Instant Genius - Dung beetles, with Sally-Ann Spence

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

Dung beetles are incredibly important insects. They keep fields clean by munching through dung, help aerate soil, and act as a food source for various animals. Dung beetle expert Sally Ann Spence tells us all about these little insects, reveals where you can find them, and explains why we should look after them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. From BBC Science Focus magazine, this is Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Alice Sipscomb Southwell, the managing editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. In this episode, I talked to Dunstan. beetle expert, Sally Ann Spence. Sally Ann is a fellow of both the Royal Entomological Society and the Linnaean Society, and she's also an honorary associate at the Oxford Museum of Natural History. She founded the UK dung beetle mapping project to gather data all about the poo-munching insects. In this episode, she tells us all about dung beetles.

So, Sally Ann, you're a dung beetle expert. Now, dung beetles are widely known for collecting dung, but what do they actually use the dung for? So dung beetles are actually, they are collecting the dung in a way actually because they're using the dung for a food source. The adults are sort of mashing it up and sucking all the goodness out of it if you like. And the larvae are eating the solids that are sort of left thereafter. But they're also living in it. It's their habitat. It's their protection.

It's their home. You know, it's their place. So they're using it on many different levels, but ultimately as a food source. Now, is eating dung quite unusual in beetles? It is more unusual probably in this country because they have less competition for the dung. So we have less invertebrates to eat the dung in this country. That's why our dung beetles have exploited the dung as a source. You'd have a lot of beetles that are eating leaves directly.

So you've got a whole group actually called leaf beetles because that's what they're doing. They're busy eating leaves. but dung beetles are almost exploiting the next stage where the leaves have been consumed by an animal and pass through and come out in the dung and there's not a lot of competition. So it's almost like they're using the dung for that. If you go around the world, the competition increases hugely. And until you get to areas where there are virtually no, well, there's not many mammals and a phenomenally large competition for the dung.

So you might have something like in the tropics. rainforest you have monkeys and the dung beetles there have adapted to actually live on the anus and then when the dung's produced they're there on source and can get it you know so it's it's about competition as well it's about that niche it's about that adaptation so the dung beetles are basically beetles that have adapted to eat organic matter after it's passed through another animal or an animal yeah and you mentioned there that we've got dung beetles in the UK now I think people would be quite surprised to hear about that because I didn't know we did yeah they've been People don't realize we have dung beetles in this country because we just don't see them a lot.

You know, we're our groups of dung beetles. We've got three big groups of dung beetles. And they're pretty much divided into those that live in it, the dwellers and those that live under it, the tulliners, if you like. And because of that, we just don't see them. Not many people go out and look through dung, so they don't come across the dung beetles. And what they are thinking of when they think about dung beetles is they're thinking of those dung beetles as a rolling the ball of dung, the elephant dung. David Attenborough's leapt out of the safari, you know, Land Rover, gone over and sort of now getting everybody excited about this gorgeous dung beetle rolling this dung ball away.

And that's due to food competition. You know, they're packing it into a ball, rolling it away. There's other beetles that can actually specialize in stealing off those balls as well, the dung balls. You know, it's just all about competition. And so those beetles are seen. They're big. You know, our dung beetles are northern hemisphere. They're quite small.

And they live in it or under it. So they're quite static, you know, in that respect. and they're just an environment that we don't often look at and come in contact. Most people would see dung and probably run the other way. So we just don't see them. And is that literally the best way you can go and find them is go into a field and start rummaging through cowpats? Yeah, you can. I mean, I've got to say there's a biosecurity issues.

So, you know, do wear gloves and disinfect and all rest of it because you can move diseases around from one load of livestock to another. You know, never go in a field without farmers' permission. and also be really careful there is an element of risk attached to dung beetling if you're in a field with livestock. So that aside, then yeah, basically if you want to find dung beetles, you have to go to their habitat and their habitat is the dung pat. So you can find dung all over the place. You know, they're feeding on wild animal dung as well as on livestock, domestic livestock. So you can come across them, but you do have to get amongst the dung to find them.

Now does each dung beetle specialise in a particular type of dung or will any poo do? They can be. So very specialist. It depends on the species. You'll get some dung beetles that will go anywhere in just about any type of dung. Ruf of peas is one in particular. I've found that all over the UK in all sorts of different dung. One of my most surprising places was on a shingle beach on the tide line in red deer dung on the island of arun. You know, not a great environment. But for this, but it was there, it was feeding on the dung. Its dung was there, so it followed it, basically. And I found that also in dung on things like rhinoceros and Cotswell Wildlife Park and things like that. However, there's also very specialist dung beetles that are only feeding on certain animal dung, certain livestock preference. And then you get something like Defer, which is the Minotaur beetle.

That is a lovely dung beetle that digs a hole, almost a roller, but not quite, because it rolls the dung into its hole, but it's not making the dung into a circle to roll into its hole. But it likes to have dung, like rabbit dung, deer dung and sheep dung, but only when they're in that petted form. So, and not all sheep and deer dung is in a in a pebblerated form. You know, it's very, as I say, it's very special. But that's, you know, there is that that goes on. Some dung beetles like certain soils, certain temperatures, you know, all certain, some like dung when it's on ground when the dung is touching the interfaces of soil, some like dung when it's in a shade, some like it when it's on long grass, you know,

some like it in woodland, you know, all this sort of thing. Because there's been a variety of habitats that livestock and animals live in, the dung beetles have exploited all those habitats as well and some have become very specialist and some are not. They're very generalist. Do any dung beetles eat human poo? Yes, yeah, they'll have a go. I mean, in this country we don't often leave pool sort of just randomly around the countryside. But if you're going out to the tropics in particular, as I said earlier on, you know, there's less competition, sorry, there's an increased competition for dung and less dung. So invariably samples will come back from the tropics and if you're going to take dung out into the rainforest with you, it's a lot of hassle.

The best thing is to do is collect what you produce and homogenize it. That's really important. Mix it up because there might be someone. in your group who's a smoker, somebody who's not, and all rest is, you mix it all up, you put it in a little bag, or quite a large bag, in fact, and you bring the dung beetles to you. So, you know, if any samples that come through with HF on, normally human feces, then that's what's brought them in. But yes, you know, you will get dung beetles in carnivore poo, as well as her before, but on the whole, they're more prevalent towards herbivore dung in this country, definitely. And why should we care about dunges?

beetles. Why are they so important? Right. Now you've just opened the Pandora box of how important these beetles are. They are so overlooked and what they do for us is phenomenal. I'm going to go through a bit of a list here and I hope I don't miss anything off.

So they're digging holes. A lot of the dung beetles are tunnelers. So the group that are tunnellers are busy digging holes under the dung. And if the soil is nice and light, they can go down to about a metre or so in depth. That's quite a long way. Those beetles are quite large. They're about the lever hole.

It's about the size of my thumb. And that has a huge effect on the soil of the field, the pasture and soil. I'm trying to think of the soil health. Let's say soil health. So what that allows to happen is rainwater to infiltrate. Really important with things like flooding, flash flugging and taking that soil erosion.

It also is mixing up the soil biology, the fungi. and the bacteria, the subsoil and the topsoil, all these things are happening when they're digging down that bit. It's aerating the soil as well, a lot of air in the soil, so it's helping to aeriate. Oh, golly, I'm going to go through a great big list. Then you've got the fact that they're actually eating the dung.

That's really important, because if you have pasture fowling, so dung that stays on the ground and is not removed, we'll just sit there and the animals won't graze in that spot around it. And you can sit there for a very long time. we're talking months or so, you know, so it can just write off your pasture. But in that dung, you'll have things breeding that are detrimental to your livestock. So certain flies and things, I'm going to be very careful. I've got an entomological friend who loves her flies and she'll be upset if I call them pest flies.

But there are a group of flies that cause, you know, welfare problems with livestock. So if the dung beetles are breaking down that dung, those flies and things haven't got the time to breed in it. They also carry a little frettic mite with them. might will come off them in the dung and whizz around and feed on those the maggots and the fly eggs as well so you know there's that going on really important relationship with that might and then you've got them breaking down the dung so quickly that sort of intestinal nematodes and things like that that go through livestock that are parasites and they come into the dung and then they'll go through another life stage and they'll pass out and migrate into the grass and be consumed again they can't

do that because that part of their life cycle, that habitat they need to have the next stage in their life cycle, has been removed. So you're actually helping your animal welfare as well. Then you have got, as I say, generally removing organic matter. Both the adults and the larvae are really, really important food sources to the wider biodiversity. So we're looking at mammals, reptiles, birds, other invertebrates. Everything seems to eat my dung beetles and their larvae. so they're really important for that. I'm trying to think of all the other things they do. So if dung's on the surface

and it's capped by the wind and the rain and it's nice wet cattle dung or something like that, it will be producing methane. If the dung beetles are in there and they're breaking it down, it's unable to produce methane, which of course is one of our greenhouse gases. And so on and so forth, you know, what they're doing is massive.

It's a colossal amount of ecosystem functions, but we just don't see them because we just don't notice. When you notice you haven't got dung beetles, is when your system's breaking down, you've got dung everywhere, and things are not great. And this is what's happened in Australia in the past. But so, you know, dung beetles are busy doing a phenomenal amount of ecosystem functions that are important for soil health, for the partial land ecology.

And I talk about partial land, but, you know, dung beetles and say are in lots of other habitats. And they're just really important for the wider biodiversity. So lots going on with dung beetles are phenomenal, awesome creatures. You mentioned there that Australia's had a real problem with dung. So can you dig into that a little bit more for us, please? Yes, yeah, I shall dig into that, definitely. So in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, you know, they are places where they had marsupil, their native indigenous wildlife and lifestyle is marsupil.

And we were bringing over huge amounts of cattle and sheep into those countries, and that became a huge industry, the livestock industry over there. but what was happening was the dung was actually staying in place it wasn't being broken down and dung in those environments can stay there for months possibly even years and while the dung's on the ground the animals will not graze near it so you had to increase the area available for the livestock and in the dung you were able to have these pest species of flies very inverted pests species of flies that were able to cause problems with both humans and animals because you've got synopic diseases.

So lots was going on that was based around the fact that the dung was not being broken down. So they looked into why wasn't the dung being broken down. There are dung beetles in Australia. Why was it not being broken down? And the answer is very simple. The dung beetles in Australia, the native dung beetles in Australia, have adapted and evolved alongside marsupials. And that's the dung that they can ingest and they search for.

And this is ovine and bovine dung, something they'd never been introduced to before. And it happened so quickly they didn't really have time to adapt. So what they did was they launched the Australian Dung Beetle project. And I'm trying to think when it ran. It ran from 1964, I think to 1985, and there's lots going on with it still anyway. But basically what they did was they went out and they looked around for dung beetles that would be suitable to breed in captivity. So because you can get them through quarantine and things because beetles do carry diseases and funguses and things that you don't want to give to each other. They wanted to look at obviously the impact of releasing non-natives.

that's a huge thing you've got to do before you release anything. And just see how many species would breed in captivity and get going. And they actually chose lots of different species because it involves the altitude, the temperature, the soil types, you know, all these different things, factors you've got to put into it. And the ones that successfully bred have now been introduced to these areas, to break down the dung and enable the whole livestock system industry to continue. So, you know, when you look at it at that scale, you think, wow, dung beetles are really, really important. I suppose that didn't then have an impact on the native dung beetles because if the native ones just eating the marsupi or poo and imported ones are eating the sheep and cow poo, then there's not going to be any issues there, are there?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the main issues you'd be looking at is the disease factor, you know, the risk of the biosecurity factor of introducing beetles from abroad as well. And yeah, those dung beetles can continue doing what they're doing. And if you're able to turn dung around really quickly, you can carry on grazing the same mountain animals on the same amount of land without having to expand too much as well, which is another important thing, because you need to have all that outback and bush and everything for the native invertebrates to be feeding on the native animal dung.

Now, are dung beetles found everywhere in the world where there's dung, you'll find dung beetles? Pretty much. pretty much. I mean, they are in most areas. That's for certain. If you've got the dung, they will be there. And there's evidence of dung beetle activity in dinosaur dung and everything. You know, these things have been around for a very long time. I wanted to delve in a bit more to just some general sort of dung beetle biology. So I was wondering, can dung beetles fly? Yes, yes, because, and that's really, really important, they can fly because you never know where your dung is going to appear.

I mean, nowadays, we're going to put a bit of a time thing on this, because now obviously we keep our livestock in fields and things like that. But if you go Mesolithic and back, you know, animals were roaming everywhere. So you just did not know where your dung was going to be. And if that's your habitat, your adult stage will be able to fly. So you see this in things like ponds and things like that. And an area where the habitat is going to disappear potentially, the adult stage in vera is winged so it can move around.

and that's the same with dung beetles. They can fly quite easily, actually. How far and how high is some work that we're still doing, which is quite important. But, yeah, very good flyers. And some of them are attracted to light. Some of them fly during the day. Some of them fly at night.

And that, again, you know, it interacts with all our other wildlife. So the ones that fly at night are really important bat food. Ones that fly in the day are really important bird food. So, you know, it's that sort of. a thing as well. But yes, and if you have your light on at night, some of them are attracted to light. So if you're lucky enough, you might have dung beetles crashing in through your window as well, coming to see you. Now that was my next question. So are they active during the day or at night? And if they're active at night, are they looking for dung at those times as well? Yes. Yes.

It's all their flight is for nothing other than trying to get to another dung pack, really. They're not off, you know, pollinating flowers or doing courtship flights or anything like that, you know, as far as we know. They're literally just getting to their dung and that's what it's all about. Some dung beetles like the dung when it's very, very fresh. Some like it less fresh, if you like. Bad English there. But so they will come into the dung at different stages. But yes, the flying is simply to get them from A to B.

Now is it true that nocturnal dung beetles can navigate using the Milky Way? Yeah, so dung beetles have amazing eyes, incredible eyes. They're sort of split. So they've got some that can process what they're seeing down down. And some partly can process what they're seeing above as well. And there's been lots of research on dung beetles, the rolling dung beetles. They're looking at the navigation of these dung beetles. How do they know where they're going with the dung bowl, you know, and all this thing? And they did lots of research, first of all to find out what part of the eye they were using. In fact, they put almost like little They weren't quite like it, but you could almost like black little baseball caps on them, you know, to block out what was going on. And the ones that couldn't see above were losing their direction. And then it was a case of, you know, what are they following? You know, are they following the sun? Are they following, you know, there's constellations. Are they following a UV, you know, all these other things? So yes, there's been a lot of research into that. So it probably is the same with our own dung beetles, but it hasn't been researched the same as it has

with dung beetles abroad. Now talking about those rolling dung beetles again, we've seen the videos of them pushing these like enormous dung balls that are bigger than them. So how strong are dung beetles? Oh, phenomenally strong. I should have checked up on my fact for that. There is a fact about how many,

if a dung beetle was a human, how many double-decker buses they could move. But no, basically, yeah, phenomenally strong. You know, that's the beauty of an exoskeleton. It enables them to be extremely strong. and when I'm actually looking at some of the soils, I was talking about the tunneling dung beetles and go down to about a metre in depth on light soils,

I've actually chased some of those through some quite stony soil before now where they've really, you know, bandaged to push and dig their way down. And if you put a dung beetle of varying sizes in the UK, but if you put a dung beetle in your hand, and don't crush it, you know, but just hold it gently in your hand, the force that they use to push your fingers apart

is really impressive. You know, they are incredibly strong insects, really, really strong. And what's the biggest dung beetle out there? Our biggest dung beetle is, yeah, so about two and a half centimeters, just over, in fact. Geotropy Spinnaker is probably our biggest dung beetle. So just over two and a half centimetres long, which is actually quite a big chunky beetle. When you go abroad, so the tropics, they are getting really quite large. I'm just trying to think, I've got one, you can't see it very well.

this is not a video. However, I have a dung beetle here from middle of Africa, and you can see that that's all, what's that getting on to? At least would that be getting on as much as 10 centimetres? Yeah, that's a chunky beetle. Very big beetle. So, yeah, and it goes down to food source. You know, if you've got a large animal producing a large amount of dung,

you want to be quite a big beetle to process that. So that also happens. The geotropies in this country are the big beetles, other than the minotaur beetle, are pretty much feeding on the bigger animal dung because they're going to be producing a large larvae, and so therefore they need more food. So it's that type of thing, really.

That's a relationship you tend to have with size very often as well. But we are northern hemisphere, so we're a little bit cooler, so that's why our invertebrates aren't quite as big. And how many species of dung beetles are there in total? In the UK, we've got about 60 species. Worldwide, I'm not sure, but an awful lot. I know there's over 500 native species in Australia. So, you know, we are talking quite a large amount of species around the world.

Yeah, huge, huge. And they're in the same group as things like cock chafers, the maybuck bugs that people see, garden chafers, you know, all that sort of thing. It's a huge family group as well. And I guess there might still be more species out there waiting to be discovered as well, you know, deep in the jungle or places we haven't really experienced. explored yet. Yeah, hopefully. I mean, if the dung's there, you'll have the dung beetles.

But, I mean, we do have a very sad situation here now is that we are losing our dung beetles and things are happening to them that are very detrimental. So at the moment, we've got sort of just over 50% of our species in the UK are nationally scarce to, you know, they're being listed as nationally scarce to, threatened to some degree. And even we've lost species and they've become extinct. So, you know, for my point of view, the speed and the passion and everything that I'm about is the conserving of these dung beetles.

You know, that's where my focus is now, very much so. And is there anything we can do to save the dung beetles, just the general public? Yeah, we need to, so this can be quite an emotive subject for a lot of people, but I want to see livestock in the countryside. side. These dung beetles are eating the dung, and as I said earlier on, they having a huge effect on the biodiversity in the soil as well as in, you know, above ground. So wherever you get dung beetles, you get far more earthworm activity and everything else going on underneath the pads. You're more of a whole group of invertebrates, loads of them. Spiders, literally all going on around that dung pat where there's dung beetles. It's a really, really active ecosystem. And, um, a whole group of invertebrates, loads of them. And, uh, a whole group of invertebrates, loads of them. And, if we don't have livestock, we don't have dung beetles. And as I said, you know, they're supporting things like our swallows and things when they're

arriving in the spring. You've got the animals out. You've got the dung being produced. You've got all these dung beetles and massive flush of species early spring. Same time that these birds are migratory birds are arriving. Those birds can't go on and lay eggs unless they're up to wait again. That won't stimulate the egg production. So, you know, these beetles are there. The birds come in. They feed on them. We start the whole process for those birds and so on. So they are an integral part of the wildlife in around our countryside, and it's all based around dung.

So if we do not have dung out there, we don't have this really, really important ecosystem. So, yeah, so one of the things that we can do to help support our dog beetles is make sure we keep livestock outside. And from a farming point of view, you know, we want them on the grasslands. They will go on other food, you know, so cattle and sheep and things are often used on. cover crops, which is really important in the farming world for soil health and things like that,

and they'll happily feed on those. But ultimately, what we need is livestock out. You know, the climate change is having a big effect on dung beetles and other invertebrates as well, because they're so small, the smallest amount of temperature changes, things for them. There is the use of treatments, insecticidal treatments, which is animal welfare, so it's very difficult subject, you know, but we're doing. lots and lots of work with farmers to reduce what they're using and how they're using it and manage that and working with their vets and things. And the same goes when you've got your pets. It's not just about the farmers. It's also, you know, every time you front line your dog or

your worm your dog or anything like that, the dung it's producing is toxic for dung beetles because it has got an insecticide in it. When you treat your livestock, no matter if it's a pet or it's, you know, domestic wildlife livestock in any way, shape or form, you are giving it an insecticidal treatment. And that it will be continuing in its dung for a bit of a while afterwards. So they will eat that and it will kill them. And then it will have less lethal effects as time progresses. So yeah, livestock in the countryside, trying to keep more grassland.

I know we all talk about putting trees everywhere and everything. And there is a lot to be done for trees, absolutely. But, you know, dung beetles do go on grazing underneath trees and things as well. But yeah, keeping livestock out there, being really aware about treatments and things. They're the big things that we can do. Are there any hotspots in the UK where we've got particularly good populations of dung beetles? I've spent six years really focused on finding different species of dung beetles around the UK. So all that data was submitted to the IUCN report, which came out and something was known as a state nature report.

And I definitely found hotspots around the UK. But some places surprised me. I didn't find the dung beetles I was expecting. And some really surprised me because I found far more than I was expecting. Places that you can go and see them. The ultimate place for dung beetles is native livestock. So they like the native livestock. And they like them on permanent pasture.

So pasture that's never been plowed or had anything like that happened to it. And they like to have it. So it's not improved. So it's not had nitrogen put on it or farmyard manure. anything like that, that's what they like because the dung beetles we're looking at here was still going around, it was still existence, these species were existence in the Neolithic period and things, you know, before all this more industrial farming came into place. So it's a very similar assemblage of beetles and that's what they prefer ideally. But they have adapted, you know, they are coming along

on modern farming systems. We have dung beetles out there. Probably one of the biggest threats, potentially in a modern system, is the treatments. But you can't say, right, we're not going to treat the animals. No one would say, right, my dog, my puppy, I've just bought a puppy and all puppies are full of worms. That's what, you know, does happen. I'm not going to treat my puppy, though. You know, it's the same for the farmers. They can't say, right, I'm not going to treat these young animals. It's just how they're treating and what they can use, which is they're really on board with. I'm working all over the UK with farmers who are just saying, right, what can I do to increase my dung beetles? Because I'd rather have a natural system on my farm than the non-natural system.

And everybody's getting used to the idea. Everybody has parasit. You, you, we all do. And it's a case of not having enough, or having too many parasites that having a detrimental effect. That's when you have to treat, really. And it's what we can use to treat with. And there's lots of other things that we can use as a toolkit alongside that. So we're working very closely with farmers to get that across. And they're very much on board.

I haven't had anybody who's turned around to me and said, look, you know, I think you're crazy. You're talking about these silly little tiny beetles that are going to make wonderful things going on in the countryside. I think you're mad, you know, that you want me to change how I'm farming. I've not had that at all. All I've had is, wow, this is incredible. It makes a lot of sense. What can we do to increase our dung beetles? How can we get more species on our farm?

You know, let us know, can we work with you? Can we work with our vets? What can we do? So the great change is on its way. But we had to find out, first of all, you know, how our dung beetles were doing. And the only way to find that, you know, to know what you're losing, you have to know what you've got. So the only way we had to do that was survey.

So getting back to your question about where you can find Dung beetles, you should be able to find them on permanent pasture that's unimproved with native livestock should be one of the best places to find a variety of species. They are active all year round, different species all year round. I'm going to grab myself some gloves and have a look, because they just sound awesome. They are, they're great, beautiful things.

I mean, I love them. I just, for me, it made a lot of sense. I'm a farmer's daughter as well. I've grown up with farming. I live on a farm. I have a large area grazing that I rent and I run as lots of different experimental sites. I'm now sat in a laboratory that is actually part of my house. And I've registered my own place as a research center.

I'm obsessed by dung beetles. And there's one species I'm completely in love with. And that's on the Fagos, Joanna. It's a little tiny one. It's a little round, bumbley, gorgeous little beetle. And when you pick them up and they'll protect their antenna, as one thing they'll do. They've got a clubbed antenna.

And they'll pull their antenna in underneath their head when they're feeling frightened because you've got to protect your antenna. It's really, really important organism, very, very, very sensitive. And organ, sorry. And then when they feel safe, you know, they'll pop their little head out and just bring out their little antenna. And their antenna of what we call leaves. So they've got these, you know,

to increase the area that they can actually smell from, very important when you're looking for dung. So they'll bring them out very tentively and then just gently bring them up and look around. And they're just gorgeous. I just love them. I was so excited when I find them. I've never, ever not got excited about fighting a dung beetle.

And when you're going through dung, you just don't know what's going to be in there. You know, I think that this species is going to be there. So there's the excitement of, is it going to be there? And then there could be other ones in there as well. I mean, there's some species. that I see regularly and I'm still excited to seeing them. And I've been looking in Dung for several decades now. And I just, yeah, it's just great to see them. And it's great from a

farming point of view. It's great from an ecosystem point of view. It's great from a biodiversity point of view. You know, they're just brilliant grip of insects. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was Dung Beetle expert, Sally Ann Spence. The latest issue of BBC Science Focus magazine. is out now. Pick up a copy in store or visit sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal, Name creates high-end

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