Finding Genius Podcast

Bees as ant trackers? Turning off a species' immune or motor neuron system? Drones used for precision delivery of products? These are just a couple of the topics explored by ant specialist and researcher Dr. Ben Hoffman. Press play to discover: Why ants are particularly good at becoming invasive, and what features tend to be shared by ants that become invasive How bees have been trained to find and hover around ants for monitoring purposes, and the challenges posed by this strategy How ants from one area of the world can easily end up in another part of the world, and what can be done to try to prevent this Dr. Ben Hoffman is Principal Research Scientist at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia. He specializes in the study of ants—specifically how ants become invasive, what parts of biology contribute to their success in becoming invasive, and how they can be better managed. Dr. Hoffman focuses his efforts on ongoing research in this regard, and on helping people understand and control invasive ant species. He explains that an 'invasive species' is one that is known to have impacts on people, environments and ecological systems, or agriculture. One of the primary challenges in removing invasive ant species is doing so without contaminating or destroying the environment from which they're being removed. In part, this is challenging because general insecticides are used to kill invasive ant species, and these insecticides can produce unavoidable negative impacts on the surrounding area. An even greater challenge, Dr. Hoffman explains, is simply detecting the presence of an invasive ant species. He explores ways of overcoming these challenges, and touches on many other topics along the way, including the ecological role of insects, ant colony structure and communication, the invasion process, and more. For more information, visit https://people.csiro.au/H/B/Ben-Hoffmann. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Can the immune response to viral infection be strengthened to the point that the impact of the infection is greatly reduced, and later or latent infection is prevented? This is the question at the crux of Ebony Monson's research in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Microbiology at Latrobe University in Australia. Tune in to learn: Why 'lipid droplets'—previously thought to be only a storage location for lipids—may actually play a critical role in the immune response to viral infection What happens from the moment a virus enters the body to the time it creates pathogenesis in the host What significant functions interferon and cytokines fill during viral infection, and what leads to an exaggerated immune response that actually harms the host Monson's work focuses primarily on viruses that infect humans—flaviviruses specifically, such as Zika, dengue, and hepatitis C. She studies the innate immune response that's produced immediately after an infection, with the goal of better understanding how this innate immune response can be enhanced or augmented. Monson recently finished her PhD, which demonstrated that during early viral infection, there is an accumulation of new lipid droplets within the cytoplasm of cells, and an increase in the size of existing lipid droplets. Furthermore, Monson demonstrated that these lipid droplets are necessary for an effective interferon response during viral infection, and that without them, there would be a much more exaggerated immune response. Prior to this research, no one thought much of lipid droplets, as they were largely assumed to be unimportant in the development or progression of the immune response. Monson explains how these lipids can be broken down and can actually become toxic to the host, how they move around in the cell, how they grow and become depleted, and a number of other topics which are the subject of ongoing research. Tune in for all the details. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

"…Their society and community is so complicated, that in fact you cannot really have a straight answer for why something is happening. You need to see it from a global perspective, and look at it from different angles…it's the complexity that makes it fascinating for me," says Dr. Fani Hatjina of bees, which have been the subject of her work for her entire professional life. She focuses specifically on social honey bees, and joins the show to discuss her current research goals and insights. Press play to discover: What royal jelly is, and how it is used by bees and humans How nectar is converted to honey Why beekeepers and scientists are particularly interested in studying and monitoring beehives during the winter months, and the challenges to doing so How bees carry pollen back to the beehive Dr. Hatjina is Director of the Institute of Animal Science & Department of Apiculture in Greece. After completing her PhD on the pollination behavior of bees, she went on to pursue additional research. Currently, her focus is on finding ways of increasing the resistance of local honey bee populations against a primary pest (the varroa mite), searching for alternative methods of controlling disease without chemicals, improving and preserving the local population of honey bees in Greece for the benefit of the species and for beekeepers, and studying the effects of pesticides and other environmental stressors on bees, such as the presence of heavy metals, and even chemicals that are used by beekeepers inside bee colonies. Dr. Hatjina explains 'pollination behavior,' which includes the way bees move inside the colony and on flowers or crops, how efficiently they transport pollen, and when they transport pollen. The idea is that by gaining a deeper understanding of this behavior, pollination efficiency can be increased. She also comments on the "many gaps in knowledge" when it comes to understanding what triggers the increase of pathogens and bee mortality in winter. Sensors inside or underneath bee colonies are being implemented in order to gain a better idea of the possible variables contributing to it, as well as generate some sort of image of what is going on within a bee hive during winter months. Infrared light can also be used to gather valuable information about the heat generated by the bees, the size of the swarm inside a colony, the position of bees inside a colony, and how these things can change according to the external temperature. Interested in learning more? Tune in for the full conversation and check out Dr. Hatjina's publications at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fani_Hatjina. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

The world's first human bionic eye is here, which means several conditions leading to blindness might (eventually) not be. What does it look like? How does a bionic eye work? What will the patient experience? Press play for the answers to these questions and more. You'll discover: How the human bionic eye processor stacks up against an HD TV Why this type of implant has the potential to treat many more conditions than other types of eye implants What makes the surgical implantation of this bionic eye technology more stable and less risky than earlier models Arthur Lowery is a professor at Monash University and a fellow at ARC Laureate Fellow Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, and for the past several years, he's been developing the world's first human bionic eye. Most people think of some sort of glass eyeball when they think of a bionic eye, but that's not what this is. Instead, it is a pair of sunglasses equipped with a camera and processing system, along with a coil on the back of the head which transmits power and data through the skull until it reaches a series of tiles, each about the size of half a fingernail. On the base of each tile, there is an electrode which goes into the brain and injects currents, leading to voltages. These voltages make the brain think that it is seeing what is being projected by the system. Whether someone lost an eye in an accident or injury, has age-related or genetic macular degeneration, or one of many conditions affecting the optic nerve, such as cancer, this technology holds promise. So, how long until it's ready to be implanted in a human, and what does the procedure entail? There is already a prototype, but still a number of regulatory components to navigate. Lowery anticipates that within a couple of years, it could be ready for use in humans. He also explains what exactly the procedure entails. To find out more, tune in and visit https://www.monash.edu/industry/success-stories/bionic-eye. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

It's easy to overlook an ant, but look again. As one not-so-small part of the ecological role of insects, ants have a profound impact, from their mutualistic relationship with plants to their ability to farm and grow fungus for food. Ecologist Tom Fayle shares many of these fascinating ant facts. Listen and learn How ants live inside plant species, protecting them from other pests and getting a habitat in return to house their ant colony structure, How some ants and plants even have an exclusionary mutualism, where each particular species is dependent on the other, and What other ant life cycle habits stand out, from ants infected by a fungus that changes their behavior to ant queen competition for a plant domatia. Tom Fayle is an ecologist and research scientist at the Czech Academy of Sciences. As an ecologist, he researches nature's networks, examining how species interact and impact each other alongside abiotic factors like elevation and human-generated impacts from deforestation to climate change. He has specified his research to ant ecology and shares some jaw-dropping stories of ant behavior. While ants don't eat plants for the most part, they do live inside plants. In fact, many plant and ant species have a mutualistic relationship, where each provides a benefit to the other towards a healthier life and reproductive cycle. He shares some of these examples, including ants protecting plants by attacking caterpillars that are trying to eat the plant. Ants can even weed, cleaning plants of encroaching vines and clarifying the surface of leaves from small epiphytes and lichens. In return, ants have a place to live. Structures plants produce call donatia can house ants, or they might use hollow stem structures. Plants can even feed ants through liquid sugar production from nectar. Ecological relationships can also be parasitic, as is the case with a fungus that infects an ant, even controlling its behavior to locate itself in a spot that's prime for fungal growth. He also discusses his future plans researching topics that include exciting PhD and postdoc opportunities. Listen in for more details. For more information, see antscience.com. For information specific to his work, see tomfayle.com. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Bees can generate five pounds of honey a day under prime nectar-gathering conditions. Numerous factors make that possible and researchers like William Meikle work on modeling honey bee populations, keeping track of how different stressors might affect honey bee colony health. Listen and learn What measures are important for beehive modeling and why, How bees are able to keep their brood area at a constant warm temperature, and What bee health productivity stressors are being analyzed and why, such as neonicotinoid exposure. Willliam G. Meikle is a research entomologist with the United States Department of Agriculture. He studies the colony-level behavior of bees through placing sensors on colonies and monitoring them over long periods of time. This can gather evidence for how they might respond to sub lethal pesticides and other stressors. He's therefore constantly measuring things like hive weight, temperature, CO2, and internal humidity. These measures are akin to numbers from a monitor your doctor might have used to check your health. Various measures might indicate your activity, from sleeping to eating to drinking a cup of coffee. No, bees don't drink coffee, but they do get exposed to neonicotinoids, which are a common type of agriculture insecticide affecting bees. Even at low amounts, he says he can see some sort of impact. Higher levels seem to cause bees to stop foraging, for example. Temperature is another abiotic factor he monitors. Bees have an amazing ability to keep the center area, the brood area, quite warm and constant. Bee social behavior is more than just an inclination. Rather, they work as a superorganism, teaming up and taking turns to use their thoracic muscle movement to warm the center of the hive one by one. A healthy brood is dependent on this constant warmth, and bee population increase can only happen with successful brood rearing. Listen in for more indications of bee colony health. For more about his work, see the USDA Honey Bee web page. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Pesticides, poor nutrition, pests, and parasites: these are the four factors influencing bee health around the world, and the amount of information we have about each—how exactly they impact bees, whether each relates to the others, and what can be done about them—is constantly growing. Press play to learn: How a particular fungicide may be altering the bioavailability of a critical micronutrient for bees Where bees are kept during commercial pollination, and how this may be contributing to poor nutrition What indicates health within a bee colony, and what metrics are used to measure the health of a bee colony Priyadarshini Chakrabarti Basu is a postdoctoral research associate at Oregon State University Honey Bee Lab, and for over a decade now, she's been studying environmental impacts on bee populations. Basu's current work focuses on two specific areas within this field of research: pesticides and poor nutrition. She's not only investigating each individually, but exploring the ways in which they may be interconnected. When it comes to nutrition, she explains that most research to date has looked into the macronutrients required by bees, which are primarily carbohydrates and proteins. Only recently have a couple of research groups—including hers—put their focus on the importance of micronutrients required by bees. Phytosterols are a group of molecules similar to cholesterol that are a required micronutrient for bees, as they fulfill several functions, including the production of important hormones and the maintenance of cell membrane integrity. Bees source phytosterols naturally from plant pollens, so Basu and the OSU Honey Bee Lab team is trying to collect as many types of pollen as possible in order to look at the phytosterol spectrum available to bees, and determine how they might be able to add this critical micronutrient to the diet of bees that are lacking it. Basu is also involved in a project which is being carried out in collaboration with growers and beekeepers with the goal of following hives across multiple cropping systems in order to evaluate colony health and growth, as well as assess individual bee physiology. The ins and outs of the research being done at the OSU Honey Bee Lab are brought to light in today's episode, along with many other informative and interesting aspects of bee health, types of apiculture (beekeeping), commercial crop production, methods of pollination (including cross-pollination and self-pollination), and more. Tune in and visit https://honeybeelab.oregonstate.edu/. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

The rabies virus kills at least 60,000 people a year, worldwide. Because it is far more prevalent in lower economic status countries, it doesn't receive adequate funding for better vaccines or treatment. Researchers like Yves Gaudin are trying to change this. He works on understanding the mechanisms of rhabdovirus transmission. Listen and learn How rhabdoviruses enter cells and install their viral factories, which are protected by liquid phase separation, Why the polymerase is key to making the viral particle infectious, and How their efforts to destabilize the liquid phase separation that contains the viral factory is one main avenue to a possible treatment. Yves Gaudin is a researcher with CNRS and the Institut de Biologie Intégrative de la Cellule. CNRS is France's National Center for Scientific Research. He's a virologist studying the rhabdovirus family, which includes the rabies virus, Chandipura virus (CHAV), and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). He describes two central mechanisms that characterize this family. First the rhabdovirus causes a particular entry process and requires a polymerase for infection: the glycoprotein, which makes a spike around the virion, recognizes the cell receptor and attaches. This triggers endocytoses and an eventual fusion event allows the viral genome and polymerase is to be released into the cytoplasm. The polymerase immediately copies that genome into an mRNA, which then hijacks the cellular machinery. The polymerase presence is vital to infection—without it, the viral particle would be inert, so targeting that polymerase offers one attack possiblity. Second, his lab has characterized the chemical nature of viral factory itself. It is distinguished by liquid phase separation—it is housed inside a compartment that separates it, like oil in water, from the cell cytoplasm. The interaction between this factory and our innate immune system spreads the infection, using the pathway to the synthesis of interferon, and so on. This liquid phase separation helps the virus keep its identity in the cell and provides another focus for fighting these viruses. They hope to find small molecules that could destabilize this liquid phase separation or utilize some other weakness such as their sensitivity to temperature. Here is the website where Yves Gaudin article is freely available: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00102-9 In the section entitled additional information, listeners can find the movies: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00102-9#additional-information Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

The queen bee has to get it right when she mates, because she only has one intense mating session for the duration of her life. The queen bee's anatomy and basic honey bee biology work together for success and Julian Rangel Posada tells listeners how. Listen and learn Why the queen flies a mile away to mate as well as other interesting details of honey bee social behavior, What the exact mechanics of honey bee mating are and why drones are "expensive" to maintain, and What she's researching about pollen choice and lipid-to-protein ratios that help bees maintain health and improve recovery from viruses they contract from types of mites. Juliana Rangel Posada is an associate professor of apiculture in the Department of Entomology and leads the Texas A&M University Honey Bee Research Program. She studies biotic and abiotic factors affecting bee health. The number one problem for honey bees is the varroa mite, and she starts the conversation addressing how her lab showed that the chemicals used to treat the mites actually affects both the mites and bees. The wax that makes up the honey comb absorbs the chemicals like a sponge, and bees grow and develop within this wax home, absorbing the chemicals. The chemical buildup causes queens to develop lower reproductive capacity and also affects drone sperm and viability. She shares various ways they advise beekeepers to mitigate this affect, including clearing out the wax every few years. She also describes for listeners a detailed and fascinating description of honey bee matting, one of several honey bee behavioral adaptations evolved to increase genetic diversity and reproductive success. She explains the harsh life of the drone, reared for mating and killed off quickly after they've done their job. She also describes the drone's endophallus and how a queen manages multiple mates and their sperm by taking in this organ. The next mate removes the endophallus of the previous one and so on, until she has sperm from multiple mates to continue producing eggs for years. In addition to reproductive studies, her lab is researching foraging behavior and nutrition to see if honey bees are using certain pollens with various ratios of lipid-to-proteins that affect their survivability. For more, see her lab's Facebook page, facebook.com/TAMUhoneybeelab, which includes a "stay-at-home beekeeping series." Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

From smelly footprints and dances to furry coats and long tongues, Professor Dave Goulson from the University of Sussex talks about it all. We often refer to "bees" as though there's only one kind, but in fact, over 20,000 species of bee have been identified. Goulson shares fascinating data and insights primarily on two: the bumblebee and the honeybee. Press play to discover: How bumblebees and honeybees differ (in many, many ways!) What two critical pieces of information are conveyed by the waggle dance of honeybees What sensing ability of bees explains why a bee may or may not choose to land on a flower for pollen or nectar Goulson's lifelong captivation by insects led to a fascination of bees in his adult life, and for the past 25 years, he's been studying them. Initially, the focus of his research was on the foraging strategies of different species of bee, but it's since shifted to an investigation of why bee populations are declining, and what can be done about it. As a specialist in the ecology and conservation of bumblebees, Goulson discusses what he believes to be the primary driving force behind the declining numbers: habitat loss, such as hay meadows in the UK and prairie fields in North America. But he's careful to note that other factors are likely at play too, including the heavy use of pesticides, and the fact that bumblebees suffer from a range of parasites and diseases. What do bumblebees eat, and which nutrients are provided by pollen versus nectar? How can seemingly strange bumblebee behaviors actually make a whole lot of evolutionary sense? How can you differentiate between a male and female bee? What exactly happens when a bee pollinates a flower? What types of technology are used for tracking and gathering data on bees? You'll get a compelling and thorough answer to all of these questions and more. Tune in and check out https://www.thebuzzclub.uk/. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK