Ologies with Alie Ward - Forest Entomology (CREEPY CRAWLIES) with Kristen Wickert

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Spooktober continues with … CrEePy cRawLies. And dark woods and solo hiking and Forest Entomologist Dr. Kristen Wickert a.k.a. KayDubs the Hiking Scientist. We chat about everything from Moth Man to chubby caterpillars to spiderwebs to fungus. She tells us how to look for big beautiful moths, what footwear is best for hitting the trail, which bugs to kill and which to cheer on, how to deal with mosquitos in your yard and ticks in your pants and why the woods feel like home. By the end, you’ll be lacing up your whatevers, walking softly and looking closely. Dr. Kristen Wickert aka KayDubs the Hiking Scientist on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kaydubsthehikingscientist/ Her website: https://linktr.ee/Kaydubsthehikingscientist KayDubs’ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Kaydubsthehikingscientist KayDubs' YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ3oAFNfgWCDPSKtH59-R1g?app=desktop A donation went to: blackinappalachia.org Sponsors of the show: www.alieward.com/ologies-sponsors More links at alieward.com/ologies/forestentomology Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and now… MASKS. Hi. Yes. Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh hey, it's the lady you see walking around the reservoir, and you think that she keeps lapping you, and then one day you realize she's twins. She's a twin sister. They both jog at the same time, but like half a mile apart, and it shakes you to your core. P.S. This really happened to me. Alli wore it back with another spooky episode of oligies, so this episode is technically creepy crawlies in the woods, but really, it's about trees and caterpillars and butterflies

and moths and solitude and fresh air and hiking. Okay, but before we set off on that trail, let's thank the folks who got us here. Big thanks to the crew at patreon.com slash oligies for supporting the show and allowing me to donate and support other causes and hire some folks to make the show better. Thank you to everyone making sure you're subscribed, who's rated this show and the Apple app, which keeps it up in the charts for others to discover. And of course, thank you to the review writers out there who know that I read them all because I pluck a fresh one like Lil Daisy to present back to you, such as this one from Ulige, who

says greatness, much the same way as seeing Laura Lenny introduce Downton Abbey, gave me the feeling that I'm about to experience something truly great. I get a similar feeling when I hear Alli word's voice and horology's intro music. Also I'm a super cheap person and I still signed up on Patreon. Ulige, thank you. Okay, forest entomology. We are talking about things that live in the woods, so entomology comes from the Greek word for sectioned or notched at the waist, isn't that neat?

Now this episode, it's all about creepy crawlies underneath a canopy of trees and about finding solitude among billions of other inhabitants. Now this scientist chatted with me from Appalachia, and I think I say Appalachia, like throw an Appalachia, because someone told me that once, but I think you can say it however you want. Anyway, she studied forest biology at Penn State and then plant pathology at West Virginia University, and has published papers on all sorts of tree and bug interactions on native and invasive species, but also does incredible work in Sycom with her whole brand, Kdubs, the hiking scientist.

So you can follow her Instagram immediately, there's a link in the show notes, you can scroll through all of her foresty photos. So we finally hopped on to chat and she spoke from her attic office in a creaky chair, her cat Tabitha on her lap. And we gapped all about forests and bugs and cryptids and creatures and hiking and things that fall from the sky and how to get mosquitoes out of your backyard and what to do about ticks and the curse of the spotted lanternfly and trees of heaven and machetes and things that buzz and bloom and bite and hide and inspire.

So are the woods scary? What lurks in them? Should you go there? In a word, yes. Get pumped to walk softly and look closely with Woods Dweller and Kdubs, the hiking scientist, forest entomologist Dr. Kristen Wicker. Of course. My name is Kristen Wicker.

And pronouns? She, her. Cool. Awesome. Just that you asked that. You know, I just started asking that recently because I have some listeners who are non-binary and who are trans and they're like, you know, that just helps to normalize it if you ask. Yeah.

And it feels good. It's just nice because we're all people. Exactly. And so now where are you right now, like both geographically and situationally and mentally? Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think you want to know mentally. No one wants to talk about that anymore. So I'm in West Virginia, the heart of Appalachia, full of pepperoni rolls and cryptic creatures such as Mothman.

Oh, they ever figure out what the deal was with Mothman? Is that an owl? No, it's a mystery. Well, he's part Mothman and there's a beautiful statue. He has a very shiny butt in the statue. And he is supposed to come before something bad is happening. So it's not sure if he's like warning us, like get away, the bridge is going to collapse or if he's causing the bridge to collapse.

Okay. Cryptic. Cryptic. He is cryptic. Now, I had only very recently heard about Mothman from an episode of Expedition Unknown, featuring none other than Ology's guest Phil Torres of the Lepidopterology episode on moths and butterflies, not the other Phil Torres from the Apocalypse episode, although that would also track.

But quick overview, Mothman, it's November 1966, a handful of people digging a grave at night. What? See a very large winged being with glowing red eyes and they shrug it off and they go about their creepier activity of digging a grave. And weeks later, a couple on a double date described seeing the same ominous creature near an old TNT bunker. A bunch of other people see him and then just over a year later, tragedy befalls the small

town as a bridge collapses into the river. So is Mothman an omen, a warning, a bird, a hoax, a hallucination, I don't know, but Mothman sightings continue for decades nearby and then in other American cities, but all I can think about is wouldn't be fucking nuts if Mothman was once Mothboy and was like a sleeping bag with a bunch of arms and just ate so many cheeseburgers to bulk up because after it pupated, adult Mothman lacked a mouth. What a backstory. Anyway, West Virginia, where K-Dubbs is at.

It sounds so silly, but when I'm in the woods, I actually feel, I don't know, like I belong because I know everything that's around me, but there's always something new to discover which I don't know and then, you know, that afternoon I'll go home and feverishly figure out what it is. I'm actually, when we're done talking, I'm going to drive to the mountains and sleep in my car and work outside all day tomorrow, which is pretty exciting. How long have you been into forest creatures and when did that start for you? You know, it's funny because I went home to see my mom this past weekend and she lives,

I grew up in like Eastern PA and I have a really, like, it's hard for me to pinpoint when all this, like, love happened and we found some, like, old comics that I drew when I was, like, eight years old and it's like a picture of me, like, crying because my brother's, like, pouring a bunch of soda on a tree I just planted and I was like, oh, I guess I really liked plants back then still. Brando's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes. So I think when I was a little kid, it was very, you know, serenity for me to be outside

and adventures and I read a lot of books back then when I had time and so it was, like, easy for me to have a very active imagination when I was in the forest, you know, Lord of the Rings kind of stuff. And when did you decide to do that kind of as your career? You got a PhD in woodsy foresty, planty, bungy things, yes? Yeah. So I have a PhD in plant pathology as well as a master's and then my undergrad is kind of where all this started.

My undergrad is in forest science and I went to undergrad. It's kind of a long, strange story, but it took me five and a half years to get my undergraduate degree because about three years of those were wasted thinking I would be like a, I don't know, a business woman and then because I didn't know that you could have a job outside and right. Yeah. And I ended up doing really bad in college. I was failing.

I didn't go to finals. I was like, it was like that bad. And my mom, she told me to go to community college just to like stop throwing money out the window and to like try to find a really general topic I liked. And I ended up having a biology 101 class where we looked at like an onion cell underneath a, you know, microscope slide and I was like, whoa, and then I started getting A's and everything. And I got like an offer letter from Penn State to go there and they said, if you keep getting whatever GPA and doing well in class, like you can come here and I looked at their

available majors and I was like, well, I want to be outside. What's outside? And the only thing I knew was a park ranger. I was like, I'm going to go to be a park ranger. And yeah, and they did have a degree where you could go to be a park ranger. I met a really good friend of mine and she's now a park ranger in Zion, but I went and like really liked the science part of it. Like we did a conservation biology with like genetics and stuff.

And that's what led me to get the forest science to be a forester degree. And from there, it just kind of all kind of step by step by step, you know, a lot of good luck and being in the right place. I am where I am today. That right place being outside, I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. It just can't be pent up inside.

It doesn't go very well for my brain. And so what did you know your your work as it is, like what is it? What is a typical day like for you? Lots of emails, lots of plan making, and then usually around like noon, there's action. And I do a lot of outreach. So normally, if coronavirus wasn't happening, I would be going in like teaching kids about how to look for bugs and like kids are a great avenue to look for invasive species because they're the ones that are outside and they're the ones that aren't afraid yet to touch things.

I would do things with like master gardeners, I would do things where I would speak at seminars with like colleges and stuff like on more in depth topics. Now I do a lot of surveying for invasive species like we do a lot of field work now. We're trying to like allocate the time in a very appropriate way because we can't do these outreach opportunities. We're like getting our boots on the ground and like trying to like solve any problems we can because we have time now. So I go outside and I scout for insects and plant diseases.

I help out farmers to get them certified. It's fun. It's wild. It's different every day. What is a bug in the forest that you've seen that was like a celebrity spotting for you? Was there anyone that you're like, oh man, the so kind of see I sounded snarky probably when I was like, oh, I know everything in the woods, but now it's like every like couple of months.

I'm like, man, I didn't know that that whole like genus existed. And then they're everywhere. It's just like the whole thing of like your eyes open up once you notice something or like learn that something exists. But like lately it's been the really huge, chunky, Saternid caterpillars. Oh, yeah. They're huge. They're like almost the size of a hot dog.

Oh my God. So if I eat this entire fat, gross hot dog. Like a little Jimmy Dean sausage. And they're just like hanging out underneath like the on the bottom or underside of leaves, like just hanging out and munching. And, you know, normally as a forester, I'm like looking at like logs and stems and then I'm looking for mushrooms on the ground. And it's just like, man, you really, there's so many different levels in the forest that

you have to train your eyes to look for. And right now I'm looking for Jimmy Dean hot dogs. So Kristen has pictures on her Instagram of these Imperial moth chunkies and they do very much look like a turkey link from a hotel breakfast buffet. But with more legs. Do people ever eat them? Oh my God. I don't know.

I don't know. I imagine. I mean, every time I see one actually like the Imperial moth has a pretty big like filled to the brim with goo caterpillar. And I always think of that scene in Lion King when your cat is like slurping down like every time I think of that, I imagine they must taste very buttery, just you just or maybe like a rock tomato. I don't know.

I don't know. I have, I have eaten insects before and they're usually pretty bland or acid-y. They're not very good on their own. What does a professional like Woods Trumper bug hunter like what is essential in your kit? Do you have like a butterfly net and a hand lens like a pickle jar with like a rubber band over it? Like what's happening? So my title is I'm a forest entomologist and forest plant pathologist.

I do a lot and they, there's a lot of intersections between those careers. But my Jeep always has some kind of educational content. I'm trying to think of what's in it right now. I have two butterfly nets. I have something called a beat sheet. It's a, maybe it's like two feet long, like it's a square, it's a white sheet and you hold it underneath the branch and you hit the branch really hard with like another stick and then it's extended so it's flat and so the insects fall on it and you can see who's

hanging out that you would normally ignore. It's really good for caterpillars. Oh my God. I've never even heard of that before. Yeah. It's really helpful to do insect surveys when it's raining because the insects use the leaves as like little umbrellas and so you can go out there and you can see who's hiding. Mm-hmm.

You know, they're kind of concentrated. It's easy to check out diversity that way. And then what about one of those sheets with a black light? I have one of those too. It's actually right behind me. I was debating on taking it with me tonight because I'm going to get where I'm going at like 9.30 and I was like, do I really want to pull up and be like, hey guys, let's look for bugs like that.

So my really good friend Damon, he sent me a sheet, like it's actually, it's literally a white shower sheet and you can like build this on your own for like 30 bucks online. And then it has a UV lamp with like an external battery that you would use for like camping or hiking. It's plugged in by USB and then you just clip it to the top or the bottom and they'll fly and check it out. But I have learned that different insects, and I've learned this the hard way, the disappointing way that nothing came the one night.

Different insects, depending on the time of the year and what's going on and the moon, they will care about if it's a mercury lamp or if it's a UV and it's like their processing of the wavelengths of light is just a whole nother science. So I have, I have a little UV lamp and I'm looking at getting a mercury one, but they don't attach to the battery. So I got, that's a puzzle for me to figure out. You found that out by using one lamp and just like getting not like throwing a party that no one shows up to.

Yeah, well actually it was my mom. So my mom is like kind of grossed out by bugs and like, she doesn't like it when I bring things home and like, she doesn't like to eat the mushrooms I find. She has, she has tried morels. They were obvious enough that she tried it, but I was like, Hey, let's go look for bugs in the backyard. I kept telling her like, Oh, these big things are going to come. They're going to be beautiful.

And I showed her pictures on the internet and she's like, Okay, I'll look for those. And then none of them showed up. And it's cause I had like kind of the wrong wavelength light. So yeah, something on the to do list. Good. Get more lamps for bugs. So disappointing. Mothman ambles up. He's like, Hey, what's up?

Is all your light out there? And you're like, Yes, I really, I really hope that you, you got to look up the statue. Oh, I will. Mothman statue point pleasant. I'm going to look it up. I'm going to, I want to see it's shiny, but okay, I was very compelled to Google this statue. And I found the following video by YouTube user Hozier Boo, who journeyed to West Virginia to pay the statue a visit.

Apparently Mothman is ripped, but he's also a moth with a human's body and moth wings. It has giant red, glassy eyes, and it resides in the median strip of another wise sleepy town right in front of a Mothman museum. But you head around back and it's firm, metallic buttocks are clenched in a position of muscular power. I mean, Mothman definitely does squats. And when you're naked on four street in West Virginia, just around the corner from a little Caesar's pizza, you might as well play up your assets, especially

since he has no genitals to speak of. Now, if only he were equipped with male moth scent glands called Kormata, which are like long feather dusters that sprout from your crotch, like a wheezy birthday party horn, wouldn't that be something? And what do you think? OK, because this is a spooktober episode, right? We're kind of talking about creepy crawlies. And do you ever walk through the woods at night and feel like maybe you're about

to run into a spider web or there's like a scorpion in your underpants or something like, do you ever get an extra sensory thing about little creepy crawlies? No, not extra sensory. I mean, like usually I'm already covered by like 30 million spider webs. So like, it's fine, throw another one on. I'm actually not very scared of a lot of things outside. Like I'm more scared when I'm, you know, interacting with people. I did actually, I think it was it was two years ago, like to the day, to the day.

I had a caterpillar fall from the sky. It fell out of a tree and it landed on my hand. And it caused like such a crazy reaction. The spines, she said, have a coagulant as well as a vasoconstrictor. So what does that do? So my veins got really tight and then my blood got really thick. So it felt like my entire arm from it just falling on my my hand. My entire arm felt like I was getting a tattoo like the entire day.

And if you sat down like your thick blood wasn't going through your thin veins. So I had to like forcibly keep walking to pump it. So I am scared of those. What kind was it? Oh, it was a I want to say a flannel moth caterpillar. OK. Yeah, I don't remember the exact one. It wasn't the hag moth, but it was a tiny wispy hairy little dude. But it was it was awful.

And so now I'm scared of them because I wasn't like messing with it or anything. Usually I respect animals unless I have to unfortunately kill them because they're an invasive species. But I, you know, I was just minding my own business looking at a flower and it got me. So now sometimes in fall, I'm like, oh, don't wear shorts. Oh, don't there's there's there's the extra creepy creepy bit. There are caterpillars that you shouldn't touch. God, that's good to know. Tiny hairy wispy little dudes.

These have also been said to look like itty bitty little two pays with stubby leg nubbins. And if you like, you can call them a pus caterpillar and they won't even be mad. Their victims describe the pain is similar to having a shattered bone or blunt force trauma. Sometimes also is white hot, which is why the date is probably burned into her mind. OK, but don't be scared because very few caterpillars will make you say the F word. Unless that F word is forest.

Am I right? You gotcha. What about a way to get people comfortable with the forest and with maybe some happy little friendly little creepy little crawlies? Is there a good ambassador species to go out looking for to like get people into it? Well, the first thing I thought about when you asked that question was to check out your local universities because they often have like bug night and they'll like open up a lot of universities have an insect zoo.

But they usually they have like the stick bugs, which are exotic. But they have we have native ones here. So that would be a good fun adventure on because they're kind of slow when they're like easy to watch their legs moving on you. It's not really a big jumpy creepy thing. But yeah, if you have a like a pretty big state school or even sometimes a smaller community colleges, they have an insect zoo and like you can go in and you can learn that a tarantula isn't really that scary

that you can pet them and they're soft and velvety and they kind of like it, I think. Do you have a favorite bug? Um, it changes all the time. Just like I'm saying, I learned about something new and I'm like, what? You're able to do that. But one of my my favorite ones that I like think of right away just because it's like purely fascinating is that there's this arctic woolly bear caterpillar in Greenland.

I did some entomological stuff, insect collection up in Greenland a couple years ago. And there's this caterpillar that like it can live up to seven years as a caterpillar. Yeah, it waits till that point that it like eats enough. So if it doesn't eat enough, you know, the first two years, it's like, oh, I'm just going to go underneath this rock and take a nap. And it like it waits up like the crazy green Greenlandic winter and then it comes out again and it eats and maybe like that third or fourth year it'll be able to pupate, but it can like go up to seven years as a caterpillar.

It's pretty nuts. Yeah, what are they eating up in Greenland? So in Greenland, there's not a lot of trees like what we have down here in North America. But there's like these little tiny birch trees and little tiny willow. And there are some grasses and some mosses and some flowers, too. But I think they mostly eat the small birch and the gray willow. Oh, yeah. So they're they're trees, but they're like little shrubs

because they're, you know, very oppressed. Have you gotten to check out a lot of global forests? And are you more of like a pine forest or a rain forest, like a moss? Like, what's your vibe? So I've always wanted to go to like Costa Rica and see, you know, the beautiful butterflies flying around globally. I've been a bunch of places, but I like I might have not had like the developed scientist mind yet, but I will say last year I went to China

and I was like all amped up. I was like, yes, I'm going to go see this crazy new forest. And it's going to be really exciting with things I have no idea what they even are. And where I was, the forest was just like our invasive species. It was like all the trees that I work with here, like on a daily basis, but they were just like kind of en masse. So it was like all tree of heaven, golden rain tree. So it was it was an interesting like realization.

But I did have the forester scientist mind on that visit. So, yes, this tree of heaven is so called because it grows fast as hell and it can reach up to nine stories tall. It's also the titular character in Betty Smith's 1943 semi-autobiographical novel. A tree grows in Brooklyn. And she wrote, no matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps.

It grows up out of cellar gratings. It's the only tree that grows out of cement. It would be considered beautiful, except that there are too many of it. But hey, as long as we're talking tenacity, Smith's novel was rejected by several publishers before someone finally said yes. And then she ended up selling millions of copies enough to maybe even afford a place in Brooklyn now. No, on the topic of trees and rents reaching skyward.

And I was just thinking, let's say that you walk into a forest, you walk into a trail. I imagine that there's got to be a lot of different strata, kind of like layers in the ocean. And what types of bugs live in what layers? I'm sure you grubs in the soil as you go up. Do you have butterflies? Like what? Who lives where? So a lot of when I think about the forest floor, I think about a lot of grubs. Yeah, which are usually associated with beetles. And also then you have the adult beetle, which are like predators.

So they kind of are like running around a very common beetle that you'll see. I think even on the West Coast are these little carabid beetles, which are the ground beetles and they're like really voracious predators. We also have, as you move up, you can go up a couple of inches and think about the mushroom caps and almost in every single mushroom cap you'll find full of fly larvae. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So usually when I go mushroom picking, like I like peek open in the cap

to see if it's all got these little holes in it. And if it does have a little holes, that's because it's like a little tunnel that a fly larvae has eaten out. Oh, my God. Yeah. And then if you jump up, you have like, you know, you have specialist insects that are on tree trunks. You have specialist insects that are only on the grasses around. You have a lot of like predators will utilize the wide open area of a,

you know, a rock higher up in order to be able to see. Something that's really cool are the tiger beetles. They're one of the fastest animals proportionate to their size and they're these beautiful green shimmering insects. And they're they'll jump on the trail, which is like open. It's because they're looking for prey. But we've created this nice little like open runway for them. Yeah, there are like layers like the ocean of where you can find things.

And when I go out looking for something like an invasive insect, I know where to look. And even like within their different life stages, they'll be OK, their babies inside of the mushroom. But then as adults, they hang out in their pollinators. And now you work with invasive species, which I'm sure differ in different parts of the country. I know out in California, we've got some pine borer beetles

that are really on our show lists, right? Yes. So they're native. Oh, OK. Yeah. And I'm not going to go too into it because I am an East Coast specialist. They're kind of responsible along with other cascading effects of like climate change for massive dieback of our pine trees on the West Coast. And usually they'll associate with stressed out trees because trees, when they get stressed out, they release a lot of smells.

And then beetles can fly to that smell and they're not very good at smelling. So they aren't able to like pinpoint that this tree is a stressed one versus this one. So they might go to the one next to it and then they end up stressing that one out. And it's just kind of a chain reaction of infestation. More on those critters later in the episode. But closer to her neck of the woods, there is a scarlet winged, polka dotted little darlin. It just looks like little moth, but in a fancy outfit.

And I was in Philly last month and they were everywhere, including taking the top spot on local shit lists. And now you are from eastern Pennsylvania. But yeah, Pennsylvania. Damn, this lantern fly. Spotted lantern fly. What? I was out. I was in Philadelphia and I was like, oh, what is this cute little strawberry

moth? And then I looked and then I realized they were everywhere, everywhere. And so this has only been a problem the last couple of years, right? How much does your work deal with these spotted, adorable little cuties? So much. Oh, they're so cute and they're such assholes, right? Yeah, it's I mean, that is actually the scary part of your your spooked over podcast. Yeah, they've been around since like 2014. They arrived on a shipment and they kind of proliferated at a very rapid rate.

They're now in more than 26 counties in Pennsylvania. And they're showing up in a lot of different states. They're in Maryland, West Virginia. They just found some in New Hampshire on a shipment. And then a shipment of what? Like what's getting trees on trees? OK, so nursery trees. Yeah. So some greenhouse warehouse kind of places are shipping ornamental trees

and the spotted lantern flies are laying eggs on it. And then they get shipped to a nearby state and then someone buys it from another state. So we're really focusing on teaching people how to identify it, because if you you buy a tree at a greenhouse, you say, oh, there are those eggs, you can kill them and then problems over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this this insect is really bad. It's not just like annoying, because like you saw, they're jumping everywhere

and like how to fly into and they're just kind of it's kind of gross. But they have a preference for our grape vines and our orchards. So they really like apple trees and their favorite tree is from their their home native range of Asia and India and Vietnam. But they like that tree so much, Tree of Heaven, and it's everywhere here. So they're just like proliferating like crazy. And then when they're done with their main course of Tree of Heaven, they move on to like dessert, which is the grape vines and the apples.

Don't mind if I do. Which the East Coast is really, you know, we don't have it like Sonoma or Napa Valley or whatever, but we have Pennsylvania, Southern Pennsylvania has a lot of wine and so does like West Virginia and Maryland. It's a big problem. And then what are they doing? I understand that they're just shitting sugar out. What's happening?

So, yeah, that's an interesting like feeding strategy that Hemipteran insects have. And I know you like bugs, so like I'm going to use some bug words. I love bugs. Yes. So the Hemipteran insects, they are classified by their wings, of course, like all insects are, but they also have a mouth part that's a lot like a straw. And so they stab this really strong straw like mouth part into the tree and they suck out the sugar that is normally used for, you know,

functions within the tree, right? It's used for making fruit. It's used for keeping the leaves alive. And so maybe if you had like one or two of these insects sucking out the sugar with their straw like mouth part, it wouldn't be that bad. But when you have millions of them, you can really deplete the tree's energy and it dies. But the way that the Hemipteran feeds with that straw like mouth part,

it's going against the pressure gradient of the tree. So it really has to suck. It does suck, but it really has to suck. And that's what forces like they're like continuously like peeing out that honeydew because like they have to suck so much. And their their gut actually has like a specialized feeding area or processing of that sugar. So it just rapidly goes back out because of that pressure gradient.

And then fungus really loves to grow on that sugar source. And so you'll have the trees and the shrubs and plants underneath the spotted lanternfly and the canopy will just get covered with this sooty mold and then they'll die because the black sooty mold blocks the sunlight to the shrubs leaves. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's really nuts. It's like a double whammy. The first whammy, of course, being the schnozz, nozzles, sucking out plant juices.

And the second whammy being the dark sooty mold that grows in their sugar pea and blacks out the leaves. Now, scientists in Pennsylvania are like, that is two whammy's too many. And I know that there are campaigns on the east coast. Like if you see it, kill it, like just kill it, like trust us, kill it. What are you having to do as like a forest entomologist and a plant pathologist to try to control these? Like on a on a bigger scale, that's more than just like fly swatter.

Um, so I will say how important it is for outreach. Like that whole thing of the campaigns is like kind of the number one thing because me as one person, I could spend literally all day at one tree trying to kill them all. But if you all see it and try to kill it, that's awesome, right? Like there's millions of you killing millions of them. Yeah, it's really scary murder mystery. But what I physically go out and do is I map it

and I report it to different agencies and then like we'll collaboratively work together to either use like these physical traps, which we call circle traps or sticky bands and like that's a whole science in its own that we're trying to find the best to use, which doesn't hurt like birds and snakes that get stuck on it. So there's these physical traps that people can put them on their trees. And then there's also pesticides. And this goes back to that whole like integrated pest management concept

where yes, pesticides are bad. And I'm like, you know, I'm scared of them like I should be. You should have a healthy fear of chemical pesticides, but they work. And like when you have like this threshold of 100 insects on a tree and you don't know they're laying eggs and you can't necessarily get all of them just by reaching for them, even if you have a really long butterfly net, you have to use pesticides. And so we use what's called a systemic pesticide and it goes inside the tree.

So when they're using that straw like mouth part, no matter where they are in the tree, they suck it out and then they die. Aha. Yeah. And it's also like not so dangerous then to for like little kids playing in the yard, right? Because like it's not on the tree, it's like in the tree. And what's happening from an ecological standpoint where they're feeding on the same tree of heaven, but they obviously are in check somehow in Asia.

So why are they so unchecked here? Well, it's it's interesting. We kind of have like a big sister story to go off of a little bit. So the spot on lanternfly is not native to South Korea. And South Korea had like an invasive problem with this. And they kind of wonder the same thing. And they, you know, it goes kind of directly what you're saying. In China, there's pathogens, predators and like other climactic events

that control them because it's co evolution, right? And so when they get out of this very narrow, co evolved region that they're in, they become problematic. We have seen a couple of them here in North America that have. And when I say a couple, I mean, like a handful that have a fungus on them, which is killing them, or maybe it's actually living on their already dead body. There's researchers studying that, but it's mostly because it's been removed from

an area where it's in checks and balances. So ecology is all about how organisms work and live together. And with millions of years to evolve, the balance should have been met to keep things in check. Unless, of course, you suddenly start building giant ships and railroads and are like, surprise, new species, we're just mixing it up. When it comes to what you do also as a scientist, a lot of your work, too, is science communication.

Like you have a big following on on Instagram and on YouTube when you're known as, you know, K-Dubs, the hiking scientist. How much of that is partly like how much of that was your mission in becoming a scientist was trying to communicate things that you're like bringing out of the deep woods? Well, it didn't start that way. I mean, it really was just me being goofy with my friends. I mean, that's kind of why everybody starts an Instagram.

And my Instagram is not associated with my work at all. So I mean, not that I do anything crazy on there, but still like I really enjoy distributing knowledge to the masses. And I do feel that knowledge is power. And so why should I hoard all this information in my little head? And I should get people to care about nature because there is kind of a big lapse or a separation just in our society now that nature is separate than like our daily lives.

And, you know, it's not really it needs us to like care and love for it like a little baby and because it has benefits to our water supply in the city or our food supply, just like the spot in lanternfly and grapes and apples, right? If we don't care for our environment, we could potentially lose wine. Which is a big thing to have at stake in the middle of a pandemic. Oh, my gosh, yeah. All you want.

And I got so many questions from patrons for you specifically. Can I ask you like lightning round? OK. I'm just shy. Like I said, like, I mean, the whole Instagram thing, like it looks like I put myself out there all the time. But like when you asked that, I said sweating because I'm a very secretive person, even though my face is on your little rectangle of doom. I know, but but it must be nice to hear back from people, too,

that enjoy the forest more and enjoy bugs and kind of get out of their comfort zone to understand how beautiful the world is, right? Oh, yeah. And I get messages like that very often and I'm not trying to brag, but like I'm so stressed out at work all the time. I'm so stressed out of other things in my life. And like sometimes I'll open up my phone and I'll see like a message. It's so nice from people who are like, I take my daughter out for walks now

because you go out for walks by yourself and if nature isn't scary. And I'm like, yes, yes. So, yeah, that's awesome. And it makes me feel, you know, really good and hopeful. And I thank everybody who's ever sent me one of those. So I am just a normal person, though, with a lot of normal people problems. So 2020, so many. But yeah, let's let's hear those questions.

OK, you ready? I'm just going to run through them. Oh, but before we do, a few words about some things I like, which make it possible for allergies to donate to a cause of the guest choice. And this week, Kdubs chose Black Outside, Inc., which was founded with one simple mission, reconnecting black and African-American youth to the outdoors through culturally relevant programming, inspired volunteers and a passion for connecting youth

to the powerful history of black people in the outdoors. They seek to move the needle on diversity in the outdoors and ensure our youth have safe and equitable spaces outside. For more on them, you can see blackoutside.org. And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, such as like. OK, your questions. But yeah, I got so many questions. OK, I'm just going to lightning round just fire away.

Is that cool? Yeah. Boom, boom, boom. OK, Ava Schaefer wants to know, why do you think so many people are afraid of bugs? Oh, it's because we have that like our nerve senses, right? In our skin, like the literal creeping of insects is like it makes our skin twitch. And I think people don't like that. And I mean, we were also raised for so long to say like those have diseases and then you go home. Yeah.

So like now we're kind of realizing because like we do have kind of this naturalist revival that not all of them have diseases. And we don't need to be scared of all of them. Mm hmm. OK, I looked this up and there is a word for when you feel like the creepy crawlies are upon you. It's called formication and it comes from the Latin root for ants. So if you get the creepy crawlies, you're a formicator. Now, if you're worried about being in the forest because of that,

which wiggles in it, just consider that your house, the house you're sitting in right now, if you're sitting in a house has about a hundred species of bugs in it. I mean, you have mites in your eyebrows, you got critters in your gut. I mean, yes, you may have walls or a toilet, but there is no real separation between humans and nature. We're part of nature and that's wild and it's cool. You just we just got to keep our eyes open as all. Jana Rigovic, though, on that note does ask,

should I worry about when my dogs wander in the brush and the denser areas during hikes, they love it so much, but I don't want to stop them. Do you have any strategies for ticks other than just check your crevices? That's probably the number one question I get from people on Instagram. But like, I've never had a problem with ticks. And I just I guess I just got used to checking myself that I don't even make it a thing. But I do I go out and I if I go and do fieldwork all day, I shower.

So I think just being diligent about the inspection because we can use frontline on pets, but that we can't use it on us because it's a poison. So I think diligence and physical inspection is appropriate. We're listening to Brad Paisley. For more on ticks and Lyme disease, you can check out the acrology and disease ecology episodes and then just check those crevices onward.

And that's good to know. A.J. Lickty wants to know what percentage of insect species do you think have been identified? Like, how many do we not know about? So many we don't know about. I mean, now that I have been going out in the woods and like really focusing on these asiatic invaders, I often see things that I don't know.

I'm like, I wonder if anybody else knows what that is. Should I care? And I usually just walk away because I don't have time. So I think that there's a lot of insects that we haven't identified yet. And some things we are very cryptic, right? The things that are living inside of a mushroom. There's not many people who are gonna peel apart

that mushroom cap to try to find what species are rear, they'll fly larva to figure out what they are. But also there's so many places we can't get. There's insects that can live in like really extreme temperatures or environments like that Greenlandic arctic woolly bear, right? That's crazy. So it's just, I think there's a really big unknown.

And also there's things we take for granted and I'm gonna go to another topic. So lichens, right? You know what a lichen is? Yeah. So the lichen is the symbiosis between fungi and algae and they make another organism and they exchange stuff. Well, for the longest time,

we thought it was one species of fungus. And not until like 2016, I think they found out that there's another organism. It's either a Ascomycotin or a Visidiomycotin yeast. So it's three players and sometimes more. But like we just took it for granted for so many years, right? You're like, oh yeah, that's what that is.

And you kind of walk by it. Yeah. So I think there's a lot of things in the forest that are like that. Oh, I had no idea. I know. Isn't that so exciting though? Yes, it is.

There's so much we don't know. Yeah, just something to live for. You could study lichens. Someone out there, they're a lichenologist. Hit me up. There gotta be some out there. And, okay, Roxanne Parker wants to know, could certain species help reduce the risk of wildfires,

especially in California, Oregon and or Washington? Was that a good idea to introduce something or is it, is that a no? I mean, that's a whole like several individuals, PhD dissertations in one question. If I were to think about it because like the main thing that's killing those are the Dendroctonus ponderosae, the bark beetles.

I mean, you could introduce, if you do like seven years of studying and vetting that a predator or a parasitoid isn't going to kill something else, you could do that. But I think with that specific question, different forest management practices might be a better avenue to seek. And just to side note,

I looked it up to see what kind of critter fixes are on the table. And these beetles, which can be about the size of a cooked grain of rice thrive on trees that are already weak from drought. And fire officials think that 80 to 90% of the recent Creek fires fuel were beetle affected trees. And they estimate that 150 million trees or so

in California were killed by these local beetles just getting out of balance. So the best fix, I read one site that said to try to water your trees during droughts or just work to reverse climate change. Also, while lovingly snooping through Kristin's Instagram, I saw a really beautiful picture of a tattoo on her forearm of a different bark beetle's gallery.

And a gallery is the pattern of tracks they leave in wood while they're munching along. And so somewhere, a European elm bark beetle was just eating away, having no idea that its lunch path would be a gallery inked on this cool chick skin. And as long as there are 300,000 to 400,000 species of beetle in the world, let's discuss another.

And Tania Heichert wants to know, first off, they say boy, hi, this episode excites me. And they live up in Canada and they want to know what is up with spruce beetles. They're so loud when they fly, they sound like helicopters and you can hear them gnaw through wood and their bites are known to be painful. Do you know anything about these things?

So the longhorn beetles, when they are chewing, usually they're chewing the bark away a little bit in order to lay an egg. I think they're usually as an adult, they're like a foliage feeder. But as they lay their egg inside the wood because the larva actually eats like inside of the hardwood of the tree.

And I'm just, I'm not an expert on this either. But yeah, they do chew. And I have heard the Sawyer beetles like chewing before and gnawing on wood in order to lay their eggs. Okay, P.S. I look this up and beetles eating decaying trees kind of sounds like eating a squeaky cracker, which I guess is just a rice cake. So just imagine the noise of me eating a rice cake

in your ear, you're welcome. Sigwani Dana wants to know if insects sleep or if they have an equivalent. Do you ever catch anyone snoozing? No, they don't sleep like we do. I guess, you know, you can say like they rest but they don't actually like kind of turn off like we do. A lot of it has to go with usage of oxygen.

So a really good way to catch a butterfly is to keep chasing it because it needs to stop moving in order to like diffusely have air go into its body. And so a lot of insects will like stop and they'll need to rest. Insects aren't active all the time. Like they are resting, but I'm not actually sure if they physically sleep like we do.

But, you know, a pollinator that flies around during the day will usually be found like resting underneath a leaf in a tree during the nighttime. And I think that's to do with temperature. Oh! Their activity level is also very dependent on the temperature. Ah!

So essentially yes, they do rest. And during that rest phase, they're much harder to arouse. They're like, ugh, hang on. And if they don't rest enough, they'll be a little groggy the next day. I found all this information in a 2000 paper published in the journal Science called Coralettes of Sleep and Waking in Drosophila melanogaster, which is a fruit fly.

And the paper notes that quote, as in mammals, rest is abundant in young flies, is reduced in older flies, and is modulated by stimulants and hypnotics. So yes, somewhere, someone in a lab coat, two decades ago, drank some coffee in order to be alert enough to feed some fruit fly some coffee. There's a coffee in my fly.

Max Aubrey has a question for you specifically. Entomologist question, what are side skills that make someone a good forest entomologist specifically? Being observant, definitely. I see that sometimes people are like, how do you see that? I'm like, I don't know. I just know what to look for now.

And so getting a friend that can teach you, this is where you find this. Then you won't be able to turn it off. And you'll be like, OK, that's where I look for that. And I think sometimes my mushroom hunting friends and I will joke about this. You need to turn off all your other eyes. And I only have your mushroom eyes on.

And I have a really hard time that I'll always be like, oh, god, look at that flower, look at that flower. And I'm like, no, turn off your plant eyes, look for your mushroom eyes. And so sometimes I do that with work, where I have to turn off all the other eyes and know what to focus on. And so being able to be observant and focused is very good.

I think also patience is a very good thing because there's a lot of these guides that will tell you from July to September, the adult is active. But they don't really, you know, those insects, I say this with everything, they don't read the textbooks. So they're like, depending on the temperature, depending on the climate of that year, or maybe they won't even be around at all

because it was a frost, right? So being able to be patient and make observations of your own without only dedicating to the textbook is key for any naturalist. So your mileage may vary depending on what kind of year you've had. Correct. Yeah, that makes sense.

Jessica Janssen wants to know how they can keep mosquitoes away from their family without a bunch of toxic chemicals. Any tips for getting mosquitoes away from you? Is it Trinella? Clean your gutters. Clean your gutters. Yes, 100%. Because a lot of times, you know,

they have all these fact sheets about 100 mosquitoes can come out of a cup of dirty dog water in a dog bowl in the yard you forgot about. So people often have not a lot of people, but sometimes people have tires and stuff in their yards. And you're providing this breeding ground. And often, people don't clean their gutters and they get filled up with leaves.

And they create this perfect habitat. And everyone's like, there's no tires in my yard. I don't know why mosquitoes. It's because your gutters are dirty. Yeah, so don't provide them with a habitat. If you have a bird bath that you don't clean, just get rid of the bird bath. That kind of deal.

Yeah. You know, I was doing some research on smelly feet and found that if you have very smelly feet, you are more likely to get bitten by mosquitoes. I get that very often. Drustin. But there's a lab out here in, I think, Riverside. They have a really good entomology lab at UC Riverside.

And they're studying mosquito olfaction and malaria and how washing your feet can help you get fewer mosquito bites. I'm going to have to remember that. Yeah. During my long fieldwork days, I'll just have to wash my feet. Wash your feet. CyclingTiger wants to know, if any forest bugs interact

within the relationship between the trees and mycorrhizae, mycorrhizae? Mycorrhizae. Mycorrhizae. Mycorrhizae. OK, so we're talking about fungus threads here. People say it different ways. I just choked, like when you see your cousin's girlfriend

and you're like, is it Jen or Jenny? Should I just call her Jennifer? Shoot, shoot, shoot. I say mycorrhizae. OK, I'm going to take that then, mycorrhizae. Then the relationship between trees and mycorrhizae to help the bugs identify food or resources or predators, are the bugs sniffing out or tapping the information

between the trees and the fungus? Probably. I mean, there's probably so much we don't know about their specialization. And you can't personify everything because they're not humans. They don't have the thought process we do. But they obviously have some kind of skill

where they're able to distinguish things that they like or things that they know or habitats that they know. So I think that they have some kind of learned ability, which you also have to remember, many insects live for more than one year. A lot of people think that an insect lives for one year and it's done. But they do have many years on earth

where they have time to learn something. And if they're fungal feeders, sure, I'm sure they're really attracted to some kind of aromatic release that the mycorrhizae is putting out. Like, I bet that there's something crazy like that, which would be super hard to monitor now. But 20 years in the future, when I'm really far away from the scientific world, there'll

be someone doing it for their masters. Or it'll be easy. Someone will get a degree at it. Which brings me to a question. OK, Pascal Perron, who is first-time question asker, wants to know, do cicadas really spend 17 years underground maturing? And are they just sleeping that whole time?

And Jen Squirrel Alvaro said, yes, all the cicada questions. Wow. OK, so yeah, we have the periodical cicadas here. Fun fact, there are both 13-year and 17-year cicadas. There's many different broods. And they're not sleeping underground. They are eating. The whole time?

Yeah, man. They're just like that Greenlandic caterpillar, right? They got a threshold. They have to meet a certain amount of energy consumption to meet a certain point of molting. Oh, my god. So they eat tree roots. And sometimes you can actually kind of see when

high cicada populations, when they're getting ready to come out, there is some kind of associated decline. That's what some people think anyway. But the cicadas are really interesting. They come out and they pretty much just molt and they turn into adults. They pump up their wings and they mate. And then they get eaten.

And they're tasty. I think they taste good. How have you eaten them prepared? So boil them, mash them, stick them in a stew? No. I've put them on cookies. I've put them so when they haven't molted, when they're still the little creepy crawly things

without wings, I've put them in peanut oil and stir fried them. And they're really good. I guess it's sad. But I mean, it's free food. And there's billions of them. It's not trillions. And like everything else is going to eat them. So why not live a little?

Oh, why do they take so long to have a glow up? It's a little amazing. Yeah. Gosh, I mean, there's so many weird cycles that we're learning about in our Native American forests where these certain oak trees, they'll have mast ears. So oaks don't make acorns all the time. They make them every four years or something,

depending on resources. And then all of them will make it. Yeah, the cicadas are awesome. And I just love their sounds. And we have a three different species that come up that are 17-year cicadas. Yes. And they all have different songs.

But they sing together. And then it just sounds like a spaceship. Cadabs says, for more on this goodness, you should check out the website cicadamania.com. And also, I think I just have to do a whole episode on them before 2021, when brood 10, which I've been calling brood X for like 16 and 1 half years, emerges. Right?

A cicada episode? All those in favor? Scream like you've been in a bunker for 17 years and you're horny as hell. OK, it's settled. Coral Taylor, first-time question asker, a longtime listener, wants to know, which creepy crawlies should we be advocating especially

hard for? Which bugs are on the brink of extinction but are critical to forests? Who should we get behind? All of them. All of them. But if you really want to be scientific about it, flies. Really?

Yeah, we should stop hating on flies. I was, when I say I'm a part of experiments, usually I'm doing kind of dominial work, like counting bugs or sorting them or weighing them. But I was part of this project for about a year where we were looking at different insect orders associated with pollination of hardwood trees. And flies come in, man.

So if you want to think about thank you for timber, thank you for fruits, thank you for flowers, it's a lot of flies, by a very high percentage versus the cute bees that we see. All sorts of flies, too. They were like, oh my gosh, there are hundreds of species that way identified just from one single tree species in one national forest in one state.

So I would advocate for the flies to not be gross maggots, right? Even the word maggot is something that you would see like a marine yelling at in a movie. Now, maybe you should make it a compliment. Oh, you're such a maggot today. I didn't mention they're great at decomposing. So unless you like a lot of dead raccoons on the side

of the road, thank the flies. Yeah. They eat shit and they don't complain about it. Just like the marines. On your feet, maggots. I know. Well, someone had a question about hoverflies. OK, Merg Atron, first-time question asker,

wanted to know what's up with hoverflies? Why are they creepy? Merg lives in the woods and they're all over the place acting really weird. Are they really government drones? No. No? No, they're not drones.

Hoverflies are, they're flower flies or the server flies. But they look like bees and they just, they use it as a mimicry to be like, please leave me alone. I'm just trying to eat flowers and like not bother anybody. So they are not tiny government drones spying on us. You know what? I don't know. The government does whatever it wants anymore.

So who knows? It's true. Speaking of things that go in the day and the night, Adam Palick, first-time question asker, relatively established listener asks, why do critters that buzz make my jammies jingle? I love all creatures, but would a bee wasp is buzzing around me? I feel the naturalists in me take off and run for cover.

They terrify me. What is the reason for that? And do you have any, any fixes for that? If you're a little blzzz. No, I don't have any fixes for that. I'm sorry. I can't answer that at all. I have been stung by many wasps during field work.

And so I have that same fear. So it's normal and that's OK. Yes. It's probably good. It's probably some like ancient relative, you know, protecting you by passing on that vibration. That's a good call. Zoe G, first-time question asker,

has heard that if you lick a banana slug, your tongue goes numb. Why anyone would do this is beyond me. But is this true? And who figured that out? I have no idea. OK. Have you ever licked a banana slug?

No, but I have tried to make them mate. No. They're like, I'm not really feeling this one. OK. Side note, I licked this up. And people kiss banana slugs because their slime has a numbing agent in it. But also, some slug scientists, aka limacologists,

are like, don't lick slugs for the slug's sake. Can you imagine if you were naked in the woods and a tongue the size of your bed came and slimed you with falafel breath? You'd be like, move along. You hairy ghoul. Lynn and Dory, great question, want to know, do bugs get high off magic mushrooms the same way

that humans do? I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know if they do. I mean, we have to remember that a lot of different animals have different reactions to the different metabolites, right? I mean, even people within the same species, right, you might be able to drink milk and I can't.

So I don't know. They might be using it as a secondary metabolite to accumulate in their body, though, to act as an anti-predation technique. And we do see that with a lot of insects. I'm going to go back to my classic example, the spotted lanternfly. We think it feeds on tree of heaven so much

because it accumulates toxins in a body, which makes birds spit it out. So potentially they might not be actually trying to get high, but they might be trying to accumulate secondary metabolites that make them not get eaten, or they might not do anything. Remember when we were wondering aloud, if anyone is researching fungus and bug interactions?

Well, they are. Okay, in fact, I was poking around cicadamania.com and I found out the guy who started the website, Dan Mozguy, as well as our own too humble guest, Kristen Wicker, are both listed as authors on the following paper, psychoactive plant and mushroom associated alkaloids from two behavior modifying cicada pathogens,

which is like, Ward, what's that all about? Okay, it's all about how certain fungal compounds make cicadas develop fluid attractions to males and females, with males doing female type of wing movements. Everyone's out there just mounting same sex partners, kind of a groovy fungus dance, but scientists think that this reaction

to those mushroom alkaloids evolved to affect males more because cicadudes congregate close together to sing their sex balance. So this helps the fungus spread more rapidly because they're all clustered. So now you know about fungal parasitized entomopathogens. Just shrooming love vests in the trees.

I love it. Except for that the fungus ends up growing into a plug that replaces everyone's butts and kills them. I don't like that. Get out of my butt, fungus. It's been 17 years. I'm just trying to have a good time over here. Jess Lofler wants to know,

since you're a hiker, how do you balance sticking to the trails with getting curious and wandering off path? Because they say hiking can be detrimental to the fragile species, but sometimes there's such cool stuff just off the path that they want to get a closer look at. So I'm very lucky that my job is like go here.

So like a lot of times I'm not on a trail and I just go, but I will say that it's that desire to seek things out then, sticks with me when I am on trail, but I have been working in the forestry realm for so long that I know that a place where hundreds of thousands of people go, it's really easy to see

if even one person walks off trail. And there's like, actually you should look this up. There's some really crazy pictures of when like the super bloom happens in California. It like they track when people go off trails, like the Instagrammers. And then like they're all day one

when the super bloom is happening, there's one designated trail. And then by like day 30, there's like 50 other side trails. Wow. So thanks to social media and seeing that I should be shameful. I don't go off trail at like public places,

but with my job, I'm able to go into the wilderness. That's part of your job. Yeah. So and even then I'm trying to be respectful and I have all the plant eyes, the bug eyes, the mushroom eyes going on. And so I'm like,

I'm not going to smash on a beautiful orchid. I am actually very aware and I try to walk where there is nothing. And then I start thinking really deep thoughts about, you know, the microbes that I'm stepping on that don't even realize it because they're so small. Lee Pedler wants to know,

first-time question, that's great. Is there an insect that you've always, always wanted to come across in the wild, but you haven't yet and you think you're always on the lookout for? Yeah, pretty much now it's all the Saturnids. So I want to see all of the Saturnid moths in real life because they're huge.

And the only one I've really seen is the Luna moth. Oh, I've never seen one in person. I've only seen one on that weird commercial for Lunesta. Oh, yeah. Which is like some sort of sleep drug that's like, you might murder someone well on Lunesta. Like, that's the only, that's what I assumed it would. Driving or engaging in other activities while asleep

without remembering it the next day have been reported. Abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations or confusion. So to any large, beautiful sage green Luna moths, I am so sorry that Lunesta co-opted your fluttery nocturnal image for this. Also, if you do need help falling asleep, try the fancy Nancy technique from the Somnology episode.

So while you're trying to fall asleep, pick a category like fruits or band names or bugs or countries or makes or models of cars. Let's say for example, and then you think of one that starts with A, like Alpha Romeo, maybe B, Bugatti, C, Corolla, D, Dotson, and so on and so on. And it helps me drift off every time.

Using this technique from my mom so far, I have not driven, eaten or acted aggressively without remembering it. So well done, mom. Also, it's my mom's birthday this week. So happy birthday, fancy Nancy, we love you. Anyway, Luna moths. Yeah, but a lot of these things are,

a lot of these deterrents are only out like flying around at night and like within a small window of time of the year. And then even within that, they will only come out like really late at night, like midnight to two AM. Really? Yeah, when you take out that shower curtain

with the light, you'll start to get small, little, very tiny moths at first. And then like as the night progresses, you'll get bigger ones. And then depending on what the moon is doing, you'll get really big ones. Wow. Yeah, so all of the moths I really wanna see.

There's this really crazy one, it's like the O'Corn moth. It's like out right now, but I don't know. I just recently fell in love with caterpillars. So anything, that's what I wanna see. And if you're wanting to go explore the world and look at wiener pillars and creepy crawlies and fungi, what's the best way to do it? Well, safety first.

And in the mushroom forging, get a book, go with people that know what they're doing. If you're just getting into it, don't just go out alone and be like, well, I'm spritzing. No, no. So I'm really fortunate to have a lot of really good friends. Most of them are on the West Coast and I miss them a lot. We would do these really big mushroom parties.

And we did one last year on this time of year. We got a cabin and we all, you know, we do these big forays. And so if you wanna get into that, you know, look at Facebook, there's like tons of groups for everything. And like just be, I guess, brave enough to be like, does anybody wanna go to a park?

And like, cause there's mushrooms and bugs everywhere. You could go to your local park, you don't have to buy a cabin or anything. And you could just like set them out on the table and learn. But yeah, with a lot of things. And even the insects too, cause some of them you don't wanna touch. It's good to go with a friend and then learn together.

I have like, when I go looking for mushrooms and I take three field guides with me. Yeah. Yeah, because some are, you know, old and might be contradictory depending on the author. It's just good to like triple check yourself with something as serious as amatoxes. Yeah, for sure.

And okay, you're in the woods. You're looking for creepy crawlies. You got spider webs all over you. Maybe there's a tick in your butt crack and you're like, I'll get it later. But what is the worst thing? Cause you're so resilient in so many ways. But what sucks?

When the person in front of you steps on ground bees. Oh no. And like they don't go after them, they go after you. So the places I go, again, I'm not on trail. And it's not like these beautiful lush places that are like Lord of the Rings, beautiful forest. They're like Greenbrier and honeysuckle. And like you have to like fight

to get through it with a machete. And then like you get stung by wasps or ground bees and like you magically are able to jump over them. Oh my God. So that's like the worst thing about being out in the field. And like I had a spider bit me one time on the Appalachian trail and I rolled up and was at my friend and I was like, my face feels funny.

And she's like, we need to go to town. Oh no. So like, yeah, they are very serious things to be aware of. And also this is another funny story. I don't remember the exact species. But on the East Coast, there's these millipedes. And I know they're not insects, but there's these millipedes. They're called Narcius americana.

They're the really big long ones that like, you know, it could be as long as a pencil. They're about that thick, like dark purple. They're on the trails a lot. You can pick them up and you can do stuff with them and whatever, check them out. They're cute. But there is a very close lookalike on the West Coast.

So she was hiking along the Pacific Crest Trail, which side note runs over 2,600 miles from Mexico to Canada, which I did not know. And then I got distracted for like 10 minutes on the Pacific Crest Trail website, looking at gorgeous wilderness photos and reading about how trail workers will quote, curse you for eternity if you go potty on the trail

and leave it for them to find without bearing at seven inches. Anyway, hiking. And I was hiking on the PCT and I'm like really lucky that I got, it was like the last day that I picked up this millipede that looked a lot like the Narciss Americana. And I went to my car

and the thing had thrown up on my hand. And I didn't really think about it because like the ones on the East Coast throw up on your hands, it's not a big deal. Sorry. But this one released like an acid. And I was driving in my hand, I was like, man, it really kind of hurts.

And I looked at it and I had these like big stains, like big red bloody stains on my hand. And I like frantically pulled over and was like, what's going on? I was trying to find like a scientific paper about it. And it said like you could, if you touched your eyes, it could blind you. And I was like, thank God.

So I went to a truck stop and washed my hands for like seven minutes. Oh God. Oh my God. Okay, also you've hiked so many trails. Any advice on buying boots? Oh, no, God, no, no boots. Okay, no boots.

What I wear when I go hiking long distance are trail runners because they dry out fast. They have really good grip. They aren't like heavy. And I don't know, I just feel like they don't give you as many blisters. That's like the number one bad thing. But you know, if you're fighting fires,

there's fire boots. And like if you're kicking over green briar to get into a forest plot, then I wear muck boots. But I never, ever wear those like hiking boots that are on commercials. So don't let a lack of fancy boots or a fear of creepy crawlies hinder you because there's so much beauty out there, I promise.

What about your favorite thing about being a forest entomologist? I love it when I get to be like all alone in the woods and like I actually feel like I'm part of something. Cause it's just like all around me and it's just so familiar. And you know, it's like overpowering sometimes like the levels of like sight and sound and smell.

It's just, I don't know, it's just nice. I feel like I'm part of it. Yeah, it must really be like a happy place to get away from the world. Yeah, I can actually like kind of get lost in my thoughts because a lot of times, man, I got like 30 things going on and it always works out. Like literally like before I called you, I was working.

Like always, and then like as soon as we hang up, I'm going to put my backpack on and I'm going to drive to the woods. Yes. So like I'm always thinking. And so it's nice to like kind of turn that off. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You're going to wake up and the birds are going to be singing and it's going to be misty dawn. God, so nice. This is making me want to go camping and like on my porch or something. So ask smart hiking scientist, creepy crawly spooky questions. And you just might find yourself

lacing up your whatever's to hit the trail. And I know you want to follow her ASAP. So please do at instagram.com slash Kdubs, the hiking scientist. You can support her Psycom on Patreon, patreon.com slash Kdubs, the hiking scientist. She also has merch that says I'm a hiking scientist, which is wonderful and many of you need.

You can find links to all that and links to her socials as well as to the non-profit blackoutside.org as well as more links at alleyward.com slash oligies slash forest entomology. That link is in the show notes. We are at oligies on Twitter and Instagram and all spooktober folks are making daily drawings along different episode themes.

So check out the oligies Instagram for more info on that or just look up the hashtag derologies2020. It's so good. So that's derologies2020. I'm alleyward with one L on Twitter and on Instagram. You can get oligies merch, including brand new masks and cozy fall blankets at oligiesmerch.com.

Thank you, Shayna Feltis and Bunny Dutch of the comedy podcast, You Are That for managing it. Also listen to their podcast this week because they have Dominic Moynihan from Lost and Lord of the Rings on who's amazing. So again, You Are That. Erin Talbert admins the Facebook group of smart, cool oligites.

Emily White is amazing and her crew of transcribers make these episode transcripts available for free for our deaf and hard of hearing oligites or for anyone who wants transcripts at alleyward.com slash oligies dash extras. Thank you, Kayla Patton for adding bleeps when needed. There are kid-friendly episodes up at the same link which is in the show notes.

Thank you, Noel Silkworth, who helps schedule all the guests and to assistant editor, Jared Sleeper and the percasts, Stephen Ray Morris, both now collectors of face caterpillars, the majestic mustache. SRM also has another podcast, See Jurassic Right about dinos

and his back to school series going on right now has some great oligies on it. So again, that's See Jurassic Right. Check that podcast out. Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote the theme music for oligies and if you stick around until the end of the episode, you get a secret.

Sometimes that's a treat. Sometimes it's a burden. This secret is a follow-up to chondrology's foot confession. Here's the deal. My feet finally started peeling. I did this acid foot mask. Last week I was like nothing. Four days in, I think my feet were just like rhinos

and nothing could penetrate them. But now what, 10, 11 days in, wispy sheets of my own flesh are just ribbiting off, just drying in curls. My socks feel like they're stuffed with feathers. It's so gross. Also, as I, if you need to dip right now, I understand, but for those of you who can weather it,

I don't even wanna tell you, but I feel compelled to. As I was examining my peeling post foot mask feet, skin just shedding like ghostly fallen leaves. My dog licked one up from the bathroom floor in a moment that was so disgusting and powerful. And I realized that she ate my foot and now she has made, if only for a few molecules of me, which I'm feeling very nauseous and parental about it.

Maybe the grossest secret I've ever told. Next week, I'll just give you a life hack, cool? All right, love you, bye-bye. Hackadermatology, homeology, cryptozoology, letology, and technology. Meteorology, peptology, pathology, seriology, cellulogy. Slimey is satisfying.