Science Friday - Endangered Crow, Hawaiian Biodiversity, Mars Simulation. Sept. 21, 2018, Part 2

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

About five million years ago, the island of Kauai emerged from the ocean waves, and a new chain of island habitats was born, right in the middle of the Pacific. In those Hawaiian islands, birds would have found a multitude of microclimates, a lack of most predators, and a pretty safe spot to grow and evolve—which they did, diversifying into a wide range of species, each suited to a different lifestyle and habitat. But today Hawaii’s diverse birds are under attack by invasive mongooses, cats, rats and other predators. Some birds no longer breed in the wild and need the help of humans to reproduce and survive. Alison Greggor, a post-doctoral research associate at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research, joins Ira to talk about efforts to rehabilitate the nearly extinct Hawaiian crow, the ʻAlalā, and the race to save delicate bird eggs before predators get them first. When people talk about evolution and islands, it seems like the Galapagos get all the credit. But just like that island chain, with Darwin’s famous finches, the Hawaiian archipelago is itself a stunning natural lab for adaptation and evolution. As new lands is created and as old islands erode, the Hawaiian islands have developed a fantastic array of microclimates and habitats—and unusual species have evolved to take advantage of each one. Perched on the side of the Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island is an otherworldly experiment—a Mars colony where half a dozen crew members spend eight months living together and simulating life on the Red Planet. The location looks altogether unearthly, with rusty red rock fields that look a lot like the images being sent back from the surface of Mars. What happens when you jam six people in a 1,200 ft2 habitat for months at a time? Kim Binstead, the principal investigator on the HI-SEAS project and a professor of information and computer sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, joins Ira to give a glimpse of what life is like inside. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo, coming to you from the Kahilu Theater in Waimea, Hawaii. About five million years ago, the island of Kauai emerged from the ocean waves, and a new chain of island habitats was born right in the middle of the Pacific. Here in the islands, the birds would have found a multitude of microclimates, a lack of most predators, and a pretty safe spot to grow and evolve, which they did, diversifying into a wide range of species, variations on a theme, each suited to a different lifestyle and habitat. But today, Hawaii's diverse birds are under attack by mongooses, cats, rats, other predators. Some birds no longer breed in the wild and need the help of humans

to reproduce and survive. Allison Greger is one of those avian helpers and a postdoctoral research associate at the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research in Volcano. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Greger. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Now, one of the species that you study is a type of Hawaiian crow. It has an unusual name. What do you call it?

So the Hawaiian crow is the Al-A law. And it's a name that historically actually meant caller of the forest. And so it carries a lot of cultural significance. as well, not just a throwaway name. They are a very important species. Give us a bit of the life story of the bird. So as part of the Corvid family, the Hawaiian crow is known to be one of the more intelligent birds of the Hawaiian islands.

It does mean that they have a life history that's a little bit slower than some birds. It takes them several years before they become of reproductive age. And historically, once they became adults, they would actually form territorial pairs and you would find them across different areas in the landscape but mostly in the wet tropical forests. They unfortunately were in serious decline by the 1950s due to a number of different factors which you explained but they became extinct in the wild in 2002 due to all of those factors. Fortunately before that time the program that I work with the Hawaiian Endangered Bird program actually brought individuals into captivity and started

started a conservation breeding program and that is why they are still alive today. Where did you raise them? So we have two facilities, one on this island, the Keahoe Bird Conservation Center, and then one on Maui. Every time you breed a new species, it's a real challenge. The process of hand-raising birds and making sure you have an environment that most closely represents the wild environment to make them want to breed and make sure that they are comfortable as well is actually, it's an iterative process that we've done.

learned over the years how to make that more successful. But the problem with any captive reared animal is that, as you well know, the captive environment doesn't mirror the wild. It's missing key elements of what birds need to be able to do in the wild, like find food and avoid predators and even navigate a wide space. Do you need a minimum number of birds to start off with to make it successful? So the larger number you start with the better, as one might expect. With the Al-A, we started with nine genetic founders, which is quite small. Ideally, you would have more like 30 or 40. It would be optimal to have 50. So I would imagine there would be a danger that you don't have enough genetic diversity with just nine birds. Yes, especially when

you're dealing with an island species. Island species tend to go through. genetic bottleneck when they arrive on an island. And so for them, they may be particularly more vulnerable to some of those in-breeding effects. But we're fortunate to have collaborators who are working on the genetics of the All-A-Law to help us better understand how to optimize the genetic variability that we do still have. Now, what happens if you get two really rare birds that you want to breed, but how shall I put this gently for our family audience? They don't want to do it, you know?

Yeah. So that's actually part of the research that I've been doing while within the center is to better understand how mates choose each other. What are they looking for? Are there certain personality traits that make pairs more compatible or not? Because it is actually true. They do have personality. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And not only can you see it when you just observe them, but actually you can quantify it as well.

You can give them personality tests the way that we would think of giving a person a personality test. test. And so we're still learning a lot about what makes pair's compatibility. Is it that opposites attract? Do you have any techniques for enhancing the romance that, no chocolate and that sort of thing? At this stage, since we know they used to be territorial, giving them space. Really? Yep. So the having birds, our averys are optimally designed to allow a breeding pair to have its own Avery so that they can basically have some privacy from their neighbors. And so how do you know once you started, you get a population going, how do you know it's been a success that things are working out well? Do you track them to see where they go?

So when we release them, we actually fit them with radio tracking backpacks. So they have a little receiver on their back that is then as they fly around in the forest, we can keep track of them. And that's otherwise it would be near impossible to find a bird in a in a big forest. All right. We have some questions in the audience. Yes, sir. You had a release that was unsuccessful where you had several birds that were preyed on. Could you tell me how that happened and how that is going to be looked at in the future? Sure. So any release program that is starting up, there's a lot to learn. There's many steps that both the program directors and the birds themselves have to go through to get to that process.

In 2016, we released five individuals and within a week, unfortunately two of them had been predated by EO, the native Hawaiian hawk, and one of them dispersed and was found in poor condition at that point and had passed away. Since that time, we sat down with our many conservation partners and we developed a new plan. We increased the rigor of the anti-preditor training, and we also released a larger group of birds, so there are more eyes in the sky looking for the predators. I'm happy to say that since that time we have released 11 individuals, and they are all still flying free. So when you say anti-preditor training, you had to teach them how to avoid?

So, yep. We... In Eden? Yes, yep. How does that word? So we actually create what would be a little play next to the Averys. Naturally, birds would learn socially what are the predators to fear, because if they had direct experience with a predator, they wouldn't survive. So they would learn from both their peers and their parents what was a predator.

And they actually have a very distinct alarm call, which basically says, danger, danger, watch out. And if they were ever, if they ever witnessed a predation event, birds actually then have a distress call saying, ouch, ouch, I'm hurt. So what we did is with the help of the local Pana Eva Zoo here, they let us borrow an EO that they have, and we actually staged this natural learning event for the birds. So we played alarm calls and distress calls and showed them a flapping EO and then actually put a taxidermy crow under the EO's feet. And it worked. You know, I got to say that I am not surprised about this, because we always hear new stories

of how smart crows are. Aren't they? They're very smart birds, aren't they? They are. They're tool makers? They do all kinds of things. Yes, yes. And we know they continue to learn throughout their lifetime.

A lot of animals learn only in a very sensitive period when they're young, but they are able to pick up new things throughout their lives, which means it's wonderful that they can hopefully learn a lot more when they go out, but it means the training process has to be a lot more rigorous because there's a lot more that they don't have innate. They need to learn. It's interesting. We'll take one more here, then we'll go over here.

Yes. You said you started with nine birds. How many are there now? So we have about 125 right now. Do you know each one of them? Actually, I do. Yep, we've been doing... I would.

Yeah, I would. So all of our birds have Hawaiian names. So I name all of them right now. It's okay. I don't know if the radio shows long enough for that one. But yes, because we've been trying to learn and understand as much as we can about these birds, we've run personality tests on all of them, and the staff at our breeding facilities have been working with these birds for years and years,

and we know a lot about each one of them. What is the lifespan of a crow, a crow like this? So we don't yet know how far they can actually go, because in captivity they often live a lot longer than they would in the wild previously. but we have birds that are 27 years old, but we don't know how long they used to live in the wild. Wow, we're in our 27th year at Science Friday, so there must have been a bird that...

I'm happy to find that bird. This kind of rescue and the kinds of things that you're doing, has that happened in many different places, or is it sort of a unique here? It's a growing field. The first real attempt in the United States was the California Condor, which was done by the San Diego Zoo. And they had a similar story.

They actually were extinct in the wild at one point, and now there are over 350 birds flying. And that has been 20 years of very intensive efforts to bring them back. And so we do have models. On this island, many people may know the Nene. They never, this is the Hawaiian goose. They were never extinct in the wild, but their populations dwindled, and they now number in the thousands. Oh, fascinating. Thank you, Dr. Greger, for taking time to be with us today.

Alison Greger is postdoctoral research associate at the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research in Volcano. Thanks again. After the break, why Hawaii is ground zero for an extinction crisis and how ecologists are outsmarting invasive species. Taking us to the break, our musical guest for the evening, Macana. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato coming to you from the Hawaii Theater Center in Honolulu. When people talk about evolution and islands, it seems like the Galapagos gets all the credit.

But just like that island chain with Darwin's famous finches, the Hawaiian archipelago is itself a stunning natural lab for adaptation and evolution. Because as new land and islands are created like what's happening at Kilaue right now, and as old islands weather, and a road, you get a fantastic array of microclimates and habitats. And here to talk about some of those species like a cornucopia of native snails, crafty thieving spiders, and the extinction crisis the islands are facing are my next guest. Melia Rivera is a scientist and educator at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology in Cana O'Hae. Welcome. Melissa Price is a wildlife biologist and assistant professor at the University of Hawaii and Manoa. Welcome to Science Friday. Malia, when people talk about diversity many times, they'll point to the, as I say, the Galapagos

as an example of a remote island community where you get diverse evolution and it's quite visible. But Hawaii compares quite favorably, right, in terms of diversity. It's really an interesting place also. We don't hear much about that. Yeah, Hawaii has probably a much higher rate of endemism than And does the Galapagos Islands, the Hawaiian archipelago's isolation being sort of this isolate, the most isolated landmass, just kind of dots of islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean, lends itself to have a high rate of species evolving within the islands. The Galapagos, on the other hand, you know, it's relatively close to the continental landmass of South America, just off of Ecuador, so that isolation isn't quite as extreme as it is in

Hawaii. And so you'll end what you end up with is still a high rate of endemism, but not nearly as high as in Hawaii. Melissa, is the fact that the islands are all different ages, is that important to have a significant for biodiversity? Sure. With the Hawaiian tree snails that I study, we have introductions, and then you have speciation taking place. You get a diversity of snails, you get introductions to different islands. With those tree snails, they're hermaphrodites. You can have a single colonizer, and they diversify up those dramatic gradients,

colonizing all the different habitat types. And so, sure, definitely as new islands appear and you get new radiations, it contributes to that. Malia, tell me about this very unusual kind of spider. You study spiders that colonize the islands once, and then they underwent a lot of adaptations to live here. Tell us about that. Well, there's actually two groups of spiders that are closely related within this subfamily

called Arjorotone. And they are both established by single colonization events to the Hawaiian archipelago and then speciation within the Hawaiian Islands. So the first one is a group of spiders from the genus Arjorotes, and these are kleptopar parasites, meaning they invade the web of a host spider and basically steal from that spider. They don't build their own webs that they reside on, but they basically steal from a large sheet well. Klepto spiders. Klepto, yeah, they're called kleptoparasites.

And a second group within the same subfamily in the genus Arryomneys, those are primarily nocturnal aranophages. So they hunt at night and they hunt other spiders. So they're very stealth. They creep around in the dark and they form these lassoes. of silk and they basically throw it at their prey spider. Cowboy spiders. Yeah, yeah.

So that second group is the one that really has radiated in the Hawaiian archipelago. It's much more specious. There's many more species of that, of the free-living eranophages. But they also have a few of the species within that group who are facultative collective parasites. So they can still invade webs of a host spider and steal from them, or they can easily live on their own as well. Now the question for me, and we were talking about the Galapagos as being remote, Hawaii being remote, how does a spider get to Hawaii? I mean, from the mainland,

there's some other place. So spiders have this very cool adaptation called ballooning. So when they are born out of, when they emerge from an egg sack, they will throw up a strand of silk and this silk can basically carry them off in the air currents. So, why, possible mechanism of dispersal is through this ballooning adaptation. How these particular spiders got to Hawaii, we won't really ever know for sure, but that's one possible mechanism, or they may have arrived, what we say, ferretically, riding on the feathers of a bird that may have come on the currents as well. That might be another mechanism.

And they could go for many, many miles in the air. Yes, yes. Cross oceans, across oceans at far? Yeah. I mean, how else are these things getting? I don't know. You're the scientist. That's why I'm asking you these questions. They can. Once when I was a graduate soon, this is 25 years ago, but I was in the lab, and these are relatively small spiders as adults. So just a few millimeters.

So the babies, when they emerge from the egg sac, they're really just pinheads. They're very tiny. And I could see them ballooning just in the lab from the currents of the AC. They would just fly off. Yeah. It was quite cool. Yeah. Life will find a way, that quotation, I remember. Melissa, one of the native species that you've studied are these really colorful tree snails. And these aren't your garden variety snails, are they? They're beautiful.

They can live for over a decade? Oh, yeah. So at least one snail that was measured over and over in the field that was marked, lived up to 18 years. Actually, and it was marked as an adult, so it's probably older than that. Do regular garden variety snails do that also, or are these special long-lived snails? So this is kind of typical of island species. So there's kind of a gigantism that occurs over time. And so you end up with, even though these guys only are a couple centimeters, maybe an inch long at most,

some of the largest snails in the islands, the ones people see in their gardens are the giant African snails. They're all introduced to the islands. They're not native. But these are the native ones. They're quite large and tend to live a little bit longer. They, kind of like a seabird, they depend on a long life history to be able to have a decent population size. So the overcollectine and introduced predators that have devastated them really have had a huge impact. They don't even reach maturity until five years of age.

Wow. I understand that a few years ago. There was a snail known as the loneliest snail in the world. Only species, only one left of his or her species? Acetynella Apex Fulva. I was... My spake apart? Yeah, so it's the last individual of Akitonella Apex Fulva.

So when I was first introduced to tree snails in 2012, and we were hiking up to visit some Acetanella Sarabiana, closely related species, we reached the spot where the last Apex Fulva had been seen in the 90s. And unfortunately, as predators move up in elevation, introduced predators, snails are disappearing faster and faster. And actually this year, David Sisko, the Snail Extinction Prevention Program Coordinator for the state,

is having to evacuate most of the native snails, at least in the genus Acetanella, out of our highest elevations to save them, either to captive breeding facilities or predator-proof enclosures. So we have snails going extinct every year? My favorite species, Akatinala Lila, which is rainbow-colored, absolutely beautiful, red, yellow, green stripes on it. And three years ago, I was up at the last population.

There were about 300 individuals. And this year, about two months ago, David went to evacuate them, and 20 hours of searching only found one snail. So, yeah, I think it's hard for people to understand how fast the rate of extinction is. And the sad thing is we know what we can do to save these. We have tools available. It just takes more funding than we currently have available. And as I say, if you'd like to ask a question, we're not taking phone calls today, but we are taking questions from the audience.

We have a couple of microphones available on both sides and up there in the balcony. Can you do anything to save the snails? Yeah, so... I feel bad the way you're talking about them. We're losing there. Hawaii has the reputation as being the extinction capital of the world, but we have the tools available to save a good 95% of the species if we had the funding available. And so...

Follow the money. Yeah. So for the snails, the three predators are Jackson's Camillians, Uglandia and Rosea, and introduced carnivorous snail, and then rats. And we have tools available to fight all three of these with a predator-proof enclosure. But it takes quite a bit of money to build

those, but once they're built, we do have the ability to protect them. Okay, let's go to the audience for a question. Over here, yes. At this rapid rate of extinction, at what time do you believe that most, if not all, native snail populations will have died out completely? Oh, that's a great question. So in talking with David a few years back, he used to say, you know, anything outside of an enclosure will probably be extinct in about 50 years. And with the rapid boom in predators that we've had in the last few years, we're looking at more like five to ten. 10 years and maybe faster.

It's going to extinct really rapidly and we need a lot of... Five to 10 years? Possibly. Wow. The Uglandina Rosea, because they can follow slime trails, their chemo-sensory, they really are efficient predators and they just clean them out. So, yeah, we need, we got to do something now. Okay.

Maybe somebody will hear us and free up some money someplace. We only need $12 million and we can save everything that David manages. in the big scheme of things actually, it's not that much money. It's after you give you a check to public radio. Malia, what about the spiders? Are they endangered also? No, they're fairly abundant. You just have to know where to look for them, but it's more of the habitats that they're in that are under threat, but the spiders themselves don't seem to be that difficult to find at present. I don't think there are any really robust population surveys of them at this point.

pretty much the only people who've looked at these spiders are me and my old advisor at Berkeley. So we haven't done those. I'm pretty sure nobody else has either. But we've never really had trouble finding them. We just know what kind of habitats to look. Do you think there are a lot of spiders that are yet to be found? Oh, yeah. Yeah? Yeah. I'm always shocked at the answers I get about how many there are that are out there we don't know about of anything. Yeah. Well, this group of Ariomni's, I don't know if you put pictures up there, but But they were originally described in Hawaii back in 1900 by early naturalists as a single species. And since then, oh yeah, this is just a few of them.

They're, as you can see, they're quite beautiful. And they come in all of these amazing colors, and they are cryptic on their habitats. But unless you're looking for them, you're not going to find them because they are cryptic. So when we started investigating this group, we discovered, in 2007, we described 10 new species, and probably that number is more about 15 right now. So if we weren't looking from, they wouldn't even have any kind of descriptions or names to them. And I think that's the case for a lot of invertebrates

in the terrestrial environment. Melissa, you agree with that? We don't know probably most of what's left out there. Invertebrates are really understudied. So Norie Young, who's with the Bishop Museum, and along with Kenneth Hayes, has been leading really great study to identify all of the,

landsnails in the Hawaiian Islands. And they've been doing a tremendous job of identifying undiscovered species. I'm a reflato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking about Hawaiian biodiversity with Melissa Price and Malia Rivera. I'm going to give you the blank check questions that I give my guests sometimes. We're talking about money here. Melissa, because you brought it up first, if you had a blank check,

and I don't have one in my pocket right now, But if you had, where would you like to spend it? How would you spend that money in your research? I've really come to realize that I think training the next generation of scientists and stewards is where I would want to spend that money and my efforts. Yeah. I have, can I give a shout out to some of my students?

There's a bunch of them, yeah. There's a bunch of them up there who are in one of my programs this summer. Do you have a lot of students who want to be scientists? Do you know people? You know, so now that I'm at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, and you know, in Hawaii, people are really connected to the ocean. They live near it, they play in it, they surf in it, they eat from it.

It's an integral part of our lives. And so I come across students all the time who tell me they want to be marine biologists and marine scientists, and yet something stops them from making that next step into pursuing those pathways. So that's where we've developed these initiatives to try to get them to have access to opportunities to do research and experience what is like to be a marine scientist in a very authentic way in the hopes that it will inspire them to pursue those kinds of career goals. When you say you have an initiative, does that mean you seek out the students and you mentor them?

Yes. So we do a fairly targeted and active recruitment in schools, primarily Hawaii public schools, and I do this through partners who are embedded in these campuses and they will identify students that they think will benefit from participating in some of the training programs that we have. And by nature of that recruitment strategy, we end up serving a lot of students who are typically underrepresented in science. These are in Hawaii. Those are primarily Native Hawaiian students, Pacific Islander students, and students of Filipino ancestry. And so those are a lot of the target demographics that we seek out to participate and give access to these programs.

Melissa, how would you spend my blank check that I don't have? You know, I'm always shocked at how little we know about even common species. For example, Pueo or Short-Eerdal in Hawaii, people love them. They're a popular Omokua or ancestral guardian is maybe one way to explain that. And so people really pay attention to them, and yet we have little idea of even just basic population numbers. And so a lot of times we have to start with basic biology, shockingly, in this day and age where we're thinking about sending people to Mars, we know very little about the species in our backyard. And so oftentimes when we're making management decisions about endangered species, surprisingly, we have to start with the basics.

So I know it's unsexy, but we have to start with reproductive. and survival a lot of times. Thank you both. We've run out of time. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Dr. Malim Rivera is a scientist and educator, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, and Melissa Price is a wildlife biologist

and assistant professor at the University of Hawaii. Thank you both, again, for taking time to be with us today. After the break, we'll talk about an experiment simulating Martian life on the side of a Hawaiian volcano. Now I'd like to welcome back. Our musical guest, McCona. Give them a round of applause. Come on out again.

This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato coming to you from the Kahilu Theater in Waimea, Hawaii. The lava flows southeast of here are reshaping the island we're sitting on, you know, even as we speak. But there's another stealthier, less flashy force that could affect the island's landscapes in the decades to come. and I'm talking about a microscopic fungus. It's attacking one of the forest keystone canopy trees, the Ohia Lehua, whose blossoms resemble a red explosion of fireworks.

And as this fungal, vill and hopscatches across the Big Island, my next guests are doing the sleuthing to predict where it's going to go next and how to stop it. Greg Asner is an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Palo Alto, and here in Volcano. Welcome to Science Friday. Great to be back. Thanks. Lisa Keith is a research plant pathologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Heelow.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you very much. Great to be here. All right, Lisa, set the scene for us. How bad is it, you know, going here? For listeners, especially across the world who may not be familiar with what's happening. Well, the disease we're talking about is rapid O'Hia death. When we discovered it in 2014, I think we thought there would be no forests left.

That man. Yes, it looked very dire at first, but I'm here to say there's lots of hope and lots of healthy forests still existing. So while it is definitely harsh plant pathogens with a group, a good team, it's definitely being managed. I see. Yeah. Greg, you're nodding up and down. You're in agreement that all is not lost here. Oh, no.

There's a lot of hope, a lot of good effort. Hundreds of scientists have come together to do this. So it's... I've heard this described as the Ebola of tree diseases. Is that right? That was an early quote by our friend Flint, yes. As many of those. But definitely, like Greg mentioned, you know, there's a lot of healthy forest.

There's a lot of studies. testing seedlings for resistance to try to get a picture of what's ahead. It's very hopeful. Even in areas where 90 plus percent mortality is seen, there are trees existing. So it looks a lot better than we thought. Yeah. To give a broader eye picture, we have a slide actually what the devastation looks like. All those dead trees. Yes, in an area, that's correct. That's the bright spot that you see healthy amongst this mortality. And Greg, you're involved in a study that actually looks for these trees from a plane. How does that? How do you do that? Well, there's the plane on the screen. It's a unique aircraft. It's our airborne laboratory that we use for flying over forests

or whatever we're flying. That's the inside of the laboratory. It's a high-tech environment, supercomputing instruments that can see the chemicals in these trees. And from those chemical measurements, we can tell you if the tree is healthy or sick. And so we've been flying over these O'Hia forests and determining where are the sick ones. So you wind up with a sort of an aerial map, a picture of what the plane sees. That's right. This is a view on the screen of a single or maybe just a few of the sick trees in brown, and the gray ones are the ones that have already passed away. They've died. And the green ones are the ones that are still making it. So our system, we fly over, we find each of these in the forest, and we make maps. If I didn't know the scale of this picture,

I think it was a head of broccoli. Right. Those are hundreds of trees right there. And there are a lot of O'Hia trees out there on this island. If we zoom out a bit, you can actually see a forest covered in blue and orange dots. What are those dots mean? The blue dots, this is the southeast corner of the Big Island, and the blue dots are areas where the trees have already died,

and the orange or yellow dots, as you see in them, are the trees that are sick at the time of overflight. So this is a part of the island that was particularly heavily impacted by this pathogen. Dr. Keith, how does the disease spread? Does it move? How did it move from tree to tree, I guess is what I'm asking? Yeah, it's a great question, and that definitely is the subject of much study, how it gets into the tree, these fungi.

So actually, we're talking about two new species of fungi of the genera serratocystis, and they need wounds to get in. So that could be something caused by hurricane force winds, or that could actually be something where you weed whack the trunk of your tree. Once there is a wound, the fungal spores get in, they germinate and start to infect and then rapidly move throughout the tree. And what's really tricky with this disease is there's not a telltale sign, there's not purple spots on a leaf that you can say, oh, that tree is diseased and has serratocistic.

We coined rapidohia death just by what we heard the public say a lot, that the trees were alive. They seemed to rapidly die, hence rapid ohia death. We now know that there's actually two specific diseases caused by these two species. And that's what's so awesome about Greg's work, that, you know, the tree that dies rapidly, if you're just looking from the outside, you see lots of brown. leaves attached to a tree. Well, that also looks like, well, maybe the tree just didn't get enough water and died because of a drought. Now, if we can go into the sapwood of the tree, we'll see the signs of the fungus with characteristics staining. But if you want to know before you actually

get into the tree, that's where Greg's work is so awesome. Yeah, he can start to now tell the difference between was it drought or was it fungal attack? You can tell that from the air. Yeah. The way to tell it is through its chemistry, just like going to the doctor and getting a blood test. It's kind of that idea, except we're flying over with instruments that can see into the chemistry of these trees and do it that way instead.

If you'd like to ask the question, we have the mics open. Let's go to this gentleman over here. Hi. We had a family trip last year, RV trip through the mainland. And we drove through Colorado, and we ran into a big kind of block of trees suddenly that were just seemed dead. And I'd also heard that, you know, in the Sierra Nevada is in California, we're facing a lot of sick trees and some things, too. I'm just wondering, how common is it that we see these type of diseases that attack trees? And is there, as we see them, is there, are they similar or are they totally dissimilar across these species?

Well, that's a great question. You know, there's a lot of microbes in nature. and probably less than 1% actually cause disease. But when an invasive species like this fungus comes into a new area and the tree and the pathogen hasn't co-evolved, you tend to see very harsh effects like what we see here. So, you know, 100 plus years there have been major tree diseases, particularly on the mainland, Dutch elm disease,

and oak wild. There's mortality due to invasive insects. So it seems to be more and more common, actually seeing major attacks of invasive pests and pathogens. You know, a lot of times we hear stories about how, whether they're insects, their bugs, their pathogens have developed a tricky way of spreading, you know, so that they fools. Is this the case here? Has the fungus found a way to make it easier for it to spread somehow? Well, the fungus itself is not airborne. So if you think of, say, a dandelion that gets caught up in the wind, this is not that type of fungus. So in order to spread, particularly from infected trees, if it's entombed and it stays that way,

the fungus won't spread. But once either boring beetles start getting into the tree, kicking out boring dust, or, you know, you happen to prune, now the fungus can actually start to spread, either in the wind attached to fine material or another big way. I mean, if you're moving firewood from one area that has the infection to another area that doesn't. That's another way that it's going to spread, or even if the fungal spores are found in soil. So they can hitch a ride on your cars or your boots and go from

one area to the other. Dr. Asner, are you going to, speaking of spreading, are you going to increase your flyover of different places of Hawaii around the different islands? Yeah, in 2016, we flew the big island. And 2017, we were asked to add the big island and windward Maui, the forest of Maui. And coming up, we're going to add Kauai, all the way out to Kauai. So as the, you know, it is known that the pathogen has been found on Kauai now. So we're trying to map not only where it might be, but the pattern of spread by remapping and adding more islands as we go.

Okay, let's go to this side, yes. Yeah, you were talking about it being an invasive species with these fungus, that are coming in. I was wondering if you guys have figured anything out as to sort of where it came from as a new disease or the path that it took to find its target in the O'Hia. Well, there are a lot of serratocistice experts. There are a lot of serratocistics experts. The genus, the fungus, the fungus is called serratacistus. And we thought, with this extensive genetic database,

that is available around the world that we could find precisely where it came from and how it got here. But that hasn't been the case because they are two new species. So we know the areas of the world where maybe their most genetically related cousins exist, but we're still working on that million-dollar question of where did it actually come from. Could it be going someplace from here? You know, I'm serious on a boat or, you know, firewood may be loaded on a boat? Yeah, well, there's definitely the quarantine in place that you can't ship any kind of product off. Right now, I mean, until just recently, it was contained on Hawaii Island.

We're really trying to figure out if the time frame for both species were both of the, them more recently introduced or did we happen to find one because of the widespread mortality of the other? So hopefully there's not going to be much more spread, but you're right. It's easy to hitch a ride on plant material or with travel, but hopefully not. Is it correct that you were the one who named these two new species? Myself, along with some help, particularly with Hawaiian practitioners and other scientists, to try to give it an appropriate name. Yes, that was some of the, it's common to name fungi after family members.

What signal of that scene to your family? I do love my husband, and I thought, I'm not going to burden my daughter being known as, Yeah, something so harsh. So we really wanted to describe, yes, these two new species, seraticistus, Lucu Ohia, the destroyer of O'Hia, and Seradicistus Huli O'Hia, the disruptor of O'Hia. Very dramatic. They deserve that name, yeah.

I sort of have two questions. One is, are you recommending you alluded to it, Are you recommending that we not prune ohia trees? If at all possible, if it's not necessary, yes, it's better not to even create a new wound. Because that word has not gotten out. We know about no transport, but we don't, nobody has talked about do not prune. Right. Where's Flint?

Is he here? So actually the recommendation. is if you do prune, you can get just a simple wound sealant, which would temporarily prevent any fungal spores from getting in. Greg, what would happen if it was successful and wiped out all the O'Hia trees? What would happen to the rest of the, what would it do to the ecology here? O'Hia is what we call a keystone tree species. It generates the habitat for many other species.

there are only a few tree species, native Hawaiian tree species, that do that. And O'Hia is the absolute apex creator of habitat. So if we lose O'Hia, there's a cascade of effects and many other species, all the way out to birds and the creatures that utilize that habitat are going to be affected. Is there a tipping point where you'll know that it's gone so far that you can't save them anymore? Are we near that yet? Or is it the percentage of trees still small enough? We don't know.

We don't know. Is the short answer? That's a good answer. A lot of times, that's the best answer. The science is busy figuring it out today, so that's where we stand. Okay, let's go on to this side. Yes, sir. The O'hea tree is a culturally significant tree to the Hawaiian people,

so it's very important that it be preserved. But I have noticed, and I'm a volunteer here at Kahilu Theater, and I have weed-wacked the grass around here, including around the trunks of the seven or eight O'hea trees that are here at the theater, and two of them have died, and I almost feel responsible for having maybe weed-wacked the bark of the tree

and ultimately killed those two trees. so it's a very sensitive issue for me. But I think homeowners and people that have O'Hia trees on their property probably need to be aware of how sensitive the trees are to these gardening devices, which could kill them. Yes. So actually, that is true. even having that happen without the presence of the fungus.

So O'Hia is very, very strong and resilient and sensitive in a way at the same time. So if it can only sustain a number of weed wax or lawn mowing over roots where it would die. And just because there is a wound, if there is no fungal pathogen there, that's the key. Yes, the fungus needs a wound, but it also needs the inoculation. So if it's not present, it's not going to get rapid o'hea death. Maybe we've eased his pain a little bit about, oh, I can see, very sensitive about that. I'm Ira Flato, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Greg, did you want to follow up on that?

Did you have anything else you wanted to see? Yeah. You wanted to jump in there. Well, both from the scientific perspective and as citizens, we're seeing that this wounding issue is a big one. And so we actually have to change our practices around Ohio trees as best we can to protect them. As a homeowner here as well, we've seen deaths on our property as well. just from our daily routine of mowing the lawn and so forth.

So it is something that we have to adapt to and change along with that. Yes, sir. Hi, how does the airplane identify instruments work? Because if you need to cut into the bark to identify that it's not from drought, how can you do that from an aircraft? Great question. So we have, I see you have a NASA sweatshirt on too. I like that.

We have unique technology on board our plane that allows us to measure the chemical signatures of a tree. Just like you sign your name, the letters that make up your name as you sign it, we generally can tell that it's you. We do that nowadays with trees using their chemical signatures. And with this pathogen, it changes the chemical signature of the tree in such a way that it makes that tree stand out in our chemical mapping. and these types of instruments are not found in satellites today. They're only found on certain aircraft. So it's a new technology. It's a new way of approaching these types of problems.

Might it find its way into a satellite? We're working on it. I think if we're lucky, we're five years out. So we might be able to get this done everywhere, not too long from now. Interesting. Yes. Hi. So I understand the significance of O'Hia as a keystone tree species in Hawaii especially.

And I understand that there have been a lot of efforts to understand Rod or rapid ohia death and how it's spreading and the effects. But what advancements have been made in the prevention and, to be so bold, potential cure for this disease? Well, the first big advancement was even figuring out the fungi killing the disease. we could then establish things like don't move firewood or the proper sanitation protocols to help reduce the possible spread and also the quarantine. I guess unfortunately, serratocystic diseases around the world, there typically is no cure, but that's definitely the scientists' high priority to look for things which can prevent spread which could protect trees from being infected in the first place.

So just so just dabbing the wound with something else is not going to stop. Correct. Yes, unfortunately as soon as the fungus gets into the tree, that's the beginning of the end, unfortunately. And that's not just our disease. I mean, that's that's serratocystice disease is in. trees. Is there any natural enemy a fungus has? Some fungi, yes, there's actually

viruses that can attack fungi. That's it. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's it. Okay. Go over here. So the instrument that you use, like, so like the detect it the tree is healthier or not healthy, how many like trees have you detected that were healthy? How many trees that you detected that weren't healthy

and how many trees that you detected that were sick? This is going to be a scientist. Yeah. Send me your resume. That's right. Great question. So we, as Lisa said, we think the fungus, what, took hold in 2014, more or less. We didn't start mapping until 2016. It took a few years for this thing to get to the level that said, okay, we need to make maps of what's going on. By then we have this massive landscape, the big island, huge amount of forest cover. We have millions of O'Hia trees.

We have a lot of dead trees already on the landscape that died because of drought. We've gone through some drought here in the last decade. We had all these other things going on. So we had to map all of that first and kind of get the background understood. And then we were able to start finding the ones that are likely to be diseased. So once you get the background out, kind of all the rest of the population accounted for, by 2017, we had about 43,000 trees that were expressing the symptoms that Lisa then goes in and tries to assess

as the pathologist. So 43,000 trees in 2017, we just flew a new mission for 2018, and I did. don't have the results today to report in numbers, but we see that it has continued to spread, even in a quick look of the data. So it's a big deal. It's thousands of trees, but we have a lot of O'Hia trees out there, and that's why I think both of us are pretty optimistic about some survivorship. Is it possible that some will survive because they have some natural immunity to the fungus, and they'll take, they might take over? Yes, and actually, that's what we're seeing in some seedling trials that we've been doing with known varieties,

inoculated the same way. You put the fungus in, and you wait and watch and see what happens. And typically the ones that succumb to disease very rapidly, it could be within a month. And there are seedlings now that are surviving a year and a half. I mean, being inoculated the same way. So it really shows you that the host genetics, definitely can play a role, and that's why, yeah, it looks a lot better now than when we first started. I can see why you're optimistic. Okay, time for one more question.

Yes. I think you started to answer some of my question. What makes the O'hea tree so susceptible to that particular fungi? And instead of trying to attack the fungi to strengthen the variety of the – ohio tree to resist that. That sounds like that's what you're doing. Yeah, unfortunately, we still don't exactly know why it was so vulnerable. I mean, I think because it's an invasive species, it hadn't been challenged the way it's being challenged, so the disease is very harsh. But with these pathogens, unfortunately, even the most healthy tree, if inoculated, succumbens,

comes to the disease. I lied, I'm going to take another question. Okay, thank you. Yes, ma'am. I'm looking at this from a regenerative farming kind of perspective. And similar to the other question, what do you know about the soil health and how that it affects the plant? Second part of that question is, is it true that the O'Hia actually resists the Vogue and other fallout from the volcanic activity? activity.

Okay. The one-to punch. You know there's a microphone right next to your mouth. Just want to let you know. So definitely, healthy soils, healthy plants. I mean, that's the overarching answer with that. But again, unfortunately, if the fungus gets in, even in the areas of the most healthy soil, the healthiest plants,

diseases. But she raised a really interesting point, me being a very, you know, inquisitive guy wants to know. Yes. Could there be a relationship between the volcanic action and the fungus? Is it a coincidence that this is just happening in the last few years? Is there more volcanic action or is there some sort of something? No, you're shaking your head, no.

Nah. Nah. Fairness? That's good. One thing that is interesting is just anecdotally, scientists are seeing that areas that have elevated Vogue from the eruption from Kilauea, O'Hia is doing among the better survivors. If they're not getting burned by lava flow, just from the gas itself, the O'Hia is one of the better survivors, along with a couple of other native species.

Some of the invasive species that are out there are not doing well in the bog. And we have some hypotheses as to why. But Ohia does pretty well, to a point. And then there's so much bog in some areas that nothing survives. Those are pretty contained. Did you want to? You look in it.

OK. No, no, I definitely agree. I definitely agree. OK. I could not make a connection. Thank you both. This is fascinating. Thank you very much for taking time to view with us.

Greg Asner is an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Palo Alto. And here on the Big Island, in Volcano. And Lisa Keith is a research plant pathologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Hilo. Again, thank you both for taking time to be able today. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato, coming to you from the Hawaii Theater Center in Honolulu. Now, Hawaii has an incredible diversity of climates and landscapes, rainforests and grasslands, pine forests, beaches. You even have snow here too, which is really interesting to learn about. But it also has places that look

altogether not of this earth. And I'm talking about the rusty red rock fields atop the island's volcanoes, which look alike like those pictures, the Curiosity rover is sending back from Mars. And it's there on the flanks of Maniloh on the big island that scientists are simulating missions to Mars to learn what happens when you jam six people into a 1,200 square foot habitat for months at a time. My next guest is the principal investigator on that project called High Seas and a professor of information and computer sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Kim Binstead, welcome. Come on. Nice to have you here. Great to be here. Give us a thumbnail print of what the high seas experiment is. Where is it? What's going on?

So high seas stands for Hawaii space exploration analog and simulation. It's on the side of monoloa at about 8,000 feet. And what we're trying to do is to simulate a Mars exploration mission. So what the surface part of sending humans to Mars and bringing them back would be. You're not planting stuff to eat there like they show in the movie. You're not putting potatoes out on the ground or anything like that. Do you know something? The Martian in the movie has made my life so much easier.

Is that right? Yeah. easier to explain what I do. People used to be like, oh, what do you? Why worry about the food? And now all I have to say is, remember when Matt Damon ran out of ketchup. So what is the idea? What is the main object that you studied, that you want to know about the people in it? Yeah, we're looking at the people. So we're looking at how to put crews together, how to pick the individuals to form a crew, how their cohesion and their performance changes over these many months of the mission. And basically, what we need to do,

to send them to Mars and bring them back without them killing each other. And why Monoloa? What's unique about that spot there? It's a beautiful spot. It looks very, very much like Mars, both visually and also geologically, it's quite a bit like Mars. So Monoloa is a shield volcano, and the volcanoes on Mars are also shield volcanoes. Monoloa has lava tubes. Mars probably has lava tubes. So it is very much like Mars in that way. Now, do you have to select certain personalities that you think will get along with one another? We do a whole range of psychological testing.

What it comes down to is what a colleague described as thick skin, a long fuse, and an optimistic outlook. How hard is it to find people with one? Do you know, I would actually add one more to that, which is easily entertained. Because if you really need to go out clubbing or if you need to go surfing on the weekends to be happy, you're not going to be happy on Mars. So it's sort of a Goldilocks sort of thing. You have to find a little bit, not too much.

the right mixture. Exactly, especially the outgoing and the so extrovert and introvert balance, because you have to get along with people, because you're going to be in a small space with them for a long time. On the other hand, you're not going to meet any new people for about three years. Are they able to communicate with people on the outside world? They are, but there's a delay. So depending on where Mars and Earth are, the delay can range anywhere between about five minutes and about 25 minutes for a signal to get from one to the other. We settled on 20 minutes. So when you send an email from high seas, it takes 20 minutes for it to arrive. And so the fastest possible answer you're going to get is in 40 minutes. I guess people realize what they're getting themselves

into, or maybe they don't realize it. I think people have been surprised at how they've reacted to it. Everyone goes in very confident. I mean, the people we choose are very astronaut-like in their attitude and their psychology. So I think they are confident that they're going to do well, and they find it more challenging than they thought it was going to be. One thing I learned is that they have to give up their internet connection? Is that right? I mean, their cell phones and things like that? All real-time communication is out.

You can't surf the internet because if you click on a link, it'd be 40 minutes before anything happened. Mine's like that already. I'd fit right in there. You know, it's interesting because I spent some time as a journal in Antarctica where people winter over and they go through the same sort of isolation. It's something predictable and they've learned from that experience. Yeah, we call places like Antarctica serendipitous analogs. You know, they're not intended to be Mars simulation mission-like,

but they are in a lot of ways. So are submarines, so are even prisons to some extent. Let's talk about what the habitat actually looks like and we have some illustrations. What are we looking at there? So it's a dome and on the ground floor there's a large, open area that is reconfigurable. So they use that for the workouts. They use that when they're doing their work during the day, relaxing at night. There's a kitchen. There's a small laboratory. And there's a bathroom. Now the bathroom contains a composting toilet, quite a fancy composting toilet, but still. And there's a shower. They're allowed eight minutes of shower time per person per week. I have to say our crew tend to be very kind of type one personality, so they

push that as far as they can. One of our crews got that down to four minutes per person per week, and one person on one crew did not shower the entire time. I bet you that person wasn't asked back again to it. Actually, their crewmates said it was just fine. He kept himself clean. It was a he, obviously. Obviously. They kept themselves clean. They just didn't do it with a shower. You know, I remember when I lived with my roommates and college, you know what the worst part was the dirty dishes in the sink. Who was going to clean those up, right? Why did you leave? Did they have those kinds of... Yeah. We call them, you know, you get sensitive to microstimuli, and that's just a fancy way

of saying you suddenly can't stand the way your crewmate chews his cereal or whatever it happens to be. Suddenly it goes from, oh, that's a bit irritating to sort of murderous levels. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I've been there. We have some microphones on the audience on the side, so this side and that side if you'd like to ask questions. So let me see if I have, oh, we have a question right here already. Go ahead. I'd like to know, how do you prepare them for their return journey? Well, it's interesting. So our return journey is not very realistic.

Basically, I just show up there in a U.H fan. But I do make it a bit of an event. I ask them what they want to eat. And after four months, eight months, 12 months in the habitat, that becomes a event. very important question. So then I spend a couple of days prior to them getting out, assembling the raspberries or the McDonald's hash browns or the whatever it happens to be. We save the beer for later. So we have a breakfast when they come out. In terms of preparing them, they're very eager to get out. And one thing that seems to happen every time that surprises them

at least is they can only go outside in their spacesuits. So they've been looking at the world through a plastic visor for months. And they get out and they say it, like going from a little black and white TV to a high-deaf television in one move. They're like, can you see the details in this rock? You know, oh my God, the sky doesn't have scratches all over it. And so that could be pretty exciting. And then the other thing that happens is everyone gets sick because they've been effectively isolated from the mutating viruses and so on of the world for months on end.

So the instant they're in a crowd, they get it. Yeah. Question over here, yes. So I'm curious about conflict. Obviously, that's a big thing. You brought that up. And with a small crew of like eight to ten people, if it gets to the point of like something like physical assault

or what you brought up, murder, what could you do with this person? How do you lock them away? Or how do you keep the crew safe from them? Well, the ISS plan features duct tape and tranquilizers. That works. In our case, this is a study with human participants, so we are ethically, of course, obliged to remove them before it gets that far,

and we do. So we would remove people, you know, if they injured themselves, or if we saw signs they were about to injure someone else. Our goal at high seas is to figure out how to prevent that. There are other scientists at NASA coming up for a plan for the worst possible case, but in any system of systems, and a Mars mission would be that, if the human element goes badly, it's just as bad as if the rocket blows up. Do you ever have to abort any missions because somebody was injured?

You had to get them out? Yeah. In the most recent mission, there was an accident at the habitat, and we had to take them to the hospital. Everyone was fine, but under our protocol, they had to go and be checked out. Do you ever have any romances that occur on board? Now, I'm obliged to protect crew confidentiality, but I guess all I can say is that on one mission, well, not actually on all of the missions.

Six people go in and six people come out. And I'm never quite sure whether I'm worried about five coming out or seven coming out. How long is the mission? In the food that you give them, is it typical astronaut food or can they get wine and things like that? No wine, no alcohol. No wine, no alcohol? Yeah. And you still get volunteers?

I know, yeah. So we give them shelf-stable food, so it all has, none of it can. require refrigeration. So a lot of it's dried, freeze dried, and so on. A lot of it I get at Costco. I wish I could say I was getting it somewhere more glamorous. A lot of it I get online. And I'll tell you if you shop for large amounts of shelf-stable food, you get on some really interesting mailing lists. Better you than me. Let's go. Over here, yes. Hi. So I have three brothers, and a lot of times I get, you know, the, I just need a gul-off or something.

So I go to my room. Is there any way that people that are in the simulation have a way to cool down or go somewhere else? So do we tell people to go to their room? Is that right? No. Is there a place for privacy in there? They do have very, very small bedrooms. I say, yeah, I mean, the size of this table and a couple of chairs, really. I don't think anyone's ever been told to go their room, but people certainly do go to chill out in their room and to get away from their crewmates every now and then. And I actually did one of these missions up in the Arctic, the Canadian Arctic, a few years back. And one day I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, as it were. And I realized that, you know, when you can't really get sick, because we'd already run out of all the bugs we'd brought in with us, you can't have a sick day. And sometimes a sick day is what you need.

So we decided that we could take sick days if we wanted. And I went back to bed, and that was that day. Do you find yourself like a camp? counselor. You have to provide the entertainment sometimes for them so they don't get bored and find fun things for them to do. We certainly do our best to give them anything that falls within the mission rules. So we record things for them. We send them movies. We send them TV. We send them news, sports. One thing that was quite interesting is they have a 3D printer. Well, they do. Yeah. And so their friends and family couldn't send them actual things, really, but you could send them

a design to print from the 3D printer. And that was quite a fun way to stay in touch. I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios here in Honolulu talking with Kim Binstead, Princeton. Investigator of the

High Seas Mission. Let's see if I have any more questions. Yes, go ahead. Are you prepared for everything? No. You want to sit here in my chair? That was a great question. No, it's no, we're not, no. What we're trying to do is to at least try to understand

what we need to be prepared for. So the way the NASA organizes this is they've got a bunch of risks, and for each mission profile, a risk is either green, which means it's fine, yellow, which means, nah, it's not fine, but it's acceptable, and red means we're not going to fly this mission while we still have red risks. So the goal of research like mine is to move

these risks out of the red column and into the yellow and green. Is there something you'd like to add to the mission now that you have experience with it, modify it? Give us an idea about that. Lots of things we'd like to do. We'd really like to have more realistic life support systems. So we'd like to have a greenhouse, for example. We'd like to have more water recycling. We'd like to have those kinds of systems and start testing those in this kind of scenario, because, of course, those would be vital for a real mission. It was interesting.

You touched on it before, but I want to learn a little bit more about the old idea of what the right stuff was in the early days versus now what the right stuff is for an astronaut or someone who's going to be going on a long mission. Yeah, NASA used to have this idea, the right stuff idea, that there was sort of an ideal of an astronaut, and then they would pick people who were as close as possible to that ideal. But I think what we're seeing on these longer missions is a better metaphor, a toolbox, right? You wouldn't put six hammers in a toolbox, even if they were the very best hammers in the universe, right? So instead you want to have a range of skills, not just job skills, but psychological skills, backgrounds, communication approaches, and so on, so that no matter what

comes up, this group of people can be resilient and can respond to pretty much any problem. Do you look for people with certain job skills? You know, either they're handy people or Are there geeky people who could fix something if it goes bad? Yeah, we look for scientists, both lab scientists and field scientists. We need engineers who are both systems engineers and MacGyver types, who can fix everything with a piece of duct tape. And we also need people with medical backgrounds. So, yeah, a whole range of skills is what we need.

There you have it. Thank you very much for taking down to be with us today. Kim Binstead, principal investigator on the High Seas Project, Professor of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of. of Hawaii at Manoa. Now I'd like to welcome back our musical guest, Makana, give him a round of applause. Come on out again.

That's about all the time we have. Our heartfelt thanks to Hawaii Public Radio for hosting us and to Jose Faro, Bill Dorman, Phyllis Look, Jason Taglionetti, and everyone else at the station for making us feel so welcome. Thank you all. Also, thanks to Lee Kattnelson and Dan Johnson,

and thanks to all our Science Friday staff It takes a lot of people behind the scenes to run the ship. And a big thank you to all the great folks at the Hawaii Theater Center and the Kahilu Theater. And most of all, thanks to all of you, all of you out there, our fans, you have, you really have been a great crowd this evening. Thank you all for showing up. Couldn't do it without you. Let's give a last round of applause from Makana, who's going to play us out tonight.

Thank you all for coming. In Honolulu, I'm Iriflato. Drive home safely. Have a good night.