Science Friday - Moths, Alan Alda, Graveyard Lichens. Nov 1, 2019, Part 2

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

There are over 160,000 species of moths worldwide, and they come in all different shapes and sizes. For example, the Comet Moth, native to the rainforests of Madagascar, boasts vibrant red and yellow patterned wings, feathery antennae, and long swapping tails, thought to useful for distracting its bat predators. By comparison, most common North American moths seem boring and dull. While their butterfly relatives flit about the garden in daylight, moths are often found lurking around outside lamps at night. And they can be a nuisance—eating holes in your cashmere sweaters or natural fiber rugs. Even in popular culture they get a bad rap. We use terms like “moth-balled” to describe a cancelled project and “like a moth to flame” when we talk about a perilous situation.  But do moths deserve the unflattering characterization of the mysterious, scaly-winged insect that haunts the night? Dr. David Lees, Curator of Lepidoptera at the Natural History Museum of London, certainly doesn’t think so. He joins Ira to set the record straight about moths by highlighting their astonishing diversity and usefulness. Actor and writer Alan Alda might be best known as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H, or as a familiar face from several Woody Allen films. But he also spent more than a decade interviewing scientists on Scientific American Frontiers, and later founded a center to teach scientists how to communicate better with the public—through improv. His latest project is hosting the podcast Clear + Vivid, where he’s interviewed a long list of public figures, from Adam Driver to Melinda Gates, and a wide variety of scientists like climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and primatologist Frans de Waal. In this interview with Ira, he focuses on a few memorable moments in the podcast that illustrate how to talk about tough topics like climate change. A cemetery isn’t necessarily the first place that comes to mind when thinking about urban biodiversity and conservation, and, for a while, even ecologists wrote them off. But there’s a growing body of research that’s come together in recent years pointing to the value of these unexpected green spaces in protecting biodiversity, especially in cities where land is at a premium and green space is limited. Researchers even discovered a new beetle species at a cemetery in Brooklyn earlier this summer and spotted a rare salamander species in the same cemetery only a few years earlier. But it’s not just beetles and salamanders that take refuge in cemeteries. Lichen, which are an algae-fungi amalgamation, do too. Jessica Allen, assistant professor of biology at Eastern Washington University and an expert in New York City lichen, joins Ira to discuss the rare lichen that her research team found in a cemetery in the Bronx and why cemeteries are helping lichen to thrive in NYC.   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 Plato. Later in the hour, myths about moths and the fascinating behaviors of this underrated night dweller. If you have a question about moths in your neck of the woods, get it. Give us a call. Our number is 1-844-724-8255. 844-724-8-255, or you can tweet us at SciFri. But first, in cities where plants and animals compete with humans for space and survival,

cemeteries offer an unexpected reprieve, right? They're usually pretty big, a lot of green growing, not frequently visited by many people, making them ideal places for some plant and animal species to thrive. And sometimes even new ones that we haven't seen before, like a new beetle species recently discovered at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, or a rare population of salamanders that researchers found in a hidden glen of the cemetery just a few years earlier. But you know what? It's not just the beetles and salamanders that benefit from these unexpected green spaces. Lichen.

Lichen. Lichen. Do you tell us more about that as Jessica Allen, professor of biology at Eastern Washington University. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. Thank you so much for having me on. You're welcome. First of all, tell us exactly what a lichen is, because I asked three different people and got three different answers.

answer. Okay. That's not unexpected necessarily, but sort of our textbook answer is that lichens are a quintessential symbiosis. So it's a relationship between a fungus and an alga where the fungus is really making the bulk of the structure that you see and housing the algae. So the algae are photosynthesizing and making sugars in return for this nice home. And so that's what you probably will read. if you read a textbook. But recent research has shown that lichens are a lot more complicated than that. So in addition to that main fungus and the main alga, there are usually these really complex and diverse communities of other fungi and bacteria,

maybe multiple different algae. You can often find tardigrades in there and nematodes as well. So some people sort of started to sort of call these miniature ecosystems. or, yeah, so a little bit more complicated maybe than our original textbook definition. Are they pretty hardy? Are they tough? So some lichens, definitely. Many lichens are what we would call extremophiles. So really organisms that really thrive in extreme environment. So if you ever travel to the Arctic or the Antarctic, you're bound to see lichens or in deserts. People have sent lichens into space, and they not only can sort of withstand that ultraviolet radiation and that level of desiccation, but rewetting them, they're totally fine.

Other scientists have grown them in growth chambers that mimic conditions on Mars, and not only are they okay, but they're physiologically active. So often lichens are very tolerant of these incredibly extreme conditions. Except they're not tolerant of air pollution. I understand, right? And that makes them a good indicator about air pollution? Yep, absolutely. So lichens are excellent indicators of air quality. And so by looking at what species of lichens exist in an area and how abundant they are,

how many of each species are present in that area, we can learn a lot about what sort of air pollutants are impacting the region and get a sense of that overall air quality. And that's why we have these air quality monitoring programs. throughout North America, largely run by the U.S. Forest Service to better understand our air quality through looking at these lichens. Let's talk about your research team heading to a cemetery in the Bronx. Yeah. It sounds like the end of a joke somewhere, but it's not. You were there for a good reason.

Yes, absolutely. Can I give you a little bit of back story on that? Sure, sure. Yeah. So I started studying the lichens in New York City when I was a graduate student at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, and it kind of really started during Hurricane Sandy, actually, which led to a lot of down trees and branches on the grounds of the garden. And I started collecting lichens in New York at that point, and that kind of fed into a number of other lichen surveys in New York, especially the Macaulay Honors College Bioblitzes in Central Park in Fresh Hills. And eventually I came up with this, I came up with this list of over 100 species of lichens in New York City. And this was really the first, really the first

first attempt at a comprehensive list of lichens for New York City since 1914. Wow. Yeah, and which was actually conducted by, again, a New York Botanical Garden graduate student named George Wood. But at that point, I moved away, and I was working in Switzerland, and I got a message from my friend Jenna Dory, who was still a graduate student at the New York Botanical Garden. And she told me that she'd found this old man's beard lichen in Woodlawn Cemetery.

So this is the genus Usnia. And at first I did not believe her because I had tried to transplant usnia to the New York Botanical Garden with James Lundamer, the liking curator there, a number of years before. And that was not successful. And I even rarely see this lichen up in places like the Hudson Valley. So if she hadn't taken a picture, I probably wouldn't have believed her. And then the next time I visited New York, which was in sort of mid-December, we went up to woodlawn. And so we took the Metro North up there on a weekday afternoon. And it was a rather cold, overcast day, one of those early dusk sort of winter days.

We're having one of those today. Yeah, I could imagine so. And we sort of started our like and meander across the cemetery and eventually ended up at this really beautiful large old red oak. And sure enough, there it was about the size. of the fingernail on my pinky finger, this tiny fragment of an usnia. And this is the first record of an old man's beard, like in New York City, since 1824. Wow, 1824. That's like 200 years, almost.

Basically, yep. So at that point, Abraham Halsey, a banker, had done a liking survey of New York City and recorded it being present at that time. So tell us why this is such a great finding. it merely because it's a rare one that you did not expect to see? Yeah, so certainly there's that aspect. This was a completely unexpected discovery. And, you know, I thought that we were getting close to having a somewhat complete list of the Likens for New York City, and this was an obvious message that we are not anywhere close.

So there was definitely that aspect of it. And I think it's also kind of a rather hopeful finding. in that we don't really know what the full potential of diversity is in these in cities, even really large, densely urbanized cities like New York. It's kind of an indication that the air quality is improving biodiversity is returning and that eventually the city could host a lot more species than we're even considering at this point. And we know that, for instance, in the 60s and 70s, Irwin Broto did some, some surveys of lichens in New York City and especially focused on Long Island.

And at that point in Brooklyn and in Queens, he only found seven species of lichens. And now, you know, we're back into the hundreds. And maybe the, you know, the potential cap on the number of species could be a lot higher than we thinking before. So there are a lot of lichenologists who are successfully going into cemeteries. And people look at them a little weirdly. What are you doing in the cemetery? We're looking for lichen? That's a great question.

I would say that lichenologists get strange looks no matter where we go when we're looking for lichens because sort of the way that we search for these generally somewhat small organisms is to stop and carefully examine, like if you go up to a tree, you want to look at your eye height and then you want to look at the base of it and maybe the soil around it, look for any fallen branches. and we're using these small magnifying glasses called hand lenses to do that. And so we very carefully examine this one area and then maybe move on to the next and we'll try to look at every single different type of rock that might be present because you'll see very different lichens on limestone versus sandstone versus granite.

And even things like park benches, like the wood on park benches, can often have different species of lichens than you would see on a tree, for instance. So we tend to move rather slowly and be looking very closely at different, what we would call substrates, so different materials the lichens could be growing on. This lichen, the 200-year-old find, the is it called? How did you know it was what it was? So we could tell immediately which genus it was. But beyond that, by just looking at it, we couldn't tell.

what species it was because it was somewhat stressed out. I think it's sort of a little bit of an intense environment for that, Usnia, to live in. That is New York, right? Exactly. So it's the New Yorker, Osnia. And we, so what we ended up having to do because we couldn't just look at it and identify it was to take a very small fragment of it.

And lichens produce all of these chemical compounds that no other organisms make. So we did some chemical analyses on it, and it should have been producing a number of chemicals, and it wasn't producing any. So that was not fruitful. So then Jenna took it the next step, took the sample down to the DNA Learning Center, and we took a DNA barcoding approach. So basically sequencing a really small gene, a really small fragment of the genome, matching that up to a database of sequences. and from there we ended up with 100% match to usnia mutabalus. So with that genetic data, we were able to confidently identify it to species. Do you ever identify a lichen and name it after the cemetery where you found it?

Not yet. I've named a lichen with my colleague James Lundamer after Dolly Parton and Oprah, but nothing after a cemetery yet. I got to ask why. Why Dolly Parton and Oprah? Okay, well. I've only got a minute. Can you hear a quick answer?

Yeah, they're both just incredible women who have done so much to contribute to the world, and we found these new species in the southeastern United States, and so really to honor their work and their contributions. We decided to do that because that name will likely stick with that species for a very long time. You're wise beyond your years, Dr. Allen. Thank you. Thank you. That's a great idea. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. It's a great story about the Likens. Yeah, thank you so much, Ira. And for people who want to learn more, we're working on a book, the Likens of urban areas of Northeastern North America that will be a field guide.

Stay tuned for that. We're liking it, Jessica. Thank you. Jessica, Allen, assistant professor of biology in Eastern Washington University. After the break actor and writer Alinald is here to talk about his podcast, clear and vivid and some lessons for how to talk about climate. change. Our listeners have asking, they ask us all the time we're going to get some tips from the expert. Alan Alda's here waiting to come on. We'll be back after the break. Stay with it.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. You might know actor and writer Alan Alder. All the best is Hawkeye in Mash or a familiar face from several Woody Allen films or all the other kinds of stuff that he's doing, but we like him most for a decade interviewing

scientists on Scientific American Frontiers and later founded a He's founded a center to teach scientists how to communicate better with the public through improv. And now his latest project is hosting the podcast clear and vivid, for which he's interviewed a long list of public figures from Adam Driver and Yo-Yo Ma to Melinda Gates. And, of course, many scientists, too. The essence of the podcast is the idea how to truly connect with other people, how to really listen and get your messages across.

also, which can come in handy when topics like climate change come up in a few weeks at Thanksgiving and they're going to be there at the table. So maybe we'll get some pointers from Alan Alda. He's, as I say, host of Clear and Vivid Podcast, founder of the Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook here in New York out of Long Island. He joins us. Welcome back, Alan. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How do you approach, you work for so many years as an actor and an improv. Do you approach the interview differently than most of us might do it? I do.

And it just crept up on me naturally. I didn't know. I didn't realize what I was doing. But what I was doing when I interviewed those hundreds of scientists on scientific American frontiers was using my experience as an improviser and an actor where I made personal contact with them. And I asked them questions not to give them a chance to go into a mini lecture, but to exercise my own curiosity and get them to explain to me so I could really understand it because I had a hunger to understand what they were working on.

And that made them talk to me in a more personal way. So what's your philosophy then for selecting guests for your podcast? Because it's not just scientists who you're talking about. I mean, our next season we've got Julie Andrews, Paul McCartney, Tom Hanks, Bill Nye, the science guy. We cover all kinds of fields. One of our most interesting guests was a chief hostage negotiator for the FBI. And he said his techniques for negotiating hostages for hostages

are his techniques could be very useful in a marriage. That's great. Let me play a clip. You got to listen to that. I did. You have to listen. And we're going to talk about this because I want to play a clip now from an interview you did with climate scientist, Catherine Hayho, a very famous scientist.

You two were talking about how important it is to talk about climate change with people and to make them care about it. Let's hear that. But I wondered how we should be talking about it. I mean, I can imagine ways to talk about it. But I'd like to hear from you what your best advice is. Well, my best advice based on thousands of conversations that I've had, some of which went well and some of which did not. And of course, you always learn the most from the ones that didn't, I think. the best advice is to start the conversation, not with what we most disagree on, but rather with what we most agree on with what we have in common. So that means that instead of hearing somebody say something that you disagree with and immediately jumping in with, how could you say that? That is completely false. I know. Instead, the time to have a conversation is when we're talking about something that we do agree about. And it doesn't have to, not climate change.

It could be, you know, that we're bemoaning the quality of coffee these days or that we're, concerned about the changes that we're seeing in our garden, or we're worried about the economy and China getting ahead of the United States. Almost every conversation these days, we can connect the dots to how a changing climate is impacting something we already care about. And that's important, isn't it, Alan, to establish trust with the person you're talking about. Especially when you're talking about something as contentious as the climate crisis. And, I mean, if I said it was a climate crisis to the wrong. person, they'd say, what do you mean crisis? So, I mean, you have to have this trust that you're not

the enemy. You share, you share many things in your common humanity. And I think Catherine Hale really is onto something important there. You can establish trust with almost anybody if you, if you get down to the things that you really have in common, your everyday experience. We asked our listeners on the Science Friday Vox Pop app, how they approach talking about climate change with people who might disagree with them. And here's what Taylor in Huntsville, Alabama had to say. When discussing a controversial topic, it's important to give validation and acceptance to parts of their story that are actually true and makes sense. On the other hand, you do want to be confident in your perspective in your place and your beliefs, back them up with sound science and be rational.

I think that's a very, very good piece of advice. And I think what's underneath that is very important. You don't have to agree with a person to listen really well and long to them. The more you listen to them, the more they feel validated. You're not cutting them off after the first sentence. or you believe that, you're totally wrong. You know, is what Catherine was just saying a minute ago. And you can establish respect for the other person. And if you don't, they're not going to respect you, I don't think. Is that something you teach at the Alda Center for Communicating Science,

how to connect with people? That's right. And that's why we use improv exercises, because the exercises that we do put you in a position where you connect. deeply to the other person. You're reading the other person. If you don't read the other person, you can't really do the exercise. And that transforms you. It's not a piece of advice we give. It's not a tip. It's an experience that actually changes you after you go through a day or two of these workshops. And I want to encourage our listeners to tell us what's your advice listeners

for talking about subjects like climate change when someone who might disagree with you. Tell us on the Science Friday Vox Pop app, what is your advice about? How do you get someone talking about like climate change with someone who might disagree with you? How do you do that, Alan? Listen, listen. You know, I have this radical idea. Yeah. It may be too radical for other people.

It's that I don't think I'm really listening unless I'm willing to be changed by you. And that doesn't mean that I'm going to agree with what you're saying. But I might be changed by something. about you, some deeply held belief you have about just living, about your dedication to your children or something like that. And I might be touched by that. That's more important than hitting you over the head with my argument, I think, because it leads to more interaction. And you may have things to say that I'd be ignoring at my peril if I just battered you into believing what my point of view is. I wanted to talk about another thing you did.

on the podcast, which is you ask every guest a list of short, simple questions at the end. And one of them is, how do you tell someone that they have their facts wrong? It's an important question in this era of alternative facts. And I wanted to play selection of responses your guests have had to that question. We have a biologist, a neurologist, a Roberts Apulski, philanthropist, Melinda Gates, and the musician Pat Mathini. How do you tell someone they have their facts wrong? you probably first spend a whole lot of time figuring out why those facts are so important to them.

And take it from there. Oh, that's interesting. People don't like to be told that they're wrong. And so you have to do it in a very gentle, kind way. And you don't do it in front of other people. You will embarrass them. Or you'll get their backup. And they'll never hear you.

Yeah, good technique. I'm pretty blunt. If something's really wrong, I'll just say, no, that's really not what it is. And then, you know, I mean, we live in an era at the moment where there's a lot of that going on. I have real problems with that. I have to admit, you know, it's sort of like, I mean, there's a musical version of that, too, which is people playing wrong notes. Oh, yeah. People just saying, no, I really hear that, man.

It's like, no, you don't. You just don't know the notes in the court. You know, don't say you do when you don't. It's great. So I have trouble with that, too. It's like, to me, there are kind of, you know, fundamental laws of nature involved in just what's true and what isn't. Gravity does exist. Exactly.

Pat Metheny is in a great position. He can be tough on the person who plays the wrong notes because he can fire the bass player. But at Thanksgiving dinner, you can't fire Uncle Bill. Well, let's talk about that. You are a great communicator and a science communicator. What is the advice you have for us in handling a very difficult possible confrontation at Thanksgiving? We're all going to, almost everybody's going to be in that situation. And I think following Catherine Hayho's advice is really good.

When she gives a talk, for 10 or 15 minutes, she doesn't talk about climate change at all. She talks about how her background is just like the background of the people she's talking to. So talking about our lives together, especially if it's close friends who don't agree with us or relatives who don't agree with us, we have a life that's apart from those disagreements. Why don't we emphasize that first and bring the tone of the conversation to a more personal, intimate level? The old song says accentuate the positive. Yeah, we got to see each other as people and listen with respect. It's hard, I know. It is. But you can just hear it when somebody leaps at the other person and says, oh, no, you see the whole thing crack and fall apart. Okay.

Alan, thank you for taking time to be with us. Thanks. I always enjoy seeing you. That's great. Thank you, Alan. Thank you. Alan, Alda actor and writer, founder of the Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University and host of a clear and vivid podcast. It's a great podcast.

And good luck with everything that you do, Alan. Thank you. And if you, our listeners, have tips for talking about climate change, we want to hear them. Tell us on our Science Friday Vox Pop app. Even though there are more than 160,000 species of moths worldwide, the ones we see day-to-day in North America tend to do, well, be not that interesting to look at, right? Their wings are often drab and dull, and while their butterfly relatives flit around the garden in the daylight, we mostly see moths, right? They're lurking around lamps outside at night or trying to get into your house where their light is.

They can be a nuisance. They eat holes in your cashmere sweaters and wool rugs. I just discovered a hole in my sweater today from a moth that I'm wearing the sweater. But just for this segment. So even in popular culture, they get a bad rap. We use phrases like mothballed, right, to describe a canceled project or like a moth to a flame when we talk about a perilous situation. So moths deserve, they deserve to be talked about in much better than that.

Moths deserve, they don't deserve this unflattering characterization. My next guest certainly doesn't think so. And he's written a book, a gorgeous book, that sets out to restore the moth reputation. So here's a question for you. Do you have a question about moths in your neck of the woods or about some mysterious moth behavior you've observed? Give us a call. Our number 844-724-8255. 844 SciTalk, or you can tweet us at SciFRI.

Dr. David Lees is curator of Lepidoptera at the famous Natural History Museum of London. His new book is Moths, a complete guide to biology and behavior. Dr. Lees, welcome to Science Friday. It's a pleasure to be on your show. Great to have you. And the first question I have for you is, I think, what most people are wondering, how do you tell a moth from a butterfly, and what's the difference? Well, a moth is a non-butterfly scaly-winged insect.

So moths are actually in popular conception, something rather like you've indicated, maybe something that is a bit mysterious and flips in from the night and maybe just brushes past your ear. And also, I'm sorry to hear that you had a hole in your sweater. Yeah, they can. attack us in ways that are not always endearing. But moths are actually an incredible group of organisms. And they, as you say, it's the butterflies that we normally notice. But moths actually represent over 10 times of diversity of butterflies.

And there is about 100, there's actually 42 super families. and only one of those is a superfamily of butterflies and they're called Paplinoidia, so there's a fact for you. Wow. I'm Ira Flato, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with David Lee's curator of Lepidoptera of the Natural History Museum in London. Why did moths, you know, have such a poor reputation when compared to butterflies?

I mean, your book is beautifully written. I learned so much about the facts of them. And did they have a common ancestor? Did they, you know, let me put it this way. How easy is for me to tell if I'm looking at a moth or a butterfly? Can you give me a quick lesson? Well, first, it's not just my book. It's written with my co-author Alberto Zilli, also at the Natural History Museum.

So repeat the question. No, I'm just wondering if I'm out in my yard and it's, how do I tell by looking at the moth or a butterfly, if it is, a moth or a butterfly. Is there something I could say, aha, it has X, so I know it's a moth or a butterfly? Yes. There's some rules of thumb, and one of the most commonly used ones is the antennae.

If you look at the antennae of a butterfly, you've probably noticed they tend to have a club at the tip or at least some kind of thickening. And this works quite well for the butterflies at Cairn, Britain, but you've got far more butterflies in the United States. And there are some

butterflies, actually, which don't have clubs at the tip, and there's some day-flying moths as well, like the Zygineate's, which have thickened tips to Antenny. So that doesn't work terribly well. And in fact, in fact, on seventh page, I think there is an illustration of a moth from southwestern Madagascar where the male has club tips and the female has fine Antenny to appoint at the tip. So it doesn't work very well.

But actually there's a more subtle character if you've got a magnifying lens, and you can manage to get a moth in your hand and handle it gently. There's a tiny little bristle on most moths, which is a linking mechanism, actually. And the thing about butterflies is they have lost this linking mechanism. Almost all of them have lost it, apart from a group of night flying butterflies, which were only just in 1986 realized. be butterflies rather than moths. They come from Central and South America. So that's a tip that you need a lens for. Actually, to answer the question, what is a moth?

You really need to know what is a butterfly. And as I mentioned, it's just a single superfamily now, once these night flying ones from South America were taken into account. That's quite interesting. We're going to take a quick break and come back and talk lots more with David Lee's, Doctor of Science and Curator of Lepidoptera at the Natural History Museum in London, an author of the new book, Moths, a complete guide to biology and behavior. And if you're looking for a holiday gift, you know, this is really an excellent, excellent find and beautiful photos,

answers all kinds of questions and tells you stuff about moths. I never knew, like there's a moth that drinks the tears out of a bird. We're going to talk about that, Dr. Lee. We'll get back after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. We're talking this hour about the mysterious scaly winged insects that haunt the night, moths.

With my guest, Dr. David Lees, whose new book is moths, a complete guide to biology and behavior. And Dr. Lees, you've mentioned this. I have mentioned it a couple of times about the scaling nature of the wings. Why are they built that way? Well, almost all moths and butterflies have got scales on the wings, but there are few that have either lost their scales just after the first flight or are more or less scaleless. They're so transparent, in fact, that they're almost invisible when they're flying during the day.

But, of course, a lot more is going on at night. The scales actually turn out, it's recently been discovered, to not just insulate the moth, you probably have maybe some conception of a moth as a rather furry creature. Indeed, they're rather cute to some of the moth pictures that you can see on the internet. But actually, it turns out that these scales actually are a kind of cloak. They disguise the moth against bats. the scales actually damp the sonar bats and make moths much more fuzzy target for their sonar. Huh, that is quite interesting.

We have a tweet that comes in from Steve wants to know, and we've had phoneers who want to know this too. What is it about moth balls that moths do not like? Well, actually, we used to use kind of moth balls at one time in the museum, and people would comment on the stink as they came into the collection. But moth balls are not actually too good for human health. The usual substance in it is naphthalene. And it literally kills insects.

It's an insecticide. I can't give you the chemical formula. But there are some things like lavender you can use to repel moths that are much more eco-friendly. Let's go to the phones. go to Brown Deere, Wisconsin. Hi, Deborah. Welcome to Science Friday. I have found a scocopia moth and brought it home. This is a couple years ago, and I set it down, laid it outside. I covered it, and it was gone the next morning. I don't know if someone in the household moved it, but did the moth die? Is it fair to say if there's a moth, you can find a moth lane on the ground? And this was huge. This is the North America's largest moth. Did it die or do you think some bird came and ate it?

Was it big and black? It was brown and black. Yeah, there's a most part of a black witch, which is rather scary looking. But actually, if it was apparently resting in a living posture, it could be that in the morning it got caught by a predatory bird. You did describe in your book a moth that plays dead, though. Well, actually, this is an amazing thing that you can probably try it if you, most moths are perfectly harmless to handle. And there are some moths called Arcteines, which if you turn one over it will stick its legs in the air and appear to be dead. It's kind of playing possum.

And actually, there is, there's a few pictures like that in our book. I have the Monty Python theme in my head. Yes, exactly. Legs in the air. Yes. And it's obviously not just intriguing to us because the moth appears to be

pretty unwell, but it actually can fool the predator because a predator might think it's just a horrible dry hulk and not really worth munching for breakfast. I was talking about some moths that actually live on other animals.

You have in your book the sloth moth, and the moth on birds that drinks, the tears of the birds? Yeah, the sloth moth is rather extraordinary because it comes down, it lives in the fur of sloths and then it comes down when the sloth has its weekly or less frequent ablutions. So actually the larvae live on sloth dung.

But this discovery of this bird-eating moth is, it was actually the first in the world. And I was actually involved in a way in this discovery, or at least discovery of the phenomenon. What happened is that a contact of mine is a ornithologist, and he was studying, as I suppose, nocturnal ornithologists do, the sleeping behaviour of birds at night. And he took an amazing picture, which is in our book,

of this huge moth sitting on the back of an endemic bird in Madagascar. And the moth, if you look more closely, it's got a kind of forked tongue which is inserted, the proboscis is inserted between, the membranes of the bird eye. And he observed this on two occasions and on both occasions the bird didn't, as it were, bat an eyelid. So the bird was completely still and I don't know whether it was frightened or anisotized, but he managed to capture one of these moths in a film capsule and he sent it to me for identification and it was an already described species.

But some scientists had been working on what's called eye-frequenting moths. So there's a whole phenomenon of moths visiting eyes of mammals. But the thing is in Madagascar, there's usually it's unculets that are attacked. And in Madagascar, the only unculets are introduced ones that are actually cattle. So on one trip I actually had to, I started looking at cattle at night, but the local people weren't very happy about that because they really prize their cattle there. So it was fantastic when we got this photo of the world's first bird-eating moth. It's not really eating the moth. What we think it's doing is it's feeding from the tears.

It's probably getting salts from the tears. And it's the males that probably do this. Wow. And you say the birds sits still to let the moth do this? Astonishing enough, in both cases, the bird was motionless, apparently petrified to move. Now, if you imagine your birds sitting on a nice perch at night, and it's very dark. It's risky to move.

There's snakes about that might get you. And so perhaps it's a strategy, or maybe the bird just doesn't notice, but I think I would notice if there was a... So when I got this mothback, I was even more shocked to see when we looked under the SEM and light microscope.

We found that the proboscis had these barbs on it, backward-pointing barbs. So I imagine if a bird gets attacked by one of these moths, it feels a bit bleary-eyed in the morning. But the moth must have a way of escaping from the eye as well. Wow. Wow. So since it was

discovered, several other bird-ditchie moths have been discovered elsewhere in the world. That's amazing. That's amazing. Let's go to Sacramento, California. Hi, Katie. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi. I really miss the Mexican tiger moth. I used to have them by my front door all

the time, and I wonder, where did they go? I haven't seen them for years. Many ideas? Are you? Yeah. Yeah, well, I tend to work with scientific names, so I don't always know the species that you're talking about. But if you lived in Mexico, I imagine you had a rich biodiversity around you. And one of the things that has come into the news, particularly earlier this year, is the massive decline in insects that's happening all over the world.

Right, right, yeah. So it may be that, and many people commented on it, that they don't see so many moths as they used to outside in the yard or attracted to their lights, the lighted window at night. And this may not just be a subjective opinion, because if you drive at night, most people don't notice as many moths in their headlights as they used to. So there's something going on with the declines of moths, and scientists are trying to find out. find out why. That's really interesting. You brought up moths being attracted to light. Do we know why that is?

Why? It's a fascinating phenomenon. It's somewhat a self-defeating, really, for a moth to just flutter into a light and get burnt by the light bulb or possibly eaten in the morning by a bird once it's rested. And it's, why would moths be attracted? to light. Actually, since the introduction of ultraviolet lights, which actually moth collectors and surveyors use, you can get huge numbers of moths attracted to light. And almost all families of moths are attracted to light, apart from the day-flying ones. And it seems like

there were several theories in those 70s. It was thought that perhaps moths are attracted to the moon, which is also light. But what happens on moonlit night? and people tested this by flying up in a balloon to about 2,000 feet up and one person saw a moth at this elevation at night. But actually there was another theory that moths are actually attracted to the pheromones of females, and the pheromones of the females are excited by the ultraviolet light to emit infrared radiation, and the attorney have tiny little sensili, which might resonate to this infrared radiation. This is not thought to be likely to be the case anymore. And the most popular theory is they simply disorientated.

They actually would normally navigate to a moon or stars or a distant light source, keeping the same angle to the light. And with our artificial, very bright light sources, they are fooled and they keep turning inwards towards the light, and they just don't seem to be able to escape very easily. Interesting. We asked our listeners to share their feelings about, moths through the Science Friday Vox Pop app.

And they were excited about them. Here's what Laura from Maryland and bunchies from Louisiana had to say. Last year, we moved from the state of California to Maryland. And we knew moving here would see different kinds of creatures and bugs that we didn't have in the state of California. But I never expected to see a moth that would make me change my mind about the way I feel about moths. This thing was even more beautiful than a butterfly to me when I saw it. It was just huge. The wings are so colorful.

And it was on my garage door. And I'm telling you, I have falling in love with moths since I've moved here. And I'm seeing all these different colors. I never thought they could be so beautiful. Last week, I spotted an I.O. Moth Caterpillar. And as I work with kids, I was able to print off a picture of what this moth will look like once it's been through the chrysalis process. They got to see the live I.O. Moth right before it. dropped to form a chrysalis, and they got to see what it will look like.

You have our listeners from the Science Friday Vox Pop app. And they're discovering, David, how beautiful moths are and getting their minds change. I encourage you to look through our book, and there's some quite amazing photos in there, which certainly hope will change your mind. Moths have some extraordinary patterns on their wings. Because in fact, I sometimes wonder why women's fashion normally has butterflies on the dresses and so on, but not moths. In many ways, moths are more artistic. There are moths that even have three-dimensional patterns imprinted on their wings, patterns that create optical illusions in our eyes.

So there's a moth called the Curled Leaf Moth that actually uses a phenomenon called counter shading. It's a trick of the light, and it looks like it's airbrushed from dark to white on the top, upper and lower part of the forewing, and it gives the illusion of a curled leaf. It's quite extraordinary. But the second listener mentioned the amazing metamorphosis of moths, and we haven't really talked about the caterpillars, but all four stages can be quite extraordinary. all have their separate adaptations, and in a sense, a casualty has a completely different ecology to the adult morph. Interesting.

Our number, if you'd like to call us, is 844-8255. We're listening to Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with the David DeLees, doctor of science and curator of Lepidoptera, at the Natural History Museum. And let's see if we can, we have time for a call? yeah, we have time for a call. Let's take it. Let's go to Jim and Rochester. Hi, Jim.

Hi there. My question, my question is, has light pollution played any effect on moths migration patterns or do moths have migration patterns? Good question. Do they migrate like butterflies? They do. Actually, one of my first projects was to work

on the migration of a ye moth called the sunset moth in Madagascar, which I never managed to see one, but it's sometimes migrates in numbers almost rival the monarch butterfly. And at night there are clouds of moths actually migrating, and it's been discovered that you can actually track them by radar. So you can actually sometimes see these clouds by radar. And one wonders whether, I guess, an interesting question that you've posed, whether the light pollution actually affects their migration. It's not a question that, as far as I'm aware, anyone has properly answered. Certainly, light pollution is possibly one of the factors. You notice if you go into urban environments, there may be still plenty of food plants, trees and low-growing plants around,

but there are few moths when you get into urban environments. Is there a question about moths that you have yet to answer that you'd like answered? Well, that one, yes, there's a question for you, which would be well worth addressing. How does light pollution actually affect moths? And is it contributing to their demise in some way? Or are moths actually evolving? And could they be becoming different in behavior? And there's actually one or two studies that have now been done.

for example, small ermine moths, and it's been discovered using laboratory races of small ermine moths that ones that subjected to a kind of light regime actually become more sluggish than ones in more natural conditions. So that the moths actually just sitting about too much and they may be not serving their normal role, which includes services such as pollination.

Well, we've run out of time, Dr. Lee's. I want to thank you very much for taking time to be with us today. It's a great book, Dr. David Lee's book is called Moths, a complete guide to biology and behavior, and you can check out some beautiful pictures of the maws as well from the book and an excerpt from the book on our website at ScienceFriday.com slash moths. Thank you very much again for staying up late for us. Thanks so much.

You're welcome. Also on our website, there are rare plants, animals, and insects crawling through the streets of Asheville, North Carolina this week for Halloween. Yep, biologists and geeks decked out as threatened native species of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and our digital producer Lauren, Cy Fry captured the haunting festivals. You can see for yourself. It says great, some great video there. ScienceFriety.com slash Halloween. And on the Science Friday Voxpop app, we have a question we'd like you to answer, what's the strangest behavior you've seen from artificial intelligence? You know, do you interact with AI? What's the strangest thing that you have seen? Within limits,

of course. We'll talk about it next week. So let us know what happens when AI gets awkward. It's on our Science Friday Vox Pop app and it's downloadable wherever you get your app. So it's the strangest behavior you've seen from artificial intelligence. We have to say goodbye. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato in New York.