WTF, Biology‪?‬ WTF Biology

In this bonus episode, I discuss some of my favorite co-evolved plant-pollinator relationships. I also include a portion of my conversation with Dr. Lindsie McCabe that ended up on the cutting room floor for last week's full episode. 

You can learn more about Lindsie and her research by visiting her website https://twitter.com/Lindsie_McCabe. You can also find her on Twitter @Lindsie_McCabe

If you're interested in participating in citizen science, you can check out iNaturalist, and/or bumblebeewatch.org

As always, music for the show is by Dr. Ron Deckert. Find his music at soundcloud.com/ron-deckert. 

In celebration of #NationalPollinatorsMonth, my guest and I talk about the lesser known and under-appreciated pollinators--native bees and flies. I am joined by Dr. Lindsie McCabe, an entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Pollinating Insect-Biology, Management, Systematics Research lab, otherwise known as the bee lab. Check out more on how to make your garden bee friendly here: https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-pollinators-month-june/#:~:text=National%20Pollinators%20Month%20in%20June,bats%2C%20and%20other%20natural%20pollinators.

You can learn more about Lindsie and her research on her website lindsiemccabe.wordpress.com. You can follow her on Twitter @lindsie_mccabe for awesome bee and other pollinator related science. 

The citizen science resources we mentioned are here:

https://www.bumblebeewatch.org/

https://www.inaturalist.org/

https://beespotter.org/



Follow WTF Biology on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and/or TikTok @wtf_biology. Music for the show is by Dr. Ron Deckert. Find him at soundcloud.com/ron-deckert

Deserts are extreme places bouncing between too hot and too cold; too dry and too wet. But moss have found a way to buffer those extremes. Join Dr. Jenna Ekwealor and I as we discuss the strange lifestyle of hypolithic moss, namely moss that live underneath rocks. You can learn more about desert mosses at https://3dmoss.berkeley.edu/ Check out Jenna's hero scientists here: https://www.esf.edu/faculty/kimmerer/ https://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/kirsten-fisher Listen to Dr. Ron Deckert's music on soundcloud.com/ron-deckert. This week's song is Green Rain.  Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @wtf_biology in all the places.

In the United States, May is #NationalWildfireAwarenessMonth. To kick off this month, I welcome Dr. Mike Remke back to the show to discuss wildfire's past, present, and future. 

Check out this article of the Yurok tribe's use of wildfire: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/21/wildfire-prescribed-burns-california-native-americans

Find the wildfire information for your location here: https://www.ready.gov/wildfires 

Wildfire Adaptive Partnership information is here: https://www.wildfireadapted.org/ 

Check out Mike's personal website here: https://www.mycoremke.com/ 

Music is by Dr. Ron Deckert and you can find this song (Pondo Funk) and all his other songs at www.soundcloud.com/ron-deckert

You can support WTF Biology at https://www.patreon.com/wtfbiology. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. I'm @wtf_biolgoy in all of those places.

Western North American landscapes are driven by ecological disturbances. That might mean wildfire, insect outbreaks, or gophers. In the Colorado River and other western North American streams, that means droughts and floods. The trouble happens when humans come along and build dams that prevent those disturbances from happening. My guest today is Dr. Dave Lytle, a Professor of Evolution and Ecology at Oregon State University who uses western North American rivers as a laboratory to understand how disturbances drive the ecology and evolution of aquatic invertebrates.    
Learn more about Dr. Dave Lytle by going to his website here: https://lytlelab.science.oregonstate.edu/
You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @wtf_biology
Music is by Dr. Ron Deckert. This song is called 'Red Rock, Blue Skies'. Listen to this song and all Ron's other songs at soundcloud.com/ron-deckert

Regent's Professor at Northern Arizona University, Dr. Nancy Johnson is a world-famous mycorrhizal researcher. She has roughly 163 publication with over 13,000 citations (according to Google Scholar). So with a track record like that, she deserves an enormous ego, but to her credit, she is the kindest, most down-to-earth, sweetest person who will intellectually bitch-slap you (but only if you deserve it). 

In this mini-episode, I revive some of Nancy and my conversation we recorded for the Rachel Carson episode that ended up on the cutting room floor.

A blub about Nancy from her lab website:

"Nutritional symbioses among soil organisms fascinate me. I study arbuscular mycorrhizas in natural and agricultural systems. A better understanding of the factors controlling the balance of trade between plants and mycorrhizal fungi could lead to their management so that fertilizer inputs can be reduced. Also, since mycorrhizal fungi are enormous (yet invisible), understanding how to manage them may help generate an important belowground carbon sink in our increasingly carbon dioxide enriched world."