Tree Frogs, Eco-anxiety, and Sewage Beer!

Eric and Sloan address eco-anxiety, discuss innovative green sewage solutions, and interview Jennifer Sheridan, Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s curator of amphibians and reptiles, right before she boards a plane for an expedition to Borneo.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to a is frightening. Anthropicene living in the age of humanity with Eric Dorfman, insulin McRae. Hello and welcome back to Hayes for Anthropocene living in the age of humanity. I'm Eric Dorfman and I'm Sloan McRae. Hello, Sloan. Eric, well, what are we talking about today? Today we are talking about Allegheny County sanitary authority, AKA AKA Zan, which is kind of an abbreviation slash acronym. So for those of you who don't know, Allegheny County is the County that Pittsburgh is in and after pressure from activists, the Pakistan board, which again, that's, that's our sanitary authority voted unanimously to increase its funding for green infrastructure, which is, they're basically a new program, green revitalization of our waterways, which spells out grow those words. Um, just just handy acronym. Yeah, that's a good acronym. It's just, just a stumbled upon this. No, no thought went into it, but they've increased their$2 million funding cycle to$10 million approving 21 grants to municipalities in the County and sewer authorities, four 30 green infrastructure projects. This is sewer separation, sewer pipelining and$10 million in projects that are projected to remove about 25 million gallons of sewage and storm water a year. I did the math on that 25 million gallons of sewage and storm water a year and that translates to 625,000 bathtubs. It's hard to imagine that many bathtubs filled with. So that's quite impressive. It's quite, but what, I guess it's a little gross, but something that I think is, is very exciting too is the incorporation of green spaces parklets and, and even rooftops into the whole sewage infrastructure, which is actually attacking more than one problem at once. Yes. That's where we need to be thinking, not just solving one problem at a time, but looking at an integrated program of solutions. So it's an economy of solutions. And should we talk about what the combined sewer problem is? As I understand it, you have your stormwater and your sewerage in old infrastructures share the system when there's too much storm water, which happens here in Pittsburgh. Um, the past couple of years we've had every year sort of a record breaking rainfall year that the stormwater overwhelms the sewerage system, everything flows together to the sewer treatment plant and that overwhelms the sewage treatment plants capacity. And then you have sewage in your water supply in your waterways because as the water goes to the first available from gravity and that is typically a waterway and with the climate changing, rainy places like Pittsburgh and also Seattle are just going to get worse. And Seattle's actually just agreed to build an underground storage tunnel which will reduce that very problem that you discussed. And that's actually happening as we speak. So, and their, their sewage runs off into the ship canal. And so, um, rainy times it gets filled with raw sewage, which obviously is affecting wildlife and oxygen content in the water. And many of us also like to do things like kayak in waterways. And when you call, you fall into the water, it's not good. They'll get back to your 27,000 bathtubs. Exactly. Many cities are starting to look at green infrastructure and take things like storm water really seriously. There's also a, there's a Washington post article by Darrel fears and it's sites Portland, and this goes back to what Eric was saying about green spaces, but in Portland, the officials claim that street planners, rain gardens and permeable pavement soaked up to 60% of stormwater runoff. That goes back to the sort of the economy of innovation and community are two things at once or three things at once. Fort Wayne, Indiana is also building tunnel infrastructure for its water overflow. So we're not alone in Pittsburgh, but the, the thing that I think I find encouraging about this one, we just took a nice little survey around the entire U S[inaudible] to Portland, to Indiana. So we've been in several different time zones and cities are tackling this. That's right across the U S but also worldwide. This is, this is not just an American problem. This is not just a Mississippi river system problem or a us problem, but it, it goes far further. We've got some interesting stories from Scandinavia, in fact, Sweden. Yeah, the Scandinavians, they've figured it out. Hey have do a lot of real innovation on all kinds of environmental topics and uh, looking at innovative uses for sewage sludge is just one of them. In Stockholm there are two sewage treatment plants that produce bio gas from sewage sludge and then they purify the gas. It's used for heating and vehicle fuel, sort of the bonus is the, in addition, it creates no emissions of carbon dioxide. So therefore it's sewage sludge is actually a resource, right? It's not a pollutant anymore. It's actually a resource. So this is the kind of thing, when you were just talking a second ago, I was thinking some of the innovations that people would have used during the great depression in the U S and the 1930s right? Making the most use of whatever you have, trying to reduce waste as much as possible. We've gone after the depression, well after the depression was the 80s where everything was about conspicuous consumption and plastics really took off in the mid 20th century. All of these things that we're doing now are starting to rethink how little we can use, which on some level flies in the face of consumer society. We are starting to rethink how the world, not in terms of how much we can make or how much we can grow, but how we can innovate to use everything that we do have most economically. And what I really like about this story is that just as we're talking about the use of greenspaces, this solves two issues at one. So we have a clever innovation that is an order of magnitude better than solving one of those problems at a time. Right? Clearly there's demand for this innovation. Absolutely. Which is the interesting thing that here, especially in the U S we may do other about is climate change real is a not real, but the reality is industry and leaders are when push listening to their customers, their constituents, the people, if they, if they created a man for this. That's right. And the interesting thing, unlike many other environmental problems that America has faced, this is a global problem. So our responses in some ways are measured against the worldview and can be inspired by it. It's a place where other countries are really doing an amazing job at thinking innovatively. And we should take a leaf out of their book or a swig from their beer. Well, yes. Speaking of innovation and while we're, while we're in Stockholm and sludge and sludge, there is a Swedish beer made from sewage and I think it actually has our name in it somehow by my, yeah, my, my Swedish pronunciation. You know, I is, I've been to Sweden once. I loved it, but I did not learn how to, how to speak the language. But if you look at the name of this one, yes. Years too. Do you have any idea how to say that? I'm gonna uh, let's, let's try it now. Carnegie beer get has that. That sounds good. We should try and deal with it my best. We just asked that we should invite Gretta on the podcast. Oh yes, that's fine. I drink one. Oh, she might not be old enough, but it's, no, she can't because she could the label. That's true. Nah, not Carnegie beer gift. Um, or we could try Google to Google translate. That's true. We'll, we'll do that. Q, the Swedish, Google voice to pronounce this for us. Okay. Thanks Google. Thank you Google. Right. So it's, but it is the, is Carlsberg and the Swedish environmental research Institute collaboration. Has anyone had this beer? And it was someone must, I mean I'm asking, I'm asking the Oh, right here. Yes. Our listeners Legion. Yes. Uh, followers hardly have any of you. Has it. Let us know this beer tastes yes. The streets. We'd love to hear from you. Carlsberg and Brooklyn brewery. You know, we're still in the sponsorship business, so yes, if you, if you want to, if you'd like to sponsor is for Andrew who was seen living in the age of humanity. We will feature you prominently and we will, we will drink a beer on the podcast. Yes. Perfect. And of course we will love it. Yes. We're going to now talk about a topic that might make you want to drink a lot of sewerage, beer or any kind or any kind of beer substance. Yes. And that is a very real thing. The BBC calls eco anxiety. There's a March 27 2019 Dave Faubert BBC article that, um, we recommend to everyone. And if you're feeling anxiety and futility about just your existence and what's going to happen to your loved ones in the future of life, in the face of climate change, you are not alone. Not just climate change either. As the name implies eco anxiety, there's all sorts of issues that are wrapped up into this. As we know, the American psychological association has spoken. Eco anxiety is an actual thing because the chronic fear of environmental Duma, it sucks. So the issue, like any other anxiety is that it's important to focus on your options, personal power, the things that you personally can do to make a difference. It's easy to get wrapped up in the concern for the whole thing and look at the big picture and think that it's a very difficult situation. And this is part of their advice to people. This article cites a paper by Owen Gaffney and the editor of the paper is Dunkin gear. And one of their points, and I'm going to read this, what to do, and this goes back to the human agency that we've spoken about previously. Firstly, make climate change a factor in the decisions you make around what you eat, how you travel and what you buy. Secondly, talk about climate change with your friends, family and colleagues and finally demand the politicians and companies make it easier and cheaper to do the right thing for the climate. This is an interesting thing for me, thinking about what this podcast is and what role natural history museums especially have in helping people find answers, especially those answers that concern what they can do in a positive way. But I think a real advantage of museums is that they take this deep scientific and often concerning scientific information and package it in a way that distills and simplifies it without making it unnecessarily simple or over simplified. And so to me, this phenomenon of eco anxiety is something that we can predict is probably going to grow. And I think it's important that those institutions that have that knowledge can actually come together and start to outline solutions for people. Yeah, I mean it's, it's kind of our, our duty and, and it's what we're also very good at, which is nice. Yeah. Conveniently it plays to our strengths. Someones we're not suffering from eco anxiety ourselves. So one of the things that it talks about here is Tim Gordon, a Marine biologist at the university of Exeter going to the great barrier reef in Australia, which for many is the trip of a lifetime. I actually had the great good fortune to be doing research on as well on the great barrier reef years ago I actually started to see the bird populations that I studied begin to change and the species that were dependent on the coral themselves started to decline and at that point didn't really even know what to look at or how, just thinking about how to explain the phenomenon. This is very early days then. And this is something that having witnessed this firsthand, I can imagine that those people who are in the field and who are living near and in places pristine places like the great barrier reef and watching them decline will be especially susceptible to this kind of thing as well as people who are living on the edge of natural environments. It's so much more palpable when you're in nature here in the city, in the middle of Pittsburgh, say looking out the window, things aren't going to change. It's a completely manufactured engineered environment that we live in and it's not going to change a watching nature slowly decline in front of you is one of the most heart wrenching things you can imagine. I need some serious beer. I step away from the sewage. When you see these things start to play out in front of you, it's so important to have a positive outlet for your frustration or your concern. I think that's, and I think that that's one of the reasons our hero Gretta is so inspiring, absolutely is she is giving voice to the fact that no one's going to solve the problem on their own. But if enough of us prioritize, this might sound rose-colored, but we've already affected positive environmental change before, right? At the, we absolutely have. When I was a adolescent, you know, that was kind of the, the approaching Armageddon and enough of the planet was energized to realize the threat was real and changed. It happened. Well, and before that too, there was DDT which was exposed by Rachel Carson in her book, silent spring, which she was of course at the time, vilified. Correct. And this is something that we also have to acknowledge the courage of people who are pointing out the concerns that are going to affect assault. It's a huge undertaking and an act of bravery really to be different, to ask people to change, but it's also not without hope. And this is one of the reasons why it's so important. Things like sewage beer. I also firmly believe that we can, by thinking more cleverly by using the, the amazing technological tools that are being developed even now or actually being developed more and more all the time. I think that there is a way to maintain the kind of life that we know and love while rethinking what we do. Early, I was talking to somebody about how when fax machines first started, it might take an hour for one page to go through and now we think we're on our cell phones, we're sending things across the world instantaneously. It's an incredible, incredible time. And the, the resources to make that happen have actually become less, even though increased population, the options have always been there. And what we're doing is becoming more clever about how to extract those, those options from the world around us. And I think that really the technology that's being developed now is showing us the huge potential. At some point we should talk about Zydeco, which is a company working on extracting sugar from cellulous. I mean these are really important advances that are gonna make an enormous difference. And there are probably many of them born from I-CAR anxiety. I'll absolutely tell the channeling of that exactly, exactly. After the sponsor break our interview with Jennifer Sheridan, curator of reptiles and amphibians here at Carnegie museum of natural history.

Speaker 2: 17:37

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Speaker 3: 18:21

welcome back to is for Anthropocene living in the age of humanity and we are thrilled to be joined by dr Jennifer shared and absolutely thrilled curator of reptiles and amphibians here at Carnegie museum of natural history. Thank you so much for having me. Sorry to talk over you, but thank you know we love it. We love the sound of your voice. It's great to have you here. Thank you so much for making time for us, especially as within how many days? Two days and two days. You are going to approximately 48 hours I'll believe and great that you could take time from packing. Oh yeah. Yes. It's a big bag. So I have a pile in my office right now. Pack. You're going to Borneo, Chen? Yes, I am. Tell us what, what are you doing there? So I will be, the main reason I'm going is to teach a class. So I'm working with an organization based out of Cambridge called the tropical biology association. They run these wonderful graduate level courses and there there's one that they base in Danum Valley, which is a wonderful large conservation area in the Eastern Saba. The Northern know stayed on Borneo and they have a, there's 24 students, half of them are from Southeast Asia, half of them are from Europe. A lot of the Southeast Asian students, they're already working in conservation. They might not have had an opportunity to go to graduate school, get a lot of formal training and field biology or ecology. So this course sort of uh, is a way for them to get a little bit of extra training. So myself and two other instructors will be leading them through various field exercises. I obviously will be teaching them how to survey frogs. We'll do some primary productivity sampling, hopefully surveying for tadpoles. Um, so for two weeks they get this formal training in different field methods. And then the second two weeks they do independent research projects. So for me that's really nice because then I can sort of funnel some of the students into frog related projects that relate to my larger research program. You're a frog specialist, aren't you? Yeah, I focus mainly on frogs, partly because, so I work on amphibians, I say broadly, but in Borneo, the majority of amphibians are frogs. They're Sicilians, which are limbless amphibians. Um, but they're very hard to find. Um, and there's no salamanders in Borneo. So in Asia, the farthest South that you get salamanders is about Lao and some parts of um, and they don't extend further South. Right. And your bigger research. Yeah. So I work the main areas of my research focus on ecological responses to climate change and ecological responses to land use change. And in Borneo, that's mainly what I do is this response to land use change. So in Southeast Asia, there's a lot of deforestation for oil Palm specifically. So oil Palm is a fruit bearing Palm and, uh, we use it for oil, for like a cosmetics and food and all these other kinds of everything, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so there's a lot of deforestation that happens in order to plan to this, um, this crop. And there is a lot of, we know, generally as scientists that fragmentation is bad. You will lose biodiversity. But what we don't know specifically is in these oil Palm landscapes, then how well does it preserve our diversity? Is there a way to improve plantation designs where you can mix oil Palm with primary forest? Um, so you have kind of a mixed use landscape. And what does that look like? What does the matrix look like that is most beneficial for preserving biodiversity? So since about 2011, I've been working as part of, um, a larger research project called the safe project, the stability of altered forest ecosystems project. And that's what this project does is it's looking at how, what is the best matrix of forests and oil Palm given that we know that we're probably not going to halt the sort of increase of oil Palm plantation. So how can we work together with oil Palm companies? The project overall is a collaboration between scientists, the government of Saba, the state of Borneo where I work, and Sime Darby, which is an oil pump company. Um, and so it's a collaboration between all those entities. So again, that we can hopefully utilize science to inform conservation practices. And you were telling us about the haze. Yeah. So this is some things. So I, I used to live in Singapore. I was a professor in Singapore for four years before I started here at the Carnegie. And, um, in 2015 was the last year that there was really, really bad Hayes. And what happens broadly in, um, Southeast Asia is that farmers tend to burn their land to clear it, um, and in certain parts of Southeast Asia, so in Southern Cali mountain and in parts of Sumatra, the land is basically peat land. And what that means is that when you burn it, it starts to burn below the surface of the ground. And what that means is that you can't really put it out by human means, meaning you can dump a lot of water on it, but unless you get the inundation of actual rainfall, that is just gonna continue burning. So what happens is it creates all this smoke haze and it creates really unhealthy air conditions. And, um, we were talking before about, you know, the government of Indonesia. So Jakarta sits far enough South that it mostly avoids that haze. And so, yeah. Um, and so I remember into this in 15, it just being very frustrating. They're like, no, no, we've got to, don't, like, we don't need anybody else's help. And it just got worse and worse and worse. So, and what happens is it starts burning. And I remember being there in early September and you're told not to go outside and every day you're told, okay, it's still bad. Don't go outside. It's still bad. Don't go outside. And you just have no idea when it's gonna end. And it ended up lasting for two months, um, that year. So it was fine. The, in like mid November that it started to clear up. Yeah. So it's starting to look a little bit like there's, I mean, who knows how long it's going to last this year. But, um, in Singapore there's really bad smoke haze and in coaching, which is the capital of Sarawak, which is another Malaysian state on Borneo, um, there, it's a dangerous level. So the, um, I think it's called the PMI, which is an abbreviation that I'm forgetting, but it's particulate matter in the air. Um, it's around, it's between two and 300 in coaching, um, and unhealthy as somewhere between 75 and a hundred. Um, so it's really, really bad. Yeah. Um, yeah. So it's gonna be interesting. Yeah. Can you talk a bit about the political and industrial situation? You said that they were collaborating, so how are their willing collaborators, the polymer companies and the government? So I mean, I, you know, I'm always sort of cautiously optimistic. Last probably a little bit naive, meaning I want to believe that everybody wants the best for everything. Right? Um, so I think it does, it, they did come to the table willingly for this. Um, whether the oil pump company actually implements the findings of all the research is another question. So the project was implemented in 2011 and it was planned for at least 10 years. So they committed to providing some, like to access to this, um, sort of experimental fragmentation landscape for 10 years. And so the, um, I don't know all the details of who has given money and how much money has been given to sort of set up this umbrella project. When I go as a researcher, I have to pay for like research assistance and to transportation and all these like costs of like food and lodging. I mean it's, it's very minimal because it's a field camp. Um, but so I pay into that project, but there there's a staff of people that are funded by either Sime Darby and or the Malaysian government to work there full time year round every year serving um, like invertebrates. And I think also then, um, forest biodiversity. Um, yeah. And so they, they're willing participants. I feel like it's very encouraging that they're kind of working together. I would like to believe that Sime Darby is going to take account of what's happening and consider adjusting their plantation design in the future. Um, but that has yet to be seen. So we'll, we'll see what happens in the coming years. You said you had a big pile of things. Yeah, Borneo. Um, so this year I'm excited about a couple of, um, I guess like new toys, so to speak from a scientist perspective. So recently I started working with a professor at Duquesne on environmental DNA sampling. So this is something that people have used in with varying success for different taxonomic groups. And basically what it means is that you can sample maybe soil or water and there's DNA of different organisms in that soil or water. In my case, obviously I'm looking for amphibians. So we work together over the summer, added powder mill to sample water, um, to look for M stream dwelling amphibians out there. And in conjunction with that, then what we do is we do visual encounter surveys. So I have a transect, I walk the length of the transect, I count every single amphibian IC, and then we're testing whether that water sample is also picking up those same amphibians. So for me, the idea is now to test this in Borneo. So in a place that has much higher diversity of amphibians along these streams, how well does it reflect the amphibians that are, I know are there. So he, Brady Porter is doing sort of the lab side of it. Um, so I get to go, um, I have these filter papers and then I had to buy these, um, sort of like big filter systems and I'll have to, um, put basically like several liters of stream water through it, um, after each survey and then I'll bring those little filter papers back and you extract the DNA and you see what you get. You must be pretty good by now I'm walking down a stream and seeing, yeah. Yeah, it's hard. Um, you know, I don't think it is and I love it because I feel like whenever students first come out, they're always so impressed. And so it's kind of like a nice ego boost for me. They're like, Oh wow, how did you see that? It's Oh, incredible. But once they kind of get used to it, it's, to me it's very easy because you, um, you have a headlamp, um, the frogs come out and they sit sort of on the banks at night. So there's lots of, these are big bouldery streams. There's, um, vegetation along the streams. So they might be sitting on the boulders like either in or right next to the stream, sometimes their own overhanging vegetation. And so you're kind of looking within a several meter like radius, I guess of yourself. Um, but their eyes are very good at reflecting your headlamp. And so because they're out calling, trying to find mates, then it's fairly easy to see them. Yeah. So do you expect to get more species through this environmental DNA or, or fewer, I mean, I am so curious. This is exactly right. Yeah. So I'm really curious to see how it is because for sure there are definitely species that I don't see. Um, either because they're canopy species that I can either sometimes here or I just don't hear them and therefore wouldn't know they're there because there are several meters above my head. Um, or if they're, um, tadpoles for example, that are burrowing under the gravel. Um, and if they're either rare species or very shy species and they're coming and they're laying their eggs and the tadpoles are kind of burrowing into the gravel, it's possible. I'm just missing them in my surveys. Um, but it may be the case that, um, we are seeing most of what is there and that the DNA would be then a good match. So I'm really curious to see. Yeah. And you've been working mirror a while. Yeah, I first went to Borneo right out of college, so I went there in 1996. Um, and I was a field assistant to a woman who was doing her PhD research there and I stayed for six months. And then, um, I went and did a masters on birds. And then, um, when I was time to do my PhD, I had the opportunity to go back. Um, and I didn't actually do my PhD research there, but through the course of my PhD elsewhere in Southeast Asia, I got to go back and then started working there again as a post doc. Have you noticed any trends over the time that you've been there? Abundance or, you know, um, yes and no. So one of the things that I find very encouraging about working in Southeast Asia is you, so you often hear about how frogs are disappearing worldwide. And I think that, um, that is true. And you find that a lot in South America and there's this fungal disease called[inaudible] that is impacting a lot of amphibians. There was just a paper that came out and I think nature is saying it's actually much worse than we thought. But the interesting thing is kindred is not impacting frog populations or amphibian populations in Southeast Asia. Um, at least not to the degree that it is elsewhere. So it's been looked for, there's sort of like rare isolated cases of it, but it's not really causing wide population declines. Whereas I know I have colleagues who work in central and South America and you have these cases where they go from one year to the next in primary forest and the, there's these catastrophic declines. Exactly. So for me, it's really nice to see that in Southeast Asia where I've been working, we're not seeing these catastrophic declines. The challenge is this habitat loss that we were talking about due to oil Palm plantation. So because of habitat loss, you are losing populations and losing species. But in the remaining primary forest, things seem to be going okay. And the other thing that I find really interesting is that, um, so the central and Southern America tend to be fairly seasonal with rainfall. Um, and in the part of Borneo where I work, it's not seasonal, so it rains all year round. There's no set dry or wet season. Um, any given month may be wet or dry from year to year. Um, so there's not like a specific sort of like explosion of breeding that you would get like in the temporal region or somewhere with seasonal rainfall. And it's, but it is interesting that if I'm there for example, for um, let's say like eight weeks you will see these ebbs and flows of, you know, like some weeks you're seeing tons and tons of frogs and other weeks you're seeing very few. Um, so it's kind of interesting to me. And what drives that exactly. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. How long were you there? I will be there for six weeks. Okay.[inaudible]

Speaker 1: 33:01

we should talk to you when you come back. Can you talk a bit about your students? Um, and I recall one of the first things I did taking this job with a press release about a sort of a novel approach to recording tree frogs and then a study that that led to, um, the evidence that, that, that, uh, noise pollution is making.

Speaker 3: 33:24

Yeah. So that was one of my students from Yale and us the school where I worked in Singapore and he is a great, great student and a wonderful example of the caliber of the students that we had there. So that was for my conservation biology class. He designed that project. And so like you said, he recorded, um, traffic noise when we were in Singapore. And then he played it to a specific species of tree frog that, um, was fairly abundant, um, in Danum Valley. The place I'll be going. And he found that their calls are impacted by that traffic noise. And so this is something where it's, it's talked about with, um, birds for example, a lot, there's a lot of evidence in birds, how anthropogenic noise negatively impacts, um, bird calls. Um, and there's less that's been done on amphibians. So this was the first one that I know of in Southeast Asia. Um, and it's one of like, um, a small handful. There's a, a S a fairly good literature on it, but it's fairly small compared to like the bird literature on those impacts. And so last year, for example with the, you know, this organization that I'm going with, I went last year, um, so it's a totally different group of students this year. But again, similarly diverse group of students from Europe and across Southeast Asia. Um, and so last year there was a group of students who worked on the bio mass of frogs on streams. And so this is something that I always find really interesting is that people often do population sizes, so they count how many individuals there are. But what is less common is to basically weigh those individuals and then compare total biomass. So when you're looking at biomass within an ecosystem, then you can then start to say, okay, how important are these? Just because you have lots of frogs that doesn't really tell you relatively speaking. Are there a lot of frogs compared to say elephants. Right. And we tend to think of these large bodied mammals and other things, um, as being more important because they're so large bodied. But there's some evidence to suggest that these small bodied organisms collectively actually have more biomass than some of these larger bodied organisms. And so the, the students, um, did a great job. They weighed every single frog and multiple nights on different streams and we didn't have enough replicates samples to actually prove, um, how much biomass there was. But with the little bit of data that we had, there is some suggestion that at least one of these streams, there may be more frog bio mass than elephant biomass in that system, which is incredible to me. Yeah. So now I'm super eager to go back and get another group of students to do this again. Um, yeah, that wants to be an infographic. Right, exactly. Right. Exactly.

Speaker 1: 36:07

So you mentioned a kitchen before, and this is a global problem, isn't it? And I was wondering, is there a group of people worldwide trying to address this problem in any concerted way?

Speaker 3: 36:22

I would say there are lots of people working on it. The challenge with[inaudible] is that because it's a fungal disease can live in water because you can imagine amphibians live in water. So it all it takes is one infected individual in a water system to either maintain or reinfect a population. So once it exists in the environment, it's very hard to eradicate it from the environment as a whole. So individual frogs or salamanders or whatever have it. Um, I shouldn't say salamanders. There's a separate, um, similar fungal disease that impacts them. Um, but with kitchen you can cure individual frogs because the, the fungus will die above a certain temperature and that's below the lethal temperature for the frog itself. But if you put that frog back into an infected environment, then it's going to get reinfected. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So it's, I think it's come from, so this is also really interesting to me. For a long time it was thought that it originated in Africa and part of that came from this. Um, so xenopus is a genus of frogs. It's the African clawed frog they used to be used in. Um, and I don't know how this physically worked in pregnancy tests, that if you put the urine of a pregnant woman onto this frog, the frog would, uh, lay eggs. Um, and so somehow, yeah, I am like, and I just imagined this big lab with like all these things, which sounds[inaudible] yeah, but this is, I'm told how pregnancy tests used to work. Um, and so there were all these frogs from Africa were brought over and people thought that it was due to potentially those frogs like escaping and then carrying this. So it was thought that they were, um, like carriers, but not negatively impacted by this fungus. And so that was a long time what I had to kind of like heard and been told by people working on it. And then I just saw, um, a paper recently indicating that it actually originated in Korea. Um, and I don't know how that was determined, haven't read the paper directly, like showing that. But that would be why, or potentially one of the reasons why frogs in Southeast Asia are not negatively effected. Yeah. So they're naturally resistant. And that was what was thought with the African frogs because African populations also tend not to be as negatively impacted as central and South American.

Speaker 1: 38:44

So we might be headed for a huge bottleneck in, in frogs mightily

Speaker 3: 38:48

maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I really curious to see, because like I said, you know, I don't, I don't know of a way that that can be eradicated from the environment. There are. Um, there's, so Cory Richards, the wacky who's at Pitt, she works on kindred, um, and I don't know like what is, and she was one of the coauthors on that paper that came out recently. Um, but I don't know what is the latest on like, is there a way that we can eradicate this? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:15

So it's really scary. And if you think about things like changing climate related to changing rainfall regimes, all sorts of ecosystem changes are happening. It's a real,

Speaker 3: 39:27

yeah. Yeah. And that was one of the things as, um, so as temperatures sort of have increased then that made it possible for[inaudible] to exist at higher elevations in central and South America. Um, and so then, you know, these, these middle and high elevation forests that used to be too cold for kids to do exist, then they have become sort of like in that temperature range that is something viable for it. Climate change, right. It's definitely not helping yet. Yeah. Told people about the alcohol house. Oh man. What do you want to know? It's so wonderful. So the alcohol houses where we keep all of, um, what some museum people would call our spirit collection. So I'm fluid preserved. Um, specimens are stored there. It's mostly amphibians and reptiles. There are birds in there. Um, but again, it's mostly amphibians and reptiles. It was built I believe in 1907, um, sometime around then. Um, and it's this wonderful old tiny building that has fantastic architecture and rot iron and beautiful marble, and it has the largest collection of freshwater North American freshwater turtles in the world. Um, in addition to our, um, other amphibians and reptiles. So that is where our collections manager spends most of her time. We're going through a lot of updates. There was a, an NSF grant that my predecessor got to improve the alcohol house and those, um, tasks related to the improvements are really moving along nicely and almost finished, which I'm very excited about. So I sort of inherited this task when I came in about a year ago and it's been really nice, especially over the summer. We had a great group of student work study students and interns helping with the tax. And I'm like updates, I'm just kind of like improving the way things are arranged in there. I'm making a little bit more space. The exhibits team has built this wonderful new, um, sort of display case in this foyer. We're going to start having tourists come through. The education team has been working with us to kind of create some fun narratives that we can highlight different stories about the alcohol house, the different special, um, either collections or individual specimens that we have. Um, I think it's gonna be really nice in there. Yeah. From Borneo. And we do, we don't have as much as I would like. And so I'm working on that. Um, so I'm working with, um, so to get specimens out of Borneo, you obviously need export permits. So I'm working with colleagues. Um, I'll be meeting with people at the Saba museum when I go and hoping that I can get some export permits. Yes. What you'll find in Borneo and bring back, what sort of things do you think that'll tell you? Um, that's a good question. So one of the things that I use our collections in museum collections more broadly for is to look at longterm impacts of climate change. And so I have, um, a project that I'm just about finished collecting all the data for looking at the body size of Bornean frogs. So they started this project years ago when I was a postdoc and I measured basically like almost every single frog in, um, the museums in Saba. Um, the state of Borneo where I work. And also the, um, the Singapore had this museum that was known at the time as the raffles museum. I measured Bornean frogs that they had in their collections. They're some really old ones from the British museum because the British museum has a long history of collecting in that region. Um, and then recently I've been spending time at the field museum and because they have a huge collection of Bornean frogs there. Um, and so I use these, you know, historical collections to look at how individuals or I should say species change over time. Um, so there's a body of evidence that suggests that, um, in response to climate change, organisms are getting smaller. Um, an echo therms especially should be getting smaller because their metabolism is directly related to temperature. So as temperature increases, their metabolism increases and if their resources are limited, meaning they can't increase the amount of food they're consuming at the same rate, their metabolism is increasing, then they will likely get smaller. So something has to give there and it's usually S growth. Um, so there's a lot of evidence that this is true and, um, that it should be true in theory. Um, this was shown broadly for, um, a bunch of salamander species here in the U S um, in the Appalachians. There was a big study that looked at that. Um, and this one that I'm working on will be the first one. Um, I think it might be the first tropical amphibian one that is looked at body size changes over time. Right? Yeah. And so, and again, there's this idea that, um, climate changes are stronger in the tropics. So, um, because in tropical regions, temperature tends to be very consistent over the course of the year. Um, so here in North America, especially in Pittsburgh, we have very hot summers and very cold winters. So organisms are very used to these big temperature fluctuations. In the tropics, they're sort of, um, acclimated or, um, evolved to, you know, have this very fairly narrow temperature range. So there is some suggestion that tropical organisms will actually be much more heavily impacted by, um, temperature changes than will, um, organisms elsewhere. So it'll be really interesting to see what happens, uh, when I get to analyzing those data. Yeah. Yeah. He'll tell us all about it for sure. Well, yeah. Going back to students, are we doing anything with students in Pennsylvania are communicating with? Yeah. So, okay. So there's a couple of things related to that. One is that I have worked with Lauren Horner and powder mill to set up what we're calling a Pittsburgh Borneo bio blitz. That's awesome. And that is going to be, and I have to double check the dates on this, but I think it's the 16th through the 20th of October. So that coincides with some activities they have out at powder mill. It works really well for our timing out in, um, in Borneo. And so what it's going to be is people can sign up for this project. I'm in I naturalist and all of the observations that are made, I believe the way we've set it up as Westmoreland County and Pittsburgh, um, you can contribute observations and basically we're competing to see who can see more wildlife. Yeah, yeah. We'll see. So, but my idea to kind of like make it interesting and hopefully people will then perceive it as like even more, I guess like fair and exciting is that I would love to see just total number of observations, number of participants and also um, percentage of known species. Right. So it's possible that there are more species in Borneo. I mean that's like there are more species over there, but are we going to be seeing a large percentage of them or are we only going to be seeing a small percentage of them and what can we get pictures of? Right. So it's like I'm not going to get pictures of hornbills probably because they're going to be flying overhead before I can like it get my camera to actually recognize that powder mill is our nature reserve. Yes. 60 miles or so Southeast of here. Yup. Well it's not in Pittsburgh. It's rural. It's still not going to compete with, but it has a very great research team out there. I'm in a wonderful like, you know, nature education team and they do a great job of identifying all the plants out there. Especially, there's a longstanding bird banding project out there, so it's I think the longest continuous bird banding project in the U S if not, yeah, there's a lot of birds that fly through there. The timing, I don't know anything about um, seasonality in terms of like what you're likely to see out there in October. But I have faith in the staff at powder mill and yeah, migrating birds. Yeah. Yeah. People want to find more about this. Where do they go? People can go to I naturalist and sign up for this project and then that will allow them to see both what is being observed here and in Borneo by our respective teams and contribute. If they are interested, you'll be able to see the link on this website and we should say, if you don't know what I naturalist is really cool app, it is incredible to me. So I remember when it started it, what it is, you basically take a picture of something, uh, natural meaning a plant or an animal or fungus, whatever it is and you upload it to this platform. I naturalist it is now so good that often the software recognizes at least what a family it is, if not sometimes the exact species that it is. And so that to me is incredible. It used to be that you would upload a photo and it was all about crowdsourcing, meaning other users would identify what that species was. And if enough users sort of had the same answer, then it gets sort of classified as research quality data. Um, but I think that, uh, what someone told me recently is now that for at least very common things, the software is so good at recognizing these images that it will frequently classify them correctly. That's great. My daughter and I. Awesome. Ooh. So I expect you to sign up for our project. Sure. Good, good, good. And then I also want to touch base on the other thing that you mentioned. So you mentioned connecting students more broadly. So this is sort of a trial run for something that I'm hoping to do more longterm, which is to connect, as you said, students in Pittsburgh with students in Borneo. So I've been working with teachers here in Pittsburgh to try to develop how to incorporate I naturalist and observations into their curriculum. And I'll be meeting with teachers when I go to Borneo to try to then connect specific classrooms, um, together. And I think that will be really interesting. I, I've talked to a teacher at the Valley school in Ligonier, um, a teacher from city high. I am meeting with our education team again to talk more specifically about what other schools in Pittsburgh we can target. So if anyone listening, if you're either a school, a student, or a teacher or you know, someone who may be interested, please reach out to me and get to me through Sloan or Eric and also through the website in general if you would like to participate in this. This is something that I'm hoping to establish in the coming year and have it be an ongoing thing for several years. At least. There's another very important question about your going to born. And that is, is it true that gin and tonics are proof against malaria? Yes, they are. Um, so I, I will tell you about that, Eric, because I love a good gin and tonic and my love of gin and tonics comes from having lived in Singapore. Um, so I, I, you know, as an American, I, you know, I was not really on my radar growing up. It was not something my parents drank or anything like that. Um, but I lived, uh, when I was in Singapore as a graduate student or a postdoc, I should say. Um, I had several British friends and, uh, British people in the tropics especially seem to be very big on gin and tonics. So this comes from the fact that tonic contains, and I'm not gonna pronounce this correctly, it's either Quintin or quinine. I think the British say Quentin Quinny. Yes. Maybe more American. Yeah. And so that is, um, a prophylactic against malaria. Um, and so by drinking gin and tonics, because I mean, who would want to drink just tonic water? So you want to put a little bit of gin in there? That could be just as good a, no, no, no, no. It's gotta be Jen, come on. Let's be serious. All those years my dad was, was fortifying himself against malaria and[inaudible]. Yeah. So I own particular brand of O of I am a gen master. You should definitely like come to my house and see, I think I have nine gins on my gin shelf at the moment from all over. I found a really nice one in Michigan recently that's kind of peppery. There's a Spanish one that is by far my favorite. Um, that's really, really wonderful from Galicia in the Northwest. Right. I know we shouldn't, we should really do. So while I've been working with a distiller locally to try to get an alcohol house gin, there we go. That's what we made. Yeah, that's what I want. Yeah. And so any, any, since clearly you've had some experience, any tips on making a good chin and Tony? Um, so my roommates and I used to say half and half is the perfect measure, but that's partly because we have a lot of ice in our glass. Um, and so you kind of, I would say it's, you know, like two fingers, right. And then you kind of swirl it around in the ice and then it, it sort of like the ice melts a little bit and then brings it up almost a half and then you add the tonic slice a line. That sounds like the voice of experience. Yes, absolutely. Also[inaudible] so we'll be sharing Jen's progress. Yeah. Trip on our various platforms. Great. Yeah, stay tuned. And you can also follow me on Instagram and Twitter and Instagram in the rainforest. Um, sometimes it's sometimes hard to upload to it. Um, so I do the best I can when I'm out there, but it always does shock me to be in the middle of the forest and to have any kind of like connectivity or on a Hill or something. Yeah. Jen, thank you so much for joining us. You for having good luck. Safe travels. Thank you. We will talk to you when you come back. Great. I can't wait. Thanks. Thanks you Jennifer Sheridan for joining us. Join us next time for our interview with Jonathan Rice, urban bird conservation coordinator here at Carnegie museum of natural history. A's for Anthropocene living in the age of humanity is the podcast of museum of natural

Speaker 2: 53:26

history. Our producer and engineer is Tim Evans. In our webmaster is Kathleen Young. For more information, visit us@carnegiemnh.org.