July 7, 2023 • 46 mins
Spiders Song is a story about a quest to hear the greatest symphony on Earth: the music of evolution. Along the way, we get to know some of nature’s most surprising musicians — the paradise jumping spiders.
Part 1 is the Spiders
Part 2 is the Song
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Introduction Voiceover (00:03):
You are listening to season five of
Future Ecologies
Adam Huggins (00:13):
Are we are we going? We're rolling?
Mendel Skulski (00:15):
We're back.
Adam Huggins (00:16):
This is the second windowless room I've been
trapped in today.
Mendel Skulski (00:20):
The things we sacrifice for sound.
Adam Huggins (00:22):
It's true. What's up Mendel? Why are we what are
we doing here?
Mendel Skulski (00:26):
Well, Adam, I want to tell you a story that's
really special to me. It'ssomething I've been working on
quietly since mid 2019.Basically, right after season
one.
Adam Huggins (00:42):
Okay, so this is, this is a long gestational
process here, even by ourstandards, which are slow.
Mendel Skulski (00:49):
Yeah. I, so I don't know if you actually
remember this, but right afterwe put out season one, we got an
email. It was a criticism of ourthird episode, The Loneliest
Plants, basically saying thatwe'd oversimplified the concept
of biodiversity.
Adam Huggins (01:09):
How does one not oversimplify the concept of
biodiversity? But I do rememberthat email actually, didn't I
respond to them?
Mendel Skulski (01:17):
Yeah, you went back and forth about genetic
diversity versus speciesdiversity. But for me, things
didn't end in that email thread.Because I got the chance to sit
down with the scientist whowrote to us.
Wayne Maddison (01:33):
I think that who I think I am is not quite who
people know me as, or at least alot of people know me as.
Mendel Skulski (01:39):
So this is Wayne Madison. And people tend to know
him as an evolutionarybiologist.
Wayne Maddison (01:46):
The work that I've done in evolutionary
biology that's had the broadestreach is actually the
computational side. It's theanalytical tools that computer
programs that help peopleanalyze their data, because, of
course, tools that help them dothat really get a lot of
traction in the field. And so alot of people know me for that.
Mendel Skulski (02:06):
So Wayne, along with his brother, David, they
developed software which is nowwidely used to understand the
tree of life, or Phylogenetics.
Adam Huggins (02:17):
Phylogenetics being... like the science of how
a group of organisms is relatedto one another.
Mendel Skulski (02:25):
Exactly.
Adam Huggins (02:26):
Their evolutionary branching patterns... that
connect them — that connect usall.
Mendel Skulski (02:31):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (02:32):
I'm not an evolutionary biologist. But I do
know that
Mendel Skulski (02:35):
So you probably have never had to create a Nexus
file or used a program calledMesquite.
Adam Huggins (02:42):
No Nexus is for crossing the border, and
Mesquite is a tree from thesouthwest. As far as I know,
Mendel Skulski (02:50):
In this context, Nexus and Mesquite are to
phylogenetics kind of what themp3 and iTunes are to music.
Wayne Maddison (02:58):
Yeah, that's a good way to think about it.
Mendel Skulski (03:00):
And Wayne is the co author of both.
Adam Huggins (03:04):
Oh wow.
Mendel Skulski (03:05):
But that's not actually the work he's most
proud of,
Wayne Maddison (03:08):
The one thing that I'm the most proud of — and
that I think will last thelongest, as in hundreds of years
— is actually my work as ataxonomist
Adam Huggins (03:19):
Taxonomy. Okay, so we've started with phylogeny,
now we're to taxonomy. But it'sthe taxonomists who put together
phylogenies, right? They're theones who figure it out and name
all the things. And thensometimes very frustratingly,
also changed the names of thingsthat you got used to knowing as
one name, and now they'resomething else... and then
sometimes they change it back.
Mendel Skulski (03:39):
Yeah, right. Taxonomists are the people who
literally make up the names. Andmore importantly, they describe
and illustrate exactly whatmakes one species different from
another.
Adam Huggins (03:52):
And I'd never be able to identify all of these
obscure grasses without them.
Mendel Skulski (03:58):
So way back then, I heard a story from
Wayne, and it kind of changed mylife. You know, looking back, I
can say that it made me theperson who I am today.
Adam Huggins (04:12):
And who is that person, Mendel?
Mendel Skulski (04:16):
In a word, I am now a musician.
Adam Huggins (04:21):
You are. It's awesome. I'm so excited that we
can make music together for thispodcast.
Mendel Skulski (04:26):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (04:26):
And yeah, I guess I hadn't thought too much about
how or why you got there. Itjust sort of happened
organically, from myperspective. Is this like your
alter ego origin story? Is thisthe the genesis of Thumbug that
we're talking about here?
Mendel Skulski (04:43):
You might call it the hatching.
Adam Huggins (04:45):
The hatching... that... that sounds very
organic.
Mendel Skulski (04:48):
Yeah. But you know that that's really just a
tiny part of it. Because to tellthat story, first, I need to
tell you Wayne's. And it startswith the moment that put him on
his path.
It's a story of divergence andconvergence; melody and rhythm;
(05:13):
pattern and endless variation.
From Future Ecologies, this isSpiders Song, Part One.
Unknown (05:29):
Broadcasting from the uceded, shared and asserted
territories of the Musqueam,Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh,
this is Future Ecologies: exploring the shape of our world (05:37):
undefined
through ecology, design, andsound.
Mendel Skulski (06:13):
Our story begins in 1970, when Wayne was 12 years
old.
Wayne Maddison (06:20):
Burned into my memory is this one day. We were
in the Rocky Mountains, myfamily, my brother and I.
Mendel Skulski (06:27):
They were on a trip through Kicking Horse pass
Wayne Maddison (06:30):
Not too far from the border between Alberta and
British Columbia, just travelingthrough the mountains.
Mendel Skulski (06:35):
While they were there, Wayne found himself at
the headwaters of a smallmountain stream
Wayne Maddison (06:41):
That has a really peculiar thing happening
to it, or at least it was reallypeculiar to me as a 12 year old.
You follow the little creekalong, it's going downstream.
And at one point, there's thispile of rocks there, and the
stream splits in two.
Mendel Skulski (06:57):
One side flowing to the west, the other to the
east.
Wayne Maddison (07:01):
It's not like a normal stream that you think
about where you have tributariesthat come together. This was a
case where it split. And there'sa little plaque there, and the
plaque explained
Mendel Skulski (07:09):
That this stream was positioned precisely on top
of the great continental divide.From this point of divergence,
the two halves of this creekwould end in different oceans.
Wayne Maddison (07:23):
The left half of the split continues, eventually
joining other creeks becomingrivers and going to the Pacific
Ocean. The right half continueddown the other side, into
Alberta, and eventually going tothe Arctic Ocean. And I remember
looking at that, and thinking,"Whoa, just imagine the water is
(07:43):
coming, and two little bits ofwater that are just a millimeter
apart, strike this pile ofrocks, and the one little bit
happens to bounce to thePacific. And the other little
bit happens to bounce to theright and ends up in the Arctic
Ocean. And these two little bitsof water from being right next
to each other, suddenly findthat they have such different
(08:06):
destinies."
Mendel Skulski (08:07):
So this place was called Divide Creek.
Wayne Maddison (08:12):
And, of course, I realized that life is full of
Divide Creek moments. Every oneof us has these moments when
some little different decisionthat you could have thought of,
or some little different bit ofchance that might have
encountered you could have ledyou on a completely different
path in your life.
Mendel Skulski (08:29):
One such moment would come for Wayne the very
next year, on the shores of LakeOntario.
Wayne Maddison (08:38):
And as we were there on the shore, a mat of
grass floated by — presumablysome nearby house or something
had mowed their lawn and thrownit onto the lake. We we didn't
compost back in those days. Andon that mat of grass floating by
was a spider. She was a fairlysmall spider as spiders go. But
(09:03):
she looked up at me. And it wasthe fact that she looked up at
me that was I think the thingthat I noticed so much, because
I'm not used to little things inthe world paying attention to
me. I imagine now that my eyestwinkled when she looked up at
me. I don't think her eyestwinkled, but it was a real
special moment.
Mendel Skulski (09:24):
She was about as cute as a spider can be. Tiny in
almost every way, except for abig pair of eyes.
Wayne Maddison (09:34):
So of course, not only did she look up at me,
but she was looking around atthings in general. Like when I
had her on my hand she lookedaround.
Mendel Skulski (09:42):
She would tilt her whole body to look at
different things. Clearly payingattention to the world around
her
Wayne Maddison (09:50):
With how she looked around, with obviously
her really good vision, she feltmore like a little cat than like
a spider.
You know, at that moment I feltconnected to her as individuals.
It was a connection about acommon way of seeing the world.
(10:11):
But as I became a biologist, andI learned more about evolution,
I came to understand that wewere connected, of course, by
more than that — because we'reall part of the same
evolutionary tree. We arerelatives. And so there must
have been a moment, which we nowthink is maybe about 600 million
(10:33):
years ago, where there was anancestor common to both of us.
Mendel Skulski (10:38):
That is to say that once upon a time, the
ancestor of Wayne and theancestor of this tiny spider
were siblings — both part of apopulation of ancient animals,
probably small, bilaterally,symmetrical wormy things living
in the ocean, when somethinghappened, that caused that one
(11:01):
population to split into two.
Wayne Maddison (11:04):
That was a Divide Creek moment. So that for
whatever reason, one of thesubpopulations became isolated,
and it evolved and changed. Andeventually it diversified into
many, many thousands, and infact millions of different
species, including snails, andinsects, and spiders, and so
forth, and including, therefore,the spider that was on my hand
(11:27):
then. And going back to thatancestral worm, the other
population that split off fromit, starting at the beginning,
looking almost exactly the sameended up evolving and
diversifying into many thousandsof things, including humans,
including me.
Mendel Skulski (11:48):
And so he kept this spider as a pet, and fell
in love. And of course, as abudding taxonomist, the first
order of business was to giveher a name.
Wayne Maddison (12:01):
So I had to first of all figure out what she
was, in terms of human names,what species. So I went, and I
looked in a bookstore. They hadthe little golden nature guides,
and there she was Phidippusaudax. That was her species. But
because her name was Phidippusaudax, her species name, I
called her Phiddy. So she wasPhiddy.
Mendel Skulski (12:21):
Audax, a species in the genus Phidippus, in the
family Salticidae — a family oftiny arachnids, also known as
jumping spiders.
Wayne Maddison (12:35):
The rest of that summer, I started noticing
jumping spiders on houses, onbushes, on fences on trees, and
I realized that there were lotsof different species.
Mendel Skulski (12:47):
They were all recognizably related.
Wayne Maddison (12:49):
They all shared these great big eyes, they all
reacted to the world like a cat.And yet,
Mendel Skulski (12:55):
They were also radically different from each
other. With all sorts ofspectacularly weird shapes and
colors.
Wayne Maddison (13:03):
Some of them were small and striped, some of
them had metallic pink rearends, some of them had green
bits, some of them are longerand thinner, and so forth. It
was an incredible diversity, allof them being jumping spiders,
all of them having thisbehavior.
Adam Huggins (13:19):
So you you said that they come in all different
shapes and colors, but um, dothey also come in all different
sizes?
Mendel Skulski (13:28):
No, basically, as a rule, no jumping spider is
very big. And they're allharmless to humans. You know,
most wouldn't even be half aswide as your pinky nail.
Adam Huggins (13:39):
Got it. Okay, these are not not huge spiders.
Mendel Skulski (13:42):
Yeah, they're teeny tiny.
Wayne Maddison (13:46):
One of the things that I learned that
summer was that you don't haveto go to exotic tropical places
to find absolutely gorgeous,spectacularly beautiful
biodiversity. Here in Vancouveron the beaches, There's this one
species, Habronattus americanus,that the males have these bright
red pom poms. And the face isthis metallic mauve color.
(14:06):
Absolutely spectacular. They'reso beautiful. And yet no one
knows that they're there becausethey're only half a centimeter
long. If they were birds,Vancouver would be famous for
them.
In a way, a lot of my career hasbeen driven by this fascination
(14:27):
by biodiversity, and wanting tosee all of the ways there are
for a jumping spider to be.
Mendel Skulski (14:33):
And as it turns out, jumping spiders — of which
Phidippus and Habronattus arejust two subgroup — this is the
most diverse family of spiderson the planet at around 6000
described species that accountsfor nearly 15% of all spiders.
Adam Huggins (14:53):
Oh, wow. That's a lot of spiders. Good thing
they're small.
Mendel Skulski (14:56):
Yeah. And this is the group that Wayne focuses
on as a taxonomist, so we'regoing to spend the rest of this
episode talking aboutbiodiversity in general by
talking about jumping spiders indetail, because they're just an
amazingly illustrative microcosmof evolution itself.
Adam Huggins (15:16):
Okay, okay, we have these colorful, beautiful
charismatic divers, but verysmall spiders that make up a
fairly significant proportion ofall spiders. But just backing up
for a sec, jumping spiders...?
Wayne Maddison (15:31):
They are called jumping spiders because they
jump. So I tend to think oftheir eyes as being their most
distinctive feature. But theirjumping is used in combination
with their eyes for their preycapture behavior. They don't
build a web to catch prey.
Adam Huggins (15:46):
Wait, what is a spider if it doesn't build a
web? Do they still spin silk?
Wayne Maddison (15:50):
So they use their silk for little cocoons
that they sleep in. They usesilk to wrap their egg masses.
They use silk as these littledraglines that they carry behind
them, sort of like a rockclimber, in case they fall. So
they see very well, they sneakup on things, and then they
pounce using a really wellexecuted jump.
Adam Huggins (16:12):
Oh, they really are like little cats, aren't
they?
Mendel Skulski (16:15):
Yeah, you know, in in a number of ways,
actually. For example, those twobig front facing eyes — thanks
to those jumping spider visionis even sharper than a cat's.
Wayne Maddison (16:26):
Which is pretty incredible for something that
small, because they're runningagainst the physical limits of
how small the pixels can be, soto speak, and still get enough
light to detect the signal.
Mendel Skulski (16:39):
But there's at least one major distinction
between cats and spiders.
Adam Huggins (16:45):
Like... like besides the number of legs?
Mendel Skulski (16:47):
Yeah. And that's how they jump. Cats basically
jump in the same way that we dowith muscles moving bone and
joints to push off of theground. But jumping spiders
don't have big muscley legs.
Adam Huggins (17:02):
Right? How does it... how does it work?
Wayne Maddison (17:04):
It turns out that the power for the jumping
doesn't come from the legsthemselves. The power from the
jumping comes from bloodpressure rising quickly and
squirting into the legs andpropelling the leg straight.
Mendel Skulski (17:17):
The powerful muscles that allow these spiders
to jump aren't in their legs,but in their heads.
Wayne Maddison (17:24):
And so it's actually a hydraulic jumping
mechanism that they use.
Mendel Skulski (17:28):
So in order to jump, they clench the muscles in
their head, push a bunch ofblood into their legs, and off
they go,
Wayne Maddison (17:36):
They can jump quite precisely. They are known
to be able to jump and nab fliesflying by. So they can nab flies
out of the out of the air.
Mendel Skulski (17:50):
But remember, these guys are teeny tiny.
Wayne Maddison (17:54):
The furthest they can jump that I've ever
seen is maybe about 25centimeters. And that's an
Olympic jumping spider jump.
Mendel Skulski (18:04):
Usually their jumps are just a few
centimeters.
Wayne Maddison (18:07):
Little hops.
Mendel Skulski (18:08):
But that precise control also allows them to do
more than just jump. They sing,and they dance.
Adam Huggins (18:17):
You're joking.
Wayne Maddison (18:21):
This amazing vision is not just used by the
spiders in catching prey, butit's also an opportunity for
them to communicate with oneanother.
The beautiful colors of thesemales and the complex ornaments
are used in these courtshipdances — where the males display
in front of the females and thefemales use their excellent
(18:42):
vision to watch the males. Insome species of jumping spiders,
like the one that Phiddy belongsto, the courtship behavior is
pretty simple. The males juststick the front legs out and
wiggle them around and sort ofdance side to side a little bit.
And it's not much more thanthat. But in other species, it's
incredibly complicated! Socomplicated as to almost defy
(19:07):
description.
Mendel Skulski (19:09):
So just for a couple of examples, jumping
spiders have dance moves likethe tick-rev and the foreleg
wave.
Adam Huggins (19:17):
Oh, these have been named.
Mendel Skulski (19:18):
Yeah. Well, Wayne and his colleagues named
them.
Adam Huggins (19:20):
Oh, got it.
Mendel Skulski (19:21):
Do you want to try them with me?
Adam Huggins (19:22):
I would love to try them with you.
Mendel Skulski (19:24):
Okay, so we're going to do the tick-rev. So
bring both your front legsforward, up and over your head.
Adam Huggins (19:31):
You mean my... you're talking about my arms?
Mendel Skulski (19:33):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (19:33):
Okay.
Mendel Skulski (19:34):
Okay. Now bring your wrists down, so your hands
point forward.
Adam Huggins (19:37):
Yes.
Mendel Skulski (19:38):
Now, pop your hands up. That's the tick. Tick!
Adam Huggins (19:42):
Tick!
Mendel Skulski (19:42):
Now, flap them forward, up and down as fast as
you can. That's the rev.
Revvvvvvvvv
Revvvvvv
Adam Huggins (19:51):
I think I've done this in aerobics class before.
Mendel Skulski (19:55):
All right. All right. One more time. Tick!
Adam Huggins (19:57):
Tick!
Mendel Skulski (19:58):
Revvvvvvv
Adam Huggins (19:58):
Revvvvvvvvvvv
Mendel Skulski (19:59):
Tick!
Adam Huggins (20:00):
Tick!
Mendel Skulski (20:01):
Revvvv
Adam Huggins (20:01):
Revvvvvvv. Aaaaa I love it.
Mendel Skulski (20:05):
I'm glad. So let's keep it going and we're
going to do the foreleg wave.Bring your arms down a little.
Adam Huggins (20:11):
Okay.
Mendel Skulski (20:11):
Keeping your hands pointing forward.
Adam Huggins (20:13):
Okay.
Mendel Skulski (20:13):
But instead of ticking and revving, wave your
hands in circles from the wrist.
Adam Huggins (20:19):
Which... which direction do I wave my hands in
here? Do I wave them together oropposite directions?
Mendel Skulski (20:25):
Well, different spiders have different dances.
So whatever feels right.
Wayne Maddison (20:31):
There's almost as much variation among jumping
spider species in their dancesas there is among their
appearances. Of course, they'vegot eight legs, they've got
these palpae up front, andthey've got an abdomen. And so
there are lots of things thatthey can wiggle and move. So
they'll rotate their littlepelvis in little circles.
They'll flick the front legs,they'll shuffle the third legs,
(20:53):
they'll be moving the abdomen upand down. And so all these
different body parts can bemoving in different times and
different sequences in differentways. And if you think you get
confused, when you try to do theMacarena, just be thankful
you're not trying to do thesejumping spider dances because
it's much, much morecomplicated.
Mendel Skulski (21:13):
And these tiny, intricate dances are taking
place all around us all thetime.
Wayne Maddison (21:19):
This is happening in people's backyards
all across North America. Likethey're just these little birds
of paradise that are hoppingaround people's backyards.
Adam Huggins (21:41):
Okay, so they dance. And you also said that...
that they sing?
Mendel Skulski (21:49):
In a manner of speaking, they vibrate.
Adam Huggins (22:12):
It almost sounds like a cat purring
Mendel Skulski (22:14):
Yeah, or a motorcycle.
Adam Huggins (22:17):
If a cat was a motorcycle!
Wayne Maddison (22:21):
That clicking is not actually being done by the
first legs, even though it lookslike it might be. The first leg
simply are synchronized with thepart of the body that is making
a noise, which is the abdomen.The way that his abdomen is
making that noise is acombination of stridulation — so
(22:44):
he's rubbing the front of theabdomen against the back of the
carapace — but a lot of thenoise is coming just from the
inertia of the flicks of theabdomen, being transmitted
through the body, through thelegs and so that it's he's
basically making his feet pulseup and down against the
substrate. So these displays arebetter thought of as not as
(23:05):
acoustic, but seismic.
Mendel Skulski (23:10):
And because of that, you can't really hear
these songs with your nakedears, which also makes them
really hard to document. Insteadof a microphone, these
recordings were made with alaser that measures changes in
the surface deflection ofwhatever the spider is standing
on.
Wayne Maddison (23:26):
So jumping spiders don't really have great
ears in terms of anything thatwould hear through the air. And
primarily, they sense vibrationsthrough the ground, so that
they're feeling the groundshaking by how it affects their
legs.
Mendel Skulski (23:42):
And despite accounting for nearly 1/6 of all
spider species, jumping spidersongs are almost completely
undocumented. When people haveheard about jumping spiders,
they usually know about thedances, but almost never about
the songs. Both the songs andthe dances are part of the same
(24:02):
courtship performance. Eachdance motif is paired with a
pattern of vibrations. And itwould be really easy to assume
that they were making the sounddirectly by moving their legs,
but they're really justamazingly well synchronized.
Adam Huggins (24:20):
That's so wild.
Mendel Skulski (24:21):
And you could say the songs are
pre-programmed. The structure ofthem is pretty consistent
between performances. Andthey're similar between closely
related species. But there'sevidence that female jumping
spiders prefer... novelty! Theyrespond better to a song and a
dance that they haven't seen amillion times before.
Adam Huggins (24:44):
Yeah they're just like us.
Mendel Skulski (24:46):
In some ways. One thing I think it's
particularly amazing is that inthe most complex performances,
there are certain sections whereindividual spiders will
apparently improvise — almost asif they're covering a jazz
standard.
Wayne Maddison (25:04):
Within a group of say 5, 10, 20 species,
they're all playing basicallythe same genre — they're all
playing jazz, basically, rightin a particular genre of jazz.
But they'll use the elementswith different numbers of
repetitions, or maybe a littleextra note in there or something
like that. But it's the samebasic thing. Whereas the next
(25:27):
group over will be big band.
Mendel Skulski (25:30):
And when jumping spiders evolve to be showy, they
really go all out.
Wayne Maddison (25:36):
So the most complicated colors and ornaments
are held by the species thathave the most complicated
movements, and the mostcomplicated songs.
Mendel Skulski (25:47):
The ones with the most complex songs can
perform for over an hour! Andagain, we're talking about a
spider that might just be thesize of a pea. So while we don't
see a huge amount of creativityacross individual spiders,
Wayne Maddison (26:02):
the creativity comes at the evolutionary level,
as natural selection generatesnew variants of the displays.
And so there is creativity inthe system, but it's more at the
broad level across millions ofyears among species, and not at
the actual individual spidersinventing new little songs.
Mendel Skulski (26:21):
But when we step back to observe the group of
species...
Wayne Maddison (26:25):
The fact that the lineages that are doing
this, that are holding thesepatterns are also beautiful,
each in their own way, that eachhas this amazing set of
structures and colors, andbehaviors and noises and
everything,
Mendel Skulski (26:38):
You might say, nature's creativity,
Wayne Maddison (26:41):
It's just stunning.
Pretty early on, as I wasgetting into jumping spiders, I
started drawing them. And forme, it was not only just an
expression of an artistic sidethat I've always had, but it was
also a way for me to celebratethese organisms that I just
(27:03):
thought were so cool.Eventually, that turned into
biological illustrations for thesake of documenting the
differences among all thesespecies. And I, of course, I
built up a bigger and biggerlibrary of all these drawings.
And I remember at some point, asI was putting these together
into a single big illustrationrepresenting the diversity for a
(27:25):
publication, that I could seeall these little parts of the
spiders that I had drawn, andthey were all arrayed like that.
And it suddenly struck me thatthe spider bits had sort of
patterns to them, there was asense to them.
Mendel Skulski (27:39):
That is, although they were very
different, there was somethingin those differences that was
recognizable.
Wayne Maddison (27:47):
You know, maybe it's easier to think about it
was something that people know,like an orchid or something like
that, like you look at an arkand you say, oh, that's an
orchid, right? And you can lookat a different species of
orchid. And it's like, oh, it'sclearly an orchid, but it's
different, right? And you get tosee what you can compare. Oh,
that's that bit. That's thatbit. But you can see how those
bits differ. And so you start tonotice that this is variations
(28:10):
on a theme. And that variation,as you look across species
starts to feel like a little bitlike a dance. It's obviously a
very different dance from thedance at the spiders do in their
lifetime.
Mendel Skulski (28:25):
But this evolutionary dance is more than
just endless variation. Becausesometimes creeks divide, and
then later reunite. That's afterthe break.
Wayne Maddison (29:07):
You know, these Divide Creek moments in
evolution where a lineage splitsin two, and then each
diversifies. You look at one ofthe points, of jumping spiders,
and another point, humans —we're so different in so many
ways. You might think, "Oh mygosh, evolution is just all this
chaotic diversification." Andthen you look within jumping
spiders and how much diversitythere is in jumping spider
(29:28):
dances "Oh my gosh, it's justconstantly diverging,
everything's different fromeverything else." And yet at the
same time, as you're gettingthis divergence, many of them
are also finding commonsolutions.
Mendel Skulski (29:40):
So understanding the dance of evolution isn't
just about appreciatingvariation. Sometimes organisms
will each take differentevolutionary journeys, and still
end up in a remarkably similarplace. In a word, they converge.
Adam Huggins (29:58):
Right. Convergent evolution.
Mendel Skulski (30:00):
Right, yeah. And maybe you've heard that there's
kind of a meme about how allsorts of animals keep evolving
into crabs.
Adam Huggins (30:07):
It has been brought to my attention, Mendel,
that we are all headinginevitably towards crab.
Mendel Skulski (30:14):
Crabs have happened at least five separate
times now. So to kind of buildon our metaphor of Divide Creek,
we've got these two blobs ofwater, they hit a rock in a
stream, go their separate waysand find themselves in different
oceans on opposite sides of theplanet. Then maybe eons later,
(30:36):
subject to the wind and thewhims of the currents. They are
eventually reunited.
Adam Huggins (30:43):
And eventually, both of them will be crabs.
Mendel Skulski (30:48):
Yeah, maybe.
Adam Huggins (30:50):
Am I following?
Mendel Skulski (30:51):
Yeah, yeah, but, but in jumping spiders, you can
see a whole set of really vividconvergences. For example,
depending on where certainspecies live, you know, either
mostly on tree trunks or invegetation. They'll take on
certain typical body forms.
Adam Huggins (31:10):
Sure.
Mendel Skulski (31:11):
But there's also apparently a really strong
pressure for a jumping spider topretend to be an ant! 14
different genera of jumpingspiders from all around the
world, separately evolved intonear perfect ant mimics. Their
bodies become long and skinny.And sometimes they grow whole
(31:32):
fake heads and eyes, or they'llwave their forelegs around like
antenna.
Adam Huggins (31:37):
You're saying that while the rest of us may be on
an inexorable trend towardscrab, jumping spiders are headed
towards ant.
Mendel Skulski (31:46):
Yeah, some of them, at least. And this ant
mimicry has happened over andover across jumping spider
evolution. But it doesn't stopthere. Some jumping spiders have
independently evolved colorvision.
Wayne Maddison (32:01):
Jumping spiders can see color, but in a limited
way for most species.
Mendel Skulski (32:06):
So most spiders can only see green and
ultraviolet light
Wayne Maddison (32:11):
Sort of the equivalent of a human being
colorblind. There are thoughsome jumping spiders that have
evolved a color vision probablyas rich as ours.
Mendel Skulski (32:19):
What's really incredible is that they've
accomplished this in differentways.
Wayne Maddison (32:23):
But only in a few groups. One of them is
Habronattus, a group that I'velooked at a lot.
Mendel Skulski (32:29):
Habronattus is a mostly North American genus,
also known as the paradisejumping spiders, many species of
which have red ornaments ontheir legs or their faces,
despite the fact that they haveexactly zero photoreceptors
sensitive to the color red.
Wayne Maddison (32:48):
But instead, they've sort of hacked their
green photoreceptors in a way tobe able to see red by putting a
red filter over some subset ofthose green photoreceptors. On
the other hand, some othergroups of jumping spiders have a
different solution to a richercolor vision. And so the peacock
spiders, genus Maratus haveinstead done it in sort of the
(33:09):
more traditional way to addcolors, which is to add extra
sensitive photoreceptors.
Adam Huggins (33:15):
Incredible.
Mendel Skulski (33:16):
And remember how you asked which way to wave your
hands while we were doing thespider dances?
Adam Huggins (33:21):
Yeah?
Mendel Skulski (33:22):
There there are actually convergences there as
well. Several different lineagesof spiders have independently
evolved asymmetrical dancemoves, despite theories that
sexual selection favorssymmetry.
Adam Huggins (33:37):
Are the ones like in the southern hemisphere, like
they go one way and the ones inthe northern hemisphere go the
other way?
Mendel Skulski (33:43):
I don't think so.
Adam Huggins (33:44):
Has anyone checked?
Mendel Skulski (33:45):
Probably not? That's a PhD right there. But
speaking of sexual selection, itcould be that many of these
other evolutionary patterns,especially the ones that seem to
be important for these courtshiprituals, are connected to
(34:06):
another convergence. Just onethat's a little harder to see...
Wayne Maddison (34:13):
Their sex chromosomes.
Mendel Skulski (34:14):
Their sex chromosomes. Stay with me here.
Adam Huggins (34:17):
Well, you said the word sex, and then you said the
word chromosomes, so I'm torn. Ihate to admit it, but my, my
cellular bio is a little rusty.
Mendel Skulski (34:27):
Well, if I may?
Adam Huggins (34:29):
By all means,
Mendel Skulski (34:30):
In your body, inside the nucleus of every
cell, you've got a copy of yourDNA, and that DNA is tightly
coiled up and split intoseparate chunks. Those chunks
are your chromosomes.
Adam Huggins (34:42):
Okay, yeah, I can keep up with this.
Mendel Skulski (34:44):
Each chromosome is part of a matched pair, half
your chromosomes are from oneparent, half her from the other.
Adam Huggins (34:50):
I'm with you.
Mendel Skulski (34:51):
The overall set of chromosomes is shared by
every member of your species,except for the sex chromosomes,
which occur in two differentforms so called X and Y. Without
getting into gender, which is asubjective experience slash
social construction, or thespectrum of genetic exceptions
to this binary, sex chromosomesin mammals, humans included, are
(35:15):
typically an XX pair in females,and typically an XY pair in
males.
Adam Huggins (35:20):
Yeah, the X chromosomes, which are the nice
long, fully formed ones, andthen the Y one, which is like
the runty little fragment of achromosome.
Mendel Skulski (35:29):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (35:29):
Okay. This I understand — humans, XX, XY.
That's us. What about thejumping spiders?
Wayne Maddison (35:38):
Well, most spiders, you can think of it as
being a little bit the same. Imean, obviously, the the basic
idea of having chromosomes it'sthe same as with mammals. The
way it works in mammals is thatthat Y chromosome typically
doesn't do a lot. And so youcould almost dispense with it,
right? You could always imaginethe few functions it does, they
(35:58):
move somewhere else. And thenyou've just got the X all by
itself. In which case, if youwere to dispense with it, you
could make something where themales have only 1 X, and they
don't have the Y anymore, andthe females have their two Xs,
and maybe that system couldwork.
And in fact, that's what exactlyspiders do. And so some of them
have a single X in the male andtwo Xs in the female, others do
(36:22):
a little duplication thing. Sothey've got two Xs in the male
and four Xs in the female. Butone way or another, it's just
about how many Xs you have.
This arrangement of sexchromosomes, in spiders in
general, and in jumping spiders,in particular, it's actually
generally pretty constant. Mostspecies are like this. But every
(36:44):
so often, you find a group ofspiders, where are they suddenly
do something different. Andthat's the way it is in
Habronattus. In Habronattus,it's clear that their ancestors
had this two Xs male, four Xsfemale system, but a number of
them have evolved something elsewhere they have either two or
three Xs and a Y chromosome!This Y chromosome has evolved in
(37:10):
Habronattus at least eight timesin different lineages, possibly
as many as 15 times.
Mendel Skulski (37:17):
Within just this one genus of Habronattus, there
are four different versions ofmale sex chromosomes — from a
single X up to three X and a Y.
Adam Huggins (37:26):
Okay, I get it sex chromosomes are weird. But
what's the relationship betweenthis and all the other
convergences we were talkingabout?
Mendel Skulski (37:34):
Okay, so I, I want to preface that that this
part is theoretical, and doesn'tnecessarily apply to mammals and
humans. But it could boil downto a sexual conflict between the
different versions of certaingenes.
Adam Huggins (37:49):
What do you mean by that?
So males and females are reallydifferent in all these regards.
Wayne Maddison (37:50):
Of course, when we're talking about these
And as each of these features ofmales and females were evolving,
courtship features, the dancesand the ornaments and songs and
so forth, males and females aredifferent in these — males have
them, females don't. What thefemales have instead is probably
there's a really good chancethat there was a time, a moment
this whole array of invisiblepreferences that we can't see,
right? So they've got their ownthings, but they're harder to see.
(38:11):
when the feature that wasappropriate for one sex was
coming in, and it might havebeen a problem for the other
sex.
So you could think of anexample, for instance, where a
(38:32):
mutation happens that wouldgenerate a red face. If the
little males could think aboutit, which they don't, they would
say "woohoo! I get to have a redface," right? And the females
would say "oh, my gosh, I don'twant a red face, I don't want to
be so visible to predators." Sothat red face could be
advantageous in males anddisadvantageous females.
(38:52):
But if there was then at thatpoint the change in chromosome
organization that generates theY chromosome, it turns out that
the variant that's good formales could be isolated to the Y
chromosome, and the variant thatis good for females could stay
on what will then become the X.And that can allow the males to
(39:13):
have a red face and the femalesto have a white face. And so it
resolves that conflict. And thatmeans that that chromosome
change can be selected for — itcan be advantageous, it can
spread. And thus the speciesacquires this Y chromosome.
because it was a useful thing toresolve this conflict between
the interests of the males andthe interest of the females.
Adam Huggins (39:39):
So a Y chromosome could be a way for the spiders
to develop sexual dimorphism.And that would give you colorful
dancing males and less colorfulbut highly discerning females,
just like you see in many birds.
Mendel Skulski (39:55):
No, not exactly. There are lots of sexually
dimorphic jumping spiders thatdon't have a Y chromosome. In
fact, it's actually reallyinteresting here, because it's
the exception, not the rule.
Wayne Maddison (40:11):
So for what it's worth, it turns out that when
you look at the data foranimals, there is only one other
case that seems to have evenclose to this density of Y
chromosome evolutions. It's somelizard case. But it's like this
is like hugely rare to have thismany origins in a small
phylogenetic space.
Mendel Skulski (40:30):
But this mechanism could play a part in
reinforcing the especiallystrong dimorphism that we do see
in certain genera, likeHabronattus.
Wayne Maddison (40:39):
One of the hints, even though we don't have
really good data, that this iswhat's happening in this group —
when you look in Habronattus,those groups of species that
have the most complex courtshipdances are in fact those that
seem to have evolved the Ychromosome most often.
And the spectacular thing iswhen you see convergence, as you
do with jumping spider dances,and chromosomes and so forth, is
(41:03):
that you start to realize thatthere are certain repeated
patterns. And those repeatedpatterns show up in one lineage,
they show up in another lineage,they show up in another lineage.
And there might have been acertain sequence in each case.
When you start to think about itlike that, and think about these
changes through time, inconsistent sequences full of
(41:26):
counterpoint and harmony, youstart to feel as if each one of
these lineages is an instrument,and that all of these branching
lineages of evolution,therefore, are just like this
giant orchestra playing thismost amazing symphony.
Mendel Skulski (41:41):
And like a symphony, evolution isn't
completely random. But it alsoisn't completely predictable.
There are similar evolutionarysequences, motifs and melodies
that come again and again.There's harmony, rhythm,
repetition. And yet, there aresurprises everywhere. To Wayne,
(42:08):
this was a shift in perspectivenot unlike looking up at the
stars at night, and realizingthat the Milky Way isn't just a
dusty stripe across the sky, butit's something gigantic, that
we're all inside of.
(42:33):
And after a while of feelingthis way — of imagining this
grand symphony — Wayne got tothinking...
Wayne Maddison (42:42):
What if somehow I could hear it?
Mendel Skulski (42:45):
That's coming up in part two.
(43:08):
Music in this episode wasproduced by Elisa Thorne, Curtis
Andrews, West McClean, PatriciaWolf, Sunfish, Moon Light, and
me, Thumbug. All the jumpingspider audio recordings you
heard came courtesy of Dr.Damian Elias and his lab at UC
(43:31):
Berkeley. This series of FutureEcologies was produced by me,
Mendel Skulski, with help frommy co-host, Adam Huggins and our
guest, Wayne Maddison. Specialthanks to Teresa Madidson for
first introducing me to Wayne'sstory, and for helping us tell
(43:52):
this one. And thanks to LeyaTess for the amazing cover art.
You can hear Part Two right now.Follow Future Ecologies wherever
you get your podcasts, or visitus at futureecologies.net.
Funding for this episode wasprovided by the Canada Council
(44:16):
for the Arts. But ongoingsupport for this podcast comes
from listeners just like you. Tokeep this show going, join us at
patreon.com/futureecologies. Andif you like what we're doing,
please just spread the word. Itreally helps.
(44:38):
See you in Part Two
You are listening to season five of
Future Ecologies
Adam Huggins (00:13):
Are we are we going? We're rolling?
Mendel Skulski (00:15):
We're back.
Adam Huggins (00:16):
This is the second windowless room I've been
trapped in today.
Mendel Skulski (00:20):
The things we sacrifice for sound.
Adam Huggins (00:22):
It's true. What's up Mendel? Why are we what are
we doing here?
Mendel Skulski (00:26):
Well, Adam, I want to tell you a story that's
really special to me. It'ssomething I've been working on
quietly since mid 2019.Basically, right after season
one.
Adam Huggins (00:42):
Okay, so this is, this is a long gestational
process here, even by ourstandards, which are slow.
Mendel Skulski (00:49):
Yeah. I, so I don't know if you actually
remember this, but right afterwe put out season one, we got an
email. It was a criticism of ourthird episode, The Loneliest
Plants, basically saying thatwe'd oversimplified the concept
of biodiversity.
Adam Huggins (01:09):
How does one not oversimplify the concept of
biodiversity? But I do rememberthat email actually, didn't I
respond to them?
Mendel Skulski (01:17):
Yeah, you went back and forth about genetic
diversity versus speciesdiversity. But for me, things
didn't end in that email thread.Because I got the chance to sit
down with the scientist whowrote to us.
Wayne Maddison (01:33):
I think that who I think I am is not quite who
people know me as, or at least alot of people know me as.
Mendel Skulski (01:39):
So this is Wayne Madison. And people tend to know
him as an evolutionarybiologist.
Wayne Maddison (01:46):
The work that I've done in evolutionary
biology that's had the broadestreach is actually the
computational side. It's theanalytical tools that computer
programs that help peopleanalyze their data, because, of
course, tools that help them dothat really get a lot of
traction in the field. And so alot of people know me for that.
Mendel Skulski (02:06):
So Wayne, along with his brother, David, they
developed software which is nowwidely used to understand the
tree of life, or Phylogenetics.
Adam Huggins (02:17):
Phylogenetics being... like the science of how
a group of organisms is relatedto one another.
Mendel Skulski (02:25):
Exactly.
Adam Huggins (02:26):
Their evolutionary branching patterns... that
connect them — that connect usall.
Mendel Skulski (02:31):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (02:32):
I'm not an evolutionary biologist. But I do
know that
Mendel Skulski (02:35):
So you probably have never had to create a Nexus
file or used a program calledMesquite.
Adam Huggins (02:42):
No Nexus is for crossing the border, and
Mesquite is a tree from thesouthwest. As far as I know,
Mendel Skulski (02:50):
In this context, Nexus and Mesquite are to
phylogenetics kind of what themp3 and iTunes are to music.
Wayne Maddison (02:58):
Yeah, that's a good way to think about it.
Mendel Skulski (03:00):
And Wayne is the co author of both.
Adam Huggins (03:04):
Oh wow.
Mendel Skulski (03:05):
But that's not actually the work he's most
proud of,
Wayne Maddison (03:08):
The one thing that I'm the most proud of — and
that I think will last thelongest, as in hundreds of years
— is actually my work as ataxonomist
Adam Huggins (03:19):
Taxonomy. Okay, so we've started with phylogeny,
now we're to taxonomy. But it'sthe taxonomists who put together
phylogenies, right? They're theones who figure it out and name
all the things. And thensometimes very frustratingly,
also changed the names of thingsthat you got used to knowing as
one name, and now they'resomething else... and then
sometimes they change it back.
Mendel Skulski (03:39):
Yeah, right. Taxonomists are the people who
literally make up the names. Andmore importantly, they describe
and illustrate exactly whatmakes one species different from
another.
Adam Huggins (03:52):
And I'd never be able to identify all of these
obscure grasses without them.
Mendel Skulski (03:58):
So way back then, I heard a story from
Wayne, and it kind of changed mylife. You know, looking back, I
can say that it made me theperson who I am today.
Adam Huggins (04:12):
And who is that person, Mendel?
Mendel Skulski (04:16):
In a word, I am now a musician.
Adam Huggins (04:21):
You are. It's awesome. I'm so excited that we
can make music together for thispodcast.
Mendel Skulski (04:26):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (04:26):
And yeah, I guess I hadn't thought too much about
how or why you got there. Itjust sort of happened
organically, from myperspective. Is this like your
alter ego origin story? Is thisthe the genesis of Thumbug that
we're talking about here?
Mendel Skulski (04:43):
You might call it the hatching.
Adam Huggins (04:45):
The hatching... that... that sounds very
organic.
Mendel Skulski (04:48):
Yeah. But you know that that's really just a
tiny part of it. Because to tellthat story, first, I need to
tell you Wayne's. And it startswith the moment that put him on
his path.
It's a story of divergence andconvergence; melody and rhythm;
(05:13):
pattern and endless variation.
From Future Ecologies, this isSpiders Song, Part One.
Unknown (05:29):
Broadcasting from the uceded, shared and asserted
territories of the Musqueam,Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh,
this is Future Ecologies: exploring the shape of our world (05:37):
undefined
through ecology, design, andsound.
Mendel Skulski (06:13):
Our story begins in 1970, when Wayne was 12 years
old.
Wayne Maddison (06:20):
Burned into my memory is this one day. We were
in the Rocky Mountains, myfamily, my brother and I.
Mendel Skulski (06:27):
They were on a trip through Kicking Horse pass
Wayne Maddison (06:30):
Not too far from the border between Alberta and
British Columbia, just travelingthrough the mountains.
Mendel Skulski (06:35):
While they were there, Wayne found himself at
the headwaters of a smallmountain stream
Wayne Maddison (06:41):
That has a really peculiar thing happening
to it, or at least it was reallypeculiar to me as a 12 year old.
You follow the little creekalong, it's going downstream.
And at one point, there's thispile of rocks there, and the
stream splits in two.
Mendel Skulski (06:57):
One side flowing to the west, the other to the
east.
Wayne Maddison (07:01):
It's not like a normal stream that you think
about where you have tributariesthat come together. This was a
case where it split. And there'sa little plaque there, and the
plaque explained
Mendel Skulski (07:09):
That this stream was positioned precisely on top
of the great continental divide.From this point of divergence,
the two halves of this creekwould end in different oceans.
Wayne Maddison (07:23):
The left half of the split continues, eventually
joining other creeks becomingrivers and going to the Pacific
Ocean. The right half continueddown the other side, into
Alberta, and eventually going tothe Arctic Ocean. And I remember
looking at that, and thinking,"Whoa, just imagine the water is
(07:43):
coming, and two little bits ofwater that are just a millimeter
apart, strike this pile ofrocks, and the one little bit
happens to bounce to thePacific. And the other little
bit happens to bounce to theright and ends up in the Arctic
Ocean. And these two little bitsof water from being right next
to each other, suddenly findthat they have such different
(08:06):
destinies."
Mendel Skulski (08:07):
So this place was called Divide Creek.
Wayne Maddison (08:12):
And, of course, I realized that life is full of
Divide Creek moments. Every oneof us has these moments when
some little different decisionthat you could have thought of,
or some little different bit ofchance that might have
encountered you could have ledyou on a completely different
path in your life.
Mendel Skulski (08:29):
One such moment would come for Wayne the very
next year, on the shores of LakeOntario.
Wayne Maddison (08:38):
And as we were there on the shore, a mat of
grass floated by — presumablysome nearby house or something
had mowed their lawn and thrownit onto the lake. We we didn't
compost back in those days. Andon that mat of grass floating by
was a spider. She was a fairlysmall spider as spiders go. But
(09:03):
she looked up at me. And it wasthe fact that she looked up at
me that was I think the thingthat I noticed so much, because
I'm not used to little things inthe world paying attention to
me. I imagine now that my eyestwinkled when she looked up at
me. I don't think her eyestwinkled, but it was a real
special moment.
Mendel Skulski (09:24):
She was about as cute as a spider can be. Tiny in
almost every way, except for abig pair of eyes.
Wayne Maddison (09:34):
So of course, not only did she look up at me,
but she was looking around atthings in general. Like when I
had her on my hand she lookedaround.
Mendel Skulski (09:42):
She would tilt her whole body to look at
different things. Clearly payingattention to the world around
her
Wayne Maddison (09:50):
With how she looked around, with obviously
her really good vision, she feltmore like a little cat than like
a spider.
You know, at that moment I feltconnected to her as individuals.
It was a connection about acommon way of seeing the world.
(10:11):
But as I became a biologist, andI learned more about evolution,
I came to understand that wewere connected, of course, by
more than that — because we'reall part of the same
evolutionary tree. We arerelatives. And so there must
have been a moment, which we nowthink is maybe about 600 million
(10:33):
years ago, where there was anancestor common to both of us.
Mendel Skulski (10:38):
That is to say that once upon a time, the
ancestor of Wayne and theancestor of this tiny spider
were siblings — both part of apopulation of ancient animals,
probably small, bilaterally,symmetrical wormy things living
in the ocean, when somethinghappened, that caused that one
(11:01):
population to split into two.
Wayne Maddison (11:04):
That was a Divide Creek moment. So that for
whatever reason, one of thesubpopulations became isolated,
and it evolved and changed. Andeventually it diversified into
many, many thousands, and infact millions of different
species, including snails, andinsects, and spiders, and so
forth, and including, therefore,the spider that was on my hand
(11:27):
then. And going back to thatancestral worm, the other
population that split off fromit, starting at the beginning,
looking almost exactly the sameended up evolving and
diversifying into many thousandsof things, including humans,
including me.
Mendel Skulski (11:48):
And so he kept this spider as a pet, and fell
in love. And of course, as abudding taxonomist, the first
order of business was to giveher a name.
Wayne Maddison (12:01):
So I had to first of all figure out what she
was, in terms of human names,what species. So I went, and I
looked in a bookstore. They hadthe little golden nature guides,
and there she was Phidippusaudax. That was her species. But
because her name was Phidippusaudax, her species name, I
called her Phiddy. So she wasPhiddy.
Mendel Skulski (12:21):
Audax, a species in the genus Phidippus, in the
family Salticidae — a family oftiny arachnids, also known as
jumping spiders.
Wayne Maddison (12:35):
The rest of that summer, I started noticing
jumping spiders on houses, onbushes, on fences on trees, and
I realized that there were lotsof different species.
Mendel Skulski (12:47):
They were all recognizably related.
Wayne Maddison (12:49):
They all shared these great big eyes, they all
reacted to the world like a cat.And yet,
Mendel Skulski (12:55):
They were also radically different from each
other. With all sorts ofspectacularly weird shapes and
colors.
Wayne Maddison (13:03):
Some of them were small and striped, some of
them had metallic pink rearends, some of them had green
bits, some of them are longerand thinner, and so forth. It
was an incredible diversity, allof them being jumping spiders,
all of them having thisbehavior.
Adam Huggins (13:19):
So you you said that they come in all different
shapes and colors, but um, dothey also come in all different
sizes?
Mendel Skulski (13:28):
No, basically, as a rule, no jumping spider is
very big. And they're allharmless to humans. You know,
most wouldn't even be half aswide as your pinky nail.
Adam Huggins (13:39):
Got it. Okay, these are not not huge spiders.
Mendel Skulski (13:42):
Yeah, they're teeny tiny.
Wayne Maddison (13:46):
One of the things that I learned that
summer was that you don't haveto go to exotic tropical places
to find absolutely gorgeous,spectacularly beautiful
biodiversity. Here in Vancouveron the beaches, There's this one
species, Habronattus americanus,that the males have these bright
red pom poms. And the face isthis metallic mauve color.
(14:06):
Absolutely spectacular. They'reso beautiful. And yet no one
knows that they're there becausethey're only half a centimeter
long. If they were birds,Vancouver would be famous for
them.
In a way, a lot of my career hasbeen driven by this fascination
(14:27):
by biodiversity, and wanting tosee all of the ways there are
for a jumping spider to be.
Mendel Skulski (14:33):
And as it turns out, jumping spiders — of which
Phidippus and Habronattus arejust two subgroup — this is the
most diverse family of spiderson the planet at around 6000
described species that accountsfor nearly 15% of all spiders.
Adam Huggins (14:53):
Oh, wow. That's a lot of spiders. Good thing
they're small.
Mendel Skulski (14:56):
Yeah. And this is the group that Wayne focuses
on as a taxonomist, so we'regoing to spend the rest of this
episode talking aboutbiodiversity in general by
talking about jumping spiders indetail, because they're just an
amazingly illustrative microcosmof evolution itself.
Adam Huggins (15:16):
Okay, okay, we have these colorful, beautiful
charismatic divers, but verysmall spiders that make up a
fairly significant proportion ofall spiders. But just backing up
for a sec, jumping spiders...?
Wayne Maddison (15:31):
They are called jumping spiders because they
jump. So I tend to think oftheir eyes as being their most
distinctive feature. But theirjumping is used in combination
with their eyes for their preycapture behavior. They don't
build a web to catch prey.
Adam Huggins (15:46):
Wait, what is a spider if it doesn't build a
web? Do they still spin silk?
Wayne Maddison (15:50):
So they use their silk for little cocoons
that they sleep in. They usesilk to wrap their egg masses.
They use silk as these littledraglines that they carry behind
them, sort of like a rockclimber, in case they fall. So
they see very well, they sneakup on things, and then they
pounce using a really wellexecuted jump.
Adam Huggins (16:12):
Oh, they really are like little cats, aren't
they?
Mendel Skulski (16:15):
Yeah, you know, in in a number of ways,
actually. For example, those twobig front facing eyes — thanks
to those jumping spider visionis even sharper than a cat's.
Wayne Maddison (16:26):
Which is pretty incredible for something that
small, because they're runningagainst the physical limits of
how small the pixels can be, soto speak, and still get enough
light to detect the signal.
Mendel Skulski (16:39):
But there's at least one major distinction
between cats and spiders.
Adam Huggins (16:45):
Like... like besides the number of legs?
Mendel Skulski (16:47):
Yeah. And that's how they jump. Cats basically
jump in the same way that we dowith muscles moving bone and
joints to push off of theground. But jumping spiders
don't have big muscley legs.
Adam Huggins (17:02):
Right? How does it... how does it work?
Wayne Maddison (17:04):
It turns out that the power for the jumping
doesn't come from the legsthemselves. The power from the
jumping comes from bloodpressure rising quickly and
squirting into the legs andpropelling the leg straight.
Mendel Skulski (17:17):
The powerful muscles that allow these spiders
to jump aren't in their legs,but in their heads.
Wayne Maddison (17:24):
And so it's actually a hydraulic jumping
mechanism that they use.
Mendel Skulski (17:28):
So in order to jump, they clench the muscles in
their head, push a bunch ofblood into their legs, and off
they go,
Wayne Maddison (17:36):
They can jump quite precisely. They are known
to be able to jump and nab fliesflying by. So they can nab flies
out of the out of the air.
Mendel Skulski (17:50):
But remember, these guys are teeny tiny.
Wayne Maddison (17:54):
The furthest they can jump that I've ever
seen is maybe about 25centimeters. And that's an
Olympic jumping spider jump.
Mendel Skulski (18:04):
Usually their jumps are just a few
centimeters.
Wayne Maddison (18:07):
Little hops.
Mendel Skulski (18:08):
But that precise control also allows them to do
more than just jump. They sing,and they dance.
Adam Huggins (18:17):
You're joking.
Wayne Maddison (18:21):
This amazing vision is not just used by the
spiders in catching prey, butit's also an opportunity for
them to communicate with oneanother.
The beautiful colors of thesemales and the complex ornaments
are used in these courtshipdances — where the males display
in front of the females and thefemales use their excellent
(18:42):
vision to watch the males. Insome species of jumping spiders,
like the one that Phiddy belongsto, the courtship behavior is
pretty simple. The males juststick the front legs out and
wiggle them around and sort ofdance side to side a little bit.
And it's not much more thanthat. But in other species, it's
incredibly complicated! Socomplicated as to almost defy
(19:07):
description.
Mendel Skulski (19:09):
So just for a couple of examples, jumping
spiders have dance moves likethe tick-rev and the foreleg
wave.
Adam Huggins (19:17):
Oh, these have been named.
Mendel Skulski (19:18):
Yeah. Well, Wayne and his colleagues named
them.
Adam Huggins (19:20):
Oh, got it.
Mendel Skulski (19:21):
Do you want to try them with me?
Adam Huggins (19:22):
I would love to try them with you.
Mendel Skulski (19:24):
Okay, so we're going to do the tick-rev. So
bring both your front legsforward, up and over your head.
Adam Huggins (19:31):
You mean my... you're talking about my arms?
Mendel Skulski (19:33):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (19:33):
Okay.
Mendel Skulski (19:34):
Okay. Now bring your wrists down, so your hands
point forward.
Adam Huggins (19:37):
Yes.
Mendel Skulski (19:38):
Now, pop your hands up. That's the tick. Tick!
Adam Huggins (19:42):
Tick!
Mendel Skulski (19:42):
Now, flap them forward, up and down as fast as
you can. That's the rev.
Revvvvvvvvv
Revvvvvv
Adam Huggins (19:51):
I think I've done this in aerobics class before.
Mendel Skulski (19:55):
All right. All right. One more time. Tick!
Adam Huggins (19:57):
Tick!
Mendel Skulski (19:58):
Revvvvvvv
Adam Huggins (19:58):
Revvvvvvvvvvv
Mendel Skulski (19:59):
Tick!
Adam Huggins (20:00):
Tick!
Mendel Skulski (20:01):
Revvvv
Adam Huggins (20:01):
Revvvvvvv. Aaaaa I love it.
Mendel Skulski (20:05):
I'm glad. So let's keep it going and we're
going to do the foreleg wave.Bring your arms down a little.
Adam Huggins (20:11):
Okay.
Mendel Skulski (20:11):
Keeping your hands pointing forward.
Adam Huggins (20:13):
Okay.
Mendel Skulski (20:13):
But instead of ticking and revving, wave your
hands in circles from the wrist.
Adam Huggins (20:19):
Which... which direction do I wave my hands in
here? Do I wave them together oropposite directions?
Mendel Skulski (20:25):
Well, different spiders have different dances.
So whatever feels right.
Wayne Maddison (20:31):
There's almost as much variation among jumping
spider species in their dancesas there is among their
appearances. Of course, they'vegot eight legs, they've got
these palpae up front, andthey've got an abdomen. And so
there are lots of things thatthey can wiggle and move. So
they'll rotate their littlepelvis in little circles.
They'll flick the front legs,they'll shuffle the third legs,
(20:53):
they'll be moving the abdomen upand down. And so all these
different body parts can bemoving in different times and
different sequences in differentways. And if you think you get
confused, when you try to do theMacarena, just be thankful
you're not trying to do thesejumping spider dances because
it's much, much morecomplicated.
Mendel Skulski (21:13):
And these tiny, intricate dances are taking
place all around us all thetime.
Wayne Maddison (21:19):
This is happening in people's backyards
all across North America. Likethey're just these little birds
of paradise that are hoppingaround people's backyards.
Adam Huggins (21:41):
Okay, so they dance. And you also said that...
that they sing?
Mendel Skulski (21:49):
In a manner of speaking, they vibrate.
Adam Huggins (22:12):
It almost sounds like a cat purring
Mendel Skulski (22:14):
Yeah, or a motorcycle.
Adam Huggins (22:17):
If a cat was a motorcycle!
Wayne Maddison (22:21):
That clicking is not actually being done by the
first legs, even though it lookslike it might be. The first leg
simply are synchronized with thepart of the body that is making
a noise, which is the abdomen.The way that his abdomen is
making that noise is acombination of stridulation — so
(22:44):
he's rubbing the front of theabdomen against the back of the
carapace — but a lot of thenoise is coming just from the
inertia of the flicks of theabdomen, being transmitted
through the body, through thelegs and so that it's he's
basically making his feet pulseup and down against the
substrate. So these displays arebetter thought of as not as
(23:05):
acoustic, but seismic.
Mendel Skulski (23:10):
And because of that, you can't really hear
these songs with your nakedears, which also makes them
really hard to document. Insteadof a microphone, these
recordings were made with alaser that measures changes in
the surface deflection ofwhatever the spider is standing
on.
Wayne Maddison (23:26):
So jumping spiders don't really have great
ears in terms of anything thatwould hear through the air. And
primarily, they sense vibrationsthrough the ground, so that
they're feeling the groundshaking by how it affects their
legs.
Mendel Skulski (23:42):
And despite accounting for nearly 1/6 of all
spider species, jumping spidersongs are almost completely
undocumented. When people haveheard about jumping spiders,
they usually know about thedances, but almost never about
the songs. Both the songs andthe dances are part of the same
(24:02):
courtship performance. Eachdance motif is paired with a
pattern of vibrations. And itwould be really easy to assume
that they were making the sounddirectly by moving their legs,
but they're really justamazingly well synchronized.
Adam Huggins (24:20):
That's so wild.
Mendel Skulski (24:21):
And you could say the songs are
pre-programmed. The structure ofthem is pretty consistent
between performances. Andthey're similar between closely
related species. But there'sevidence that female jumping
spiders prefer... novelty! Theyrespond better to a song and a
dance that they haven't seen amillion times before.
Adam Huggins (24:44):
Yeah they're just like us.
Mendel Skulski (24:46):
In some ways. One thing I think it's
particularly amazing is that inthe most complex performances,
there are certain sections whereindividual spiders will
apparently improvise — almost asif they're covering a jazz
standard.
Wayne Maddison (25:04):
Within a group of say 5, 10, 20 species,
they're all playing basicallythe same genre — they're all
playing jazz, basically, rightin a particular genre of jazz.
But they'll use the elementswith different numbers of
repetitions, or maybe a littleextra note in there or something
like that. But it's the samebasic thing. Whereas the next
(25:27):
group over will be big band.
Mendel Skulski (25:30):
And when jumping spiders evolve to be showy, they
really go all out.
Wayne Maddison (25:36):
So the most complicated colors and ornaments
are held by the species thathave the most complicated
movements, and the mostcomplicated songs.
Mendel Skulski (25:47):
The ones with the most complex songs can
perform for over an hour! Andagain, we're talking about a
spider that might just be thesize of a pea. So while we don't
see a huge amount of creativityacross individual spiders,
Wayne Maddison (26:02):
the creativity comes at the evolutionary level,
as natural selection generatesnew variants of the displays.
And so there is creativity inthe system, but it's more at the
broad level across millions ofyears among species, and not at
the actual individual spidersinventing new little songs.
Mendel Skulski (26:21):
But when we step back to observe the group of
species...
Wayne Maddison (26:25):
The fact that the lineages that are doing
this, that are holding thesepatterns are also beautiful,
each in their own way, that eachhas this amazing set of
structures and colors, andbehaviors and noises and
everything,
Mendel Skulski (26:38):
You might say, nature's creativity,
Wayne Maddison (26:41):
It's just stunning.
Pretty early on, as I wasgetting into jumping spiders, I
started drawing them. And forme, it was not only just an
expression of an artistic sidethat I've always had, but it was
also a way for me to celebratethese organisms that I just
(27:03):
thought were so cool.Eventually, that turned into
biological illustrations for thesake of documenting the
differences among all thesespecies. And I, of course, I
built up a bigger and biggerlibrary of all these drawings.
And I remember at some point, asI was putting these together
into a single big illustrationrepresenting the diversity for a
(27:25):
publication, that I could seeall these little parts of the
spiders that I had drawn, andthey were all arrayed like that.
And it suddenly struck me thatthe spider bits had sort of
patterns to them, there was asense to them.
Mendel Skulski (27:39):
That is, although they were very
different, there was somethingin those differences that was
recognizable.
Wayne Maddison (27:47):
You know, maybe it's easier to think about it
was something that people know,like an orchid or something like
that, like you look at an arkand you say, oh, that's an
orchid, right? And you can lookat a different species of
orchid. And it's like, oh, it'sclearly an orchid, but it's
different, right? And you get tosee what you can compare. Oh,
that's that bit. That's thatbit. But you can see how those
bits differ. And so you start tonotice that this is variations
(28:10):
on a theme. And that variation,as you look across species
starts to feel like a little bitlike a dance. It's obviously a
very different dance from thedance at the spiders do in their
lifetime.
Mendel Skulski (28:25):
But this evolutionary dance is more than
just endless variation. Becausesometimes creeks divide, and
then later reunite. That's afterthe break.
Wayne Maddison (29:07):
You know, these Divide Creek moments in
evolution where a lineage splitsin two, and then each
diversifies. You look at one ofthe points, of jumping spiders,
and another point, humans —we're so different in so many
ways. You might think, "Oh mygosh, evolution is just all this
chaotic diversification." Andthen you look within jumping
spiders and how much diversitythere is in jumping spider
(29:28):
dances "Oh my gosh, it's justconstantly diverging,
everything's different fromeverything else." And yet at the
same time, as you're gettingthis divergence, many of them
are also finding commonsolutions.
Mendel Skulski (29:40):
So understanding the dance of evolution isn't
just about appreciatingvariation. Sometimes organisms
will each take differentevolutionary journeys, and still
end up in a remarkably similarplace. In a word, they converge.
Adam Huggins (29:58):
Right. Convergent evolution.
Mendel Skulski (30:00):
Right, yeah. And maybe you've heard that there's
kind of a meme about how allsorts of animals keep evolving
into crabs.
Adam Huggins (30:07):
It has been brought to my attention, Mendel,
that we are all headinginevitably towards crab.
Mendel Skulski (30:14):
Crabs have happened at least five separate
times now. So to kind of buildon our metaphor of Divide Creek,
we've got these two blobs ofwater, they hit a rock in a
stream, go their separate waysand find themselves in different
oceans on opposite sides of theplanet. Then maybe eons later,
(30:36):
subject to the wind and thewhims of the currents. They are
eventually reunited.
Adam Huggins (30:43):
And eventually, both of them will be crabs.
Mendel Skulski (30:48):
Yeah, maybe.
Adam Huggins (30:50):
Am I following?
Mendel Skulski (30:51):
Yeah, yeah, but, but in jumping spiders, you can
see a whole set of really vividconvergences. For example,
depending on where certainspecies live, you know, either
mostly on tree trunks or invegetation. They'll take on
certain typical body forms.
Adam Huggins (31:10):
Sure.
Mendel Skulski (31:11):
But there's also apparently a really strong
pressure for a jumping spider topretend to be an ant! 14
different genera of jumpingspiders from all around the
world, separately evolved intonear perfect ant mimics. Their
bodies become long and skinny.And sometimes they grow whole
(31:32):
fake heads and eyes, or they'llwave their forelegs around like
antenna.
Adam Huggins (31:37):
You're saying that while the rest of us may be on
an inexorable trend towardscrab, jumping spiders are headed
towards ant.
Mendel Skulski (31:46):
Yeah, some of them, at least. And this ant
mimicry has happened over andover across jumping spider
evolution. But it doesn't stopthere. Some jumping spiders have
independently evolved colorvision.
Wayne Maddison (32:01):
Jumping spiders can see color, but in a limited
way for most species.
Mendel Skulski (32:06):
So most spiders can only see green and
ultraviolet light
Wayne Maddison (32:11):
Sort of the equivalent of a human being
colorblind. There are thoughsome jumping spiders that have
evolved a color vision probablyas rich as ours.
Mendel Skulski (32:19):
What's really incredible is that they've
accomplished this in differentways.
Wayne Maddison (32:23):
But only in a few groups. One of them is
Habronattus, a group that I'velooked at a lot.
Mendel Skulski (32:29):
Habronattus is a mostly North American genus,
also known as the paradisejumping spiders, many species of
which have red ornaments ontheir legs or their faces,
despite the fact that they haveexactly zero photoreceptors
sensitive to the color red.
Wayne Maddison (32:48):
But instead, they've sort of hacked their
green photoreceptors in a way tobe able to see red by putting a
red filter over some subset ofthose green photoreceptors. On
the other hand, some othergroups of jumping spiders have a
different solution to a richercolor vision. And so the peacock
spiders, genus Maratus haveinstead done it in sort of the
(33:09):
more traditional way to addcolors, which is to add extra
sensitive photoreceptors.
Adam Huggins (33:15):
Incredible.
Mendel Skulski (33:16):
And remember how you asked which way to wave your
hands while we were doing thespider dances?
Adam Huggins (33:21):
Yeah?
Mendel Skulski (33:22):
There there are actually convergences there as
well. Several different lineagesof spiders have independently
evolved asymmetrical dancemoves, despite theories that
sexual selection favorssymmetry.
Adam Huggins (33:37):
Are the ones like in the southern hemisphere, like
they go one way and the ones inthe northern hemisphere go the
other way?
Mendel Skulski (33:43):
I don't think so.
Adam Huggins (33:44):
Has anyone checked?
Mendel Skulski (33:45):
Probably not? That's a PhD right there. But
speaking of sexual selection, itcould be that many of these
other evolutionary patterns,especially the ones that seem to
be important for these courtshiprituals, are connected to
(34:06):
another convergence. Just onethat's a little harder to see...
Wayne Maddison (34:13):
Their sex chromosomes.
Mendel Skulski (34:14):
Their sex chromosomes. Stay with me here.
Adam Huggins (34:17):
Well, you said the word sex, and then you said the
word chromosomes, so I'm torn. Ihate to admit it, but my, my
cellular bio is a little rusty.
Mendel Skulski (34:27):
Well, if I may?
Adam Huggins (34:29):
By all means,
Mendel Skulski (34:30):
In your body, inside the nucleus of every
cell, you've got a copy of yourDNA, and that DNA is tightly
coiled up and split intoseparate chunks. Those chunks
are your chromosomes.
Adam Huggins (34:42):
Okay, yeah, I can keep up with this.
Mendel Skulski (34:44):
Each chromosome is part of a matched pair, half
your chromosomes are from oneparent, half her from the other.
Adam Huggins (34:50):
I'm with you.
Mendel Skulski (34:51):
The overall set of chromosomes is shared by
every member of your species,except for the sex chromosomes,
which occur in two differentforms so called X and Y. Without
getting into gender, which is asubjective experience slash
social construction, or thespectrum of genetic exceptions
to this binary, sex chromosomesin mammals, humans included, are
(35:15):
typically an XX pair in females,and typically an XY pair in
males.
Adam Huggins (35:20):
Yeah, the X chromosomes, which are the nice
long, fully formed ones, andthen the Y one, which is like
the runty little fragment of achromosome.
Mendel Skulski (35:29):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (35:29):
Okay. This I understand — humans, XX, XY.
That's us. What about thejumping spiders?
Wayne Maddison (35:38):
Well, most spiders, you can think of it as
being a little bit the same. Imean, obviously, the the basic
idea of having chromosomes it'sthe same as with mammals. The
way it works in mammals is thatthat Y chromosome typically
doesn't do a lot. And so youcould almost dispense with it,
right? You could always imaginethe few functions it does, they
(35:58):
move somewhere else. And thenyou've just got the X all by
itself. In which case, if youwere to dispense with it, you
could make something where themales have only 1 X, and they
don't have the Y anymore, andthe females have their two Xs,
and maybe that system couldwork.
And in fact, that's what exactlyspiders do. And so some of them
have a single X in the male andtwo Xs in the female, others do
(36:22):
a little duplication thing. Sothey've got two Xs in the male
and four Xs in the female. Butone way or another, it's just
about how many Xs you have.
This arrangement of sexchromosomes, in spiders in
general, and in jumping spiders,in particular, it's actually
generally pretty constant. Mostspecies are like this. But every
(36:44):
so often, you find a group ofspiders, where are they suddenly
do something different. Andthat's the way it is in
Habronattus. In Habronattus,it's clear that their ancestors
had this two Xs male, four Xsfemale system, but a number of
them have evolved something elsewhere they have either two or
three Xs and a Y chromosome!This Y chromosome has evolved in
(37:10):
Habronattus at least eight timesin different lineages, possibly
as many as 15 times.
Mendel Skulski (37:17):
Within just this one genus of Habronattus, there
are four different versions ofmale sex chromosomes — from a
single X up to three X and a Y.
Adam Huggins (37:26):
Okay, I get it sex chromosomes are weird. But
what's the relationship betweenthis and all the other
convergences we were talkingabout?
Mendel Skulski (37:34):
Okay, so I, I want to preface that that this
part is theoretical, and doesn'tnecessarily apply to mammals and
humans. But it could boil downto a sexual conflict between the
different versions of certaingenes.
Adam Huggins (37:49):
What do you mean by that?
So males and females are reallydifferent in all these regards.
Wayne Maddison (37:50):
Of course, when we're talking about these
And as each of these features ofmales and females were evolving,
courtship features, the dancesand the ornaments and songs and
so forth, males and females aredifferent in these — males have
them, females don't. What thefemales have instead is probably
there's a really good chancethat there was a time, a moment
this whole array of invisiblepreferences that we can't see,
right? So they've got their ownthings, but they're harder to see.
(38:11):
when the feature that wasappropriate for one sex was
coming in, and it might havebeen a problem for the other
sex.
So you could think of anexample, for instance, where a
(38:32):
mutation happens that wouldgenerate a red face. If the
little males could think aboutit, which they don't, they would
say "woohoo! I get to have a redface," right? And the females
would say "oh, my gosh, I don'twant a red face, I don't want to
be so visible to predators." Sothat red face could be
advantageous in males anddisadvantageous females.
(38:52):
But if there was then at thatpoint the change in chromosome
organization that generates theY chromosome, it turns out that
the variant that's good formales could be isolated to the Y
chromosome, and the variant thatis good for females could stay
on what will then become the X.And that can allow the males to
(39:13):
have a red face and the femalesto have a white face. And so it
resolves that conflict. And thatmeans that that chromosome
change can be selected for — itcan be advantageous, it can
spread. And thus the speciesacquires this Y chromosome.
because it was a useful thing toresolve this conflict between
the interests of the males andthe interest of the females.
Adam Huggins (39:39):
So a Y chromosome could be a way for the spiders
to develop sexual dimorphism.And that would give you colorful
dancing males and less colorfulbut highly discerning females,
just like you see in many birds.
Mendel Skulski (39:55):
No, not exactly. There are lots of sexually
dimorphic jumping spiders thatdon't have a Y chromosome. In
fact, it's actually reallyinteresting here, because it's
the exception, not the rule.
Wayne Maddison (40:11):
So for what it's worth, it turns out that when
you look at the data foranimals, there is only one other
case that seems to have evenclose to this density of Y
chromosome evolutions. It's somelizard case. But it's like this
is like hugely rare to have thismany origins in a small
phylogenetic space.
Mendel Skulski (40:30):
But this mechanism could play a part in
reinforcing the especiallystrong dimorphism that we do see
in certain genera, likeHabronattus.
Wayne Maddison (40:39):
One of the hints, even though we don't have
really good data, that this iswhat's happening in this group —
when you look in Habronattus,those groups of species that
have the most complex courtshipdances are in fact those that
seem to have evolved the Ychromosome most often.
And the spectacular thing iswhen you see convergence, as you
do with jumping spider dances,and chromosomes and so forth, is
(41:03):
that you start to realize thatthere are certain repeated
patterns. And those repeatedpatterns show up in one lineage,
they show up in another lineage,they show up in another lineage.
And there might have been acertain sequence in each case.
When you start to think about itlike that, and think about these
changes through time, inconsistent sequences full of
(41:26):
counterpoint and harmony, youstart to feel as if each one of
these lineages is an instrument,and that all of these branching
lineages of evolution,therefore, are just like this
giant orchestra playing thismost amazing symphony.
Mendel Skulski (41:41):
And like a symphony, evolution isn't
completely random. But it alsoisn't completely predictable.
There are similar evolutionarysequences, motifs and melodies
that come again and again.There's harmony, rhythm,
repetition. And yet, there aresurprises everywhere. To Wayne,
(42:08):
this was a shift in perspectivenot unlike looking up at the
stars at night, and realizingthat the Milky Way isn't just a
dusty stripe across the sky, butit's something gigantic, that
we're all inside of.
(42:33):
And after a while of feelingthis way — of imagining this
grand symphony — Wayne got tothinking...
Wayne Maddison (42:42):
What if somehow I could hear it?
Mendel Skulski (42:45):
That's coming up in part two.
(43:08):
Music in this episode wasproduced by Elisa Thorne, Curtis
Andrews, West McClean, PatriciaWolf, Sunfish, Moon Light, and
me, Thumbug. All the jumpingspider audio recordings you
heard came courtesy of Dr.Damian Elias and his lab at UC
(43:31):
Berkeley. This series of FutureEcologies was produced by me,
Mendel Skulski, with help frommy co-host, Adam Huggins and our
guest, Wayne Maddison. Specialthanks to Teresa Madidson for
first introducing me to Wayne'sstory, and for helping us tell
(43:52):
this one. And thanks to LeyaTess for the amazing cover art.
You can hear Part Two right now.Follow Future Ecologies wherever
you get your podcasts, or visitus at futureecologies.net.
Funding for this episode wasprovided by the Canada Council
(44:16):
for the Arts. But ongoingsupport for this podcast comes
from listeners just like you. Tokeep this show going, join us at
patreon.com/futureecologies. Andif you like what we're doing,
please just spread the word. Itreally helps.
(44:38):
See you in Part Two
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