Science Talks

How did venom evolve?

Venom... it is a substance that many animals produce, including rattlesnakes, that helps them to survive by assisting with capturing their prey. Here, you will learn all about how ecology can influence the evolution of venom in rattlesnake populations from the Gulf of California. We interview lead author Samuel Hirst and discuss his recently published manuscript titled "Island Biogeography and competition drive rapid venom complexity evolution across rattlesnakes," published in the peer-reviewed journal Evolution. We discuss how ecology and evolution interact, which leads to the traits observed in living populations today. The paper is linked here [https://academic.oup.com/evolut/advance-article/doi/10.1093/evolut/qpaf074/8118642]. You can follow Samuel Hirst's work through the following sources: Lab website: https://www.margreslab.com/ [https://www.margreslab.com/] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/SamuelRHirst/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/SamuelRHirst/] Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hirsticane/ [https://www.instagram.com/hirsticane/] Bluesky: @hirsticane.bsky.social [http://hirsticane.bsky.social]

What's fungi got to do with plants?

In this episode, Dr. Liz Bowman describes the importance of fungi in the lives of plants. We focus particularly on the invasive plant - Buffelgrass - and how fungal communities differ between populations in their native (African) and non-Native (Texas & Arizona) ranges. Surprisingly, fungus plays a very important role in the lives of plants! Listen in to hear about differences among these communities and our discussion of her recent paper titled "Invasive Buffelgrass, Cenchrus ciliaris, Balances Opportunistic Acquisition of Foliar fungi With Host and Environmental Filtering in Its Introduced Range" published in the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Ecology. You can click on this link to read the paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.17609 [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.17609] Dr. Bowman received her Bachelor of Science in Botany from Oregon State University before going on to her Master of Science and Ph.D. in plant pathology at the University of Arizona. She is currently a research associate in the Department of Integrated Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is stationed at the Brackenridge Field Station. She has 10 peer-reviewed publications and focuses her work on plant-fungal associations. She also has a new blog that you should follow! It can be found here: https://sustainablesymbioses.substack.com/ [https://sustainablesymbioses.substack.com/] You can also follow her work on Instagram @liz_bowman_fungi [https://www.instagram.com/liz_bowman_fungi/#] *Special note/correction: The pathogen that causes Sudden Oak Death, an oomycete which is a Stramenopile, is more virulent on red oak than white oak.

What can ice tell us about global climate change?

This episode addresses how we know what temperatures and concentrations of atmospheric gases were long before humans could record it with modern instrumentation. Ice tells a story about what the environment was like tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago. Here we interview Dr. Dr. Kaden Martin, a scientists interested in major climate shifts over geologic time. Dr. Martin is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dr. Martin graduated from Oregon State University with a Ph.D. in Ocean, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences and has seven peer-reviewed articles that document the use of ice core data to better understand climate variability across geographic regions and time. In this episode we discuss his most recent paper titled: "Greenland Ice Cores Reveal a South-To-North Difference in Holocene Thermal Maximum Timings" published in 2024 in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Letters Research. To follow along you can view his paper here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024GL111405 [https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024GL111405].

What is antibiotic resistance?

In this episode, we interview Dr. Amrita Bhattacharya [https://www.linkedin.com/in/amritabphd/], an expert in the field of data science. She recently published the paper, Exceptions to the rule: When does resistance evolution not undermine antibiotic therapy in human bacterial infections?, which was published in the journal Evolution Letters in 2024. You can access the paper using this link [https://academic.oup.com/evlett/article/8/4/478/7618138].