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Speaker 3: Oh hey, it's your old pops. We're in a cardigan,
Speaker 3: sitting on the porch with a cup of instant coffee,
Speaker 3: just watching the windblow, smell in the storm a comin.
Speaker 3: It's alli worth back with another episode of Ologies. Apologies
Speaker 3: if you will, because this topic I have talked about
Speaker 3: on a previous episode a minisode last year or the
Speaker 3: year before, just mentioning that it exists. But this year
Speaker 3: we dove fase first into a pile of crispy rustling
Speaker 3: Lee to bring you a one on one interview all
Speaker 3: about the changing of the seasons. But before we drift
Speaker 3: into it, a little business up top. Thank you to
Speaker 3: all the patrons on patreon dot com slash Ologies for
Speaker 3: belonging to the backstage club and submitting your questions to Theologists.
Speaker 3: You two can join first Littlest twenty five cents an
Speaker 3: episode if you would like. We could not make the
Speaker 3: show without you. And thanks to everyone who rates and
Speaker 3: subscribes to Ologies. It keeps us up there and the
Speaker 3: science charts with the big giants just little less. And
Speaker 3: especially to those folks who take a few minutes to
Speaker 3: use their thumbs to write a review for me to
Speaker 3: lurk on like a creep and I can just pluck
Speaker 3: a fresh eet each week to prove it, such as
Speaker 3: for example, Aaron Miranda said the other day, I was
Speaker 3: telling my aunt about ticks ecology, and she said, fifty
Speaker 3: percent of me is like, wow, you're such a cool person,
Speaker 3: and fifty percent of me is like, wow, you are
Speaker 3: exceptionally weird. And I think that was the best compliment
Speaker 3: I've ever received. Thanks Dad for teaching be everything I know.
Speaker 3: Aaron Miranda, thank you for that. That was lovely. Also,
Speaker 3: thank you to Terry's child for stealing your mother's phone
Speaker 3: to write a review. I appreciated it. Okay, Phenology, The
Speaker 3: first thing you need to know is that this isn't phrenology.
Speaker 3: There is no R in there no R. Phrenology is
Speaker 3: a weird, racist, iniquated study of human skulls that is
Speaker 3: pure flum flam. Phenology, however, comes from the word phenomenon,
Speaker 3: which means to show in Greek, and it's the study
Speaker 3: of the timing of natural events or the influence of
Speaker 3: climate on cyclical natural happenings, So seasonal business. An ecologist
Speaker 3: named Charles Morien first used the term in eighteen forty nine,
Speaker 3: Thanks Chuck. So what better time to get all up
Speaker 3: in phonology than as the summer turns to fall. Colors
Speaker 3: start warming up, the air, cools, squirrels, hard things, the
Speaker 3: trees in the yard start becoming mustard and ochre and
Speaker 3: russet and ruby. People stop shaving all manner of body parts,
Speaker 3: and hot girl summer turn into a hot nerd fall.
Speaker 3: It's a real hashtag. Get into it. So I was
Speaker 3: looking for a good phonologist and came across a recent
Speaker 3: special issue of Applications in Plant Sciences, and it was
Speaker 3: titled Emerging Frontiers in Phenological Research, and this ologist was
Speaker 3: a co editor of the entire issue. I was like, boy, howdy,
Speaker 3: I bet she knows her phenological shit man. So obviously
Speaker 3: she lives in like a thatched masonry cottage in the
Speaker 3: New England Woods. But Lo, no, she's based in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Why why? And can I ask her about it? I can,
Speaker 3: and I did so. I toddled over one sunny, hot
Speaker 3: September afternoon, like last week to her office at the
Speaker 3: Page Museum at the Librea tar Pits, and she met
Speaker 3: me in the parking lot. We were both in jeans,
Speaker 3: but only one of us was cool enough to be
Speaker 3: wearing a Ramone T shirt and sneakers and a museum
Speaker 3: employee lanyard. Spoiler. That person was not me. And we
Speaker 3: went down to her office and we settled in for
Speaker 3: a chat, covering all things cozy, like leaves changing color
Speaker 3: and crisp autumn skies, cider versus pumpkins, spice lattes, migratory
Speaker 3: bird gossip, how climate affects flora and fauna, how to
Speaker 3: make your backyard into a critter Kegger and the technology
Speaker 3: making phonology easier and how you can get involved. Now,
Speaker 3: this episode has so many twists and turns, and she
Speaker 3: is so charming and funny and candid and real, and
Speaker 3: parts of this episode surprise the hell out of me.
Speaker 3: And in those parts there's minimal to no editing. You'll
Speaker 3: know when you get there. So without nattering on, put
Speaker 3: the kettle on, grab kerchief, and cozy up to ecologists
Speaker 3: and seasons researching phonologist doctor Libby Ellwood. Are you an
Speaker 3: East Coaster by birth?
Speaker 4: I am. I'm from Long Island, New York.
Speaker 5: Heard of it, yes, and then did my undergrad at
Speaker 5: the University of Rhode Island. I got a Bachelor's of
Speaker 5: Science in marine biology.
Speaker 3: Marine biology, yes, indeed so. She then got a master's
Speaker 3: in teaching at the University of Southern Maine amazing fall foliage,
Speaker 3: and got her PhD in biology in Boston, Massachusetts. Your
Speaker 3: foliage also slaps. Now. She had been studying marine biology
Speaker 3: from a molecular level, and she says what drew her
Speaker 3: were the big questions, the how do all these systems
Speaker 3: fit together? Questions which led her to study ecosystems terrest Really,
Speaker 3: how did you become a phonologist?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So when I was in grad school and I was
Speaker 5: reaching out to my advisor before he was my advisor,
Speaker 5: I was interested in how climate change was affecting plans
Speaker 5: and animals and kind of in a big picture of way,
Speaker 5: and I was thinking about migrations and just ways of
Speaker 5: examining how climate change is impacting critters. And Phonology is
Speaker 5: the study of cyclic events in a plant or animals
Speaker 5: life cycle, So is everything from when plants flower to
Speaker 5: when insects emerge or migratory birds arrive, all of those
Speaker 5: kinds of events that happen usually every year. It could
Speaker 5: be more than that, but usually on an annual basis,
Speaker 5: And that is often associated with other variables, like, for example,
Speaker 5: when plants flower in the spring, it's usually because the
Speaker 5: temperature has reached a certain temperature and then it's warm
Speaker 5: enough for them to bloom, and so then we could
Speaker 5: record that date, and on and on and on over
Speaker 5: the years. We can get a lot of information about that.
Speaker 3: Do you have to study a bit of astronomy as
Speaker 3: well to understand how the Earth is going around the sun?
Speaker 3: Like how much does that play into the basis of
Speaker 3: your work?
Speaker 5: Not too much, Okay, it's a lot of more earth
Speaker 5: bound variables that we look into. So lots of climate variables, temperature, precipitation,
Speaker 5: even things potentially like humidity or soil temperature. Are things
Speaker 5: like that that might impact the organism here and now.
Speaker 3: And quick aside. So the Earth's axis is what scientists
Speaker 3: call wonkafied just kidding, that's not a term. What I
Speaker 3: mean is that the Earth's axis is just tilted. So
Speaker 3: as we cruise around the giant fireball in the sky,
Speaker 3: one hemisphere gets more direct sunlight howk girl summer. The
Speaker 3: other gets less of a sunlight blast, hence hot nerd fall.
Speaker 3: Now what about sweater weather. Well weather dot com conducted
Speaker 3: a pole of over six thousand people, and that crisp, nippy,
Speaker 3: grab a Cardigan weather was on average agreed upon to
Speaker 3: be right at sixty degrees sixty degrees grab us wetter.
Speaker 3: Of course, that's the average for the United States. Now,
Speaker 3: live in South Dakota, you likely can get down to
Speaker 3: fifty one degrees before you consider shoving a hoodie in
Speaker 3: your bag. But Nevada, you're looking at a dip to
Speaker 3: sixty five degrees and you're like, whoah, it's chili, gotta
Speaker 3: pop on a sweater, and so do you think that
Speaker 3: in terms of phonology and in terms of seasonal changes,
Speaker 3: especially like our fall in spring the ones that you
Speaker 3: pay most attention to, or is there just as much
Speaker 3: action happening in the dead of winter in the heat
Speaker 3: of summer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So my work was mostly in the New England
Speaker 5: area where that is definitely the case that spring and
Speaker 5: fall are the big seasons because things are relatively quiet
Speaker 5: in the winter and so then springs all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: a big event. Yeah, it's when the flowers come out,
Speaker 5: it's when insects and marriage, it's when the birds return
Speaker 5: and all of that kind of stuff. And so that's
Speaker 5: true for a lot of temperate regions in the northern
Speaker 5: hemisphere and then oppositely on in the southern hemisphere in
Speaker 5: the fall, and then yeah, during the summer, a lot
Speaker 5: of things have settled down. So once the migratory birds
Speaker 5: have arrived, for example, they're there to breed and so
Speaker 5: they do their thing all summer, they're hanging out, and
Speaker 5: then they will start their southern migration usually in the fall.
Speaker 5: So that's another thing too that we have a lookout for.
Speaker 5: Be on the lookout for also, that would be when
Speaker 5: the leaves start to change color and leaves fall, and
Speaker 5: then you know, it's pretty quiet for the winter. So
Speaker 5: those cyclic events are most common, right, like you said,
Speaker 5: in the spring and fall, But in other places, like
Speaker 5: in the desert or in even here in southern California,
Speaker 5: those events could be happening at other times of the year,
Speaker 5: and it could be more dependent on rain which might
Speaker 5: come in the winter, or or drought which might happen
Speaker 5: later in the summer.
Speaker 4: Things like this.
Speaker 3: So there's like cacti, they are like, don't sleep on me.
Speaker 3: I'm over here. It rained, I'm blooming executive. I mean
Speaker 3: notice right now. Yeah, now, okay, you're from the East Coast,
Speaker 3: you live in Los Angeles, you must get this question
Speaker 3: so much like, how do you deal with the lack
Speaker 3: of seasons that are as dramatic as say, on the
Speaker 3: Stern seaboard.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you for phrasing it that way, because I
Speaker 5: feel like, at least at first when I moved out here,
Speaker 5: I really felt the lack of seasons, and any Angelina
Speaker 5: would say, oh, no, we have seasons. Yeah, Like, just
Speaker 5: give it a little while and you'll get it. And
Speaker 5: still after four years of being here, I'm going to
Speaker 5: maintain that the seasons might exist, but they are pretty subtle,
Speaker 5: very subtle. Sometimes you kind of miss them, Like if
Speaker 5: we have a dry winter and it just doesn't rain
Speaker 5: that much, it just just feels like extended spring or something. So, yes,
Speaker 5: that did take some getting used to, and I'm still
Speaker 5: getting used to.
Speaker 3: It. Does that drive you crazy at all?
Speaker 4: It does?
Speaker 5: It absolutely does, because I really like today it's you know,
Speaker 5: the middle of September, and to me, it could be July,
Speaker 5: it could be May. Like I don't really know what
Speaker 5: month it is, so I often find myself still kind
Speaker 5: of confused because it's not I feel like it should
Speaker 5: be getting onto sweater weather.
Speaker 4: It's not quite sweater weather.
Speaker 3: I know, I have an aspirational flannel with me. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to put that on. I'm in a tank top.
Speaker 3: I wore boots today and I was like, shouldn't want
Speaker 3: flip flops. Yeah, there's a heat advisory. So why are
Speaker 3: you doing your work here in la instead of just
Speaker 3: like deep in the woods over a covered bridge in Vermont?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Wow, that covered bridge and Vermont does sound pretty nice.
Speaker 5: I know. It was the two body problem that brought
Speaker 5: me out here. So I was a postdoc at the
Speaker 5: time where it was a position I could do remotely,
Speaker 5: and my husband got a position out here, so truth
Speaker 5: be told, I was a trailing spouse.
Speaker 3: Liby says that her job was flexible, and after that
Speaker 3: position ended, she started a new one at the Librea Tarpets,
Speaker 3: analyzing plant matter and mammal bones unmooked from the sticky
Speaker 3: asphalt vats outside to help understand paleo food webs so
Speaker 3: she can work on seasons even if LA doesn't really
Speaker 3: have intense and all shifts. We'll say, is it weird
Speaker 3: for you to talk about the weather in a way
Speaker 3: that is not shallow, because like you talking about the
Speaker 3: weather is in some deep shit, like that's like your life.
Speaker 3: Like how do you approach people chit chatting about that?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 5: I love letter chick chat. I could letter chit chat
Speaker 5: all day long. You know, when you're the first couple
Speaker 5: people on the conference call and you're waiting for the
Speaker 5: six people to show up.
Speaker 3: Hey it's Tina, who else of on the call?
Speaker 5: But no, you go, now you go, and it's that
Speaker 5: awkward small talk time and they're like, oh, how's the weather?
Speaker 3: By you?
Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah, let's talk about that. Let's let's go
Speaker 5: deep on that.
Speaker 3: You're like taking data sets. You're like, what temperature did
Speaker 3: you say, Randy, okay, seventy eight? Got it?
Speaker 5: Got it?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 4: Is that usually warmer core for you? Interesting?
Speaker 3: And so what is your work entail? Like, what are
Speaker 3: what kind of numbers are you crunching? Are you looking
Speaker 3: at plants? Are you looking at leaves changing? Are you
Speaker 3: looking at birds? All of the above?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes to all of that. And it is a
Speaker 5: lot of data crunching. That's really the crux of it.
Speaker 5: So when I'm looking at addressing climate change, for example,
Speaker 5: which is really at the heart of a lot of this,
Speaker 5: it's understanding how things were and how things used to
Speaker 5: be compared to how they are now. And so for
Speaker 5: that we need historic data sets. So we have to
Speaker 5: kind of be creative about how and where we get those.
Speaker 5: And that's kind of what brought me to the museum
Speaker 5: world too, is access to data from one hundred, two
Speaker 5: hundred or more years ago. Because at museums there are specimens.
Speaker 5: There are barriom specimens, so press plants that are housed
Speaker 5: and maintained at museums, and those are just a wealth
Speaker 5: of data for understanding what plants were like, for example,
Speaker 5: one hundred or two hundred years ago. So that's one
Speaker 5: way of getting the data and the numbers that I need.
Speaker 5: Another way is to look into the archives of sometimes museums,
Speaker 5: but also libraries and special collections and things like that,
Speaker 5: and that's where you'll find field notes or journals and
Speaker 5: people recording their observations of what they.
Speaker 4: Saw when they saw it and all of that.
Speaker 5: And one of the things that has been really fruitful
Speaker 5: for me and for the lad that I was a
Speaker 5: part of in grad school was the was the journalist
Speaker 5: from Henry David Threau and his musings as he walked
Speaker 5: around Walden Pond and he took notes of what flowers
Speaker 5: were in bloom, what birds he was seeing in all
Speaker 5: of that.
Speaker 3: So do you think more people should be journaling nature journaling?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then just like give it to a museum.
Speaker 3: You're here, I saw daffodil. It was whatever January, probably
Speaker 3: by that Moaven because we're so screwed. But do you
Speaker 3: have any kind of personal affinity toward that kind of
Speaker 3: journaling and that kind of history. Did you grow up
Speaker 3: loving natural history in a.
Speaker 4: Really casual way.
Speaker 5: I guess more in the walk in the woods kind
Speaker 5: of way than the journaling kind of way, and appreciation
Speaker 5: for taking notes like that, and I think a general
Speaker 5: appreciation for observing the world around me or just enjoying
Speaker 5: time outside.
Speaker 3: So getting back to collections and archives, you're mentioning like
Speaker 3: a leaf that was say pressed, what kind of information
Speaker 3: are you getting from that? Are you just looking at it?
Speaker 3: Has it changed color over the years? Do you stick
Speaker 3: it through a chromatic graph? Not a word?
Speaker 5: Yeah, not so much with the chromatograph. That might be
Speaker 5: a thing, but it's not something I usually use. What
Speaker 5: I'm looking at is some kind of evidence of a
Speaker 5: pheno phase. So is it flowering? Is is there some
Speaker 5: kind of reproductive phase that's represented on the plant? So
Speaker 5: a flower, of fruit, a seed, something that is evident
Speaker 5: on the plant, and even a twig for example, could
Speaker 5: be a phase that this plant is dormant. So this
Speaker 5: was during the winter, hopefully probably in the northern hemisphere,
Speaker 5: and then it was maybe later in the spring that
Speaker 5: plant would have flowered. But so that even that kind
Speaker 5: of information is informative, or if it doesn't have a
Speaker 5: reproductive structure like a flower or fruit, and it's just
Speaker 5: leaves that that too is a pheno phase. If it's
Speaker 5: fully leafed out, that means that it was probably growing
Speaker 5: and representing the growing season being up and running where
Speaker 5: that plant was living.
Speaker 3: And usually they'll tag like it was the thirteenth of March, and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all that information is really critical to it. So
Speaker 5: it would have the collection date and the collector, the
Speaker 5: species name. All of that information will will use to
Speaker 5: understand when that phenol phase occurred and where and put
Speaker 5: our little dot on the map and then be able
Speaker 5: to crunch all those numbers.
Speaker 3: Ps. I didn't know what a pheno phase was, so
Speaker 3: I looked it up and according to the USA National
Speaker 3: Phonology Network, it's quote an observable stage in the annual
Speaker 3: life cycle of a plant or animal that can be
Speaker 3: defined by a start and endpoint. So it's usually pretty
Speaker 3: short lived. It's things like ooh a new flower or
Speaker 3: oh the trees yellow, undune, salt. How do you just
Speaker 3: go for a walk, Like how do you walk through
Speaker 3: your parking lot without being like, oh, look at that,
Speaker 3: Oh look at that.
Speaker 5: It seems like it would be. So there's data everywhere
Speaker 5: there are and it's that's fantastic. And if you've ever
Speaker 5: been on a hike with botanists, it's just great. You're
Speaker 5: never that one who's out of breath and huffing and
Speaker 5: puffing because we're stopping in every plant to identify it
Speaker 5: and check it out and just look at the birds.
Speaker 4: It's great.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, look at this. And now, okay, real, real,
Speaker 3: stupid question. Let's talk about leaves changing color, because we're
Speaker 3: in September. It's air quotes fall in Los Angeles. Yeah, leaves,
Speaker 3: Why do they change color? How's it happen?
Speaker 5: Yeah? So it has to do with chemical changes in
Speaker 5: the leaf that are probably mostly impacted by the changing
Speaker 5: levels of light. A tree, a plant will be able
Speaker 5: to sense that the light levels are changing, that it's
Speaker 5: getting lighter later and earlier, and that will be a
Speaker 5: sign for them to start making chlorophyll. And as the
Speaker 5: chlorophyll amount concentration decreases in the leaf, it'll be less green,
Speaker 5: and therefore the other colors that are naturally in the
Speaker 5: leaf will become more visible and more vibrant. And depending
Speaker 5: on what other chemicals are in the plant, some trees
Speaker 5: or some plants might change to these beautiful reds or
Speaker 5: yellows or oranges, what other trees or plants might just
Speaker 5: turn brown and leaves just kind of fall off. But
Speaker 5: it all has to do with the environment signaling to
Speaker 5: the plant that the season is changing, and cooler temperatures
Speaker 5: can also do that, or even drought conditions or drier weather,
Speaker 5: or if the plant is under stress, that can also indicate, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna give up and drop all these leaves.
Speaker 3: Oh they're just gonna dip.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they try again next year.
Speaker 3: Looks, I'll see you guys next fall. So if you
Speaker 3: let's say you're looking at like an orange leaf or
Speaker 3: a beautiful yellow leaf, that color was there all along,
Speaker 3: but the green was just kind of stealing its thunder.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: And I don't know off the top of my head
Speaker 5: what the orange flavor is versus the red one.
Speaker 3: Now, in case you're on a too quiet car ride
Speaker 3: through the leafy woods and you need a topic of conversation,
Speaker 3: carotenoids and flavonoids bring the yellow carotenoids responsible for the
Speaker 3: orange hues too. See also the stuff and carrots and
Speaker 3: anthocyanins are the compounds producing those beautiful reds now in
Speaker 3: the spring and summer. There's a lot of light and warmth,
Speaker 3: so there's tons of chlorophyll production, But those flavonoids and
Speaker 3: carotenoids and anthocyanins are hanging out underneath the green.
Speaker 5: Those are always there in lower concentrations. And then the
Speaker 5: chlorophyll is just so important for the tree to on
Speaker 5: the plant to be producing lots of chlorophyll to be
Speaker 5: able to photosynthesize all through the growing season that that's
Speaker 5: what we see as the green leaves.
Speaker 3: And what's the point of a tree having a growing
Speaker 3: season and a shedding season versus say, others evergreens perennials
Speaker 3: that are no, I'm in it to win it all
Speaker 3: year round, Like who's doing what and why.
Speaker 5: Plants have all kinds of different strategies evolutionary strategies that
Speaker 5: have made them successful over you know, eons. So yeah,
Speaker 5: it really depends on because even within the same ecosystem,
Speaker 5: you could have deciduous trees and evergreen trees and it's
Speaker 5: just working for them. Even trees that are evergreen will
Speaker 5: often lose some of their leaves in the winter and
Speaker 5: then grow new ones in the spring. They just sort
Speaker 5: of appear to be fuller than a deciduous tree. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it depends just what advantages or disadvantages that particular species
Speaker 5: has found to be most successful.
Speaker 3: And the trees that shed their leaves, they're living off
Speaker 3: sugars in the root system and the in different parts
Speaker 3: of the tree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 5: And you know, which is similar to how a deciduous
Speaker 5: tree is doing it too. It's just our Yeah, that's
Speaker 5: how all trees are doing it and what is available
Speaker 5: to them at that time.
Speaker 4: And so often in cooler.
Speaker 5: Areas is where you'll have more deciduous trees because they
Speaker 5: are will drop their leaves and during the winter be
Speaker 5: more dormant because they're not able to suck up the
Speaker 5: water and the sugars and do what they need to
Speaker 5: do as trees. So they do become more dormant in
Speaker 5: the cooler weather. And that's a strategy that works for those.
Speaker 3: Plants and human beings who just just sweater weather, couch weather.
Speaker 4: That Swedish or like hug Yeah.
Speaker 3: So side note, this word looks like higgy, but it's
Speaker 3: pronounced hohoga. And in the Cabinology episode, I made my
Speaker 3: friend Scandinavian gismologist Simone Yetch, which looks like Geerts pronounce
Speaker 3: it and it's cabins, laziness, throw blankets. Is there ever
Speaker 3: a bad time for these things?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Hohoba's hell, just like bundle up? Do you do you
Speaker 3: tend to get fall fever? Are you more excited about spring?
Speaker 4: Hmmm? Equal excitement?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 5: I a colleague of mine who is in grad school
Speaker 5: the same time as me, in the same lab, would
Speaker 5: wake up just sweating in a cold sweat each spring, like,
Speaker 5: oh no, I missed the first flowing of this planned
Speaker 5: and you know she would be weeks off from actually
Speaker 5: doing that, but there are you know, you could have
Speaker 5: phenology nightmares, phonology terrors in the weeks and months leading
Speaker 5: up to those important seasons.
Speaker 3: Do you ever notice in fall? Do you ever notice
Speaker 3: like the first leaf you see drop? Like that happens
Speaker 3: to me sometimes some years where I'll see like a
Speaker 3: yellow leaf flutter and I'll be like, who, what's the
Speaker 3: first one? Does that happen to you?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Oh for sure? And you know, getting back to
Speaker 5: your spring or fall question, I think I'm more of
Speaker 5: a spring person and that sort of romantic hopefulness and
Speaker 5: optimism that comes with it versus the fall, which I
Speaker 5: appreciate for the cooler weather and the beautiful colors. It
Speaker 5: does also feel a little bit like, can I say depressing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, hell yeah. I mean there's the seasonal affection
Speaker 3: disorder spells out SAD. That's like the most obvious backronym ever,
Speaker 3: sad PS. One of my favorite words is backronym, and
Speaker 3: it means an acronym that on purpose spells something cheeky
Speaker 3: or cheesy or obvious. I hate backronyms themselves, but I
Speaker 3: love that we have a word for backronyms. So Seasonal
Speaker 3: effective disorder was coined in nineteen eighty four by psychologist
Speaker 3: doctor Norman Rosenthal, and it affects women four times more
Speaker 3: than men, and folks in the northern US more than
Speaker 3: the Southern US, according to Research Now. A twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: article in Psychology, Research and Behavior Management found that winter
Speaker 3: depression effects between one to ten percent of North Americans
Speaker 3: and it's related to latitude New Hampshire. One study found
Speaker 3: that nine point seven percent of you have the SADS,
Speaker 3: but only one point four percent get it in Florida
Speaker 3: and symptoms, in case you're wondering, include sleeping more, wanting
Speaker 3: to do less, wanted to eat carbs. I can't figure
Speaker 3: out how ninety percent of the population isn't afflicted with
Speaker 3: this all winter long. But anyway, seasonal effective disorder is
Speaker 3: serious and it's a type of depression, and having it
Speaker 3: spelled SAD seems oddly both official and empathetic, kind of
Speaker 3: like a TSA agent putting their hand on your shoulder
Speaker 3: or a court bailiff giving you a hug. But what
Speaker 3: about when's your birthday?
Speaker 4: September?
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, you've just flipped my theory on its head,
Speaker 3: because I have a theory that people's favorite season is
Speaker 3: always when their birthday is Oh, because I love fall
Speaker 3: November birthday. My sister big fan of summer July. So
Speaker 3: my theory is garbage. I need more data. I need
Speaker 3: more data. I'm going to do a Twitter pole because
Speaker 3: of you. I did some very official scientific research via
Speaker 3: a Twitter pole and found that only thirty two percent
Speaker 3: of people's favorite season was also their birthday season. I
Speaker 3: thought this number would be one hundred percent, because growing up,
Speaker 3: when that season came around, you're like, oo, shit, my
Speaker 3: birthday's coming up. I am so disappointed that this number
Speaker 3: was less than one hundred percent. However, thirty two percent
Speaker 3: is seven points higher than the twenty five percent randomized probability. Also,
Speaker 3: more US babies are born in September than any of
Speaker 3: the other months. Researchers think that freezing, cold winters and
Speaker 3: shorter days, not a lot of outdoor activities like badminton
Speaker 3: that kick the can have something to do with it.
Speaker 3: So a lot of people born in September. The start
Speaker 3: of fall is objectively the best time of year. So
Speaker 3: I'm a genius. My theory is solid. Thank you for
Speaker 3: attending my PhD defense. I am a doctor now. So
Speaker 3: now the season's changing, and seeing that in birds and
Speaker 3: in plants that is partly daylight and partly temperature.
Speaker 5: For most organisms, we find that it's temperature, okay, and
Speaker 5: or at least I should say for plants it's temperature.
Speaker 5: For birds, it's probably a combination. And even other behavioral
Speaker 5: factors like birds consense that they've been in a location
Speaker 5: for a particular amount of time and heck, it's just
Speaker 5: time to leave. Can we get the Please went to
Speaker 5: go north. It's been three months here in Costa Rica.
Speaker 5: Now I need to go back up to Maine or
Speaker 5: whatever it is. They have to kind of be aware
Speaker 5: of the fact that where they're going might be ready
Speaker 5: for them now, and so their food source might be
Speaker 5: ready and they need to.
Speaker 3: Fit the road announcement. I have a very stupid question,
Speaker 3: and I'm asking it anyway near the equator, are the
Speaker 3: seasons less distinct?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, And so does your work take you kind of
Speaker 3: to closer to the poles? Would you say?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Or at least that's what I'm most familiar with,
Speaker 5: and far less work has been done in tropical and
Speaker 5: subtropical worlds as far as phonology is concerned, and that's
Speaker 5: kind of a wide open area for research. And there
Speaker 5: has been some work done on plants, especially that live
Speaker 5: in tropical and subtropical areas, but yeah, those queues aren't
Speaker 5: quite as strong. So if any of you guys out
Speaker 5: there have lived in arctic or even temperate areas, you
Speaker 5: know that comes spring, you kind of feel that energy
Speaker 5: to just live life again and to get out of
Speaker 5: your hole and do the things. So animals and plants
Speaker 5: kind of feel that to an extent too. So there's
Speaker 5: a real spring pop of phonology, and so we have
Speaker 5: records for hundreds of years because of that, where hundreds
Speaker 5: of years ago people were excited by that be like wooho,
Speaker 5: I saw this first flower today. I saw this first
Speaker 5: bird today after so long of not seeing it and
Speaker 5: being holed up in my living room for six months.
Speaker 5: So in closer to the equator, there are certainly more
Speaker 5: subtle phenological events happening.
Speaker 3: Of course, fall leaves may fall a week or three
Speaker 3: later than the previous year, or spring may spring early.
Speaker 3: So Libby says, the more data you have over more time,
Speaker 3: the better sense you get of the whole picture. And
Speaker 3: just like firstborns have way more baby pictures neatly tucked
Speaker 3: into albums than their younger siblings, some seasons have better records,
Speaker 3: and so spring is probably better documented than falls.
Speaker 5: A Yeah, and likewise, it's easier to see when that
Speaker 5: first leaf shows up on a tree than it is
Speaker 5: to see when that first leaf falls off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. Like it came out, there was a pile.
Speaker 3: And what can I tell you? What is a rundown
Speaker 3: of the function of each season? We did to think
Speaker 3: of summer as like this feeding season and then kind
Speaker 3: of like a feast and a famine through winter is
Speaker 3: Does that do anything for plants, like to reset their
Speaker 3: cycles or anything for animals?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, so birds will often have, at least in
Speaker 5: the northern hemisphere, they're breeding seas and is in the summer,
Speaker 5: so during the winter they're fattening up, they're getting ready
Speaker 5: they come back north, and they're establishing their territories, building
Speaker 5: their nests and then making a family. And so there
Speaker 5: are those kinds of things with certain animals. And then
Speaker 5: for plants to plants have a chilling requirement in the
Speaker 5: northern hemisphere, so they'll need to actually be dormant for
Speaker 5: a certain amount of time to then recognize that it's
Speaker 5: getting warmer again and to know that they could start
Speaker 5: producing flowers and leaves and that spring is here. But
Speaker 5: if they don't get that chilling requirement, if we were
Speaker 5: to have a really warm winter, for example, and doesn't
Speaker 5: get cold enough for them to meet their chilling requirement,
Speaker 5: then their spring phrenology can be thrown off.
Speaker 3: Okay, what about seasonal movies, any movies that involve the
Speaker 3: changing of seasons, particularly fall, Since it's late September that
Speaker 3: you really feel like, get it right or really annoy you.
Speaker 5: It has happened where I'm watching TV or a movie
Speaker 5: and they'll claim to be in New York in a
Speaker 5: and then you see that cherry tree flowering, and you're like,
Speaker 5: that's April.
Speaker 4: That's so April.
Speaker 3: They've just busted in a bunch of like silk leaves
Speaker 3: and put them on the ground. I always hate that
Speaker 3: when there are people in like a winter street and
Speaker 3: they're all bundled up but there's no breath coming out.
Speaker 3: You can't see their breath, and I'm like, you're all
Speaker 3: wearing ear muffs, like, come on, what are you doing
Speaker 3: to us? Put it in post? That drives me crazy.
Speaker 3: So fun fact, the breath in Titanic was added in
Speaker 3: post and to make it they had to get a
Speaker 3: really cold room and I had to lign it with
Speaker 3: black velvet and have people talk as they filmed these
Speaker 3: puffs of warm breath, and then they took those and
Speaker 3: super imposed them on jacket rose floating on wreckage. Now
Speaker 3: keep in mind this was in nineteen ninety seven, when
Speaker 3: cell phones were the size of your shoe, and before
Speaker 3: you could use a filter on them to make you
Speaker 3: look like a tiger. So come on, movies, you can
Speaker 3: do this. So do you have any kind of celebrations
Speaker 3: of your own when it comes to seasonal things? Are
Speaker 3: you ever hitting the like scarecrow isle at Michael's like
Speaker 3: in August whenever they start putting it out.
Speaker 5: Like my own personal phonology. Yeah, you know, I'm terrible
Speaker 5: with personal traditions and things like that, So maybe I
Speaker 5: just get enough of it in my day job that
Speaker 5: I don't carry that on into my personal life.
Speaker 3: But it makes sense. I do feel like commerce is
Speaker 3: screwing us up because we used to wait until we
Speaker 3: saw these cues in nature, and now literally, like at Walgreens,
Speaker 3: it's like back to school season in July. I just
Speaker 3: went to CBS yesterday whole pumpkin isle. What do you
Speaker 3: think about the way that human beings take cues from
Speaker 3: their environment?
Speaker 5: Well, I think you right there just propose a great
Speaker 5: Michael's phonology study where you look at over time when
Speaker 5: that pumpkin ale establishes itself and how that has just
Speaker 5: crept earlier and earlier, and it's probably due to climate change.
Speaker 5: So you know, you could probably published that.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, getting wereb getting my masters? Now that
Speaker 3: I have my PhD in Twitter birthday polls, I might
Speaker 3: as well get my masters in what the retail industry
Speaker 3: calls Christmas creep or holiday creep, which sounds like a
Speaker 3: guy to Barr who thinks his Santa hat is charming,
Speaker 3: but you're like, please, under no circumstances talk to me.
Speaker 3: So this early sales tactic, it's been in effect since
Speaker 3: Victorian times. And in a Slate article they cite a
Speaker 3: Philadelphia Inquirer quote saying gift buying has begun in earnest
Speaker 3: it seems to get earlier every year. Now that article
Speaker 3: was written nineteen oh one, so people have been complaining
Speaker 3: about this for plenty of time. How has climate change
Speaker 3: affected craft stores and the planet and phonology, because I
Speaker 3: mean this is a hot topic obviously, How what is
Speaker 3: the data really showing?
Speaker 5: So the data are really clear that when it is
Speaker 5: warmer or when other climate variables are out of whack,
Speaker 5: that the plants and animals are likewise out of whack.
Speaker 5: And the most responsive seem to be the plants, and
Speaker 5: usually in the northern hemisphere they will react with earlier phonology,
Speaker 5: So when it's warmer, they will respond with flowering earlier,
Speaker 5: and that could be a couple of weeks earlier, it
Speaker 5: could be six weeks earlier. And insects are slightly less,
Speaker 5: so it appears there are less responsive to climate cues
Speaker 5: and birds even less so, and that could partially be
Speaker 5: because birds are migrating from elsewhere where they're not getting
Speaker 5: the same climate cues, and so if it's a really
Speaker 5: warm year here, might not be a really warm yer
Speaker 5: in their wintering grounds, so they could be getting different cues.
Speaker 5: But yeah, climate change is impacting all kinds of things.
Speaker 5: And not only does that impact that one organism or
Speaker 5: even that one species, but if plants flower earlier because
Speaker 5: it was a really warm year, but then let's say
Speaker 5: the insects aren't responding quite as readily, but they're emerging
Speaker 5: like at the same time they always did. Well, then
Speaker 5: when they emerge the plants that they're used to munching
Speaker 5: on those nice fresh young leaves, well those leaves might
Speaker 5: be fully established and be rough, tough, difficult to digest leaves,
Speaker 5: and so then the insects might suffer because of that,
Speaker 5: And then the birds show.
Speaker 4: Up at the same time they always do, and maybe.
Speaker 5: There are fewer insects or the whole thing could just
Speaker 5: be messed up. So that's called an ecological mismatch. Oh
Speaker 5: and climate is a likely contributor to things like that.
Speaker 3: And can temperature differences of just a few degrees make
Speaker 3: that big of an impact. How does that happen?
Speaker 5: So that too is pretty species specific, but yeah, even
Speaker 5: a couple of degrees can make a big difference.
Speaker 3: And what about fall if it's staying warmer longer, what's
Speaker 3: happening with those cues?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so looking to plants again, just because plants are
Speaker 5: probably the most well studied and the easiest to study,
Speaker 5: and so it's possible that some of them might drop
Speaker 5: their leaves earlier than they should just because their leaves
Speaker 5: have lived their life.
Speaker 3: So plants may have a shorter growing season if it
Speaker 3: gets too warm, or the growing season might continue longer.
Speaker 3: Wait is that good? Don't trees want to continue growing?
Speaker 3: And why aren't they marketed gummy vitamins that promise fuller
Speaker 3: leaves and longer stems.
Speaker 5: The growing season and the length of the growing season
Speaker 5: then impacts all kinds of things like nutrients cycling. So
Speaker 5: when a tree is active during the growing season, it's
Speaker 5: sucking up water, it's slucking up nutrients from the soil
Speaker 5: and impacting the whole ecosystem in doing so, and then
Speaker 5: if it drops its leaves, it's doing less of that.
Speaker 5: So the more time that all those trees are active
Speaker 5: can really impact the whole ecosystem, not just that one tree,
Speaker 5: or not even just the insects that might be depending
Speaker 5: on it, but everything all around.
Speaker 3: When the leaves fall off of trees, who's munching on them?
Speaker 3: What's happening? Like? Are they important for groundcover or can
Speaker 3: they pretty much stay or go?
Speaker 5: They're really important for groundcover. And by the time the
Speaker 5: leaf falls and is dead and is on the ground,
Speaker 5: then you're entering the realm of microorganisms and decomposers and
Speaker 5: things like that. So there's some insects and invertebrates that
Speaker 5: might lunch on them, and then you quickly get into
Speaker 5: fungi and bacteria that are eating them and decomposing them.
Speaker 3: Should you rake your lawn or not?
Speaker 5: I'd say not unless where you are it happens to
Speaker 5: be a fire hazard. And I don't want to encourage
Speaker 5: anybody to create fire hazards around them. But generally, maintaining
Speaker 5: things in the most natural way possible is the way
Speaker 5: to do it. So, contrary to Trump's advice to rake
Speaker 5: our forests, you gotta take care of the floors. You know,
Speaker 5: the floors of the forest very important.
Speaker 3: All we gotta do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'd say leave them and maybe take on some
Speaker 5: other strategies to prevent fires. But yeah, leaving your leaves
Speaker 5: on the ground is good because the leaves or the
Speaker 5: trees have taken up those nutrients and created those leaves,
Speaker 5: and then when they fall, you're you know, you're completing
Speaker 5: the cycle and the nutrients can return to the soil.
Speaker 3: Could you rake your leaves in a pile and jump
Speaker 3: in them and then spread them out again?
Speaker 4: Heck yes, I recommend doing so.
Speaker 3: Did you ever do that growing up in New England?
Speaker 4: Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 3: We used to do that where I grew up, And
Speaker 3: now I think, wow, there's so many mites on you.
Speaker 3: But I still want to do it. I just want
Speaker 3: to do it in a full scuba suit because I'm
Speaker 3: afraid of like lingering ticks and stuff.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, ticks are our problem. But I think otherwise
Speaker 5: you're probably boosting your immune system and interacting with all
Speaker 5: those great microorganisms. I think it's a good thing.
Speaker 3: You just got to check your crevices, You're good to go.
Speaker 3: I do love this time of year. Is my favorite
Speaker 3: time of year for like dogs jumping into leaf piles. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's the best. And also Halloween costumes. Ye, what about
Speaker 3: flim flam that you would love to debunk about seasons
Speaker 3: or climate change? I mean there's a lot there. But
Speaker 3: what myths about seasons or autumn? Are you?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so i'd say climate change is a huge climate
Speaker 5: change is I mean we're screwed right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Climate change is here, it hits real, and it's big
Speaker 5: bad news. Let's repeat that, climate change is here, it
Speaker 5: hits real, and it's big bad news.
Speaker 3: What can we do?
Speaker 5: But I think we also shouldn't forget about all the
Speaker 5: other big bad news that's out there, like the Amazon
Speaker 5: rainforest is burning to the ground. In addition to taking
Speaker 5: big climate change action at a government level, on an
Speaker 5: international level, of course, all of those things, but there
Speaker 5: are other conservation related actions that we can also take
Speaker 5: that helps give more species of fighting chance come climate change.
Speaker 5: Because climate change is happening already, but if we don't
Speaker 5: plow over habitats, then we're giving more species a chance
Speaker 5: to have a go and actually survive through the changes
Speaker 5: that are coming.
Speaker 3: Is there anything that you do in your life, knowing
Speaker 3: what you know, to help mitigate it on any level
Speaker 3: you can? I mean other than voting, which we all
Speaker 3: know is the most important.
Speaker 5: Yeah, is totally the most important. In addition, I killed
Speaker 5: all the grass in my lawn and have planted a
Speaker 5: lot of native plants, so created some habitat for some
Speaker 5: bugs and birds, and you know, created our own little
Speaker 5: place where things can be a little bit not even greener,
Speaker 5: but more natural and more inviting. And because in La
Speaker 5: La is just such a huge, huge city that takes
Speaker 5: up so much space that having little pockets where plants
Speaker 5: and animals can be is really helpful. At a really local,
Speaker 5: hyperlocal backyard level, we can invite all of those things
Speaker 5: to live.
Speaker 3: Do you ever sit out and bug watch and bird
Speaker 3: watch and see what comes and hangs out?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What have you got?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I used to work from home, which was amazing because
Speaker 5: I would just stare out the wind all day with
Speaker 5: my binoculars, get really distracted, but had a great time
Speaker 5: with my bird guide and identifying everything. And for a
Speaker 5: while I had a trail cam set up. I have
Speaker 5: a tiny, tiny backyard in the middle of Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: but was constantly amazed and fascinated by the visitors that
Speaker 5: we would get. It would be raccoons, just having parties
Speaker 5: back there, but just seeing them do their thing at
Speaker 5: two am on our little camera was fantastic.
Speaker 3: Are those expensive?
Speaker 4: They're not.
Speaker 5: You get one for like one hundred bucks or less,
Speaker 5: and you should do it. And I've been really tempted
Speaker 5: to take it with me if I'm camping or on
Speaker 5: vacation somewhere, I could put it up in the woods
Speaker 5: and just kind of see what else is there. I
Speaker 5: haven't really quite gotten to that step yet, but.
Speaker 3: Just next day go for grizzlies. How about it? Look
Speaker 3: at that? Yeah, I smelled something interesting. Quick aside, what
Speaker 3: about hummingbird feeders? Is it bad to leave them up?
Speaker 3: Flim flam consider debunked, So having hummingbird feeders won't deter
Speaker 3: the little friends from flying south, and in more southern regions,
Speaker 3: keeping them up may actually help out migratory hummers who
Speaker 3: need a pit stop or who are overwintering in your region.
Speaker 3: You can also plant native flowers, especially those that have seeds,
Speaker 3: which is a more natural way to have bird feeders
Speaker 3: in the yard if you prefer to do that. I
Speaker 3: have a hummingbird feeder right outside my window. Let me
Speaker 3: tell you, it's like having an aquarium made out of
Speaker 3: the whole world, or maybe the hummingbirds are like, man,
Speaker 3: this restaurant's great. It's got a terrarium with one big,
Speaker 3: weird lady in it. And sometimes she doesn't even bother
Speaker 3: wearing pants. I can see a future of me. That's
Speaker 3: a bird lady, and I like her. How are birders
Speaker 3: seeing the change in seasons? Do you get a lot
Speaker 3: of data from birders?
Speaker 4: Thank god, we do.
Speaker 5: Birders are just such meticulous no takers. Yes, and they
Speaker 5: love their life lists, and that enables us to go
Speaker 5: back a couple hundred years really to see when birds
Speaker 5: were arriving, what birds were around, and so it's really
Speaker 5: a lot of the work of a phonologist is finding
Speaker 5: those old records. So yeah, birds are where it's up.
Speaker 3: Oh how did I not ask this next question yet?
Speaker 3: What in the daylight is wrong with me? What do
Speaker 3: you think about daylight saving time? Let's get over it.
Speaker 4: No more? Okay, no more. Why do we have to
Speaker 4: do that?
Speaker 3: Thank you? That makes me feel so much better. It
Speaker 3: usually falls right around my birthday, which is a bummer,
Speaker 3: and it gets dark so early, and people have like
Speaker 3: heart attacks from losing an hour of sleep. It's so
Speaker 3: bad for people. Okay, I know heart attacks. Car accidents.
Speaker 4: No, we don't need it.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you questions from patrons?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Please do?
Speaker 3: Okay, so many, all right, but before we get to
Speaker 3: your patroon questions, you may hear a few words about
Speaker 3: sponsors of the show. But before that, these sponsors make
Speaker 3: it possible for ologies to donate to a different cause
Speaker 3: each week of the ologist choosing, and this week Libby
Speaker 3: picked save Gparrangutans dot Org. This is the Gunngal Orangutan
Speaker 3: Project whose mission is to protect orangutang populations and forest
Speaker 3: biodiversity in and around gunan Palung National Park on the
Speaker 3: island of Borneo. They say, recognizing that most threats to
Speaker 3: a rangutank survival are human induced, to we take a
Speaker 3: multifaceted community based approach to conservation, Livy says they do
Speaker 3: great work. They're her favorite conservation organization, so that is
Speaker 3: save GPO ranguetank dot Org. There'll be a link to
Speaker 3: that in the show notes, as well as link to sponsors.
Speaker 3: So if this is a newly posted episode, you may
Speaker 3: hear some sponsor offers just for ologites. Okay, back to
Speaker 3: your automny Springy questions. Okay, from the mouth of a
Speaker 3: seasonal doctor, let's see Sofi kost note says, what is
Speaker 3: your favorite most unusual seasonal phenomenon that people don't even
Speaker 3: know is link to seasons?
Speaker 4: Oh? Interesting.
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot of phonology that we're actually
Speaker 5: not even super aware of. And most of our studies
Speaker 5: have been on the terrestrial world, but there's a whole
Speaker 5: lot of marine things happening out there that you know.
Speaker 5: There are marine metals that migrate, there are fish that migrate,
Speaker 5: and all these things that we're just not as in
Speaker 5: tune too as we are with those that are literally
Speaker 5: in our backyard.
Speaker 3: Do you terrestrial animals shed more in the fall or
Speaker 3: the spring? Do we get hairrier?
Speaker 5: I don't think we do, although we for yourself, but certainly, yeah,
Speaker 5: mammals will get hairer in the winter. Really, it'll get
Speaker 5: thicker coats.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that explains my upper lip. A lot
Speaker 3: of people had this question, and I'm going to say
Speaker 3: their names right now. You ready, ready? Okay? Maya Price,
Speaker 3: Marissa Laws, Hannah M. Childers, and Jessica Starkman essentially said,
Speaker 3: why do we love to crunch so much? Why do
Speaker 3: we love a satisfying crunchy leaf? Do you stop on
Speaker 3: leaves crunchy leaves?
Speaker 4: Yes, I do.
Speaker 3: What do you think it is about us that likes that?
Speaker 5: I think it's the sound effect and the fact that
Speaker 5: we can do that knowing that we're not really doing
Speaker 5: any damage to anything. The leaves are dead there there.
Speaker 5: We're actually probably helped them out a little bit, just
Speaker 5: getting them that much closer to being decomposed. And it's
Speaker 5: so satisfying, isn't it just to hear that crunch? Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think it's the sound effect mostly, but I think
Speaker 5: it's also doing some good.
Speaker 3: I'm going to look up and see if, like there's
Speaker 3: a hashtag leaf crunch and see if, like you know,
Speaker 3: if they're pimple popper videos. There's gotta be someone just
Speaker 3: leaf stomping sound nerds. Can I recommend the instagram at
Speaker 3: leaf crunching. This is a bunch of nature based ASMR
Speaker 3: videos of crunching leaves and ice cracking underfoot in the
Speaker 3: winter and snow squeaking. They only have one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty followers as their research this, but I feel like
Speaker 3: y'all could surprise them and blow them up with demands
Speaker 3: for more leaf crunchy sounds. This question also is asked
Speaker 3: by so many people, including Megan Johnson and Ana Thompson, Bath,
Speaker 3: Bunny Art, Julie Bear, Maren Mossman, Nikki Finger, Heather Dunsmore,
Speaker 3: ken Lee Wallace, Live Schaeffer, Henna and Savannah, Kate Stumps,
Speaker 3: and Carrie Lee Hessman all asked why does fall smell
Speaker 3: so good? What is it about the smell that is
Speaker 3: so crisp and nostalgic and it just is something that
Speaker 3: you want to huff. Why do leaf smell like that?
Speaker 5: It's the microorganisms, really, yeah, I'm pretty sure because it's
Speaker 5: the same thing how rain smells like something, even though
Speaker 5: it's just water falling from the sky, but it's kind
Speaker 5: of enlivening microorganisms in the ground and all of this.
Speaker 5: So fall is a similar kind of thing where you
Speaker 5: have it's really you know, you do have some of
Speaker 5: those rotting leaves you have, Yeah, just that seasonal shift
Speaker 5: where things are, things are dying, some things are coming
Speaker 5: to life because of it, like the decomposers out there,
Speaker 5: and so I think that's a big part of it.
Speaker 3: So I looked into this and who she was so right.
Speaker 3: So a few things are at play, and leaves are dying,
Speaker 3: they emit gases through pores on the surface, and those
Speaker 3: contain volatile organic compounds made of hydrogen and carbon that
Speaker 3: are similar to the oils found on the leaf surface. Now,
Speaker 3: if you're an antique book sniffer, you're also there for
Speaker 3: the volatile organic compounds. But on top of that, or
Speaker 3: rather I guess festering quietly underneath it, is a blanket
Speaker 3: of fungus. Now, in particular, it might be Geotrichum candidum,
Speaker 3: and I'm pretty sure that name means white hair of
Speaker 3: the earth. But it rots plants and its burps smell
Speaker 3: like fall. Now there's also something called geosmine. This is
Speaker 3: the metabolite byproduct of a different microscopic crater, and it's
Speaker 3: the stuff that makes the smell of rain on the
Speaker 3: ground so perfect. That smell, by the bye has a name.
Speaker 3: It's called petrocore. Over fifty years ago, two chemists, Isabel
Speaker 3: Bear and R. G. Thomas put a name to that
Speaker 3: smell of rain drops hating the dry ground, and petrocore
Speaker 3: means stone and blood of the gods, So it's the
Speaker 3: smell of the blood of the earth. Oh, such a
Speaker 3: beautiful notion. You'll get goosebumps under your sensible fall fleece.
Speaker 3: But that's not all that smells good.
Speaker 5: I mean in addition to pumpkin spice latte. But I
Speaker 5: think we're talking more about believes.
Speaker 3: Oh, we got a lot of questions about that. And
Speaker 3: in fact, Casey Wright wants to know which camp are you?
Speaker 3: Pumpkin spice or apple cider?
Speaker 5: Apple cider?
Speaker 3: Really any reason? In particular?
Speaker 5: Well, I do love pumpkin spice in it's truest sense
Speaker 5: of the spices that you put in the pumpkin pie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what spices even? Are they? Okay? Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove,
Speaker 3: and allspice. Wait, isn't all spice just the name of
Speaker 3: all those spices put together? No, allspice is its own thing.
Speaker 3: It comes from a Jamaican pimento tree, and it's the dried,
Speaker 3: unripe fruit. And it's only called allspice because it tastes
Speaker 3: like a blend of the other fall spices. Also, it's
Speaker 3: used in Cincinnati chili, which is a very terrifying culinary
Speaker 3: chimera of chili and spaghetti. Cincinnati, I love you, but
Speaker 3: this dish confounds me. It's like a centaur or a
Speaker 3: half person, half octopus, and the octopus legs are spaghetti
Speaker 3: noodles and then the top half is a chili brain.
Speaker 3: What is happening? Please don't at me. I say this
Speaker 3: with love, with awe, with concern anyway, pumpkin spice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg,
Speaker 3: cloves offspice.
Speaker 5: And things like that. Less so in the syrupy, goopy
Speaker 5: form of pumpkin spice.
Speaker 3: Okay, what about like pumpkin spice candles And there's all manner.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that there's like an axe body spray that's
Speaker 3: like autumnal man. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I feel like in those kind of ways, Apple's a
Speaker 5: little fresher and I'm on Apple Team Apple.
Speaker 3: Okay. I blame myself because when I put up this
Speaker 3: Patreon question, I think I added something about pumpkin spice
Speaker 3: in the question the call for questions, because literally that
Speaker 3: was asked by el McCall, Jessica Randolph, Shannon Palmer, Aki
Speaker 3: Rott Todd Peterson, Christa Evanpado, Jenny Hoover, Brandon McKenna, and
Speaker 3: Liv Schaeffer all asked about pumpkin and spice lattes and
Speaker 3: why you think that companies push pumpkin spice flavors so
Speaker 3: much When apple cider is equally perfect. Why is it?
Speaker 3: Do you think? Do you think it's just do you
Speaker 3: think that they know that we're horny for seasons?
Speaker 5: Yes, and that nostalgia And even though we're in southern
Speaker 5: California where it is one hundred degrees right now and
Speaker 5: they're pushing pumpkin spice lattes on us, I think it
Speaker 5: is that nostalgia for our romantic idea of fall in
Speaker 5: the north and the leaves changing colors and the fireplace
Speaker 5: crackling away in the corner, and our sweaters on and
Speaker 5: all of that. I think it's, yeah, just really tapping
Speaker 5: into that primal feelings of seasons humans.
Speaker 3: Brendan Dean wants to know as leaves start to change color,
Speaker 3: does it change how effective photosynthesis is?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Okay, yep.
Speaker 5: So the more they change color, the less green they
Speaker 5: are than the less effective they are at photosynthesizing.
Speaker 3: Which is kind of their point, right They're like, We're
Speaker 3: we're good. We got some stored up a bunch of people.
Speaker 3: Kylie Sue Casey Wright Ellen Boss also wanted answers and
Speaker 3: confirmation that they don't have to rake their lawns. Does
Speaker 3: rehee leave leaves remove nutrients from the trees.
Speaker 5: It doesn't remove them from the trees directly, but it
Speaker 5: does take them from this from what would be in
Speaker 5: the soil, which therefore then makes less a bit makes
Speaker 5: less nutrients available for the trees later on, So indirectly, Yes.
Speaker 3: So if it's not a fire hazard, Willia Mumba leave
Speaker 3: the leaves killer? So easy to remember. So many people
Speaker 3: had questions about how trees change colors. Evan jud Jasmine Wells,
Speaker 3: Melanie Baker, Noah Gonzalez, Marian Moss, Megan daw Heather d
Speaker 3: Van Walkenberg, Great Name, Leanna Schuster, Christine Chapman, McKenna Larson,
Speaker 3: Robin Louden, and Daletka tomorrow Man, Karen Burnham, Colleini me
Speaker 3: Juan Pedro Martinez and See Murphy all asked about. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of people curious about this. Evan Jude's words,
Speaker 3: who was a first time question asker. Why do the
Speaker 3: same species of trees in the same area turn different colors?
Speaker 3: For instance, one maple in my art turns red, but
Speaker 3: the other turns yellow. Is it genetic? Why does it
Speaker 3: vary so much?
Speaker 5: My guess is that even the two maples in his
Speaker 5: backyard are different species. They might really kind of similar
Speaker 5: when they're green and fully leafed out, but my guess
Speaker 5: is that they're a different species. It is possible for
Speaker 5: there to be slight variation within a species, for sure,
Speaker 5: and I'd be curious to see his sleeves and how
Speaker 5: they're changing colors and to know if that's happening every
Speaker 5: single year. And the other thing too, is that some
Speaker 5: trees will change colors more than once in a way,
Speaker 5: so they'll i mean, they'll start off green and then
Speaker 5: maybe they'll go to like an orange color and then
Speaker 5: they'll turn redder or something like that. So it could
Speaker 5: be like a gradient of change that happens. So it
Speaker 5: could also be that one of those trees is further
Speaker 5: along than the other, and then I would guess the
Speaker 5: other one could catch up, and then they'll both kind
Speaker 5: of be on the same color scheme, just at a
Speaker 5: slightly different timeline.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm light.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why would one change earlier? Would one maybe have
Speaker 3: less water in the roots or.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it could be something like that one is more
Speaker 5: stressed for one reason or another, maybe getting less water.
Speaker 5: It could be that one is a little bit older
Speaker 5: and more established and therefore has more, a larger root
Speaker 5: system and more access to water. One could be in
Speaker 5: a slightly shadier area, could be under the eve of
Speaker 5: the house. It could be in the shade of a
Speaker 5: larger tree, whereas one is getting more sun and therefore
Speaker 5: thinking that it's still a little bit more summary than
Speaker 5: the one who's in the shade of a structure or something,
Speaker 5: and I think it's further along into the fall. So
Speaker 5: there are lots of even of those kind of like
Speaker 5: microhabitat reasons that could influence why one tree is reacting
Speaker 5: differently than another.
Speaker 3: Do you have to worry about that when you're looking
Speaker 3: through historical data, Like what if this person says that
Speaker 3: this tree flowered early, but the tree just had a
Speaker 3: better spa in the yard.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's totally a part of it. And that's why
Speaker 5: having tons of data will help shake out some of
Speaker 5: those patterns. When we're out looking for let's say, the
Speaker 5: earliest flower of a particular species, will try to find
Speaker 5: the warmest places, maybe the sunniest places, maybe the places
Speaker 5: that are a little bit more sheltered from winds and
Speaker 5: things like that, and that would be our first data
Speaker 5: point that we're actually seeking out. That first one.
Speaker 3: Oh, so of the most optimal conditions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, And it's similar for even people who are
Speaker 5: bird watching. It's really that first first bird of the
Speaker 5: spring that you're interested in recording, even though that mass
Speaker 5: of birds might not show up for another week or two.
Speaker 5: So that first one is often what we're after. Although
Speaker 5: statistically sometimes that mass or the full peak is what
Speaker 5: is most biologically important. Historically, sometimes it's that first one
Speaker 5: that people are actually recording.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, so it's like the winner of a marathon
Speaker 3: versus like the median time it took to finish that
Speaker 3: race exactly. Ah, that's so interesting. Caitlin Pointexter wants to know,
Speaker 3: are there any indoor place ants that change colors with
Speaker 3: the seasons.
Speaker 5: Well, most of our indoor plants are often tropical or
Speaker 5: some tropical kind of plants that we just have indoors.
Speaker 5: They're not necessarily plants that are native to your area, so,
Speaker 5: and we do like them to remain green all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. We're like, unless you're into orchids, in
Speaker 3: which case you're just I feel like people who like
Speaker 3: orchids could deal with cats. It's just like it doesn't
Speaker 3: like me sometimes, and that's Okay, yeah, that's true. A
Speaker 3: lot of returns that happen in October. This is plant died. Like, Yeah, dude,
Speaker 3: Chrisper wants to know if there's a place that's autumn
Speaker 3: all year round because his allergies are better there. No, no,
Speaker 3: not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 5: I mean some places, like even in southern California, there
Speaker 5: are places that are just seventy degrees all the time.
Speaker 5: But it's more eternal spring, i'd say, than eternal autumn.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I guess you could just get a holow deck
Speaker 3: like they had in Star Trek and just you know,
Speaker 3: be bop, be pop it's fall. A few people Areas Costello,
Speaker 3: Kunniy Halberson, and Eva all asked about SAYAD seasonal effective disorder.
Speaker 3: Do SAD lamps really work or should I spend my
Speaker 3: money on wine to keep me cheerful? Areas Costello wants
Speaker 3: to know.
Speaker 4: I'd say do both.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm not totally up on the SAD literature, but
Speaker 5: I do believe that we are that we do better
Speaker 5: in light sometimes, or at least certain of us do
Speaker 5: better in light and feel more energized when there is
Speaker 5: more light out. So if that works for you, then
Speaker 5: totally get a sad lamp and sip some wine while
Speaker 5: you're in front of it.
Speaker 3: For more remedies for SAD, I went to the source,
Speaker 3: doctor Norman Rosenthal dot com. Remember this is the guy
Speaker 3: who was instrumental in describing and naming seasonal affective disorder,
Speaker 3: and he's also afflicted with it himself, so he knows
Speaker 3: his stuff now. His website recommends getting outside on winter
Speaker 3: mornings into the sunlight or having indoor light boxes to
Speaker 3: supplement light. Exercise like a nice morning walk or a
Speaker 3: dance club or regular trips to the gym also helps,
Speaker 3: so does watching your diet and avoiding sugar and starch binges.
Speaker 3: Talk therapy helps. Winter vacations to a sunnier spot if
Speaker 3: you can, antidepressants if need be, and if all else fails,
Speaker 3: just move. Just pick up your life and move. Snowbirds
Speaker 3: in Florida are like, Hey, we may be overrun with
Speaker 3: questionable tattoos in feral iguanas, but we are living life
Speaker 3: down here year round. They don't call it the Sunshine
Speaker 3: State for nothing, anyway. Speaking of which, Erica asked about
Speaker 3: sky color. I've always thought that a clear autumn sky
Speaker 3: is a particular shade of blue, and I can see
Speaker 3: it getting closer to that shade in September. Is this
Speaker 3: real or is this just confirmation bias? I live in
Speaker 3: western Pennsylvania. If that's relevant, Does the sky change color?
Speaker 5: I believe that it could, because there could be different
Speaker 5: levels of humidity in the air. For example, So in
Speaker 5: the spring, let's say there's a lot of rain and
Speaker 5: it's more humid or cloudier or something like that, and
Speaker 5: so the sky itself might be might appear to be
Speaker 5: a different color because the ad your is more dense
Speaker 5: with what are molecules that kind of thing, And then
Speaker 5: right in the fall, maybe it's dryer and it's just
Speaker 5: a different shade of blue. I would totally believe that.
Speaker 5: I'd also say that it's possible that the juxposition of
Speaker 5: the sky against whatever else it is that you're looking at,
Speaker 5: especially if it's some nice orange leaves or some bare branches,
Speaker 5: that that might appear different than blue sky against a
Speaker 5: tree a full tree of green leaves. So I think
Speaker 5: it could be related to all of those things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, damn good answer. Any songs about September or October
Speaker 3: that you like. I keep thinking of waking up when
Speaker 3: September Ends or Pale September by Phone Apple.
Speaker 5: I really should have like some kind of Phenology playlist going.
Speaker 3: You really should? I know? Different sasonal ones? Yeah, Spotify
Speaker 3: it up, send me a link. Let us not forget
Speaker 3: about the classic standard Autumn Leaves. Another classic the GNR
Speaker 3: ballad November Rain, which I wish we're called Autumn petrokore
Speaker 3: yum yuns. There's also Sweater Weather by the Neighborhood Yola
Speaker 3: Tango's Autumn Sweater Tangentially related is Weezer's Undone the Sweater
Speaker 3: Song or Neil Young's Harvest Moon. I guess ed Sheeron
Speaker 3: has a song called Autumn Leaves Why Cliffe John's Got
Speaker 3: Gone to November? Morrissey's November Spawnded a Monster, which I thought,
Speaker 3: in hyper self awareness might be autobiographical, but no, Morrissey
Speaker 3: is a May baby. And of course the Green Day
Speaker 3: plea to sit the Pumpkin spice back to school ramp
Speaker 3: out out, asking only for us to wake them up
Speaker 3: on Septemberance Billy Joe Armstrong vocalist for Green Day, his
Speaker 3: birthdays in February makes sense. Sydney B wants to know
Speaker 3: why do some areas have a false fall where their
Speaker 3: weather gets cozy and fall esk and then jumps back
Speaker 3: to summer for a few more days. Signed a bitter
Speaker 3: Hoosier who just wants it to be autumn. Dang it,
Speaker 3: does that tend to happen? Is that a new climate
Speaker 3: change phenomenon or is that always kind of happened.
Speaker 4: It's always kind of happened to some ex stent.
Speaker 5: I think now we're a little bit more attuned to it,
Speaker 5: just because maybe that jump back to summer used to
Speaker 5: be a few degrees now maybe it's a few more degrees.
Speaker 5: Or maybe we're just extra sick of summer because it's
Speaker 5: been so hot and dry for so long that we're
Speaker 5: extra ready for some cooler weather. But those seasonal changes
Speaker 5: are notoriously bumpy. Even in the spring, you'll have some
Speaker 5: warm spring days and then all of a sudden it'll
Speaker 5: drop all of phrasing for a couple of days and
Speaker 5: then warm back up again. So those seasonal changes are
Speaker 5: pretty are pretty common and have been going on for
Speaker 5: a long time.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that makes sense because there's always those April
Speaker 3: snowstorms that New Yorkers are like, how dare you so? Yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes sense, Madeline Winter of All Names says, where
Speaker 3: I am in Victoria, Australia, indigenous communities recognize six distinct
Speaker 3: seasons in the exact same climate, where my own culture
Speaker 3: recognizes only four. Is this a common situation in other
Speaker 3: places if you.
Speaker 5: Go back far enough in other cultures, Yeah, they certainly
Speaker 5: have other ways of recognizing seasons, which is often very
Speaker 5: phenologically based in a way, because they would recognize a
Speaker 5: certain plant that has started to grow, sort an animal
Speaker 5: that has arrived in sex doing something, and so their
Speaker 5: seasons will be based on that. And I know in Japan,
Speaker 5: for example, they've been studying the seasons for way longer
Speaker 5: than a lot of other places in the world and
Speaker 5: making written notes about this, and so we have records
Speaker 5: from Japan that go back to the ninth century. Oh
Speaker 5: my God of phonology. And this is actual data that
Speaker 5: we've been using in scientific research to understand long term
Speaker 5: phonology trends.
Speaker 3: Do you ever have to go back in archives and
Speaker 3: study like haiku that have something to do with the
Speaker 3: seasonal changes.
Speaker 5: I haven't studied Haiku's exactly, but in the Japanese work,
Speaker 5: for example, yeah, you would be looking at old court
Speaker 5: documents where they said something like the cherry blossoms were
Speaker 5: in full bloom today and we had our citywide party
Speaker 5: under the cherry trees and so things like that are
Speaker 5: real data, especially for cherry trees where they're only flowering
Speaker 5: for a couple of days and so we yeah, so
Speaker 5: we're looking at anything.
Speaker 3: I feel like people have to dig up the old
Speaker 3: grandma's postcards being like, well, the rhododendron flower today, and
Speaker 3: they're like helpful information. Moving along, a lot of people
Speaker 3: asked about migration. Hh Slevnik, Anna Thompson, Michelle Yee, Tyana Heigert,
Speaker 3: Eric Sodters, Enrique Sarmiento, Madeline Rodgers, I've been Krutt, Chelsea,
Speaker 3: Alison Warren, oj Carrasco, Charlotte fieikergerd I hope I said
Speaker 3: that right. McKenna, Larsen and Jesse Cole all want to
Speaker 3: know why do some species of birds migrate and others
Speaker 3: don't need to? What's happening there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so similar to trees and what they're however, tree
Speaker 5: is doing something different. Lots of bird species do different things,
Speaker 5: and it's all what is evolutionarily successful for them, and
Speaker 5: so when in even some of the research I was doing.
Speaker 5: We were looking at historic records from the rose time,
Speaker 5: for example, and we found that in the last one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty years or so, some species that used
Speaker 5: to migrate no longer migrate because it's warm enough in
Speaker 5: Massachusetts for them to just stick around all year.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 5: So even those kind of things that we think are
Speaker 5: really ingrained and a species can change if the conditions change,
Speaker 5: and that's a good sign in a sense that that
Speaker 5: species might be adaptable to something like climate change. So
Speaker 5: it really depends on food resources is for most species
Speaker 5: what it comes down to and why they might migrate.
Speaker 5: That in addition to finding their own niche. So not
Speaker 5: all species can exist in that perfectly habitable place all
Speaker 5: year round, and so some have been able to find
Speaker 5: their niche way up in the Arctic, but they can
Speaker 5: only be in the Arctic for a couple of months
Speaker 5: in the summer, so then they might have to fly
Speaker 5: down to somewhere warmer for their winters where they can
Speaker 5: have their own niche there. And so it's finding your
Speaker 5: niche and getting the food resources that you need.
Speaker 3: So to find your niche, go where there's food and
Speaker 3: sex that people will let you have, So just keep
Speaker 3: traveling around until you're full of onion rings and spinach
Speaker 3: dip and an adult person consensually lets you get nude
Speaker 3: with them. That's where you belong. Someone does not want
Speaker 3: to mate with you. Keep it moving. A lot of
Speaker 3: folks asked about climate records, and Jessica Friz asks who
Speaker 3: are some of ye old superheroes of recording seasonal data
Speaker 3: whose records are still useful to us today. A few
Speaker 3: other people asked about throw in this Vein the following
Speaker 3: folks asked about ye old journaling superheroes and also about
Speaker 3: helping scientists record phenological data, and they are I will
Speaker 3: say them with my mouth, Elaine Barr, Ellen Voss, Ellen,
Speaker 3: Silva Allen, Captana Glue, Julie Bear, Shalise Quinlan, Michelle Mooey
Speaker 3: and Booboo Rock Sound and and also community science aka
Speaker 3: citizen science And how important is that in what you do?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the Row is definitely a hero, although Leopold
Speaker 5: also made great observations of the plants and animals around him,
Speaker 5: and so we've been able to use those records, and
Speaker 5: Japanese recorders of phenological data are huge heroes and that's
Speaker 5: been going on for centuries, So very cool And.
Speaker 4: What was scart that question?
Speaker 3: Oh, citizen science? Yeah, community and citizen science. How much
Speaker 3: can people help?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So I came into the world of community science when
Speaker 5: doing my doctoral research and realized that I was unable
Speaker 5: to be all over New England recording first beef out
Speaker 5: of every tree out there, and so we developed a
Speaker 5: project to engage the public in helping us do that
Speaker 5: and recording leaf out on the trees that they had
Speaker 5: around them, and so that was hugely helpful and really
Speaker 5: gave us a sense a picture of when and how
Speaker 5: leaves were leafing out around the Northeast. So you two
Speaker 5: can do that. And there are lots of projects out there.
Speaker 5: The National Phonology Network is a good one in the
Speaker 5: United States. Project Budburst I think it's just called Budburst
Speaker 5: now is another one that is really accepting of people's observations.
Speaker 5: So there are also lots of local ones too.
Speaker 3: And has it changed it all that it's now community
Speaker 3: science as opposed to citizen So here where I work.
Speaker 5: We've had an institutional change from citizens science the community
Speaker 5: science to be more inclusive, but nationally and internationally it
Speaker 5: is still more widely recognized as citizen science.
Speaker 3: Yes, so once called citizen science, it's making a shift
Speaker 3: toward community science. So if you're looking to get involved
Speaker 3: and help out search for both of those terms. Leanna
Speaker 3: Schuster wants to know what about the migration of butterflies.
Speaker 3: I've always loved monarchs and have read about their migratory
Speaker 3: patterns and loss of wintering grounds in Mexico. Do other
Speaker 3: butterflies seasonally migrate? How screwed are the monarchs by climate
Speaker 3: change and habitat loss?
Speaker 5: Yeah, monarchs and of other butterflies are supremely screwed. Okay,
Speaker 5: And monarchs are one of the more charismatic species and
Speaker 5: so we have lots of great data on them, and
Speaker 5: so we are really ware aware of their migration and
Speaker 5: migratory patterns. So that's kind of let us know that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's in certain years especially, the numbers have been pretty low,
Speaker 5: and that's cause for alarm. But making those observations of
Speaker 5: when you see butterflies in your backyard and all of
Speaker 5: that is important for us to know. And as citizen
Speaker 5: scientists or community scientists, we encourage people to do those
Speaker 5: things and to make contributions of those data so that
Speaker 5: we can understand more about where those butterflies are and
Speaker 5: what they're doing, because we could only be in so
Speaker 5: many places at one time.
Speaker 3: And just like you and me and the person in
Speaker 3: your office who ate your leftover pad tie without asking,
Speaker 3: butterflies gotta eat. And native plants help as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely, like milkleed. Planting a species of milk weed
Speaker 5: that's local to your area and really help the monarchs
Speaker 5: and give them a place to munch on some meali
Speaker 5: milgreed and.
Speaker 4: To do what they need to do.
Speaker 5: But each butterfly species has different host plants, so finding
Speaker 5: out what butterfly species are local to you and planning
Speaker 5: those plants can be a real help.
Speaker 3: Not to mention as a butterfly party in your backyard.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, Julie Maher wants to know if you can
Speaker 3: elaborate on the technology that's being used in phonology field
Speaker 3: studies like drones, tagging data sets, simulations. How is it
Speaker 3: changing with technology?
Speaker 5: Yeah, hugely, And so we've gone from we meaning phonologists
Speaker 5: of the past, have gone from pen and paper kind
Speaker 5: of just making observations of what we see to now
Speaker 5: being able to automate that more with things like phenocams,
Speaker 5: where maybe you have a tower with a camera on
Speaker 5: it that's pointed out over the forest, and you could
Speaker 5: watch that forest green up over the spring and into
Speaker 5: the summer, and then you could watch leaves change color
Speaker 5: and die off in the fall. And that would be
Speaker 5: at a landscape scale, which is so much different than
Speaker 5: looking at it plant by plant and gives us a
Speaker 5: whole different kind of data to work with. The plant
Speaker 5: by plant is also really important and really interesting. We
Speaker 5: could also get phonology data from satellite images, where if
Speaker 5: you have an aerial image of a whole area, you
Speaker 5: can or a computer program will count essentially how many
Speaker 5: green pixels and leaf color pixels are in that image,
Speaker 5: and how that image has changed over time from week
Speaker 5: to week or even day to day, and we could
Speaker 5: watch that area green up.
Speaker 3: Essentially someone else counting the pixels.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so helpful.
Speaker 5: Another thing too, that's kind of really at the forefront
Speaker 5: of phonology is machine learning and our ability to look
Speaker 5: at images, either photographs or orbarium specimens, and to programmatically
Speaker 5: quantify a particular phenological state that is in that image
Speaker 5: without a human even having to look at it. So
Speaker 5: we could feed thousands of herbarium specimens into this image
Speaker 5: processing system and it could tell us which of those
Speaker 5: specimens are in flower or in fruit, and that saves
Speaker 5: us as humans from having to look at all of
Speaker 5: those specimens. And don't get me wrong, it's a ton
Speaker 5: of fun to look at orbarium specimens and to go
Speaker 5: around and to see them in person. But it does
Speaker 5: limit what you're able to do. You can't do things
Speaker 5: at a national or global scale, but you can if
Speaker 5: it's been automated in that way.
Speaker 3: This next topic was requested by listener Katie Pinnett, who asked,
Speaker 3: is there any way to preserve the color in leaves
Speaker 3: once they fall? I'm an artist and haven't found a
Speaker 3: good way online to preserve them where they don't fade
Speaker 3: relatively quickly. Do you have a leaf collection?
Speaker 5: H randomly, I have like all tons of books with
Speaker 5: leaves just shoved into them.
Speaker 3: What is the best way to preserve a leaf?
Speaker 5: Leaves are actually really easy and plants are pretty easy
Speaker 5: to just like anybody could slip it in between sheets
Speaker 5: of a newspaper pages of a newspaper. I would recommend
Speaker 5: laying them out flat and as thin as possible. So
Speaker 5: if you take a whole branch of something. You want
Speaker 5: it to not be more than just a leaf thick ideally,
Speaker 5: or a couple of leaves stick if you have to,
Speaker 5: and displaying there's a flower on it, for example, to
Speaker 5: display all the pedals spread out instead of just smushed,
Speaker 5: because however, it smushes down the first time, that's how
Speaker 5: it's going to be forever. And then you could put
Speaker 5: it under some books in a dryish place. If you
Speaker 5: have a heater or something you know that's in your house,
Speaker 5: just put it near there for I'd say a week
Speaker 5: or two, and then there you have a little pressplit.
Speaker 3: Is there a good way to preserve the color on it?
Speaker 3: Or is it like it's color is gonna fade.
Speaker 5: Color's going to fade almost no matter what. Certain species
Speaker 5: do preserve better than others, but there's more likely than
Speaker 5: not going to be some feeding.
Speaker 3: I feel like if you're doing that to help the
Speaker 3: future generations, you should just have a pantone wheel and
Speaker 3: try to match what color it wasn't it was fresh.
Speaker 3: It's just like, yo, do you guys ever have to
Speaker 3: use the pantone wheel? I wish Pantone, by the way,
Speaker 3: is so named because its inventor Lawrence Herbert, who worked
Speaker 3: at a printing company, wanted to standardize colors and capture
Speaker 3: them all under one system. So pan means all and
Speaker 3: tone means color. Pantone all colors. I'm guessing other phonologists
Speaker 3: are also into it, because in a twenty sixteen article
Speaker 3: titled it was a Great Green Year identification of a
Speaker 3: chlorophyll definalise that functions in chlorophyll turnover published in the
Speaker 3: Plant Cell Journal, opens with this sentence. Green may have
Speaker 3: been the Pantone color of the year for twenty thirteen,
Speaker 3: but twenty sixteen was a great year for articles on
Speaker 3: chlorophyll research at the Plant Cell and beyond. But instead
Speaker 3: of staring at color chips at your desk, you could
Speaker 3: get outside and see them yourself. A few people had
Speaker 3: this question, Robin Cohen, Kayla Kelly, el McCall, Francina Martinez,
Speaker 3: Christina Weaver, Andrew Bayne, Kyla Kelly All kind of asked
Speaker 3: about geography and about New England. Where is the most
Speaker 3: beautiful place to enjoy fall foliage. Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, go into the mountains where the air is crisp.
Speaker 5: You can get some hot cider, leave some cider donuts,
Speaker 5: some apples, enjoy the foliage, and I'd say don't overlook
Speaker 5: some of the higher altitude places for some nice phonology.
Speaker 5: And if you live in a place that you know
Speaker 5: might have some places that are above treeline to have
Speaker 5: some nice alpine plants and flowers that are changing colors
Speaker 5: in potentially more subtle ways. But get on your knees
Speaker 5: and check them out.
Speaker 3: Does Vermont rule when it comes to fall color switching.
Speaker 4: Or you can't beat New England?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 4: Really? Yeah? Vermont, New Hampshire main, Yeah.
Speaker 3: All up in there. What's the best time a year ago?
Speaker 4: October? Usually okay?
Speaker 5: And there are some websites that will kind of like
Speaker 5: estimate and predict the best time for a peak fall foliage,
Speaker 5: which is, you know, essentially a phonology calculator, and so
Speaker 5: you can can plan your trips around that.
Speaker 3: Well. So leaf peepers look for fall foliage maps that
Speaker 3: let you know when the peak viewing times are. You
Speaker 3: can just bust out the ugs, bring a sweater if
Speaker 3: it gets cooler than like seventy last questions, I always ask,
Speaker 3: what's the shittiest thing about phonology, what's the worst thing
Speaker 3: about your job? What's annoying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the shittiest thing about phonology. I guess there are
Speaker 5: a couple and I'm sure everybody says this, but it's
Speaker 5: the desk work. Yeah, you know, we all got into
Speaker 5: this to be outside and just in the nature, and
Speaker 5: then here we are doing emails all day.
Speaker 3: I don't think either of us were expecting this next
Speaker 3: part to go the way that it did, so I'm
Speaker 3: just going to leave it all in uncut. It's one
Speaker 3: of the most candid and powerful messages I have ever
Speaker 3: heard from a scientist.
Speaker 5: That and the fact that you know, there's a lot
Speaker 5: of bad news that comes with studying the natural world
Speaker 5: that just takes its toll. So, yeah, how do you
Speaker 5: get yourself out of that? Like, yeah, going in my backyard. Man,
Speaker 5: it's tough. It's so tough.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of bad news. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to ask. I get it. I mean literally,
Speaker 3: the world is burning. I mean it's straight up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, and there doesn't feel like a lot we
Speaker 3: can do one on one sometimes, you know.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, So yeah, if I knew good news out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is there anything that you feel like you can
Speaker 3: have in your control at all? Or does it feel
Speaker 3: hard because it feels out of your control?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it does feel out of control.
Speaker 3: I mean, and this is like from the mouth of
Speaker 3: someone who is knee deep in data about it. Does
Speaker 3: there ever feel like a way to have your work
Speaker 3: legitimized by people who don't want to believe it? Is
Speaker 3: that ever really hard to be? Like I've been working
Speaker 3: on this for like a decade, Like it's real?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And there's you know, there's it's such a weighted
Speaker 5: issue on occasion, especially in this country, to feel like,
Speaker 5: you know, is climate change real? Like the fact that
Speaker 5: we're still having that conversation, yeah, makes it feel like
Speaker 5: there's like this situation is not only not getting better,
Speaker 5: but we haven't even agreed that there's a situation that
Speaker 5: we should be addressing or should be paying attention to
Speaker 5: and like let alone doing the things that need to
Speaker 5: be done to make it better.
Speaker 3: And just feels like it's a long uphill climb, Yeah,
Speaker 3: before we even get to the battleground.
Speaker 5: Right, And yeah, and not only are we not addressing
Speaker 5: climate change, but we are as a country anyway kind
Speaker 5: of rolling back the systems that we have in place,
Speaker 5: the checks and balances that we have in place, to
Speaker 5: keep natural places preserved for the future, and to help
Speaker 5: you keep the water clean and the air clean.
Speaker 4: Like we're rolling all of those back.
Speaker 5: So not only are we not moving forward, but in
Speaker 5: some cases we're kind of moving backwards.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Every single day in the news, you're like,
Speaker 3: are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah. I can't listen to NPR on my commute anymore
Speaker 5: without coming in with like red eyes and like inability
Speaker 5: to function.
Speaker 3: I think it's really important that people know that how
Speaker 3: real this is, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, real and and pressing yeah yeah, And also that
Speaker 5: the real people who are working on it.
Speaker 3: See things so much sooner than the general public does.
Speaker 3: And to to be one of the people at the
Speaker 3: forefront collecting the data, seeing how it's changing, seeing how
Speaker 3: dire it is, and the warnings aren't even being heard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think people it's all of that right,
Speaker 5: And I think a lot of people data don't mean
Speaker 5: the same thing that it means to somebody who's spending
Speaker 5: their days with it. And I get that. I don't
Speaker 5: expect everybody to be knee deep in the scientific literature
Speaker 5: to understand what's happening with climate change and I certainly
Speaker 5: don't know anything that's happening with climate change or so
Speaker 5: many of the environmental issues that are going on right now.
Speaker 5: But I think the fact that there's not even trust
Speaker 5: for scientists and the people that are doing this that
Speaker 5: doesn't help us any if there were at least an
Speaker 5: acknowledgment that hey, I don't need to understand everything you're doing,
Speaker 5: I don't need to understand all the data, but I
Speaker 5: trust what you're saying, and Okay, let's take action because
Speaker 5: of what you are contributing to this conversation, Like, that's valuable,
Speaker 5: and so let's do something about that. I think that
Speaker 5: would be an important step forward to recognize that, yeah,
Speaker 5: that that data means something, and that there are people
Speaker 5: that are thinking a lot about it.
Speaker 3: It's just truth versus money at this point.
Speaker 4: Oh so much. Yeah, yeah, that's what they say.
Speaker 5: The You know, we could study climate change all we want,
Speaker 5: but really we have to kind of get through the
Speaker 5: capitalist greed to really work on it, to really address
Speaker 5: the problem. All the data in the world about every
Speaker 5: critter on the planet won't help us. It's you know,
Speaker 5: getting through the greed.
Speaker 3: Do you have a favorite thing about your job?
Speaker 5: Yeah, getting outside, but seeing new places, meeting new plants
Speaker 5: and animals keeps me going.
Speaker 3: Is there a favorite moment you've had outside? Oh, let's
Speaker 3: see make you cry again? Probably it's a big beautiful
Speaker 3: world out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for now, I've.
Speaker 5: I've been able to travel to Kenya and Costa Rica
Speaker 5: and in South America and seen yeah, like national geographic
Speaker 5: scenery and that keeps me going.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh no, no, no, you're you're fine, You're fine.
Speaker 3: So just kind of remembering how beautiful the world is,
Speaker 3: how many critters there are in it right now. There
Speaker 3: might be some in your backyard just munching on a seed.
Speaker 4: Check them out.
Speaker 3: In terms of what you would leave at the kind
Speaker 3: of like legacy, the kind of work that you want
Speaker 3: to do. Is there a big picture goal for you
Speaker 3: that you'll that kind of keeps you going every.
Speaker 5: Day When we think about taking action towards emulerating climate change, that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 5: I hope my work could be applied to positive action.
Speaker 5: And you know, a lot of it is kind of
Speaker 5: esoteric in that sense where it's not like do X
Speaker 5: y Z and it's all going to be fixed. It's
Speaker 5: really kind of like bird by bird and plant by plant,
Speaker 5: which only speaks to so much of the problem, but
Speaker 5: just being that drop in the bucket with all the
Speaker 5: other scientific literature out there that is pointing in the
Speaker 5: same direction, I think that's helpful to know about it.
Speaker 3: That's super important. I think anyone who's listening who wants
Speaker 3: to help now knowing that there's community science and citizen
Speaker 3: science programs out there where just their love of being
Speaker 3: in nature and making observations is helping people like you
Speaker 3: that can't be in fifty places at once. Like that's
Speaker 3: such a powerful thing to be able to be a
Speaker 3: part of you know.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's huge.
Speaker 5: Yeah, recommend people doing all the community science they possibly can.
Speaker 5: It contributes data which we use all the time for
Speaker 5: the work that we do, and also then gives people
Speaker 5: a deeper appreciation for the natural world, and so when
Speaker 5: they when it comes down for them to vote, they're
Speaker 5: more informed and more curious and interested in those sides
Speaker 5: of the issues that are really often overlooked. Or we
Speaker 5: kind of make that decision with our wallet and maybe
Speaker 5: be like, oh, I want my taxes a guip a
Speaker 5: dollar to like put in a public transportation system or
Speaker 5: things like that, and understanding more parts of the more
Speaker 5: pieces of the puzzle from the natural world, I think
Speaker 5: will or can influence how people vote.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for doing this. It's such It's
Speaker 3: so many warm fuzzies and so many like cold chill
Speaker 3: goose bumps at the same time.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I could talk about this stuff all very long.
Speaker 3: Well season long. Thank you for doing what you're doing.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: You're the best. So ask the smartest folks the stupidest questions,
Speaker 3: and you may get answers that will get you, that
Speaker 3: will inspire you, that will change your life, that'll change
Speaker 3: the way you huff a leaf pile or stare at
Speaker 3: the trees on a walk, and it just might get
Speaker 3: you to help these scientists gather more data and keep
Speaker 3: fighting the good fight. So to follow doctor Libby Elwood,
Speaker 3: and you should. She's at Libby Elwood on Twitter, and
Speaker 3: there are resources in the show notes and up at
Speaker 3: aliward dot com slash ologies slash phonology with the sponsor
Speaker 3: links and the codes the conservation organization that got a
Speaker 3: donation this episode and links to Libby's work. So ologies
Speaker 3: is at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Ali
Speaker 3: Ward with one L on both. Thank you to Shannon
Speaker 3: Felts and Bonnie Dutch of the comedy podcast You Are
Speaker 3: That for managing all that merch. Thank you Aaron Talbert
Speaker 3: and Hannehalippo for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group, which
Speaker 3: just hit ten thousand nice people, so join into that
Speaker 3: if you feel like chatting science with some fellow Ologites.
Speaker 3: Thank you to Jared Sleeper of the mental health podcast
Speaker 3: Make Good, Bad Brain for the assistant editing and for
Speaker 3: the extra research help this week, and of course to
Speaker 3: the Pumpkin Spice Center lattes, Stephen Ray Morris of the
Speaker 3: per Cast and see Jurassic Wright who helps stitch together
Speaker 3: all these clips every week. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme
Speaker 3: song and he is in a wonderful band called Islands.
Speaker 3: And if you listen to the end of the show,
Speaker 3: you know I tell you a secret. And the secret
Speaker 3: this week it's a pro tip of fall beverages. If
Speaker 3: you're making a chi latte on top, crack a little
Speaker 3: fresh black pepper, add a sprinkle of cayenne hot Damn
Speaker 3: you get spicy your business. So just a little tip
Speaker 3: for mole pops, maybe pumpkin and apple cider take a
Speaker 3: little back seat. Let chilie the way this year. Also,
Speaker 3: I know this episode was hard to hear, so please
Speaker 3: help scientists. Help people in your community register to vote,
Speaker 3: get to the polls. It matters, all right. Next week
Speaker 3: the start of Spooktober. So there are five Tuesdays in October,
Speaker 3: which means five spooky episodes coming up in the next month.
Speaker 3: I can't even deal. Next Tuesday, you ready an episode
Speaker 3: on bones, that's right, skeletons, skellies, that's up next. Okay,
Speaker 3: bye bye, pacodermatology, hobbiology from do zoology, lithology, zechnology, meteorology, paratology, anthology, zeriology, elatology.
Speaker 3: Hop in spice, he's my ride, ye,