Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the lady you see walking around the
Speaker 1: reservoir and you think that she keeps lapping you, and
Speaker 1: then one day you realize she's twins. She's a twin sister.
Speaker 1: They both jog at the same time, but like half
Speaker 1: a mile apart, and it shakes you to your core. Ps.
Speaker 1: This really happened to me. Ali Ward back with another
Speaker 1: spooky episode of Ologies. So this episode is technically creepy
Speaker 1: Crawleys in the Woods, but really it's about trees and
Speaker 1: caterpillars and butterflies and moths and solitude and fresh air
Speaker 1: and hiking. Okay, but before we set off on that trail,
Speaker 1: let's thank the folks who've got us here. Big thanks
Speaker 1: to the crew at patroon dot com sloshologies for supporting
Speaker 1: the show and allowing me to donate and support other
Speaker 1: causes and hire some folks to make the show better.
Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone making sure you're subscribed, who's rated
Speaker 1: the show, and the Apple app which keeps it up
Speaker 1: in the charts for others to discover. And of course,
Speaker 1: thank you to the review writers out there who know
Speaker 1: that I read them all because I pluck a fresh
Speaker 1: one like a little daisy. To present back to you,
Speaker 1: such as this one from Oolige, who says greatness much
Speaker 1: the same way as seeing Laura Lennie introduce down to
Speaker 1: Nabbey gave me the feeling that I'm about to experience
Speaker 1: something truly great. I get a similar feeling when I
Speaker 1: hear Ali Ward's voice and horologies into music. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: a super cheap person and I still signed up on
Speaker 1: Patreon Oolige, thank you. Okay, forest entomology, we are talking
Speaker 1: about things that live in the woods. So entomology comes
Speaker 1: from the Greek word for sectioned or notched at the waist.
Speaker 1: Isn't that neat? Now this episode, it's all about creepy
Speaker 1: Crawley's underneath a canopy of trees and about finding solitude
Speaker 1: among billions of other inhabitants. Now, this scientist chatted with
Speaker 1: me from Appalaysia, and I think I say Appalachia like
Speaker 1: throw an apple Atchia because someone told me that once.
Speaker 1: But I think you can say however you want anyway.
Speaker 1: She studied forest biology at Penn State and then plant
Speaker 1: pathology at West Virginia University and has published papers on
Speaker 1: all sorts of tree and bug interactions on native and
Speaker 1: invasive species, but also does incredible work in sycom with
Speaker 1: her whole brand k Dubs the Hiking Scientist, So you
Speaker 1: can follow her Instagram immediately. There's a link in the
Speaker 1: show notes you can scroll through all of her foresty photos.
Speaker 1: So we finally hopped on to chat and she spoke
Speaker 1: from her attic office in a creaky chair, her cat
Speaker 1: Tabitha on her lap, and we gabbed all about forests
Speaker 1: and bugs and cryptids and creatures and hiking and things
Speaker 1: that fall from the sky and how to get mosquitoes
Speaker 1: out of your backyard and what to do about ticks
Speaker 1: and the curse of the spotted lantern fly and trees
Speaker 1: of heaven and machetes and things that buzz and bloom
Speaker 1: and bite and hide and inspire. So are the woods scary?
Speaker 1: What lurks in them? Should you go there? In a word? Yes,
Speaker 1: So get pumped to walk softly and look closely with
Speaker 1: woods dweller and k Dubs the Hiking Scientist, Forest entomologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Kristen Wickert.
Speaker 2: Of course, my name is Kristin Wicker.
Speaker 1: And pronouns she her cool awesome. Just to you asked that,
Speaker 1: you know, I just started asking that recently because I
Speaker 1: have some listeners who are non binary and who are fans,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you know, that just helps to normalize
Speaker 1: it if you ask.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it feels good. It's just nice because we're
Speaker 3: all people exactly.
Speaker 1: And so now where are you right now? Like, both
Speaker 1: geographically and situationally mentally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think you want
Speaker 3: to mentally, No one wants to talk about that anymore.
Speaker 3: So I'm in West Virginia, the heart of Appalachia, full
Speaker 3: of Pepperoni.
Speaker 2: Rolls and cryptic creatures such as Mothman.
Speaker 1: Oh did they ever figure out what the deal was
Speaker 1: with Mothman? No?
Speaker 3: No, it's a mystery. Well, he's the part moth part man,
Speaker 3: and there's a beautiful he has a very shiny button
Speaker 3: the statue, and he is supposed to come before something
Speaker 3: bad is happening. So it's not sure if he's like
Speaker 3: warning us, like get away the bridge is gonna collapse,
Speaker 3: or if he's causing the.
Speaker 2: Bridge to collapse.
Speaker 1: Okay, cryptic, cryptic, it is cryptic. Now. I had only
Speaker 1: very recently heard about Mothman from an episode of Expedition
Speaker 1: Unknown featuring none other than Ology's guest Philterorus of the
Speaker 1: Lepidopterology episode on moths and butterflies, not the other Philterurus
Speaker 1: from the Apocalypse episode, although that would also track. But
Speaker 1: quick overview Mothman. It's November nineteen sixty six. A handful
Speaker 1: of people digging a grave at night. What see a
Speaker 1: very large winged being with glowing red eyes. And they
Speaker 1: shrug it off and they go about their creepier activity
Speaker 1: of digging a grave. And weeks later, a couple on
Speaker 1: a double date describes seeing the same ominous creature near
Speaker 1: an old TNT bunker. Bunch of other people.
Speaker 4: We'll see him, you know, there's a big bird looking thing.
Speaker 5: Go over top from my car.
Speaker 1: And then just over a year later, tragedy befalls the
Speaker 1: small town as a bridge collapses into the river. So
Speaker 1: is Mothman an omen a warning, a bird, a hoax,
Speaker 1: a hallucination? I don't know, but Mothman sightings continue for
Speaker 1: decades nearby and then in other American cities. But all
Speaker 1: I can think about is, wouldn't it be fucking nuts
Speaker 1: if Mothman was once Mothboy and was like a sleeping
Speaker 1: bag with a bunch of arms and just ate so
Speaker 1: many cheeseburgers to bulk up because after a pupated adult
Speaker 1: mothman lacked a mouth. What a backstory anyway, West Virginia
Speaker 1: where Kdops is at.
Speaker 3: It sounds so silly, but when I'm in the woods,
Speaker 3: like I actually feel I don't know like I belong
Speaker 3: because like I know everything that's around me, but there's
Speaker 3: always something new to discover which.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: And then you know that afternoon, I'll go home and
Speaker 3: fevershly figure out what it is. I'm actually one words,
Speaker 3: one talking. I'm gonna drive to the mountains and sleep
Speaker 3: on sleep in my car and work outside all day tomorrow.
Speaker 2: This is pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: How how long have you been into forest creatures? And
Speaker 1: when did it start for you?
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny because I went home to see
Speaker 3: my mom this past weekend, and she lives I grew
Speaker 3: up in like Eastern PA and I have a really
Speaker 3: like it's hard for me to pinpoint when all this
Speaker 3: like love happened.
Speaker 2: And we found some like old comics that I.
Speaker 3: Drew when I was like eight years old, and it's
Speaker 3: like a picture of me like crying because my brother's
Speaker 3: like pouring a bunch of soda on a tree I
Speaker 3: just planted, and I was.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, I guess I really liked plants back then.
Speaker 1: Still, Brondo's got what plants crive, It's got electrolytes.
Speaker 3: So I think when I was a little kid, it
Speaker 3: was very you know, serenity for me to be outside
Speaker 3: and adventures. And I read a lot of books back
Speaker 3: then when I had time, and so it was like
Speaker 3: easy for me to have a very active imagination when
Speaker 3: I was in the forest, you know, Lord of the
Speaker 3: Rings kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And when did you decide to do that kind of
Speaker 1: as your career. You got a PhD in woodsy foresty
Speaker 1: planty buggy things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so I have a PhD in plant pathology
Speaker 3: as well as a master's. And then my undergrad is
Speaker 3: kind of where all this started. My undergrad is in
Speaker 3: forest science and I went to undergrad. It's kind of
Speaker 3: a long, strange story, but it took me five and
Speaker 3: a half years to get my undergraduate degree because three
Speaker 3: years of those.
Speaker 2: Were wasted thinking I would be like a I don't know,
Speaker 2: a business.
Speaker 3: Woman, and then because I didn't know that you could
Speaker 3: have a job outside and right, yeah, and I ended
Speaker 3: up doing really bad in college. I was failing, like
Speaker 3: I didn't go to finals. I was like, it was
Speaker 3: like that bad. And my mom she told me to
Speaker 3: go to community college just to like stop throwing money
Speaker 3: out the window and to like try to find a
Speaker 3: really general topic I liked. And I ended up having
Speaker 3: a biology one on one class where we looked at
Speaker 3: like an onion cell underneath the you know, microscope slide,
Speaker 3: and I was.
Speaker 1: Like, WHOA.
Speaker 3: I started getting a's and everything, and I got like
Speaker 3: an offer letter from Penn State to go there, and
Speaker 3: they said if you keep getting whatever gp A and
Speaker 3: doing well in class, like you can come here.
Speaker 2: And I looked at their available majors and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I want to be outside. What's outside? And the only
Speaker 2: thing I knew was a park ranger. I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to be a.
Speaker 3: Park ranger and yeah, and they did have a degree
Speaker 3: where you could go to be a park ranger. I
Speaker 3: met a really good friend of mine, she's now a
Speaker 3: park ranger in Zion. But I went and like really
Speaker 3: liked the science part of it. Like we did a
Speaker 3: conservation biology with like genetics and stuff, and that's what
Speaker 3: led me get the forest science to be a forester
Speaker 3: degree and from there it just kind of all kind
Speaker 3: of step by step by step, you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of good luck and being in the right place I
Speaker 3: am where I am today.
Speaker 1: M h that right place being outside I imagine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this can't be pent up inside. It doesn't
Speaker 3: go very well for my brain.
Speaker 1: And so what did you now? Your your work as
Speaker 1: it is? Like what is it? What is a typical
Speaker 1: day like for you?
Speaker 3: Oh, lots of emails, lots of plan making, and then
Speaker 3: usually around like noon.
Speaker 2: There's action and I do a lot of outreach.
Speaker 3: So normally, if coronavirus wasn't happening, I would be going
Speaker 3: and like teaching kids about how to look for bugs,
Speaker 3: and like kids are a great avenue to look for
Speaker 3: invasive species because they're the ones.
Speaker 2: That are outside and they're the ones that aren't afraid.
Speaker 3: Yet to touch things. I would do things with like
Speaker 3: master gardeners. I would do things where I would speak
Speaker 3: at seminars with like colleges and stuff like on more
Speaker 3: in depth topics. Now I do a lot of serving
Speaker 3: for invasive species, Like we do a lot of fieldwork.
Speaker 3: Now we're trying to like ALC at the time in
Speaker 3: a very appropriate way because we can't do these outreach opportunities.
Speaker 3: We're like getting our boots on the ground and like
Speaker 3: trying to like solve any problems we can because we
Speaker 3: have time now. So I go outside and uh I
Speaker 3: scout for insects and plant diseases. I help out farmers
Speaker 3: to get them certified. It's fun, it's wild. It's different
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 1: What is a bug in the forest that you've seen
Speaker 1: that was like a celebrity spotting for you? Was there
Speaker 1: anyone that you're like, oh, hi.
Speaker 3: Dude, man the uh so kind of see I sounded
Speaker 3: snarky probably when I was like, oh, I know everything
Speaker 3: in the woods. But now it's like, every like couple
Speaker 3: of months, I'm like, man, I didn't know that that whole.
Speaker 2: Like genus existed, and then they're everywhere.
Speaker 3: It's just like this whole thing of like your eyes
Speaker 3: open up once you notice something or like learn how
Speaker 3: something exists. But like lately it's been the really huge
Speaker 3: chonky saturnid caterpillars. Oh yeah, they are just like they're huge.
Speaker 3: They're like almost the size of a hot dog.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, So if I eat this entire that gross.
Speaker 3: Hot like a little Jimmy Dean sausage, and they're just
Speaker 3: like hanging out underneath like the on the bottom or
Speaker 3: underside of leaves, like just hanging out in muncheon. And
Speaker 3: you know, normally as a forester, I'm like looking at
Speaker 3: like logs and stems, and then I'm looking for mushrooms
Speaker 3: on the ground and it's just like, man, you really
Speaker 3: there's so many different levels in the forest that you
Speaker 3: have to train your eyes to look for.
Speaker 2: And right now I'm looking for Jimmy Dean hot dogs.
Speaker 1: So Kristin has pictures on her Instagram of these Imperial
Speaker 1: Moth chunkies and they do very much look like a
Speaker 1: turkey link from a hotel breakfast maffe but with more legs.
Speaker 1: Do people ever eat them?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I imagine.
Speaker 3: I mean every time I see one, actually, like the
Speaker 3: Imperial Moth has a pretty big like fill to the
Speaker 3: brim with goo caterpillar, and I always think of that
Speaker 3: scene in Lion King when your pat is like slurping down,
Speaker 3: Like every time I see I think of that.
Speaker 1: I imagine they must taste very buttery, just cute, just
Speaker 1: or maybe like a raw tomato. I don't know. I'll
Speaker 1: get it.
Speaker 3: I have I have eaten insects before, and they're usually
Speaker 3: pretty bland or acidy.
Speaker 2: They're not very good on their own.
Speaker 6: A little green field conyne.
Speaker 1: What does a professional like woods trumper, bug hunter?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: What is essential in your kit? Do you have like
Speaker 1: a butterfly net and a handlen's like a pickled jar
Speaker 1: with like a rubber band over it. Like, what's happening?
Speaker 3: So my title is I'm a forest entomologist and forest
Speaker 3: plant pathologist. I do a lot and they there's a
Speaker 3: lot of intersections between those careers. But my jeep always
Speaker 3: has some kind of educational content. I'm trying to think
Speaker 3: of what's in it right now. I have two butterfly nets.
Speaker 3: I have something called a beat sheet. It's a maybe
Speaker 3: it's like two feet long, like it's a square.
Speaker 2: It's a white sheet, and.
Speaker 3: You hold it underneath the branch and you hit the
Speaker 3: branch really hard with like another stick, and then extended
Speaker 3: so it's flat and so the insects fall on it.
Speaker 3: I do see who's hanging out that you would normally ignore.
Speaker 2: It's really good for caterpillars.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I've never even heard of that.
Speaker 2: Before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really helpful to do insects surveys when it's
Speaker 3: raining because the insects use the leaves as like little umbrellas,
Speaker 3: and so you can go out there and you can
Speaker 3: see who's hiding hy kind of concentrated. It's easy to
Speaker 3: check out diversity that way.
Speaker 1: And then what about one of those sheets with a
Speaker 1: black light.
Speaker 3: I have one of those too. It's actually right behind me.
Speaker 3: I was debating on taking it with me tonight because
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get where I'm going at like nine point thirty,
Speaker 3: and I was like, do I really want to pull
Speaker 3: up and be like, hey, guys, let's look for buds.
Speaker 3: So my really good friend Damon, he sent me a
Speaker 3: sheet like it's actually it's literally a white shower sheet, hm.
Speaker 3: And you can like build this on your own for
Speaker 3: like thirty bucks online.
Speaker 2: And then it has a UV lamp.
Speaker 3: With like an external battery that you would use for
Speaker 3: like camping or hiking. It's plugged in by USB and
Speaker 3: then you just clip it to the top or the
Speaker 3: bottom and they'll fly and check it out. But I
Speaker 3: have learned that different insects, and I've learned this the
Speaker 3: hard way. The disappointing way that nothing came the one night.
Speaker 3: Different insects, depending on the time of the year and
Speaker 3: what's going on in the moon, they will care about
Speaker 3: if it's a mercury lamp or if it's a UV,
Speaker 3: and it's like they're processing of the wavelengths of light
Speaker 3: is just.
Speaker 2: A whole other science.
Speaker 3: So I have I have a little UV lamp and
Speaker 3: I'm looking at getting a mercury one, but they don't
Speaker 3: attach to the batteries.
Speaker 2: So I got it. If that's a puzzle for me
Speaker 2: to figure.
Speaker 1: Out, you found that out by using one lamp and
Speaker 1: just like getting not like throwing aparty no one shows
Speaker 1: up to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, actually it was my mom.
Speaker 3: So my mom is like kind of grossed out by bugs,
Speaker 3: and like she doesn't like it when I bring things home,
Speaker 3: and like she doesn't like to eat the mushrooms I
Speaker 3: find she has. She has tried morel's. They were obvious
Speaker 3: enough that she tried it. But I was like, hey,
Speaker 3: let's go look for bugs in the backyard. I kept
Speaker 3: telling her, like, all these big things are gonna come,
Speaker 3: They're gonna beautiful, And I showed her pictures on the
Speaker 3: internet and she's like okay, I'll look for those, and
Speaker 3: then none of.
Speaker 2: Them showed up, and it's because I had like kind
Speaker 2: of the wrong wavelength light.
Speaker 3: So yeah, something on the to do list, get more
Speaker 3: lamps for bugs.
Speaker 1: So disappointing Mothman ambles up. He's like, hey, what's up? Uh?
Speaker 1: Sell your light off?
Speaker 3: Really, I really hope that you. You gotta look up
Speaker 3: the statue.
Speaker 2: Oh, I will Mothman statue point pleasant.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look it up. I'm gonna I want to
Speaker 1: see it's tiny butt Okay. I was very compelled to
Speaker 1: google this statue, and I found the following video by
Speaker 1: YouTube user hoser Boo, who journeyed to West Virginia to
Speaker 1: pay the statue a visit.
Speaker 4: Apparently, Mothman is ripped, but he's also a moth ook
Speaker 4: with a humans body and moth wings.
Speaker 1: It has giant red, glassy eyes, and it resides in
Speaker 1: the median strip of an otherwise sleepy town, right in
Speaker 1: front of a Mothman museum. But you head around back
Speaker 1: in its firm, metallic buttocks are clenched in a position
Speaker 1: of muscular power. I mean, Mothman definitely does squats, and
Speaker 1: when you're naked on four Street, in West Virginia, just
Speaker 1: around the corner from a little Caesar's Pizza. You might
Speaker 1: as well play up your assets, especially since he has
Speaker 1: no genitals to speak of. Now, if only he were
Speaker 1: equipped with male moth scent glands called cormata, which are
Speaker 1: like long feather dusters that sprout from your crotch like
Speaker 1: a wheezy birthday party horn. Wouldn't that be something? And
Speaker 1: what do you think? Okay, because this is a Spooktobra episode, right,
Speaker 1: we're kind of talking about creepy crawleys, And do you
Speaker 1: ever walk through the woods at night and feel like
Speaker 1: maybe you're about to run into a spider web or
Speaker 1: there's like a scorpion in your underpants or something like?
Speaker 1: Do you ever get an extra sensory thing about little
Speaker 1: creepy crawleys?
Speaker 3: No, No, it's a sensory I like usually I'm already
Speaker 3: covered by like thirty million spider webs, so like it's fine,
Speaker 3: throw another one on. I'm actually not very scared of
Speaker 3: a lot of things outside. Like I'm more scared.
Speaker 2: When i'm you know, interacting with people.
Speaker 3: I did, actually I think it was it was two
Speaker 3: years ago, like to the day to the day I
Speaker 3: had a caterpillar fall from the sky. It fell out
Speaker 3: of a tree and it laided on my hand and
Speaker 3: it caused like such a crazy reaction.
Speaker 1: The spines, she said, have a coagulant as well as
Speaker 1: a vasoconstrictor. So what does that do?
Speaker 3: So my veins got really tight, and then my blood
Speaker 3: got really thick, so it felt like my higher arm
Speaker 3: from it just falling on my hand, my entire arm.
Speaker 2: Felt like I was getting a tattoo, like the entire day.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, and if you sat down, like your thick
Speaker 3: blood wasn't going through your thin veins, so I had
Speaker 3: to like forcibly keep walking the pump it.
Speaker 2: So I am scared of those.
Speaker 1: What kind was it?
Speaker 3: Oh? It was a I want to say, a flannel
Speaker 3: moth caterpillar.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Don't remember the exact one.
Speaker 3: It wasn't the hag moth, but it was a tiny, wispy,
Speaker 3: hairy little dude, but it was.
Speaker 2: It was awful.
Speaker 3: And so now I'm scared of them because I wasn't
Speaker 3: like messing with it or anything. Usually I respect animals
Speaker 3: unless I have to unfortunately kill them because they're an
Speaker 3: invasive species. But I you know, I was just mind
Speaker 3: of my own business looking at a flower, and uh
Speaker 3: it got me so now sometimes in fall I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, don't wear short, so don't.
Speaker 3: There's there's the extra creepy creepy bit. There are caterpillars
Speaker 3: that you shouldn't touch.
Speaker 1: God, that's good to know. Tiny hairy, wispy little dudes.
Speaker 1: These have also been said to look like any bitty
Speaker 1: little to pace with stubby leg nubbins, And if you like,
Speaker 1: you can call them a pus caterpillar and they won't
Speaker 1: even be mad. They're victims. Describe. The pain is similar
Speaker 1: to having a shattered bone or blunt force trauma. Sometimes
Speaker 1: also is white hot, which is why the date is
Speaker 1: probably burned into her mind. Okay, but don't be scared
Speaker 1: because very few caterpillars will make you say the F
Speaker 1: word unless that f word is forest. Am I right? Gotcha?
Speaker 1: What about a way to get people comfortable with the
Speaker 1: forest and with maybe some happy, little, friendly, little creepy
Speaker 1: little crawleys. Is there a good ambassador species to go
Speaker 1: out looking forward to like get people into it?
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing I thought about when you asked
Speaker 3: that question was to check out your local universities because
Speaker 3: they often have.
Speaker 2: Like bug night and they'll like open up.
Speaker 3: A lot of univer have an insect zoo, but they
Speaker 3: usually they have like the stick bugs, which are exotic,
Speaker 3: but they have we have native ones here, so that
Speaker 3: would be a good fun adventure one because they're kind
Speaker 3: of slow. When they're like easy to watch their legs
Speaker 3: moving on you. It's not really a big, jumpy, creepy thing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, if you have a like a pretty big
Speaker 3: state school or even sometimes these smaller community colleges, they
Speaker 3: have an insect zoo and like you can go in
Speaker 3: and you can learn that a tarantula isn't really that scary,
Speaker 3: that you.
Speaker 2: Can pet them and they're soft and velvety and they
Speaker 2: kind of like it.
Speaker 1: I think, do you have a favorite bug?
Speaker 2: It changes all.
Speaker 3: The time, just like I'm saying, I learned about something
Speaker 3: new and I'm like.
Speaker 2: What you're able to do that.
Speaker 3: But one of my favorite ones that I like think
Speaker 3: of right away just because it's like purely fascinating, is
Speaker 3: that there's this Arctic wooly bear caterpillar in Greenland. I
Speaker 3: did some entological stuff insect collection up in Greenland a
Speaker 3: couple years ago, and there's this caterpillar that like it
Speaker 3: can live up to seven years as a caterpillar.
Speaker 4: What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it waits till that point that it like eats enough.
Speaker 3: So if it doesn't eat enough, you know, the first
Speaker 3: two years, it's like, oh.
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna go on and meet this rock and take.
Speaker 3: A nap, and it like it waits up like the
Speaker 3: crazy great greenlandic winter, and then it comes out again
Speaker 3: and it eats and maybe like that third or fourth
Speaker 3: year it'll be able to pupeate. But it can like
Speaker 3: go up to seven years as a caterpillar. It's pretty nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are they eating up in Greenland?
Speaker 3: So in Greenland there's not a lot of trees like
Speaker 3: what we have down here in North America, but there's
Speaker 3: like these little tiny birch trees and little tiny willow
Speaker 3: and there are some grasses and some mosses and some
Speaker 3: flowers too, but I think they mostly eat those small
Speaker 3: birch and the gray willow. Oh yeah, So they're trees,
Speaker 3: but they're like little shrubs because they're you know, very oppressed.
Speaker 1: Have you gotten to check a lot of global forests
Speaker 1: and are you more of like a pine forest or
Speaker 1: a rainforest or like a moth, like what's your vibes?
Speaker 3: So I've always wanted to go to like Costa Rica
Speaker 3: and see, you know, the beautiful butterflies flying around Globally,
Speaker 3: I've been a bunch of places, but I like, I
Speaker 3: might have not had like the developed scientist mind yet.
Speaker 3: But I will say last year I went to China
Speaker 3: and I was like all amped up. I was like, yes,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go see this crazy new forest and it's
Speaker 3: gonna be really exciting with things I have no idea
Speaker 3: what they even are, and where I was, the forest
Speaker 3: was just like our invasive species. It was like all
Speaker 3: the trees that I work with here, like on a
Speaker 3: daily basis, but they were just like kind of en mass.
Speaker 3: It was like all tree of Heaven, golden rain tree.
Speaker 3: So it was it was an interesting like realization. But
Speaker 3: I did have the forest or a scientist mind.
Speaker 2: On that visit.
Speaker 1: So yes, this tree of Heaven is so called because
Speaker 1: it grows fast as hell and it can reach up
Speaker 1: to nine stories tall. It's also the titular character in
Speaker 1: Betty Smith's nineteen forty three semi autobiographical novel A Tree
Speaker 1: Grows in Brooklyn, and she wrote, no.
Speaker 7: Matter where its seed falls. It makes a tree which
Speaker 7: struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up
Speaker 7: lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up
Speaker 7: out of cellar gratings. It's the only tree that grows
Speaker 7: out of cement. It would be considered beautiful except that
Speaker 7: there are too.
Speaker 1: Many of it. But hey, as long as we're talking tenacity.
Speaker 1: Smith's novel was rejected by several publishers before someone finally
Speaker 1: said yes, and then she ended up selling millions of copies,
Speaker 1: enough to maybe even afford a place in Brooklyn. Now,
Speaker 1: now on the topic of trees and rents reaching skyward,
Speaker 1: and I was just thinking, let's say that you walk
Speaker 1: into a forest, you walk into a trail. I imagine
Speaker 1: that there's got to be a lot of different strata,
Speaker 1: kind of like layers in the ocean, and what types
Speaker 1: of bugs live in what layers? I'm sure you grubs
Speaker 1: in the soil as you go up, do you have butterflies?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Who lives where?
Speaker 3: So a lot of When I think about the forest floor,
Speaker 3: I think about a lot of grubs, yeah, which are
Speaker 3: usually associated with beetles. And also then you have the
Speaker 3: adult beetle, which are like predators. So they kind of
Speaker 3: are like running around a very common beetle that you'll see,
Speaker 3: I think even on the West coast are these little
Speaker 3: karrabid beetles, which are the ground beetles, and they're like
Speaker 3: really voracious predators. We also have as you move up,
Speaker 3: you can, you know, go up a couple of inches
Speaker 3: and think about the mushroom caps and almost in every
Speaker 3: single mushroom cap you'll.
Speaker 2: Find full of fly larvae.
Speaker 1: Really yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So usually when I go mushroom picking, like I
Speaker 3: like peek open in the cap to see if it's
Speaker 3: all got these little holes in it. And if it
Speaker 3: does have a little holes, that's because it's like a
Speaker 3: little tunnel that a fly larvae has eaten out. Oh
Speaker 3: my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then if you jump up, you have like, you know,
Speaker 3: you have specialists insects that are on tree trunks, you
Speaker 3: have specialist insects that are only on the grasses around.
Speaker 2: You have a lot of like predators.
Speaker 3: Will utilize the wide open area of a you know,
Speaker 3: a rock higher up in order to be able to
Speaker 3: see something that's really cool are the tiger beetles. They're
Speaker 3: one of the fastest animals proportionate to their size, and
Speaker 3: there are these beautiful green, shimmering insects and they'll jump
Speaker 3: on a trail which is like open. It's because for prey,
Speaker 3: but we've created this nice little like open runway for them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there are like layers like the ocean of where you
Speaker 3: can find things, and when I go out looking for
Speaker 3: something like an invasive insect or I know where to look.
Speaker 3: And even like within their different life stages, they'll be okay,
Speaker 3: they're babies inside of the mushroom, but then as adults
Speaker 3: they hang out and they're pollinators.
Speaker 1: And now you work with invasive species, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: differ in different parts of the country. I know out
Speaker 1: in California we've got some pine board beetles that are
Speaker 1: really on our shit lists.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, so they're native, oh okay, yeah, and I'm not.
Speaker 2: Going to go too into it because I am an
Speaker 2: East Coast specialist.
Speaker 3: They're kind of responsible, along with other cascading effects of
Speaker 3: like climate change, for massive die back of our pine
Speaker 3: trees on the West coast. And usually they'll associate with
Speaker 3: stressed out trees because trees when they get stressed out,
Speaker 3: they release a lot of smells and then beetles can
Speaker 3: fly to that smell, and like, they're not very good
Speaker 3: at smelling, so they aren't able to like pinpoint that
Speaker 3: this tree is a stressed one versus this one, so
Speaker 3: they might go to the one next to it, and
Speaker 3: then they end up stressing that one out, and it's
Speaker 3: just kind of a chain reaction of infestation.
Speaker 1: More on those critters later in the episode, but closer
Speaker 1: to her neck of the woods, there is a scarlet winged,
Speaker 1: polka dotted little darlin. It just looks like little moth
Speaker 1: but in a fancy outfit. And I was in Philly
Speaker 1: last month and they were everywhere, including taking the top
Speaker 1: spot on local shit lists. And now you are from
Speaker 1: eastern Pennsylvania, but yeah, Pennsylvania. Damn this lantern fly, this
Speaker 1: spotted lantern fly. What I was out? I was in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia and I was like, oh, what is this cute
Speaker 1: little strawberry moth? And then I looked and then I
Speaker 1: realized they were everywhere, everywhere, And so this has only
Speaker 1: been a problem the last couple of years. Right, how
Speaker 1: much does your work deal with these spotted adorable little
Speaker 1: cuties so much? They're so cute and they're such assholes?
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, it's I mean that is actually the scary
Speaker 3: part of your Spooptober podcast. Yeah, they've been around since
Speaker 3: like twenty fourteen. They arrived on a shipment and they
Speaker 3: kind of proliferated at a very rapid rate. They're now
Speaker 3: in more than twenty six counties in Pennsylvania and they're
Speaker 3: you know, showing up in a lot of different states.
Speaker 3: They're in Maryland, West Virginia there. They just found some
Speaker 3: in New Hampshire on a shipment.
Speaker 1: And then what's getting on trees?
Speaker 2: Okay, so nursery trees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so some greenhouse warehouse kind of places are shipping
Speaker 3: ornamental trees and that's by lantern flies are laying eggs
Speaker 3: on it, and then they get shipped to a nearby
Speaker 3: state and then someone buys it from another state. So
Speaker 3: we're really focusing on teaching people how to identify it,
Speaker 3: because if you buy a tree at a greenhouse, you say, oh,
Speaker 3: there are those eggs, you can kill them and then
Speaker 3: problem's over.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this, uh, this insect's really bad.
Speaker 3: It's not just like annoying because like you saw there
Speaker 3: jumping everywhere and like the kind of fly into and
Speaker 3: they're just kind of it's kind of gross. But they
Speaker 3: have a preference for our grape vines and our orchards.
Speaker 2: So they really like apple trees.
Speaker 3: And their favorite tree is from their their home native
Speaker 3: range of Asia and India and Vietnam. But they like
Speaker 3: that tree so much, Tree of Heaven, and it's every here.
Speaker 3: So they're just like proliferating like crazy. And then when
Speaker 3: they're done with their main course of Tree of Heaven,
Speaker 3: they move on to like dessert, which is the grape vines.
Speaker 2: And the apples.
Speaker 1: Don't mind if I do.
Speaker 3: Which the East Coast is really you know, we don't
Speaker 3: have it like Sonoma or Napa Valley or whatever, but
Speaker 3: we have Pennsylvania. Southern Pennsylvania has a lot of wine,
Speaker 3: and so does like West Virginia and Maryland.
Speaker 2: It's a big problem.
Speaker 1: And then what are they doing? I understand that they're
Speaker 1: just shitting sugar out. What's happening?
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's an interesting like feeding strategy that hemipter
Speaker 3: and insects have. And I know you like bugs, so
Speaker 3: like I'm gonna use some bug words I love. Yes,
Speaker 3: So the hamipter and insects they are classified by their wings,
Speaker 3: of course, like all insects are.
Speaker 2: But they also have a.
Speaker 3: Mouthpart that's a lot like a straw, and so they
Speaker 3: stab this really strong straw like mouthpart into the tree
Speaker 3: and they suck out the sugar that is normally used
Speaker 3: for you know, functions within the tree. Right, it's used
Speaker 3: for making fruit, it's used for keeping the leaves alive.
Speaker 3: And so maybe if you had like one or two
Speaker 3: of these insects sucking out the sugar with their straw
Speaker 3: like mouthpart, it wouldn't be that bad. But when you
Speaker 3: have millions of them, you can really deplete the tree's
Speaker 3: energy and it dies. But the way that the nypterin
Speaker 3: feeds with that straw like mouthpart, it's going against the
Speaker 3: pressure gradient of the tree.
Speaker 2: So it really has to suck.
Speaker 3: It does suck, but it really has to suck, and
Speaker 3: that's what forces like they're like continuously like peeing out
Speaker 3: that honeydew because like they have to suck so much,
Speaker 3: and their gut actually has like a specialized feeding area
Speaker 3: or processing of that sugar, so it just rapidly goes
Speaker 3: back out because of that pressure gradient. And then fungus
Speaker 3: really loves to grow on that sugar source. And so
Speaker 3: you'll have the trees and the shrubs and plants underneath
Speaker 3: the spotted lantern flying the canopy will just get covered
Speaker 3: with the sooty mold and then they'll die because the
Speaker 3: black city mold blocks the sunlight to the shrubs leaves.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, yeah, it's really nuts. It's like a
Speaker 3: double whammy, the.
Speaker 1: First whammy, of course, being the schnaz nozzles sucking out
Speaker 1: plant juices, and the second whammy being the dark sooty
Speaker 1: mold that grows in their sugar pea and blacks out
Speaker 1: the leaves. Now, scientists in Pennsylvania are like, that is
Speaker 1: two whammys too many. And I know that there are
Speaker 1: campaigns on the East coast like if you see it,
Speaker 1: kill it, like just kill it, like trust us kill it.
Speaker 1: What are you having to do as like a force
Speaker 1: entomologist and a plant pathologist to try to control these
Speaker 1: like on a bigger scale. That's more than just like
Speaker 1: fly swater.
Speaker 3: So I will say how important it is for outreach,
Speaker 3: Like that whole thing of the campaigns is like kind
Speaker 3: of the number one thing because me as one person,
Speaker 3: I could spend literally all day at one tree trying
Speaker 3: to kill them all. But if you all see it
Speaker 3: and try to kill it. That's awesome, right, Like there's
Speaker 3: millions of you killing millions of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really scary murder mystery.
Speaker 3: But what I physically go out and do is I
Speaker 3: map it, and I report it to different agencies and
Speaker 3: then like will collaboratively work together to either use like
Speaker 3: these physical traps which we call circle traps or sticky bands,
Speaker 3: and like that's a whole science in its own that
Speaker 3: we're trying to find the best to use which doesn't
Speaker 3: hurt like birds and snakes that get stuck on it.
Speaker 3: So there's these physical traps so people can put them
Speaker 3: on their trees. And then there's also pesticides, and this
Speaker 3: goes back to that whole like integrated pest management concept
Speaker 3: where yes, pesticides are bad, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm scared of them, like we should be. You should
Speaker 3: have a healthy fear of chemical pesticides.
Speaker 2: But they work.
Speaker 3: And like when you have like this threshold of one
Speaker 3: hundred insects on a tree and you don't know they're
Speaker 3: laying eggs, and you can't necessarily get all of them
Speaker 3: just by reaching for them, even if you have a
Speaker 3: really long butterfly net. You have to use pesticides, and
Speaker 3: so we use what's called a systemic pesticide and it
Speaker 3: goes inside the tree.
Speaker 2: So when they're using that straw like mouthpart, no matter
Speaker 2: where they are in the tree, they suck it out
Speaker 2: and then they die.
Speaker 1: Ahh Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's also like not so dangerous then too for
Speaker 3: like little kids playing in the yard, right, because like
Speaker 3: it's not on the tree, it's like in the tree.
Speaker 1: And what's happening from an ecological standpoint where they're feeding
Speaker 1: on the same tree of heaven. But they obviously are
Speaker 1: in check somehow in Asia, So why are they so
Speaker 1: unchecked here?
Speaker 3: Well, it's it's interesting we kind of have like a
Speaker 3: big sister story to go off of a little bit.
Speaker 3: So the spot of lanternfly is not native to South Korea,
Speaker 3: and South Korea had like an invasive problem with this,
Speaker 3: and they kind of wonder the same thing and they
Speaker 3: you know, it goes kind of directly what you're saying.
Speaker 2: In China.
Speaker 3: There's pathogens, predators, and like other climac events that control
Speaker 3: them because it's coevolution, right, and so when they get
Speaker 3: out of this very narrow co evolved region that they're in,
Speaker 3: they become problematic We have seen a couple of them
Speaker 3: here in North America that have and when I say
Speaker 3: a couple, I mean like a handful that have a
Speaker 3: fungus on them which is killing them, or maybe it's
Speaker 3: actually living on their already dead body. There's researcher studying that,
Speaker 3: but it's mostly because it's been removed from an area
Speaker 3: where it's in checks and balances.
Speaker 1: So ecology is all about how organisms work and live together,
Speaker 1: and with millions of years to evolve, the balance should
Speaker 1: have been met to keep things in check, unless, of course,
Speaker 1: you suddenly start building giant ships and railroads and are
Speaker 1: like surprise, new species. We're just mixing it up. When
Speaker 1: it comes to what you do. Also as a scientist,
Speaker 1: a lot of your work too is science communication. Like
Speaker 1: you have a big following on instagm and on YouTube
Speaker 1: and you're known as you know, Kdobs the hiking scientists.
Speaker 1: Do you how much of that is partly?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 1: How much of that was your mission in becoming a scientist,
Speaker 1: was trying to communicate things that you're like bringing out
Speaker 1: of the deep woods.
Speaker 2: Uh, well, it didn't start that way.
Speaker 3: I mean, it really was just me being goofy with
Speaker 3: my friends I mean, that's kind of why everybody starts
Speaker 3: on Instagram. And my Instagram is not associated with my
Speaker 3: work at all, So I mean not that I do
Speaker 3: anything crazy on there, but still, like I really enjoy
Speaker 3: distributing knowledge to the masses, and I do feel that
Speaker 3: knowledge is power, and so why should I hoard all
Speaker 3: this information in my little head?
Speaker 2: And I should get people to care about nature because there.
Speaker 3: Is kind of a big lapse or a separation just
Speaker 3: in our society now that nature is separate than like
Speaker 3: our daily lives, and you know it's not really It
Speaker 3: needs us to like care and love for it like
Speaker 3: a little baby, and because it has benefits to our
Speaker 3: water supply in the city or our food supply, just
Speaker 3: like the spotted lanternfly and grapes and apples. Right, if
Speaker 3: we don't care for our environment, we could potentially lose wine, which.
Speaker 1: Is a big thing to have at steak in the
Speaker 1: middle of a pandemic.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I got so many questions from patrons for
Speaker 1: you specifically, who can I ask you like lightning round?
Speaker 3: Okay, Ah, I'm just shy, like I said, Like, I mean,
Speaker 3: the whole Instagram thing, like it looks like I put
Speaker 3: myself out there all the time, but like when you
Speaker 3: ask that, I started sweating because I'm a very secretive
Speaker 3: person still, even my faces on your little rectangle of doom.
Speaker 1: No, but it must be nice to hear back from
Speaker 1: people too that enjoy the forest more and enjoy bugs
Speaker 1: and kind of get out of their comfort zone to
Speaker 1: understand how beautiful the world is.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh yeah, and I get mess just like that
Speaker 3: very often. I'm not trying to brag, but like, I'm
Speaker 3: so stressed out at work all the time, and I'm
Speaker 3: so stressed out with other things in my life. And
Speaker 3: then sometimes I'll open up my phone and I'll see
Speaker 3: like a message that's so nice from people who are like,
Speaker 3: I take my daughter out for walks now, because you
Speaker 3: go out for walks by yourself and if nature isn't scary,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, yes, yes, so yeah, that's awesome and
Speaker 3: it makes me feel, you know, really good and hopeful.
Speaker 2: And I thank everybody who's ever sent me one of those.
Speaker 3: So I am just a normal person, though with a
Speaker 3: lot of normal people problems.
Speaker 1: So twenty twenty, so many.
Speaker 2: But yeah, let's hear those questions.
Speaker 1: Okay, you ready, I'm just gonna run through them. Ooh,
Speaker 1: but before we do a few words about some things
Speaker 1: I like which make it possible for ologies to donate
Speaker 1: to a cause of the guest choice, And this week
Speaker 1: Kdobs chose Black Outside Ink, which was founded with one
Speaker 1: simple mission reconnecting Black and African American youth to the
Speaker 1: outdoors through culturally relevant programming and inspired volunteers and a
Speaker 1: passion for connecting youth to the powerful history of black
Speaker 1: people in the outdoors. They seek to move the needle
Speaker 1: on diversity in the outdoors and ensure our youth have
Speaker 1: safe and equitable spaces outside. For more on them, you
Speaker 1: can see Blackoutside dot org. And that donation was made
Speaker 1: possible by sponsors of the show, such as.
Speaker 3: Like mum, why did they call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 2: It's cottage cheese, honey.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Did dogs in other countries speak different languages?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think so.
Speaker 1: Well when we get there, well, we've got to fix
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Speaker 3: Is it the man from Geneva?
Speaker 1: Not Geneva, he's from a Viva. Oh there's the van.
Speaker 1: Now for car insurance with breakdown rescue. It takes a
Speaker 1: Viva visit a Viva Dota eat to say fifteen percent.
Speaker 5: Acceptance criteria, terms and conditions apply. Minimum premium of three
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Speaker 5: Car insurance is underwritten by Aviva Insurance Arland DAK Aviva
Speaker 5: Direct Arlund Limited is red by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 1: Okay, your questions, but yeah, I got so many questions again,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna lightning around. Just fire away. Is that cool?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Boom boom boom Okay. Ada Schaeffer wants to know why
Speaker 1: do you think so many people are afraid of bugs?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's because we have that like our nerve senses, right,
Speaker 3: and our skin, like the literal creeping of insects is
Speaker 3: like it makes our skin twitch.
Speaker 2: And I think people don't like that. And I mean we.
Speaker 3: Were also raised for so long to say, like those
Speaker 3: have diseases, and then you come yeah, so like now
Speaker 3: we're kind of realizing, because like we do have kind
Speaker 3: of this naturalist revival, that not all of them have
Speaker 3: diseases and we don't need to be scared of all
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, okay. I looked this up, and there is
Speaker 1: a word for when you feel like the creepy crawleys
Speaker 1: are upon you. It's called formication, and it comes from
Speaker 1: the Latin root for ants. So if you get the
Speaker 1: creepy crawleys, you're a formicator. Now, if you're worried about
Speaker 1: being in the forest because of that which wiggles in it,
Speaker 1: just consider that your house, the house you're sitting in
Speaker 1: right now, if you're sitting in a house, has about
Speaker 1: one hundred species of bugs in it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have mites in your eyebrows, You got critters in your gut.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, you may have walls or a toilet,
Speaker 1: but there is no real separation between humans and nature.
Speaker 1: We're part of nature and that's wild and it's cool you.
Speaker 1: We just got to keep our eyes open as all.
Speaker 1: Jianna Rigovic though, on that note, does ask should I
Speaker 1: worry about when my dogs wander in the brush and
Speaker 1: the denser areas during hikes. They love it so much,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to stop them. Do you have
Speaker 1: any strategies for ticks other than just check your crevices?
Speaker 3: That's probably the number one question I get from people
Speaker 3: on my Instagram, but like, I've never had a problem
Speaker 3: with ticks, and I just I guess I just got
Speaker 3: used to checking myself that I don't even make it
Speaker 3: a thing, but I do. I go out and if
Speaker 3: I go and do fieldwork all day, I shower. So
Speaker 3: I think just being diligent about the inspection because we
Speaker 3: can use frontline on pets, but that we can't use
Speaker 3: it on us because it's a poison. So I think
Speaker 3: diligence and physical inspection is appropriate.
Speaker 2: We listen named to Brad Paisley and I.
Speaker 4: Locked hit.
Speaker 1: For more on tics and Live disease. You can check
Speaker 1: out the Acroology and Disease Ecology episodes and then just
Speaker 1: check those crevices onward. Ah, that's good to know. Aj
Speaker 1: Lichti wants to know what percentage of insect species do
Speaker 1: you think have been identified? Like how many do you
Speaker 1: not know about?
Speaker 2: So many we don't know about. I mean now that I.
Speaker 3: Have been going out in the woods and like really
Speaker 3: focusing on these agiatic invaders, I often see things that
Speaker 3: I don't know and I'm like, I wonder if anybody
Speaker 3: else does what that is?
Speaker 1: Don care?
Speaker 2: And I usually just walk away because I don't have time.
Speaker 3: So look, I think that there's a lot of insects
Speaker 3: that we haven't identified yet, and some things we are
Speaker 3: very cryptic, right, the things that are living inside of
Speaker 3: a mushroom.
Speaker 2: There's not many people who are gonna peel a part
Speaker 2: that mushroom.
Speaker 3: Cap to try to find what species are rear the
Speaker 3: in fly larva to figure out what they are. But
Speaker 3: also there's so many places we can't get there's insects
Speaker 3: that can live in like really extreme temperatures or environments
Speaker 3: like that Greenlandic Arctic wooly bear.
Speaker 2: Right, that's crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's just I think there's a really big
Speaker 3: unknown and also there's things we take for granted. And
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go to another topic. So lichens, right, you
Speaker 3: know what a lichen is? Yeah, So the lichen is
Speaker 3: the symbiosis between fungi and algae and they make another
Speaker 3: organism and they exchange stuff. Well, for the longest time,
Speaker 3: we thought it was one species of fungus, and not
Speaker 3: until like twenty sixteen I think they found out that
Speaker 3: there's another organism. It's either a asco my coaton or
Speaker 3: a city of my coat in yeast. So it's three
Speaker 3: players and sometimes more. But like we just took it
Speaker 3: for granted for so many years, right, You're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what that is, and you kind of walk by it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a lot of things in the
Speaker 2: forest that are like that.
Speaker 1: Oh I had no idea.
Speaker 2: I know. Isn't that so exciting?
Speaker 1: Though? Yes it is. There's so much we don't know.
Speaker 2: Just something to live for. You could study, like.
Speaker 1: Someone out there, they're like anologist, hit me up. They've
Speaker 1: gotta be someone out there. And Okay, Rox Sande Parker
Speaker 1: wants to know could certain species help reduce the risk
Speaker 1: of wildfires, especially in California, Oregon and or Washington. Was
Speaker 1: that a good idea to introduce something or is it
Speaker 1: is that a no?
Speaker 3: Hmmm? I mean that's a whole like several individuals PhD
Speaker 3: dissertations in one way, right, if I were to think
Speaker 3: about it, because like the main thing that's killing those
Speaker 3: are the Dendoctinis ponderosa, the bark beetles.
Speaker 2: I mean, you.
Speaker 3: Could introduce if you do like seven years of studying
Speaker 3: and vetting that a predator or parasitoid isn't going to
Speaker 3: kill something else.
Speaker 2: You could do that.
Speaker 3: But I think with that specific question, different forest management.
Speaker 2: Practices might be a better avenue to seek.
Speaker 1: And just a side note, I looked it up to
Speaker 1: see what kind of critter fixes are on the table.
Speaker 1: And these beetles, which can be about the size of
Speaker 1: a cooked grain of rice, thrive on trees that are
Speaker 1: already weak from drought and fire officials think that eighty
Speaker 1: to ninety percent of the recent Creek fire's fuel were
Speaker 1: beetle affected trees, and they estimate that one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million trees or so in California were killed by
Speaker 1: these local beetles just getting out of balance. So the
Speaker 1: best fix? I read one site that's said to try
Speaker 1: to water your trees during droughts, or you know, just
Speaker 1: work to reverse climate change. Also, while lovingly snooping through
Speaker 1: Kristen's Instagram, I saw a really beautiful picture of a
Speaker 1: tattoo on her forearm of a different bark beetles gallery.
Speaker 1: And a gallery is the pattern of tracks they leave
Speaker 1: in wood. Well, they're munching along, and so somewhere a
Speaker 1: European ELM bark beetle was just eating away, having no
Speaker 1: idea that its lunch path would be a gallery inked
Speaker 1: on this cool chickskin. And as long as there are
Speaker 1: three to four hundred thousand species of beetle in the world,
Speaker 1: let's discuss another. And Tanaya Hichert wants to know. First off,
Speaker 1: they say, boy, HAIDI, this episode excites me. And they
Speaker 1: live up in Canada and they want to know what
Speaker 1: is up with spruce beetles. They're so loud when they fly.
Speaker 1: They found like helicopters, and you can hear them now
Speaker 1: through wood and their bites are known to be painful.
Speaker 1: Do you know anything about these things?
Speaker 3: So the longhorn beetles when they are chewing, usually they're
Speaker 3: chewing the bark away a.
Speaker 2: Little bit in order to lay an egg. I think
Speaker 2: there usually is an adult.
Speaker 3: They're like a foliage feeder, but as they lay their
Speaker 3: egg inside the wood, because the larva actually eats like
Speaker 3: inside of the hardwood of the tree. And I'm just
Speaker 3: I'm not an expert on this either, but yeah, that's
Speaker 3: they do chew. And I have heard the soyer beetles
Speaker 3: like chewing before and gnawing on wood and order lay
Speaker 3: their eggs.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, ps I look this up. And beetles eating
Speaker 1: decaying trees. Kind of sounds like eating a squeaky cracker,
Speaker 1: which I guess is just a rice cake. So just
Speaker 1: imagine the noise of me eating a rice cake in
Speaker 1: your ear. You're welcome. Segwiny Dana wants to know if
Speaker 1: insects sleep or if they have an equivalent Do you
Speaker 1: ever catch anyone snoozing?
Speaker 2: No, they don't sleep like we do.
Speaker 3: I guess you know, you can say like they rest,
Speaker 3: but they don't actually like kind of turn off like
Speaker 3: we do. A lot of it has to go with
Speaker 3: usage of oxygen. So a really good way to catch
Speaker 3: a butterfly is to keep chasing it because it needs
Speaker 3: to stop moving in order to like diffusely have air
Speaker 3: go into its body mm hm. And so a lot
Speaker 3: of insects will like stop and they'll need to rest.
Speaker 3: Insects aren't active all all the time like they are resting,
Speaker 3: But I'm not actually sure if they physically sleep like
Speaker 3: we do. But you know, a pollinator that flies around
Speaker 3: during the day will usually be found like resting underneath
Speaker 3: a leaf in a tree during the nighttime. And I
Speaker 3: think that's to do with temperature. Oh, their activity level
Speaker 3: is also very dependent on the temperature.
Speaker 1: Oh, so essentially, yes, they do rest, and during that
Speaker 1: rest phase they're much harder to arouse. They're like h
Speaker 1: on and if they don't rest enough, they'll be a
Speaker 1: little groggy the next day. I found all this information
Speaker 1: in a two thousand paper published in the journal Science
Speaker 1: called coralits of Sleep and Waking in drosophil up melanogastar,
Speaker 1: which is a fruit fly, And the paper notes that quote,
Speaker 1: as in mammals, rest is abundant in young flies, is
Speaker 1: reduced in older flies, and is modulated by stimulants and hypnotics.
Speaker 1: So yes, somewhere someone in a lab coat two decades
Speaker 1: ago drank some coffee in order to be alert enough
Speaker 1: to feed some fruit fly some coffee. There's a coffee
Speaker 1: in my fly. Max Aubrey has a question for you,
Speaker 1: specifically UH entomologists question, what are side skills that make
Speaker 1: someone a good forest entomologist, specifically being observant?
Speaker 3: Definitely, I see that. Sometimes people are like how do
Speaker 3: you see that? And I'm like, I don't know. I
Speaker 3: just I just know what to look for now. And
Speaker 3: so getting a friend that can teach you this is
Speaker 3: where you find this, then like you won't be able.
Speaker 2: To turn it off, and you'll be like, Okay, that's
Speaker 2: where I look for that.
Speaker 3: And I think sometimes my like mushroom hunting friends and
Speaker 3: I will joke about this, you need to turn off
Speaker 3: all your other eyes and only have like your mushroomize
Speaker 3: on because like I have a really hard time and that.
Speaker 2: I'll always be like, oh God, look at that flower.
Speaker 2: Look at that flower. I'm like, no, turn off your ties,
Speaker 2: look for your mushroom eyze.
Speaker 3: And so sometimes I do that with work, where I
Speaker 3: have to like turn off all the other eyes and
Speaker 3: like know what to focus on. And so being able
Speaker 3: to be observant and focus is very good. I think
Speaker 3: also patience is a very good thing because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of these guides that will tell you, like from
Speaker 3: July to September the adult is active, but they don't
Speaker 3: really you know, those insects. I say this with everything.
Speaker 3: They don't read the textbooks, so they like depending on
Speaker 3: the temperature, depending on the climate of that year, or
Speaker 3: maybe they won't even be around at all because it was.
Speaker 2: A frost right.
Speaker 3: So, like, being able to be patient and make observations
Speaker 3: of your own without only dedicating to the textbook is
Speaker 3: key for any naturalist.
Speaker 1: Mm hm, so it might your your mileage may vary
Speaker 1: depending on what kind of year you've had.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Jessica Jansen wants to know
Speaker 1: how they can keep mosquitoes away from their family without
Speaker 1: a bunch of toxic chemicals. Any tips for getting mosquitoes
Speaker 1: away from you? Clean your gutters, clean your cutters.
Speaker 3: Yes, because a lot of times, you know, they have
Speaker 3: all these like fact sheets about one hundred mosquitoes can
Speaker 3: come out of like a cup of.
Speaker 2: Like dirty dog water in a dog bowl in the
Speaker 2: yard you forgot about.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: So like people often have not not a lot of people,
Speaker 3: but sometimes people have tires and stuff in their yards,
Speaker 3: and like you're providing this breeding ground. And often people
Speaker 3: don't clean their gutters and they get filled up with
Speaker 3: leaves and they create kind of like perfect habitat and
Speaker 3: everyone's like, there's no tires.
Speaker 2: In my yard. I don't know why, you know, because
Speaker 2: your gutters are dirty.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So don't provide them with a habitat. If you
Speaker 2: have a bird bath that you don't clean, just get
Speaker 2: rid of the bird bath.
Speaker 1: That deal. Yeah, you know. I was doing some research
Speaker 1: on smelly feet and found that if you have very
Speaker 1: smelly feet, you are more likely to get bitten by
Speaker 1: mosquitoes h very often. But there's a lab out here
Speaker 1: in a I think they're in Riverside. They have like
Speaker 1: a really good entomology lab, but you see for Riverside
Speaker 1: and they're studying like mosquito olfaction and malaria and how
Speaker 1: washing your feet can help you get fewer mosquito bites.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna have to remember that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, during my long field work days, I'll just have
Speaker 3: to wash my wash your feet.
Speaker 1: Cycling Tiger wants to know if any forest bugs interact
Speaker 1: within the relationship between the trees and Michael Risei micro Rizzi,
Speaker 1: micro Risei, Mike Risey, Mike A Risey. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about fungus threads here. People say it different ways.
Speaker 1: I just choked, Like when you see your cousin's girlfriend
Speaker 1: and you're like, is it Jenny or Jenny? Should I
Speaker 1: just call her Jennifer? Shit, I say, Mike A Risei, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that. Then, micro Risey. Then the relationship
Speaker 1: between trees and Michael Risey to help the bugs identify
Speaker 1: food or resources or predators, Like are the bugs sniffing
Speaker 1: out or kind of like tapping the information between the
Speaker 1: trees and the fungus. Hmmm.
Speaker 2: Probably.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's probably like so much we don't know about,
Speaker 3: like their specialization, and like you really you can't personify
Speaker 3: everything because they're not humans.
Speaker 2: They don't have like the thought process we do.
Speaker 3: But they obviously have some kind of skill where they're
Speaker 3: able to distinguish things that they like or things that
Speaker 3: they know, or habitats that they know, right, and so
Speaker 3: I think that they have some kind of learned ability,
Speaker 3: which you also have to remember. Many insects live for
Speaker 3: more than one year. A lot of people think that
Speaker 3: an insect lives for one year and it's done, but
Speaker 3: they do have many years on Earth where they have
Speaker 3: time to learn something. And if they're fungal feeders, sure,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm sure they're really attracted to some kind of
Speaker 3: aromatic release that the mic rise is putting out. Like
Speaker 3: I bet that there's something crazy like that, which would
Speaker 3: be super hard to monitor now. But you know, twenty
Speaker 3: years in the future, when I'm really far away from
Speaker 3: the scientific world, there'll be someone making up for their masters.
Speaker 2: It'll be easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, someone will get a degree at which brings me
Speaker 1: to a question. Okay, pescal whose first time question asker
Speaker 1: wants to know do cicadas really spend seventeen years underground maturing?
Speaker 1: And do are they just sleeping that whole time? And
Speaker 1: Gen Squirrel Alvarez said, yes, all the cicada questions.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, okay, so yeah, we we have the periodical
Speaker 3: cicadas here. Fun fact, there are both thirteen year and
Speaker 3: seventeen year cicadas. There's many different broods, and they're not
Speaker 3: sleeping underground.
Speaker 2: They are eating their whole time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're just like that greenlandic caterpillar. Right, they
Speaker 3: got a threshold they have to meet a certain amount
Speaker 3: of energy consumption to meet a certain point of molting.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So they eat tree roots and sometimes you can actually
Speaker 3: kind of see when high cicada populations, when they're getting
Speaker 3: ready to come out, there's like some kind of associated decline.
Speaker 3: That's what we some people think anyway. But the cicadas
Speaker 3: are really interesting. They come out and they pretty much
Speaker 3: just molt and they turn into adults. They pump up
Speaker 3: their wings and they mate and then they get eaten.
Speaker 1: Oh and they're tasty.
Speaker 2: I think they taste good.
Speaker 1: How do you How have you eaten them?
Speaker 2: Prepared some boiler mash and stick them in a stew.
Speaker 3: No, I've put them on like cookies. I've put them
Speaker 3: so when they haven't molted, when they're still like the
Speaker 3: little creepy crawley things without wings, I've put them in
Speaker 3: like peanut oil and stir fried them and they're really good.
Speaker 3: It's I guess it's sad, but I mean it's like
Speaker 3: free food. And there's like billions of them, it's not trillions,
Speaker 3: so and like everything else is gonna eat them, so
Speaker 3: why not live a little?
Speaker 1: Why do they take so long to have a glow up?
Speaker 2: Is that amazing?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Gosh, I mean there's so many weird cycles.
Speaker 3: That we're learning about in our Native American forests where
Speaker 3: these you know, certain oak trees they'll have mast years.
Speaker 3: So oaks don't make acorns all the time. They make
Speaker 3: them every like four years or something, depending on resources,
Speaker 3: and then all of.
Speaker 2: Them will make it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The cicadas are awesome, and I just love their sounds.
Speaker 3: And we have a three different species that come up
Speaker 3: that are seventeen year cicadas, yes, and they all have
Speaker 3: different songs and they but they sing together, and then
Speaker 3: it just sounds like a spaceship.
Speaker 2: Oo.
Speaker 1: Ketobs says. For more on this goodness, you should check
Speaker 1: out the website cicadamania dot com. And also, I think
Speaker 1: I just have to do a whole episode on them
Speaker 1: before twenty twenty one. When brood ten, which I've been
Speaker 1: calling brood x for like sixteen and a half years,
Speaker 1: emerges right a Cicada episode, all those in favor scream
Speaker 1: like you've been in a bunker for seventeen years and
Speaker 1: you're horny as hell. Okay, settled. Coral Taylor first time
Speaker 1: question asker, a longtime listener wants to know which creepy
Speaker 1: crawley should we be advocating especially hard for which bugs
Speaker 1: are on the brink of extinction but are critical to forrest,
Speaker 1: Like who should we get behind?
Speaker 2: All of them?
Speaker 1: All of them?
Speaker 3: But if you really want to be like scientific about it,
Speaker 3: flies really, yeah, we should stop painting on flies. I was,
Speaker 3: you know, when I say I'm a part of like experiments,
Speaker 3: usually I'm doing like kind of dumb menial work like
Speaker 3: counting bugs or sorting them or weighing them. But I
Speaker 3: was part of this project for about a year where
Speaker 3: we were looking at different insect orders associated with pollination
Speaker 3: of hardwood trees, and flies come in many. So if
Speaker 3: you want to think about thank you for timber, thank
Speaker 3: you for fruits, thank you for flowers, it's a lot
Speaker 3: of flies, like by a very high percentage versus the
Speaker 3: cute bees.
Speaker 2: That we see. All sorts of flies too.
Speaker 3: They'll be like, oh my gosh, they're like hundreds of
Speaker 3: species that way identified just from like one single tree
Speaker 3: species in one one national forest in one state. So
Speaker 3: I would advocate for the flies to not be gross maggots, right,
Speaker 3: Even the word maggot is something that you would see
Speaker 3: like a marine yelling at in a movie. I know,
Speaker 3: maybe you should make it a compliment, Oh you're such
Speaker 3: a maggot to I didn't mention they're great at decomposing.
Speaker 3: So unless you like a lot of dead raccoons on
Speaker 3: the side of the road, the flies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they eat shit and they don't complain about it,
Speaker 1: just like the marines.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: Well, someone had a question about hoverflies, Okay, merg Atron,
Speaker 1: first time question asker wanted to know what's up with hoverflies?
Speaker 1: Why are they creepy?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Merg lives in the woods and they're all over the
Speaker 1: place acting really weird. Are they really government drones?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, they're not drones.
Speaker 2: Hoverflies are. They're flower flies or the serverflies.
Speaker 3: But they look like bees and they just they use
Speaker 3: it as a mimicry to be like, please leave me alone.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to eat flowers like, not bother anybody.
Speaker 1: So they are not tiny government drones spying on it.
Speaker 2: You know what, I don't know. The government does whatever
Speaker 2: it wants anymore, So who knows?
Speaker 1: This shows speaking of things that go b the in
Speaker 1: the day and the night. Adam Pallack, first time question asker,
Speaker 1: relatively established listener asks why do critters that buzz make
Speaker 1: my jammies jingle? I love all creatures, but what a
Speaker 1: bee wasp is buzzing around me? I feel the naturalists
Speaker 1: in me take off and run for cover. They terrify me.
Speaker 1: What is the reason for that? And do you have
Speaker 1: any any fixes for that your.
Speaker 2: Little No, I don't know for that. I'm sorry. I
Speaker 2: can't answer that at all.
Speaker 3: I have been stung by many wasps during fieldwork, and
Speaker 3: so I have that same fear.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a it's normal, and that's okay.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's probably good.
Speaker 3: It's probably some like ancient relative, you know, protecting you
Speaker 3: by passing on that vibration.
Speaker 1: That's a good call. Zoeg. First time question asker has
Speaker 1: heard that if you lick a banana slug, your tongue
Speaker 1: goes Nuh. Why anyone would do this is beyond me.
Speaker 1: But is this true? And who figured that out?
Speaker 2: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Okay, have you ever looked a banana slug?
Speaker 2: No? But I have tried to make them mate.
Speaker 1: No, They're like, I'm not really feeling this one. Okay.
Speaker 1: Side note, I licked this up, and people kiss banana
Speaker 1: slugs because their slime has a numbing agent in it.
Speaker 1: But also some slug scientists aka limacologists are like, don't
Speaker 1: like slugs for the slug's sake. Can you imagine if
Speaker 1: you were naked in the woods and a tongue the
Speaker 1: size of your bed came and slimed you with falafel breath,
Speaker 1: You'd be like, move along, you hairy gool. Lennen Dory,
Speaker 1: great question. Want to know do bugs get high off
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms the same way that humans do?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know either.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they do. I mean you have
Speaker 2: to remember that a lot.
Speaker 3: Of different animals have different reactions to the different metabolites, right,
Speaker 3: I mean even people within the same species.
Speaker 2: Right, you might be able to drink milk and I
Speaker 2: can m hm. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: They might be using it as a second dairy metabolite
Speaker 3: to accumulate in their body though, to act as an
Speaker 3: anti predation technique, and we do see that with a
Speaker 3: lot of insects. I'm going to go back to my
Speaker 3: classic example, the spoty lanternfly. We think it feeds on
Speaker 3: tree of Heaven so much because it accumulates toxins in
Speaker 3: a body which makes birds spit it out. So potentially
Speaker 3: they might not be actually trying to get high, but
Speaker 3: they might be trying to accumulate secondary metabolids that make
Speaker 3: them not get eaten, or they might not do anything.
Speaker 1: Remember when we were wondering aloud if anyone is researching
Speaker 1: fungus and bug interactions, well they are okay. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was poking around cicadamania dot com and I found
Speaker 1: out the guy who started the website, Dan Mosguy, as
Speaker 1: well as our own Too Humble guest, Kristin Wickert, are
Speaker 1: both listed as authors on the following paper psycho Active
Speaker 1: plant and mushroom associated alkaloids from two behavior modifying cicada pathogens,
Speaker 1: which is like, word, what's that all about? Okay, it's
Speaker 1: all about how certain fungal compounds make cicadas develop fluid
Speaker 1: attractions to males and females, with males doing female type
Speaker 1: of wing movements. Everyone's out there just mounting same sex partners.
Speaker 1: Kind of a groovy fungus dance. But scientists think that
Speaker 1: this reaction to those mushroom alkaloids evolve to affect males
Speaker 1: more because cica dudes congregate close together to sing their
Speaker 1: sex ballads. So this helps the fungus spread more rapidly
Speaker 1: because they're all clustered. So now you know about fungal
Speaker 1: parasitized and tomapathogens. Just shrewman love fests in the trees.
Speaker 1: I love it, except for that the fungus ends up
Speaker 1: growing into a plug that replaces everyone's butts and kills them.
Speaker 1: I don't like that. Get out of my butt, fungus.
Speaker 1: It's been seventeen years. I'm just trying to have a
Speaker 1: good time over here. Jess Leffler wants to know since
Speaker 1: your hiker. How do you balance sticking to the trails
Speaker 1: with getting curious and wandering off path because they say
Speaker 1: hiking can be detrimental to fragile species, but sometimes there's
Speaker 1: such cool stuff just off the path that they want
Speaker 1: to get a closer look at.
Speaker 3: So I'm very lucky that my job is like go here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like a lot of times I'm not on a
Speaker 3: trail and I just go. But I will say that
Speaker 3: it's that desire to seek things out then sticks with
Speaker 3: me when I am on trail.
Speaker 2: But I have been, you.
Speaker 3: Know, working in the forestry realm for so long that
Speaker 3: I know that a place where hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 3: people go, it's really easy to see if even one
Speaker 3: person walks off trail and there's like, actually you should
Speaker 3: look this up. There's some really crazy pictures of when
Speaker 3: like the super.
Speaker 2: Bloom happens in California.
Speaker 4: Mm hm.
Speaker 3: It like they track when people go off trails, like
Speaker 3: the instagrammers, and then like they're day one when the
Speaker 3: super bloom is happening, there's one designated trail and then
Speaker 3: by like day there's like fifty other side trails.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So thanks to social media and seeing that I should
Speaker 3: be shameful.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't go off trail at like public places. But
Speaker 3: with my job, I'm able to go into the wilderness.
Speaker 1: That's part of your job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, and even then, I'm trying to be respectful,
Speaker 3: and I have all the plant eyes, the bug eyes,
Speaker 3: the mushroom eyes going on, and so I'm like, I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna smash on a beautiful orchid. I am actually
Speaker 3: very aware, and I try to walk where there is nothing,
Speaker 3: and then I start thinking really deep thoughts about, you know,
Speaker 3: the microbes that I'm stepping on that don't even realize it.
Speaker 2: Because they're so small.
Speaker 1: Lee Peddler wants to know first time question, that's great.
Speaker 1: Is there an insect that you've always always wanted to
Speaker 1: come across in the wild but you haven't yet and
Speaker 1: that you're always on the lookout for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. Now it's all the saturnids.
Speaker 3: So I want to see all of the Saturnid moths
Speaker 3: in real life because they're huge.
Speaker 2: And the only one I've really seen is the Lunama.
Speaker 1: Oh I've ever seen one of person. I've only seen
Speaker 1: one on that weird commercial for Lunesta Yea, which is
Speaker 1: like some sort of sleep drug. That's like you might
Speaker 1: murder someone well on Lunesta, like, that's the only that's
Speaker 1: what I assated with.
Speaker 6: Driving or engaging in other activities while asleep without remembering
Speaker 6: it the next day have been reported. Abnormal behaviors may
Speaker 6: include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, or confusion.
Speaker 1: So to any large, beautiful sage green Luna moths, I
Speaker 1: am so sorry that Lunesta co opted your fluttery nocturnal
Speaker 1: image for this. Also, if you do need help falling asleep,
Speaker 1: try the Fancy Nancy technique from the Somnology episode. So
Speaker 1: while you're trying to fall asleep, pick a category like
Speaker 1: fruits or band names or bugs or countries or makes
Speaker 1: or models of cars let's say, for example, and then
Speaker 1: you think of one that starts with a like Alpha Romeo,
Speaker 1: maybe B, Bugatti, C Corolla, D dots in and so
Speaker 1: on and so on, and it helps me drift off.
Speaker 1: Every time using this technique from my mom, so far
Speaker 1: I have not driven, eaten, or acted aggressively without remembering it.
Speaker 1: So well done, mom. Also, it's my mom's birthday this week,
Speaker 1: so happy birthday, Fancy Nancy. We love you anyway, Luna, moths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but a lot of these things are a lot
Speaker 3: of these saturnis are only out like flying around at
Speaker 3: night and like within a small window of time of
Speaker 3: the year, and then even within that they will only
Speaker 3: come out.
Speaker 2: Like really late at night, like midnight to two am.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you take out that shower curtain with the light,
Speaker 3: you'll start to get small, little, very tiny moths at first,
Speaker 3: and then like as the night progresses, you'll get bigger ones,
Speaker 3: and then depending on what the moon is doing, you'll
Speaker 3: get really big ones.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so all of the moths I really want to see.
Speaker 3: There's this really crazy one. It's like the oakhorn moth.
Speaker 3: It's like out right now, but I don't know. I
Speaker 3: just recently fell in love with caterpillars, So anything, that's
Speaker 3: what I want to see.
Speaker 1: And if you're wanting to go explore the world and
Speaker 1: look at wiener pillars and creepy Crawley's and fun, guy,
Speaker 1: what's the best way to do it? Well, safety first,
Speaker 1: and in the mushroom foraging, get a book, Go with
Speaker 1: people that know what they're doing. If you're just getting
Speaker 1: into it, don't just go out alone and be like,
Speaker 1: well it's pretty icy.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: No, So I'm really fortunate to have like a lot
Speaker 3: of really good friends. Most of them are on the
Speaker 3: West Coast and I miss them a lot. We would
Speaker 3: do these really big mushroom parties and we did one
Speaker 3: last year around this time of year. We got a
Speaker 3: cabin and we all, you know, we do these big forays.
Speaker 3: And so if you want to get into that, you know,
Speaker 3: look at Facebook. There's like tons of groups for everything,
Speaker 3: and like just be I guess brave enough to be like.
Speaker 2: Does anybody want to go? Yes, go like.
Speaker 3: To park and like, because there's mushrooms and bugs everywhere,
Speaker 3: you could go to your local park. You don't have
Speaker 3: to buy a cabin or anything, and you could just
Speaker 3: like set them out on the table and learn. But yeah,
Speaker 3: with a lot of things, and even the insects too,
Speaker 3: because some of them you don't want to touch. It's
Speaker 3: good to go with.
Speaker 2: A friend and then learn together.
Speaker 3: I have, like when I go looking for mushrooms and
Speaker 3: I take three field guides with me. Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 3: some are you know, old, it might be contradictory depending
Speaker 3: on the author. It's just good to like triple check
Speaker 3: yourself with something as serious as amatoxins.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah for sure. And Okay, you're in the woods,
Speaker 1: you're looking for creepy Crawley's. You got spider webs all
Speaker 1: over you. Maybe there's a take in your butt crack
Speaker 1: and you're like, i'll get it later. But what is
Speaker 1: the worst thing? Because you're so resilient in so many ways,
Speaker 1: But what sucks when.
Speaker 2: The person in front of you steps on ground bees?
Speaker 1: Oh no, and like.
Speaker 2: They don't go after them, they go after you.
Speaker 3: So the places I go again, I'm not on trail,
Speaker 3: and it's not like these beautiful, lush places that are
Speaker 3: like Lord of the Rings beautiful forest. They're like green
Speaker 3: briar and honeysuckle and like you have to like fight
Speaker 3: to get through it with a machete. And then like
Speaker 3: you get stung by wasped or ground bees and like
Speaker 3: you magically are able to jump over them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So that's like the worst thing about being out in
Speaker 3: the field. And like I had a spider bit me
Speaker 3: one time on the Appalachian Trail and I rolled up
Speaker 3: and looked at my friend and I was like, my
Speaker 3: face feels funny, and she's like, we need to go to town. Oh,
Speaker 3: so like, yeah, they are very serious things to be
Speaker 3: aware of.
Speaker 2: And also, this is another funny story.
Speaker 3: I don't remember the exact species, but on the East
Speaker 3: coast there's these millipedes and I know they're not insects,
Speaker 3: but there's these millipedes. They're called Narsius americana. They're the
Speaker 3: really big long ones that like you know, could be
Speaker 3: as long as a pencil.
Speaker 2: They're about that thick, like dark purple. They're on the
Speaker 2: trails a lot. You can pick them up and you
Speaker 2: can do stuff with them and whatever. Check them out.
Speaker 2: They're cute. But there is a very close look alike
Speaker 2: on the West coast.
Speaker 1: So she was hiking along the Pacific Crest Trail, which
Speaker 1: side note runs over twenty six hundred miles from Mexico
Speaker 1: to Canada, which I did not know. And then I
Speaker 1: got distracted for like ten minutes on the Pacific Crest
Speaker 1: Trail website looking at gorgeous wilderness photos and reading about
Speaker 1: how trail workers will quote curse you for eternity if
Speaker 1: you go potty on the trail and leave it for
Speaker 1: them to find without bearing it seven inches anyway, hiking.
Speaker 3: And I was hiking on the PCT and I'm like,
Speaker 3: really lucky that I got. It was like the last
Speaker 3: day that I picked up this millipede that looked a
Speaker 3: lot like the Narsius Americana. And I went to my
Speaker 3: car and the thing had thrown up on my hand.
Speaker 3: And I didn't really think about it because like the
Speaker 3: ones on the East Coast throw up on your hands.
Speaker 2: It's not a big deal.
Speaker 3: Sorry, but this one released like an acid and my
Speaker 3: hand I was driving in my hand, I was like, man,
Speaker 3: it really kind of hurts. And I looked at it
Speaker 3: and I had these like big stains, like big red
Speaker 3: bloody stains on my hand.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: And I like frantically pulled over and was like, what's
Speaker 3: going on? Trying to find like a scientific paper about it,
Speaker 3: uh huh, and it.
Speaker 2: Said like you could if you touched your eyes, it
Speaker 2: could blind you. And I was thank god. So I
Speaker 2: went to a stop and wash my hands for like
Speaker 2: seven minutes.
Speaker 1: Oh god, oh my god. Okay, Also, you've hiked so
Speaker 1: many trails. Any advice on buying boots?
Speaker 2: Oh no god, no, no boots.
Speaker 3: Okay, no boots what I wear when I go hiking
Speaker 3: long distance or trail runners.
Speaker 2: Because they dry out fast. They have really good grip.
Speaker 3: They aren't like heavy, and I don't know, I just
Speaker 3: feel like they don't give as many blisters.
Speaker 2: That's okay, the number one bad thing.
Speaker 3: But you know, if you're fighting fires, there's fire boots,
Speaker 3: and like if you're kicking over green brier to get
Speaker 3: into a forest plot, then I wear muck boots, but
Speaker 3: I never ever wear those like hiking boots that are
Speaker 3: on commercials.
Speaker 1: So don't let a lack of fancy boots or a
Speaker 1: fear of creepy Crawley's hinder you, because there's so much
Speaker 1: beauty out there, I promise. What about your favorite thing
Speaker 1: about being a forest entomologist.
Speaker 3: I love it when I get to be like all
Speaker 3: alone in the woods and like I actually feel like
Speaker 3: I'm part of something mm hmmm, because it's just like
Speaker 3: all around me and it's just so familiar. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's because it's like overpowering sometimes like the levels of
Speaker 3: like sight and sound and smell.
Speaker 2: It's just I don't know, it's just nice. I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm part of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it must really be like a happy place to
Speaker 1: get away from the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can actually like kind of get lost in
Speaker 3: my thoughts because a lot of times, man, I got
Speaker 3: like thirty things going on, and it always works out.
Speaker 3: Like literally, like before I called you, I was working
Speaker 3: like i'm and then like as soon as we hang up,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna put my backpack on and I'm gonna drive
Speaker 3: to the woods.
Speaker 2: Yes, So like I'm.
Speaker 3: Always thinking, and so it's nice to like kind of
Speaker 3: turn that off.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Yeah, You're gonna wake up and the birds
Speaker 1: are gonna be singing, and then it's gonna be misty down.
Speaker 1: Got so nice. This is making me want to go camping,
Speaker 1: like on my porch or something. So ask smart hiking scientists,
Speaker 1: creepy crawleyspooky questions, and you just might find yourself lasen
Speaker 1: up your whatevers to hit the trail. And I know
Speaker 1: you want to follow her asap, so please do. At Instagram,
Speaker 1: dot com slash kdubs the Hiking Scientist, you can support
Speaker 1: her sidcom on Patreon, Patreon dot com slash kdubs the
Speaker 1: Hiking Scientist. She also has merch that says I'm a
Speaker 1: hiking scientist, which is wonderful and many of you need.
Speaker 1: You can find links to all that and links to
Speaker 1: her socials as well as to the nonprofit Blackoutside dot org,
Speaker 1: as well as more links at aliward dot com, slash
Speaker 1: ologies slash forest Entomology. That link is in the show notes.
Speaker 1: We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram and all
Speaker 1: spooktober folks are making daily drawings along different episode themes,
Speaker 1: So check out the ologies Instagram for more info on that,
Speaker 1: or just look up the hashtag Drologies twenty twenty. It's
Speaker 1: so good. So that's Drology's twenty twenty. I'm Ali Ward
Speaker 1: with one L. On Twitter and on Instagram, you can
Speaker 1: get oli She's merch including brand new masks and cozyfall
Speaker 1: blankets at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shanda Feltus and
Speaker 1: Bunny Dutch of the comedy podcast You are That for
Speaker 1: managing it. Also listen to their podcast this week because
Speaker 1: they have Dominic Mordihan from Lost and Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings on Who's Amazing, So again, you are That. Aaron
Speaker 1: Talbert admins the Facebook group of Smart Cool Ologites. Emily
Speaker 1: White is Amazing and her crew of transcribers make these
Speaker 1: episode transcripts available for free for our deaf and hard
Speaker 1: of hearing ologites, or for anyone who wants transcripts at
Speaker 1: aliwar dot Com slash Ologies Dash extras. Thank you Caleb
Speaker 1: Patton for adding bleeps when needed. There are kid friendly
Speaker 1: episodes up at the same link, which is in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Thank you Noel Silkworth who helps schedule all
Speaker 1: the guests, and to assistant editor Jarrett Sleeper and the
Speaker 1: per casts Stephen Ray Morris, both now collectors of face caterpillars.
Speaker 1: The Majestic Mustache SRM also has another podcast see Jurassic
Speaker 1: right about Dino's and his back to school series going
Speaker 1: on right now. Has some great ologist on it, so again,
Speaker 1: that's great. Check that podcast out. Nick Thorburn of the
Speaker 1: band Islands wrote the theme music for Ologies And if
Speaker 1: you stick around until the end of the episode, you
Speaker 1: get a secret. Sometimes that's a treat, sometimes it's a burden.
Speaker 1: This secret is a follow up to Coondurologies Foot Confession.
Speaker 1: Here's the deal. My feet finally started peeling. I did
Speaker 1: this acid foot mask last week. I was like nothing.
Speaker 1: Four days in. I think my feet were just like
Speaker 1: rhinos and nothing could penetrate them. But now what ten
Speaker 1: eleven days in, wispy sheets of my own flesh are
Speaker 1: just ribboning off, just drying in curls. My socks feel
Speaker 1: like they're stuffed with feathers. It's so gross. Also, if
Speaker 1: you need to dip right now, I understand. But for
Speaker 1: those of you who can weather it, I don't even
Speaker 1: want to tell you, but I feel compelled to. As
Speaker 1: I was examining my peeling post foot mask feet, skin
Speaker 1: just shedding like ghostly fallen leaves, my dog licked one
Speaker 1: up from the bathroom floor in a moment that was
Speaker 1: so disgusting and powerful, and I realized that she ate
Speaker 1: my foot and now she has made, if only for
Speaker 1: a few molecules of me, which I'm feeling very nauseous
Speaker 1: and parental about it. Maybe the grossest secret I've ever told.
Speaker 1: Next week, I'll just give you a life hack. Cool,
Speaker 1: all right? Have you ever by hacadermatology, hombiology, ycdo zoology, lithology, numinology, meteorology,
Speaker 1: old paratology, nathology, seriology, eldology. Slimy and satisfying,