Heart Health, Explosive Gas, and Mexican Mollies (2/8/15)

Last Sunday's program with Dr. Jennifer Shaw from the OSU Department of Integrative Biology, was about how we might learn something about our own body chemistry by studying some amazing fish from Mexico.

I kicked us off with a new song called "Team Science." This is a topic I've wanted to work into a song for a while - how scientists always work as part of an enormous team. Since Jennifer made an unexpected connection with another researcher, using Dr. Michi Tobler's fish evolution studies to further her investigation of how we humans regulate hydrogen sulfide, it seemed like a great way to illustrate the point that scientists do not work alone.

Brand new song, "Team Science"

Hydrogen sulfide is an important signaling molecule that helps our bodies know when to grow new blood vessels, among other things. On it's own, it's a poisonous gas, and it stinks. So of course we wanted to smell it!

Jennifer prepares to release some hydrogen sulfide gas.

Adding powder to water to release the gas.

Jennifer wafts the gas gently so I won't get a harmful dose. I take a whiff - whew! Smells like rotten eggs!

Dr. Tobler's fish are nearly identical except that one group evolved the ability to live in hydrogen sulfide springs. Since the two fish are so similar we can assume that any genetic differences probably have something to do with processing hydrogen sulfide. This can help us figure out which genes are most involved, by comparing how genes are expressed between the two types of fish, when they live with and without hydrogen sulfide in their water. 

And guess what, we humans have a lot in common with fish! The same mechanisms are at work in our own bodies.

Amazing Mexican Mollies that live just fine in pools poisoned by hydrogen sulfide.

Nearly identical mollies collected from nearby pools without hydrogen sulfide. These fish can't survive in the sulfide pools.

Jennifer's lab setup - this is how she delivers hydrogen sulfide to the fish in her experiments.

Hydrogen sulfide is something our bodies need, in small amounts. Too much is poison. There are human diseases related to both having too much and having too little hydrogen sulfide available in our bodies. Understanding how these sulfide tolerant fish can manage will help us figure out how to correct the balance when it goes wrong for us! 

Loser Lizards and Motherly Winners (March 23, 2014)

Our most recent program was on the Sunday after Spring Break. In hindsight, not the best date for a program! We had two kids show up, and their parents. So, a small group, but we had a great time anyway, and asked lots of good questions.

In preparation for this program I visited my guest, Jess Magaña, at the OSU Zoology Department where she does her research. I took some pretty good photos of lizards in their cages...

Brown anole lizards in their cages at the OSU Zoology Department

Jess holding one of her subjects.

This is just one section of one wall of the lizard room!

I kicked the program off with a new song, "My Lizard Brain," which is basically about how mysterious it is the way we humans make decisions, and maybe that it has a lot to do with the way other animals make decisions, since we've retained a lot of ancient circuitry in our brains through the process of evolution. I expressed all that in the form of a love song, which my wife, Lisa, finds intriguing - it's the second lizard love song I've written. I don't know if that's a coincidence or a "thing." Maybe a lizard love CD is in the works.

I kicked us off with a brand new song.

Jess's research was inspired by thinking about how lizards make decisions about allocating their energy. In particular, how does a female lizard decide (and we use the word "decide" loosely here, since it probably isn't a conscious decision being made) how much energy to put into making eggs and babies? I asked everyone to think like a lizard and allocate some energy to various lizard activities such as finding food, defending territory, and reproduction.

Giving some thought to how much energy a lizard should allocate to various lizard activities such as finding food, defending territory, and reproduction.

Collecting data from our imaginary lizards.

Just like in real life, we got lots of different answers for our imaginary lizards. We talked about different kinds of things that might effect a lizard's choices. The thing that Jess was most interested in is what's called "the experience effect." Lots of animals' behaviors are known to be effected by things they've experienced in the past. Jess wanted to know whether a female lizard would put more or less energy into her eggs and offspring according to whether she has won or lost fights for territory in the past.

Answering questions.

To find out, she paired female lizards in conflict situations by putting one lizard into another's territory. After ten minutes she removed the interloping lizard, effectively making it the loser. Then she followed the winners and losers over time to see how they did with their eggs and offspring.

During our program tried putting two males together in a cage, so we could observe some of the aggressive behaviors. We saw the lizards move toward one another and bob their heads. We didn't see them display their dewlaps, though, as they often will.

Lizard fight! We introduced the light brown lizard on the right into the cage to see if the darker lizard on the left would defend his territory.

The lighter lizard made aggressive moves up the stick.

The darker lizard finally turned to face the interloper. They never got too energetic about the confrontation, though. Maybe they felt too cold or too "on display" for an energetic fight.

Jess found in her study that the lizards who lost territorial fights put less energy into their offspring and more energy into their own upkeep. Those who had won the fights gained less weight and hatched heavier babies. Moreover, the effect was increased with the number of fights. The heaviest babies came from the lizards who had won two or three fights instead of just one.

One of our attendees suggested that the lizards who win fights can get the best territory with the most food, and therefore it makes sense that they would spawn larger offspring. That's probably true of lizards in the wild.

However, Jess went to a lot of trouble to make sure the lizards in her study got the same amount of food, and lived in very similar "territories." The only difference between the winning group and the losing group was that the winning group won their fight and the losing group lost theirs. I think it's really interesting that just losing a fight or two triggers the lizard to put less energy into her eggs.

Next time we'll be delving into the teeny tiny world of proteins and trying to figure out how those micro-machines that run our bodies do what they do! 

April 13, 2:00 at the library. I hope to see you then!!

Imperiled Bats of Tar Creek (March 9, 2014)

Whew, it's been a while, but we did it - another Born to Do Science program for the books!

My guests were Dr. Karen McBee and her student, Rachel Eguren, whose study we talked about.

Rachel, who did the bat study, Karen, her advisor, Monty (me) the host, Elizabeth the children's librarian

I performed a brand new song based on Rachel's research. She wanted to find out whether the bats at the Tar Creek superfund site are affected by toxins in the area. She had to come up with a really clever way to answer that question, since you can't just ask a bat how it's feeling. The song, "Figure It Out" takes the form of a few journal entries where the researcher is trying to feel her way through the process. Scientists don't get to follow directions in a lab book - they're figuring out how to do things as they go!

Me singing a brand new song, "Figure It Out," inspired by Rachel's research project. 

What Rachel ended up doing is flying bats through an obstacle course made of strings that would drop when hit by a bat's wing. She charted the time each bat spent in the air against the number of strings dropped. As you would expect, for the control group (bats from a healthy habitat), the longer the bats flew the more strings they knocked down. However the Tar Creek bats showed almost no such correlation!

To get us in the question asking mood, we ran the kids through their own obstacle course, made from sections of carpet tubes. In hindsight, we should have placed the tubes closer together, or maybe had the kids stick their elbows out like bat wings, because even when we spun them with their eyes closed to simulate bats whose brains are addled with lead, hardly a tube got knocked over. Rachel had more time than we did to design her obstacle course. She made sure the strings were placed so that the bats could get through without knocking strings, but it was a challenging for them.

We timed each kid's run through the obstacle course, just like Rachel did with the bats.

After our activity we discussed lots of details about Rachel's study, including how she video taped the bats using a night-vision (infra-red) camera. She needed a marker in the bat cage to show depth so she could tell on the video whether the bats were flying through the obstacles. The marker had to be warm, to show up on camera, it had to stay warm for a long time, it couldn't require an electric outlet since she did her trials outdoors where the bats live, and it had to be relatively inexpensive. See the photo caption to find out what she used...

Karen passing around a "hot hands" - this is what Rachel used as a marker in her night vision (infra-red) video.

Rachel is still compiling results from the lab so she can correlate each bat's performance in the obstacle course with the levels of toxins found in their body tissues. But judging from the bats' performance in the obstacle course, the is definitely something different going on with the Tar Creek bats. The heavy metals in the area, including lead, may be affecting the bats' brain function, which could interfere with their ability to maneuver. This would make it more difficult for them to hunt at night.

The heavy metals in the soil and water around Tar Creek were left there by mining operations started over 100 years ago. In 2009 the town of Pitcher was completely evacuated due to the toxins. Dr. McBee and her students are studying many different aspects of how wildlife in the Tar Creek area has been affected.

Bats from the OSU Zoology Department collection.

Looking through the night vision camera!

Bat skeleton.

Thanks to Rachel, Karen, and the Stillwater Public Library for making this program possible, and for support from the National Science Foundation.

See you next time for "Loser Lizards and Motherly Winners!"

This Saturday - My One and Only Vole!

Don't forget we're meeting a week early this month! Saturday March 10. I hope to see you there! We're working on setting up a live vole-cam in the lab! Here's what the program is about:

--

Vole pups! I borrowed this photo from a Mother Nature
Network article, 11 Animals that Mate For Life.

Zoology student Tomica Blocker will share the science of "voles in love" in a program for children Saturday at the Stillwater Public Library.

Blocker, a master's student in zoology at Oklahoma State University, will present "My One and Only Vole" at Monty Harper's "Born to Do Science." "Born to Do Science" is a monthly program that gives students a chance to meet scientists and learn about their research. The series is hosted by Monty Harper, a local children's musician who composes a song for each program inspired by his guest scientist's work.

Three brother voles moved nesting material
one mouthful at a time from one end of
their tub to the other while I interviewed
Tomica about her research.

"Prairie voles are a fascinating species to study," said Harper. "It's a rare mammal that sticks with a single mate for life. It's even rarer to find a mammal species where mothers and fathers both care for their young. That's why certain types of prairie voles are useful model species for investigating human behavior and physiology; they are rodents with family values. We can learn a lot about ourselves by studying these cute little monogamous mammals."

The presentation will include hands-on activities for the participants. "This one will be a lot of fun," said Harper. "We'll have kids up acting out vole social recognition using olfactory cues, analyzing vole behaviors in videos from the lab, and even designing their own vole research!"

One of the voles gets a sunflower seed treat.

"Born to Do Science" is free and open to students in at least third grade. Parents are encouraged to attend, participate, and learn along with their children. It will begin at 10:00 a.m. in Room 119 of the library. Registration is requested at (405) 377-3633 or askalibrarian@stillwater.org.

For more information about "Born to Do Science" or to listen to podcast interviews with past guest scientists, visit www.BornToDoScience.com. Stillwater Public Library is at 1107 S. Duck St.