Science Friday - Faster COVID-19 Testing, Hell Ants. August 14, 2020, Part 1

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

Throughout the pandemic, testing has continued to be one of the biggest issues, particularly in the United States. Some scientists say that the solution is to rethink our COVID-19 testing strategy, focusing on making faster, cheaper tests. While these more cost-effective tests may be lower in sensitivity than the PCR tests and perhaps not as accurate, they would allow for more people to get tested and receive faster results. The system can also help improve case tracking—which is essential as more people return to work, school, and daily lives. Eric Topol, the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, talks about how these tests can look ahead for infectious patients rather than those already infected. Plus, epidemiologist Anne Wylie walks us through what the process would look like to develop a rapid test. Plus, we’re back with another installment of the Charismatic Creature Corner! This is Science Friday’s place to highlight creatures (broadly defined) that we think are charismatic (even more broadly defined). This month, we’re bringing you an ancient ant relative with a possibly offputting name: the Hell Ant. This insect was a subspecies of ants that lived in the Cretaceous period, when T. rexes and velociraptors roamed the earth. The largest hell ants were about a centimeter and a half long, which isn’t much different than some modern ants. What makes hell ants so cool, however, is their dramatic headgear. They sport jaws that look like mammoth tusks, sticking out of their faces and moving up and down, a motion similar to our own jaws. Hell ants also had horn-like protrusions coming out of their foreheads, which may have helped them catch and eat prey. SciFri’s new Charismatic Creatures Correspondent Kathleen Davis tries to convince Ira that these extinct insects are worthy of the coveted Charismatic Creature title, with the help of Phil Barden, assistant professor of biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey.  Also, climate activists have struggled to convince lawmakers to meaningfully reduce the country’s carbon footprint. Now, new research ties air pollution’s monetary cost to arguments for change. As Vox reports, a Duke University researcher presented findings to Congress last week that air pollution’s effects are roughly twice as bad as previously thought, potentially costing the United States as much as $700 billion per year in avoidable death, illness, and lost productivity—more than the estimated price tag for transitioning to clean energy.   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 Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, we'll talk about an unappreciated insect, the Hell Ant. It's the latest installment of Charismatic Creature Corner, plus a look at whether it's time to rethink COVID-19 testing. But first, people concerned about our climate crisis are pushing for a faster transition to 100% clean energy, a result that has another benefit, removing not just CO2, but removing the health hazards of air pollution. New research shows these hazards are twice as bad as we once thought, meaning twice as much death, twice as many health problems. And reducing air pollution could save twice as much money. Vox staff writer Umer Irfan is here to explain how these savings mean aggressive climate change action could essentially pay for itself. Welcome back, Omer. Hi, Ira, thanks for having me.

I just threw out a lot of big ideas. Can you connect the dots for us between air pollution and climate change? Sure. The fossil fuels that produce carbon dioxide also produce a lot of particulates and a bunch of other hazardous chemicals that have immediate impact on our health and our environment. And we've known this for a long time and research keeps coming in showing us how dangerous it is for our health. But in particular, we've had a tougher time teasing out the economic impacts of this. And recently a researcher, Drew Shindell, who is an author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Climate Report, he testified before Congress on some recent research he had conducted. and found that looking at the economics, when he used a high-resolution climate model that incorporated air pollution, he found that the economic cost of air pollution are actually almost twice as much as what we had previously thought, and that if we were to try to limit climate change in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, meaning limiting warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, we would have huge enormous benefits to our economy.

On the whole, we would probably save about $37 trillion in avoided deaths alone. You know, twice as bad is a huge difference, right, between past assumptions and now. What changed in the calculations or the economics of this? Well, it was basically being able to simulate more with a higher resolution. They developed a model that looked out to the year 2070 that could also incorporate changes in air pollution, but also changes in economics. And they were able to come up with an estimate that was probably a little bit more robust than some of the other previous estimates that were based on just what we've, reported in the past about our own experience with the economy of air pollution and how that impacts us.

Is there a dollar figure on that estimate? How much money could we save? Yeah. The benefits to the U.S. economy alone is about $700 billion per year if we were to get aggressive about fighting climate change. And it shows that basically that just the benefits of reducing air pollution alone make the case for getting rid of fossil fuels. Even if climate change weren't a problem.

this is a pretty compelling argument for getting rid of all these sources of pollution. You know, it's kind of interesting. Why is this kind of data reducing human lives to dollar amounts useful for the cause of taking action on climate change? I mean, is that how we have to justify it to people who don't really believe in climate change or resistant to changing? In a way, yes. I mean, the cost-benefit analysis is always a little bit tricky, especially when you're talking about human life. But under the Trump administration, they've been pushing doing these cost-benefit analyses on environmental regulations as a way to come up with rationales for rolling them back. But this new finding basically shows that if you do the cost-benefit

analysis, it actually becomes an argument for more aggressive regulations to limit greenhouse gases and air pollution. And climate change continues to exacerbate disasters like fires in California right now, fires in wetlands in South America. That's right. You may recall the Amazon fires that got global attention last year. We saw similar fires this year in the Amazon rainforest, but now we're also seeing fires in wetlands in South America. These are some of the largest tropical wetlands in the world. And that's sparked in part by recent weather.

They saw massive drought, some of the lowest water levels in 50 years, but also human activity from farmers in the region, deliberately starting fires to clear land for planting and also for cattle cultivation. I imagine it's going to take a while for climate action to make a difference in places like this. Can people do anything to protect fragile ecosystems from fire in the meantime? Well, one of the key things to consider is the economics, just like we discussed with the air

pollution. The reason they burn these forests is that it's more valuable for farmers to cultivate crops or raise cattle, even if it is on marginal land. And so right now what governments are trying to do is come up with policy incentives and measures that can pay farmers to preserve these forests. And they actually come up with ways that they can benefit. from them monetarily, things like through tourism or through using local crops or products in a sustainable met fashion. But that requires a lot of infrastructure, requires a lot of monitoring,

and it requires a political will, which some countries right now don't have a lot of, especially with the current coronavirus pandemic. Your next story is one that I am legitimately excited about, and it's the story of a new insecticide based on grapefruit. That's right. This is a is a pesticide called Newt Cotone, and it's the first new insecticide we've seen approved in the United States by the EPA in more than a decade. This is, as you noted, it is an oil found in grapefruit, and it's also found in cedar trees. You may have seen people selling, you know, cedar chips as something to put in your, you know, dresser to help get rid of moths and things

like that. And it turns out there are some natural insect repellents in that. And this is a big deal because this is a natural insecticide that's pretty safe. It's safe for humans, mammals, birds, and crucially, bees. But it's also very potent at driving away more dangerous insects, things like mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks, things that can potentially spread disease. You know, I've tried the citronella candles, the other natural way and other essential oils and natural bug sprays, just like everyone else has. Why should this one be different? Why should this work better? Well, the researchers have looked at this, and they found that this is actually a little bit more potent.

In fact, it's comparable in its potency to a synthetic pesticide. So, yes, as you noted, things like citronella, they have a moderate effect and it doesn't last very long. But this is something that's actually pretty strong and can actually kill off some of the more dangerous insects. And it comes from grapefruit. It comes from grapefruit. And the way scientists want to use it now is not just, you know, as a way to spray it on things, but they want it impregnated into fabrics, things like bed nets or even clothing. And some have suggested that we could blend this into soap so that, you know, you could take a shower in the morning. end up coated in this insect repellent all day and prevent bites to begin with.

I love it. When can I get some of this stuff? Well, because it's been approved, I mean, you can probably get it now. It's just a matter of getting it incorporated into products. And so it could be very soon. There's another item from the Department of Things I want yesterday. And that's a vaccine for the common cold. How does that work? I know the cold is many different viruses. How do we get one vaccine for all of them? Well, it's not one vaccine for all of them. It's a vaccine for one of the more common causes of the common cold. As you noted, you know, there are about 200 different viruses that are associated with the common cold. But one of the more common ones is called RSV, the respiratory syncytial virus.

This is such a contagious virus and it's so common that about 90% of people have been infected by it before the age of two. And because it's a common cold, you know, it's not something that scientists have really focused on, but they've realized recently that, you know, when people get infected very early, it can cause lifelong complications. things like asthma, and in the elderly, it can be particularly dangerous. You know, because this is such a common virus, we can see about 60,000 children a year under the age of five and about 14,000 adults over the age of 65 die from this virus every year. So it does make it a worthwhile target. And what's the catalyst for actually coming up with this now? I mean, people have been looking for stuff like this for years.

Why now this breakthrough? Well, scientists have, you know, it's a cumulative process, and I think they are just now starting to get attention on it. There's a German pharmaceutical company, Bavarian, Nordic, that's behind this particular one. And they just recently conducted a clinical trial on 420 adults over the age of 55. And now they have some interest and momentum in doing a larger-scale clinical trial. These drugs, you know, these vaccines are a hugely costly endeavor because you have to go through such extensive safety and approval testing. They have to meet a much higher bar for safety than conventional drugs because you usually give them to healthy people.

And so a lot of pharmaceutical companies have been really reluctant to invest in them. But now the economics sort of pan out for a drug for an illness like the common cold. And potentially the company sees a potential financial upside in investing in this. So how soon might we see something like this available to everybody? And would everybody get it to begin with or would they prioritize people? Yeah, they would definitely prioritize people because this is more dangerous for very young people and very old. They are likely to focus very early on the elderly. They will likely get the first doses and children afterward once they clear those clinical trials. The company wants to begin

larger trials next year with about 12,000 adults. And they say that if those trials go well, they could potentially have this on the market by 2024. Wow, that's pretty fast. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Let's go to your last story. And this is a really cool one because I like space and I know a lot of our listeners do, is we're going to Distant Planet Series, the largest object in the asteroid belt. Humair, I was so excited to see this headline, Series might have an ocean.

How cool is that? It's very cold, but not cold that it's frozen, because one of the key findings here is that there is a liquid ocean. It's not just ice. And this comes from NASA's dawn spacecraft. It arrived in 2015 at Siri, and it kind of wrapped up its mission in 2018. But just this week, scientists put out their analysis,

of some of their key findings there. And one of the big things they found is that there's evidence that there might be a liquid ocean far beneath the surface of this small dwarf planet. How would a liquid ocean be possible for an object as small and as far away as that? I mean, it's really cold out there, isn't it?

Yeah, it is, but many planets and planetoids have a warm core, and so potentially, if you have water that's closer to the core, that might be enough heat there to maintain it as a liquid. I know scientists want to send probes out to the moons of Jupiter. They think there might be liquid oceans and some of those moons, even some moons of Saturn, perhaps. Would series be a good target for probes also? Yeah, it's probably very likely that they want to do a follow-up mission there because while scientists did say that they found strong evidence for liquid water on series,

other researchers are a little bit skeptical and they want to see better evidence. The researchers in this case, they used a combination of gravitational data, basically monitoring how the density of the planet changed with the space probe. And they used a simulation to see how heat would move through the planet's surface if there were ice or if there were liquid water. And they found that the combination of the simulation and their data showed that there was likely an ocean there. But other researchers say they want more tangible evidence. They want more direct evidence that there's some liquid water there. And that might be a mission for a follow-up probe. Thank you, Omer.

No problem. Omer Irfan, staff writer for Vox. After the break, we'll talk about rethinking our COVID-19 testing strategy. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this short break. This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo. Throughout the pandemic, one of the big issues has been, of course, testing.

The main test used to detect COVID-19 infections are polymerase chain reaction tests. These PCR tests are highly accurate and reliable, but they have been hampered by all sorts of issues, not enough of them, taking too long for results, for example. Some scientists are saying that the solution is rethinking our testing strategy, make faster, cheaper tests, and while they may be lower in sensitivity than the PCR tests, and perhaps not as accurate, they would allow for more tests, faster results, and better tracking. So is the trade-off worth it? What are some of the possibilities and advantages and disadvantages,

and how should we rethink our testing system? My next guest is here to speculate with us. Dr. Eric Topal, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, Professor of Molecular Medicine, Executive Vice President of Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. Welcome back, Eric. Always good to have you. Oh, same here. I are great to be with you.

Let's first talk about the PCR test. They have been the go-to test to determine if you are infected with COVID-19, but you say the tests have a different mission. Tell us what's wrong with these tests. Well, you covered, of course, the practical aspects that they're hard to get and they're taking too long to get the results back. But the bigger problem is that they test whether someone is infected, and that's not what we really are interested in. Our exit strategy from where we are right now is predicated on knowing if someone is infectious. So all you need- The difference being the difference?

Though the difference is there's a lot more viral load, a lot less, a lot more likelihood that you could spread an infection. So just because you have some RNA nucleotides picked up by a PCR, which, as you said, is pretty darn sensitive, we don't need to know about that. We need to know whether you can transmit the infection. because if you can't transmit, then you're good to go. So what will tell us, what kind of test would tell you if you're infectious? Well, there's 20 different companies working on this and lots of different academic labs around the world. And so there's lots of different solutions. Most of them are using this so-called RT-lamp assay.

But what it does is gets the results within 20 minutes, 30 minutes at most. It's very inexpensive. and it's pretty darn sensitive, but not as sensitive, and that's good as the PCR test, which is the standard today, which isn't perfect, by the way. The PCR still has a 10% gap of missing false negatives. So if you had a test that was not terribly accurate, and I mean that not 100%, or maybe not even 75%, let's say 50%, a quick, easy test, cheap, 50% accurate, is that still a useful test? Well, firstly, that 50% is using the wrong benchmark because that's against PCR. What you really want is, is it picking up infectious? The person is infectious accurately?

That could be 90 or 100% if we get the right threshold. How many copies of virus? How much viral load? So that's what's great about this is that it's a whole new path. And the problem, of course, it hasn't been recognized, and it's vital that we get behind it because it's really a practical way that could be done by anyone in the home or any environment and get an answer quickly. Why has it not been recognized? Well, there's three major reasons. One is that because it goes through the regulatory path of FDA and they're still holding PCR as the standard, they haven't recognized this as an independent new pathway, and so that's a problem.

The second thing is, as you well know, you need millions, millions, tens of millions of these tests to be manufactured. And these are largely startup companies or academic centers, and they don't have the means. They don't have the funds to do that. So it's a cash-22. If they can't get FDA clearance, they sure can't go into high production. And that gets us to the fact that the government has not gotten behind this like it has for vaccines. In fact, none of the rescue PPP funds have been going to this diagnostic rapid home testing. So this is a real problem.

It's a lack of financial support, a regulatory pathway that hasn't been established. And finally, the fact that you have to prove it, that is all this makes a lot of sense, but you have to show that when you use these tests at scale, you don't have infections that get spread. So that's the one other piece that has to get validated. Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, tested positive with a rapid test, but then he tested negative with two different PCR tests. Are we risking having more false positive tests? Well, actually, the good part is the false positive is not the worry here. The problem, even with some of the tests that are used today that are so-called rapid, they're requiring very expensive machines.

They can't be done at home or at scale. And they do generate false. negatives. And that's, for example, the ones that are used at the White House and many other places where, you know, the Abbott ID test, for example, is notorious for having a sensitivity problem. So that's why this whole new path, this whole new type of testing has a lot of appeal. Let me bring on somebody who is developing a whole new type of testing, who is part of a team developing a rapid test called saliva direct, and as you can guess it, it uses your saliva. The test is currently in the process of being approved by the FDA. Anne Wiley is an associate research scientist in epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health in New Haven.

Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Wiley. Thank you. Tell us a little bit about how your saliva test works and what part of the virus is it testing for. Why is it rapid? Give me the ABCs, please. So what we're done with saliva direct is we were wanting, you know, it is still, as you say, a PCR-based method. We are still relying on laboratories for testing it at the moment. But we saw early on in the pandemic that saliva was giving us comparable results to the nasopharyngeal swab. But it had the benefits of not needing that, you know, deep brain swab.

It wasn't relying on swab kits that were in short supply. It had less risk to healthcare workers. it could be easily collected by just about anyone. And we realized that as this was going forward, we were going to start to see a shift in, you know, needing to move away so much from the diagnostic test, but to ongoing screening and surveillance as we start to reopen our communities. So we really wanted to make a test that was a lot easier to take a faster turnaround time.

And we had seen others taking their swabs and testing them almost directly into PCR. So we decided to see if we could do the same with. saliva and we have been able to. We do a very minor workup and we take away the RNA extraction step. Taking away that RNA extraction step saves a lot of time, but it also saves a lot of money in terms of the resources needed to do that RNA extraction and the hands-on time of people to do that test. So how quickly can you turn a test around? How cheap is it and how accurate is it? We're using the CDC in one primers. So this is a primary that's being used in all across the country already, which is showing to be very specific for SARS-CoV-2.

I mean, we are still relying on the PCR, so this is still something that has to be done in the lab. But by removing that RNA extraction step, it is only, we can get results in about two to three hours. But this is, so that doesn't seem like rapid for, you know, an individual test, but these plates can hold up to 90 samples on a, in a reaction. So we can test 90 samples in perhaps less than three. hours. So this is a much faster turnaround time than what we're seeing otherwise. And the price point we're talking about? We're looking at anywhere between $1.50 and $4.50 per test, depending on what reagents you use. And as you said before, the reagents are quite commonly available. We don't have

to go out and get some exotic stuff. That's right. And what we've actually done with our FDA-EUA is that we've validated reagents from a wide range of suppliers and different manufacturers with the idea that, you know, different labs will have connections with different suppliers. We also want to circumvent any supply chain issues with demand. And we're also hoping that by having reagents available from different suppliers will help keep costs down and not have a single company, you know, jack up their prices in response to a recommendation from us. Of course, one of the issues with new tests is that you need to test them and you have studies to see how effective they are. I understand that to do this, you've partnered with the NBA.

Are you testing the NBA players? We have. It's a very interesting scenario to find ourselves in, but indeed. And the NBA reached out to us earlier in the year because they had seen our work with saliva and they realized, same as everyone else, you know, they would much rather be taking a daily saliva sample than taking a daily nasoprengeal swab or any other swab for that matter. They could have reached out to any one of the sort of industry partners out there and just bought some rapid tests for them to test with, but they really wanted to help support research.

And after discussing with them, we realized that, you know, our ideals quite aligned. We wanted to make testing more accessible at price points that could reach sort of right across the community. And so they really helped us to continue our research into saliva. And indeed, you know, we do need to validate this method on asymptomatic individuals to show that this can be worked in a screening manner for healthy. people. And the time and resources to set a study like that up by ourselves when we have been so stretched than responding to this pandemic would have been near impossible. So being able to piggyback

on their resources and have them send us saliva samples, we receive them blinded. We don't know who they are or who they've come from, but we're comparing them to their true diagnostic test that they're having taken by Quest or by a reference. So it's been an incredible opportunity to validate our method in a healthy asymptomatic population. How close are you then to doing a home test that you could send a tube or people get a tube but their saliva in and how close are you? So at the moment, our FDA-EUA will be for a saliva collection under the guidance of another individual.

Going into the home and getting home tests is where the regulations are still really tight at the moment. We are working on that. We're looking into things. we're seeing that you don't need really expensive collection tubes to take saliva samples. You can just almost spit into a very simple plastic cup or classic container, which also helps keep prices down. We're going to see what we can do.

But I think one of the things I'm most excited about for our FDA, EUA, is that our saliva direct is not only the rapid, fast, you know, point of care, possible tests that's out there. There's so many others that have been developed. And I just hope that us getting our EUA will really help. pave the way for other tests to also get the EUA more easily through the FDA, and we can just open up testing right across the board. Eric Topol, how close to these tests that she's talking about come to the kinds of tests you'd

like to see? Well, I think what the innovation that Anne and our colleagues at Yale did is just terrific. The problem, though, is we need to get the results for at home wide-scale use even quicker. That is the 20-30-minute is, you know, or even shorter. So a lot of these tests that are now in ready mode for scale production and testing are paper strips or change in color of liquid that you can get in 20 minutes and are very inexpensive, like what I described, even at the level of a dollar per test. So the frequency of the test is really important. And I think you mentioned that IRA at the outset, that if you do this test that's done on a frequent basis, like every day, that's where you're making a big difference.

And so I think they're very different. The path of these rapid, inexpensive, frequent testing, whether it's for the antigen that is a protein of the virus or the virus per se, is different than trying to get, you know, a plate of a large number of samples in a two or three or four hour period. So we need for speed and frequency and, of course, the accuracy of course the accuracy of infectiousness. Those are the things that need to be emphasized. I'm Ira Plato and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. And how do we scale up to get a test that's cost about a dollar and can get out

to everybody and get to the point where you would like to see it? What kind of revolution do we need into the testing business? Yeah, well, as Anne alluded to, we need to get the FDA to buy into this and quickly. There are months behind. You know, Anne's paper was published, months, ago, as Harvard, the Heidelberg University, so many academic groups have been on this, but the FDA has not yielded, even though they made a statement recently that said they think this is the future. They haven't changed from the PCR current standard. And that will unlock some funding, but also the government should get behind this. It isn't just about vaccines, which still, you know, that's going to take time and there's a lot of uncertainties. And the problem really is,

Ira, when you get down to it from the bigger picture in medicine. Diagnostics are like the Rodney Dangerfield. You know, they don't get any respect. But here, they are the way we see the virus. So we really need government and funding. If they put some of the rescue funds towards this, it would really help. Are there other countries that we can look to that have rethought this testing strategy, Eric, and have come down to your way of thinking?

Senegal and Africa, they're capable of doing two to three. hour tests in the UK. They're adopting that right now. So, you know, that's good. That's a definite step, an enormous step in the right direction when you think that people are waiting many days to get their results back now. So, you know, there are some efforts around the world, South Korea, early on, a switch from the conventional PCR to one that was in the two-three-hour range. But even that is not ideal when you're trying to make a decision that when you wake up in the morning, am I good to go somewhere? And that's the point, Eric, if you can test every day, it doesn't matter if the test is not

totally sensitive. By testing every day, you will eventually find out how infected people are. Exactly. You know, as you're familiar with, Ira, there are many people who, once they get an infection, they can be PCR positive for weeks, but they're not infectious. And that's basically the story. We just want to know about the ability to spread an infection. And so the whole idea is it's a different threshold that a lot more virus load.

And so that has to be established and proven. But, you know, this is something that's very appealing when we otherwise don't have an adequate alternative. Are you hopeful that the FDA might come around to your way of thinking? Well, there's certainly starting to get some pressure. I sure hope so. But, of course, it'd be nice if we'd not only had that, but we also had a, national coordinated plan to emphasize that this is worthwhile, that this is a way to get, you know,

for example, as you know, the school controversy is ongoing now. But if we had each teacher and child and staff people, bus drivers, if they were being tested every day, we'd be potentially much more comfortable about opening schools in regions where there's low spread or, you know, well suited for this. So no matter what scenario you look at, This is a very promising path. Well, I'd like to thank both of you for taking time to be with us today. And Wiley, Associate Research Scientist in Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Eric Topal, Professor of Molecular Medicine, Executive Vice President of Scripps Research

and Director of Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Good luck in your work. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, you may have heard. of carpenter ants and fire ants, but what about hell ants? Stay with us. We'll be right back. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. And now is time for another charismatic creature corner.

Joining us today is our charismatic creature correspondent, Kathleen Davis. Hi, Kathleen. Hey, Ira. I am here to plead the case that a certain critter is worthy of the title of a charismatic creature in the eyes of the SciFri community. So if you're remember our other charismatic creature corners, you know that by creature we mean just about anything. We have argued for slime molds being called charismatic. And by charismatic, we mean something that is as worthy of our interest and enchantment as, say, a little baby sloth. Ooh, that is a high bar. Of course, because who isn't delighted by tiny sloths? Part of the challenge, though, is that this week I am not bringing you a baby sloth, because

that would just be too easy. Ira, are you familiar with the Hell ant by chance? You know, I can't say that I have ever met one. Right off the bat, do you think this sounds like a charismatic creature? With the name Hell in it? I don't know, you know. You're here to convince me, so go ahead and do that. So how about if I add dinosaurs to it?

Well, now you've gotten my attention. So Hell ants are a subspecies of ants that lived in the Cretaceous period. That's when T-Rexes and velociraptors were running around the earth. The biggest hell ants were about a centimeter and a half long, which isn't much different than what we get from modern ants. But what makes hell ants so cool is that they have pretty wild headgear. So they have these jaws that kind of look like mammoth tusks that stick out of their faces and go up and down in the same motion that our jaws do.

Hell ants also have these horn-like petrusions that come out of their foreheads. Experts say all these things going on on the hell ant face probably help them catch and eat prey. So I can tell that you're not quite convinced yet that hell ants are charismatic creatures. So to help me out, I've got Dr. Phil Barden. He's an assistant professor of biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Barden. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Hi, Phil. Good to have you.

Hi there. So can you explain to us why health? Hell ants are called hell ants? I can, yes. You know, we came up with a common name, hell ant a few years ago because we sort of got tired of saying, like, you know, these bizarre ants with these funky appendages that were 100 million years old. And the reason why we came up with the name hell ants specifically is because the first

species that was described, the scientific name for it, was Hado-Mermex, Cerberus. And so Hado-Mermex meaning Hadoes and Hades and Murmix is sort of Greek for Ant. And then Cerberus, if you're familiar, is sort of the hound that guard the hell. And so this researcher named the first ant Hado-Mermak serveras back in the mid-90s because of the animal's really striking bizarre appearance. I want to hear more about that headgear that Kathleen mentioned earlier. Why would an ant need to have such a strange face? Why would it have evolved this way? I need to know more. Yeah, that's a great question. Well, one of the reasons why it's so strange is because there's so many ants that we know about today. So on the planet,

currently there's about 15,000 known ant species, and they have all kinds of funky things going on. They have really strange mouth parts. Some of them are highly specialized, but none quite like what we see in hell ants. So what we think is happening here is this kind of interesting pattern called evolutionary integration. So what happens is when you have this innovation in the way that different features on a body move, it might allow two different features to interact for the first time. And that opens up this new kind of evolutionary pathway to new adaptive space. And what we think is with hell ants, they first evolved this ability to move their mandibles up and down. And then that put the head and the mouth parts together in this integration style for the first

time. And that is what kind of generated this crazy range of adaptations that we don't see today. There are different types of hell ant headgear. Is that right? It sounds like they can be a little bit different. Yeah, absolutely. So there's a wide variety in the horns that we see in these ants. Some of them are just tiny teeth. They're almost kind of cute. It's just a little nub. And then some of them are these huge elongate unicorn-like horns. Some of them are serrated and they look like chainsaws. Some of them are bifurcated and really lobe-like. And, you know, some also have these spoon-like projections.

So they look like these giant lobe-like paddles that come right out of the forehead. And it really does make you wonder just, you know, how and why this evolves because it's something that we just never see today. Ira, did you hear that? That some of them had cute little teeth. I like the spoon. I mean, I've never heard of an animal with a spoon-like projection coming out of their head. So you're sort of winning me over on this one. Well, Phil, you've got this whole lab at the New Jersey Institute of Technology that studies social insects, including the hell ant.

How do you know that hell ants were social? Yeah, that's a great question. So hell ants are right at the base of the ant evolutionary tree. So the first time that we see ants in the fossil record about 100 million years ago, some of them are hell ants. And so one of the first questions we had was whether or not these were social in the same way that modern ants are, if they have a social, society and a structure where you have queens and workers. We know that helen ants are social because we have multiple different casts of the species. So we have workers and queens from the same species. And the reason we know that is you kind of have to

learn a little bit about how modern ants start colonies. So if you look at a modern ant colony, what you'll see is that there's a queen and a variety of workers. All the workers are female, by the way. And the queen is also female, of course. And so what happens is the queens have wings. And when queens start a new colony, they actually fly off and they tear off their own wings to dig out a new colony. And that gives you an idea of where at and the kind of social development these species are. And we have hell ants that have wing scars indicating that they were queens starting new colonies. They chewed off their own wings and they were in the process of starting a colony. We also have workers and we have queens with wings. So we have the whole kind of ensemble of social cast members way back in the Cretaceous with these hell ants.

Phil, I don't know if this is going to help or hurt our case here, but I have to ask you about this one particular hell ant your lab has studied. It's trapped in amber, as many of these hell ants are. And this one in particular is in the process of eating an ancient cockroach. I would imagine that this was a pretty exciting find for a hell ant researcher, was it not? It really was, yeah. I mean, this specimen was kind of the final puzzle piece in this mystery because, you know, the first of the first of, first hell ant was dug up about 100 years ago, and it's been a really kind of open question about how and why it is that we have this ancient diversity in the fossil record. And your dinosaur

analogy is accurate because hell ants really are the dinosaurs of the ant world. They're this group of animals that have specializations that we no longer see today. So we speculated for a while about why it is they have these funky features. And one of the things that we've proposed was that it was this specialized feeding mode, that they were grabbing prey by moving their mouth parts up and down, to basically pin them or pierce them against their own head. And we proposed this, you know, maybe in 2012 or so. And people were a bit skeptical then, and by people, I mean, the scientists who tend to be skeptical about these kinds of things.

And so this fossil conclusively says that these ants had to have moved their mouth parts in this way and that they did use this strange variety of adaptations to capture their prey. And then IRA just mentioned, you know, you said that you thought the spoonbill ant was particularly interesting. that ant we actually think would have impaled prey with its mouth parts against that spoon, basically like a backstop, and then would have drank the blood of the insects, which is called hemalimp. This is getting better and better as you keep describing it. It depends on what your definition of charismatic is, that's for sure. So we talked about the cockroach that was in this specimen with the hell ant,

but what else existed in the hell ant circle of life as far as we know? Like what else would it have preyed on? Yeah, that's a cool question. So, yeah, this extinct cockroach relative is called Caputo Raptor. And it has this funky thing where it has basically a serrated back of the head and serrated shoulders. And people have been kind of asking why that would have been the case. And because this Hell Ant had its mandibles around essentially the neck of this cockroach, we started to speculate that maybe those serrated features were actually to defend against Hell ants.

Outside of that Caputo Raptor thing, we have a lot of early members of lineages that we know about today. So other early wasp relatives, beetles, for example. And in fact, in this time period, there were beetles that were specialized to live specifically just within ant colonies. So we know that ants were ecologically kind of impactful enough to have species that were specialized to live among them. And then I guess if we have to do the boring stuff and pan out outside of insects, you know, there are all kinds of interesting dinosaurs and terrosaurs and things that are lumbering around above the ants. So you have an ant that was alive during the time of the dinosaurs. and we have ants that are around today.

Is there any connection, relationship, descendancy between the two? So the short answer is no, that these hell ants are not the ancestors of modern ants. They're kind of like the distant cousins. So in the same way that Tyrannosaurus Rex is a relative of the pigeons you see outside. You know, the pigeons you see outside

aren't the descendant of Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's kind of a, you know, the hell ants are this early lineage offshoot that kind of did its own thing for a while. But that leads to an interesting question, which is why is it that the hell ants when extinct, whereas modern ants are so ubiquitous. You see them in your kitchen counter. You see them on the sidewalk. Pretty much anywhere you go on the planet where there's land outside

of Antarctica, you find ants. And so one open question we're working on now is why is it that some early ant lineages kick the bucket, whereas other groups became really kind of highly successful. Yeah, you know, I was wondering what happened to them if there's such great hunters and they have such great weapons on their head. What, you know, was it climate change? Was there something that wiped them out. Yeah, we don't know exactly the time where we lose hell ants. So the last window into the fossil record that we have hell ants is about 78 million years ago. And then the next time that we have a fossil deposit that we have ants is actually after the KPG extinction event, 65 million years ago where we lose non-avian, you know, non-bird dinosaurs. So we suspect that

hell ant loss could be related to that last mass extinction event. And one thing that we've kind of speculated about is this is a highly specialized adaptation and it's a I mean it's a really a way to commit to this strategy right there's no backing out from developing these really highly specialized horns and mandibles so it could be that this extreme specialization led hell ants to be susceptible to extinction we find that many of the groups that do really well around extinction periods tend to be generalists right jacks of all trades that can maybe live in a variety of environments or feed on a variety of different things because there's a lot of uncertainty in times of extinction. So it could have been that hell ants really just didn't have this generalist strategy.

And so this highly specialized strategy was really tricky for them and led to their ultimate demise. You know, you're not only making a good case for a charismatic creature, but you're making a case that we should be seeing these hell ants along the other dinosaurs in museums, right? That's right, yeah. I really do think that people maybe could use some extinct insect analogs. I push for hell ants because, you know, I happen to study fossil ants and I think they're great. But there are a lot of fossil insects that people don't really think about, you know. We don't see lunchboxes with fossil insects on them. People might know that there were maybe giant dragonflies way back when.

But outside of that, people tend to not think about fossil insects. And I think that that could be a place, a room for improvement because people see insects in their everyday life. And so if they're more inclined to think about, you know, insects going extinct, maybe they think that extinction is a little bit more familiar and a little bit closer to them. than if it's something like a Tyrannosaurus rex that they might see, you know, once every few years or something in a museum. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you just joined us, we're talking with Dr. Phil Barton, assistant professor of biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. Also talking with charismatic creature correspondent, sci-fi producer Kathleen Davis. Well, I am fully on board that hell answer charismatic creatures.

But before we wrap things up, Phil, have we missed any other aspects of hell ants that make them particularly charismatic, in your opinion? Yeah, that's right. So again, it depends on your definition of charismatic. I will say that, you know, one kind of interesting fun thing is that the first hell ant that I worked on a few years ago now actually had those wing scars I was talking about before. And so what that means is that if you go from the perspective of her as a new queen, right? She is off to found a new colony, so she chewed off her own wings. And then she would have founded a new colony. She would have dug out a hole. And many modern ant species, once they dig out this hole and they start living inside of it,

they never leave. They actually have enough fat stores in their thorax to basically produce the first generation of young. So they never leave the nest again. This hell ant had the wing scars and was still trapped in amber, which strongly suggests that she was out hunting, probably for her own young. And so maybe that's something that's a little bit charismatic and maybe endearing. about hell ants is, of course they would have, you know, cared for their offspring, just as all modern ants do. And they would have had this social structure that we may admire in some ways,

although they do often do some terrifying and horrifying things. So maybe that's something that we can kind of take away that might be a little bit charismatic, as they would have cared for their offspring in each other. And I think that's always something that's nice. Well, Ira, before I get your verdict, here's a review of some of the things that we have learned about hell ants today. As Phil just told us they were social creatures. They cared for their offspring. They cared for each other. They had this rich community within their colonies. They have got some wild looking headgear. You can't argue with that. And hell ants are part of this murder mystery, of this gap in the ant timeline. So learning more about hell ants can potentially help us learn more about the ants that you may

find in your cupboard, perhaps. So, Ira, what is your verdict? Charismatic or not charismatic? Well, you sort of hit the trifecta of ants here. I mean, you have ants that live during the dinosaur period. Whoever heard of those kinds of ants? And the headgear, crazy head gear, including a spoon-like projection used to attack their enemies. And what do they attack? Cockroaches. How can you not like an ant that devours cockroaches? I wish we could do a Jurassic Parky thing with the amber and bring these ants back, although I may be sorry later on if they get out. But yeah, they're definitely charismatic in my opinion. Phil, I don't even know if I have to ask you this question, but do you think these are charismatic creatures?

Oh, I absolutely do, yeah. Well, I do appreciate you teaching me about Hell ants today. I want to thank you, Phil, for taking time to be with us today. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on and for the chance to talk about these weird things. I hope we have advanced the case for Hell Ants being charismatic and maybe showing up in a science museum someplace. Dr. Phil Barden is assistant professor of biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark,

and he was here teaching us all about hell ants. So, Ira, I do have a question for you before we go. Are there any creatures that you want to learn more about for future charismatic creature corners? You know, I've learned about these creatures in the past, but I can never get enough of them, and they are the tiny tardigrades. They're just so unique that I would like to know as much as I can about them. I don't think you're alone on that one. And we're taking ideas for future charismatic creature corners on the Science Friday Vox Pop app.

And we will take just about anything. We have featured slime molds, Tasmanian Tigers, and now Hell Ants. So we want to know what is next. Listeners can nominate the next charismatic creature on the Science Friday Vox Pop app. And you can find that wherever you get your apps. Thank you, Kathleen. Our charismatic Creature Corner correspondent, SciFri producer Kathleen Davis. Thanks, Ira.

Charles Berkwest is our director. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, and Kathleen Davis, B.J. Leaderman, compose our theme music. And we're saying goodbye this week. Oh, no, to our triple-AS mass media fellow Atabey Rodriguez-Benitez. This summer, Atabay produced segments about mosquitoes, our sense of smell, and Peru's Boiling River. I'm sure you've heard and enjoyed all of them. But this fall, she's going to continue her Ph.D. studies in chemical biology at the University of Michigan. Thank you, Edda Bay, for your contributions this summer, and we hope to see you again. And this week on our Science Friday Vox Pop app, we want to know for an upcoming segment. We're revisiting Second Life. Do you remember that massive online virtual world? Science Friday had its own island there, where we were broadcasting the show and hung out as avatars, and I had my own avatar named Ira Flatly. If you were involved in Science Friday's Second Life community in the late 2000s,

please tell us your favorite memory from that time. And you can do that on our Science Friday Vox Pop app wherever you get your apps. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Plato.