Science Friday - Primate Parasites, Spider Mating Songs, Spotted Lanternfly. Oct 1, 2021, Part 1

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Healthcare Is Hard Enough to Get. If You’re A Trans Youth, It’s Even Harder Healthcare can be difficult to access for anyone—that’s been made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. But for transgender youth, the barriers are exponentially higher. A new study from the journal JAMA Pediatrics shows that trans youth don’t get the care they need because of a variety of obstacles. Those range from laws that prevent them from advocating for themselves, to stigma from doctors. Joining Ira to talk about this story and other big science news of the week is Sabrina Imbler, science reporting fellow for the New York Times based in New York City. Ira and Sabrina also discuss the massive undertaking of COVID-19 testing in school districts, and the impacts ivermectin misinformation is having on the livestock and veterinary industries.   See A Spotted Lanternfly? Squash It! If you live in Pennsylvania or any of its surrounding environs, you’ve probably seen a really interesting looking bug in the past few years: the spotted lanternfly. Around this time of year, it’s in its nymph stage. But when fully grown, these lanternflies sound a little like the joke—they’re black and white and red all over. They’ve also got spots, as their name suggests. The charming news about how interesting they look is offset by the bad news: They are an invasive species. And they frighten crop farmers because they have a taste for just about anything, and a fondness for grapes, which could have dramatic economic consequences. Many states have a unified stance on what to do if you spy a spotted lanternfly—stomp them out. But is that an effective way to stop their spread? Joining Ira to chat about stomping techniques and lanternfly biology is Julie Urban, associate research professor in entomology at Penn State University, in State College, Pennsylvania.   As Primates Go Extinct, So Do Their Parasites, Upsetting Ecosystems As of 2017, more than half of primate species—that’s apes, monkeys, lemurs, and our other relatives—were considered at risk of extinction. While the loss of these animals would be its own ecological crisis, this is causing another wave of die offs: the parasites that live on those primates, many of whom are specially adapted to live on just one species for their entire lives. That includes fungi and viruses, as well as the more grimace-inducing parasites like lice and intestinal worms. Producer Christie Taylor talks to Duke Lemur Center researcher James Herrera, the first author on new research that found if endangered primates do disappear, nearly 200 species of primate parasites might also. They talk about why that loss could have consequences—not just for dwindling primates, but also for us.   The World According To Sound: How Spiders Shake Things Up For Love Amorous arachnids sing to their lovers without making a sound. Instead, they like to shake things up. Spiders aren’t powerful enough to vibrate the air, the way actual singing does. Instead, they use the ground. Male spiders send vibrations down their legs, and into whatever they’re standing on. Nearby females “hear” the song vibrating up their legs. Humans can’t hear these spider songs with our ears, but we can listen to them with the help of a laser doppler vibrometer. This instrument can make non-contact vibration measurements of a surface. It shoots a laser beam at a particular surface, and depending on how much that surface moves, it can then measure the frequency and amplitude of the vibration, based on the Doppler shift of the reflected laser beam. Hear an example of these lovelorn spiders on The World According to Sound, a live audio show, online listening series, and miniature podcast that focuses on sound, not story. Producers Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett create intentional, communal listening experiences as a way to “reclaim autonomy in a visually dominated world that is increasingly fracturing our attention.” The spiders in this piece were recorded by researchers in Damian Elias’s lab at UC Berkeley. This recording is part of their next listening series, an immersive listening party where audiences from all over the globe will be invited to experience a world of sound together, beginning in January 2022. You can get a ticket to the series here.   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 Flito. This morning, drugmaker Merck says it has an experimental pill that effectively combats the COVID-19 virus, cutting the risk of death or hospitalization in half, is made for people who have become ill from COVID, not a substitute for the vaccine, and has not yet been approved by the FDA. We will have more on this story as it unfolds. Speaking of health care, we know it can be difficult to access for anyone, And that's been made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, but for transgender youth, the barriers are exponential. A new study shows that trans youth don't get the care they need because of a wide variety of obstacles, from legal barriers to stigma from doctors. Joining me today to discuss the story and other big science news of the week is my guest, Sabrina Imbler,

Science Reporting Fellow at the New York Times based in New York City. Welcome to Science Friday, Sabrina. Thank you, Ira. It's great to be here. Nice to have you. Let's start with the story you reported for the Times about the barrier trans youth face when it comes to getting health care. What kind of barriers are we talking about? We are talking about almost every kind of barrier. There are systemic barriers, geographic barriers, family barriers. And these obstacles, they exist both for gender affirming health care, which for trans youth means puberty blockers or hormone therapy,

as well as regular health care, just like being seen for an ear infection. And a lot of these exist because young people under the age of 18 are under the age of independent medical consent in most states. So parents need to be involved with these processes. But if a parent isn't on board with a child's medical transition, then, you know, that transition can't happen. There are also insurance barriers. Coverage for gender-forming treatments can be spotty. Many insurance plans don't cover puberty blockers. And they're very expensive if they're not covered. And puberty blockers can pause the onset of puberty and give adolescents more time to figure out the kind of puberty they do want to have. There's also just, there isn't a lot of research on the long-term effects of gender affirming treatments on young people. So oftentimes these folks are in a place where they need to make a decision about their medical future without a lot of research to go off of. You know, one person I spoke with was given different advice from two clinics about how going on testosterone, affect his future fertility. And he ultimately just had to make a gut call, which is never really something you want to do in medicine. And, you know, there's also just the general omnipresent

stressor for any trans person going into a health care setting, which is the possibility of being misgendered, such as being called the wrong name or the wrong pronouns. I would think that another issue is that doctors who are known to have experience with trans patients get all booked up because there are very few of them. Definitely. I mean, it can be hard enough to find a trans-friendly provider in your area, but even harder to find a pediatric endocrinologist, which is the kind of doctor that, you know,

can prescribe gender-affirming treatments for trans youth. And a lot of this care is actually delivered through pediatric gender clinics, which tend to be located in big cities. So youth that are living in more rural areas often have to travel hours to get this care. And the wait list can be long, you know, 50 to 100 people in certain clinics, which can mean wait times of months. We've heard a lot about anti-trans bills in the states over the past few years. Do these play in here, too?

Oh, absolutely. You know, Piper, who is a 17-year-old trans girl I spoke with in this story, she lives in Georgia. And Georgia is one of 20 states that has introduced anti-trans legislation that's specifically targeting young people's access to gender-affirming care. And, you know, this bill didn't pass, but Piper is planning on leaving the state for, college because she fears she won't be able to get the care that she needs. And that's not to

mention, you know, the greater psychological toll of being told you can't play sports because of your gender, which is something other bills are targeting. Is there a way that experts are suggesting things change for the better for trans health care? Definitely. There are some immediate suggestions, just like making care a more inclusive experience in a health care clinic. You can ask people their pronouns and their name before they're seen by a doctor. Once you're in inside the examination room, you know, you can use gender-neutral terminology, such as instead of saying ovaries, you can say reproductive organs. And there are larger issues like making this healthcare more accessible for all trans youth, especially youth of color and people living in rural

places. And I guess the last thing that a lot of the young trans people I interviewed expressed a desire for is just more trans doctors, you know, being able to share a life experience with your provider. It takes some of the burden off of you in terms of explaining your body. Interesting story. Let's move on to a COVID story. Schools have been back in session for a few weeks now. COVID tests are proving to be an issue for some districts. What's the story here? So Emily Anthes and I wrote a story for the times about how across the nation, every school district is basically doing it differently. It's a big policy patchwork. Some districts have robust, large-scale testing programs. You know, for example, the San Antonio Independent School District is offering free, weekly test to students and staff, which is a great way of catching spikes before they happen. But other districts, you know, even in the same area, are doing almost no testing. Some are only testing students who are symptomatic. Some are actually not referring symptomatic

students to testing at all. And the government is offering some programs to make this process easier, but districts need to opt in. And many are not opting in or have opted in too late to have the program in place by the time school started. If every district where to opt in, you're testing every single person once a week or even more, that's a huge number of tests you need to process. Absolutely. And even the schools that have, you know, these ambitious testing programs, they're struggling to keep up. A lot of schools are understaffed due to a labor shortage. And, you know, at one school that I spoke with, they're posting positions for school nurses, but no one is filling them. There are also shortages of testing supplies. And some districts

have had to cut down on testing just because they can't buy a enough rapid tests, you know, for their needs. And sometimes a curveball just comes, like, you know, we spoke with a district in New Orleans that was just about to get their testing program off the ground and then Hurricane Ida hit and closed everything. Wow. Wow. Do we know if testing at schools is working to keep COVID out of classrooms? Well, with some of the districts that we spoke with, you know, that are using this robust testing cases appear to be low. But, you know, these situations change weekly and protocols that work when transmission rates are low. And become unsustainable when COVID cases rise.

Let's move on to something we've talked about on this show a few times, Ivermectin. We know that it's not an effective way to combat COVID-19, and yet many, many people think it does. And this has led to a shortage for industries that actually need it. Who's affected most by this shortage? So Aaron Wu has this great story for the New York Times about how animal hospitals and veterinary centers are just strapped for,

for ivermectin. And, you know, vets used this drug to deworm animals like chickens, dogs, horses, and snakes. It's really a staple for people who work with livestock to keep the animals healthy and parasite-free. But these hospitals are running out of ivermectin. You know, in one hospital in Mississippi, there just isn't enough ivormectin for all the animals. So the vets are only giving it to the exotics like snakes and asking dog owners to buy a replacement that just costs so much more. Wow. Are there alternatives that vets and farmers are using in replacement of ivermectin? You mentioned these alternatives. Is that what you're talking about? They're just so expensive? Yeah, there are some alternatives that are approved for dogs, say, but not approved for snakes, but they are more expensive.

And they're also just selling out. So there just isn't really a reliable supply. Staying in our wormy-like spectrum, let's talk about solar-powered sea slugs. This is, this is a mind-blower. What is a solar-powered sea slug? Does it actually get energy from the sun? Yeah, so Katie Wu has this great story for the Atlantic about how some sea slugs are solar-powered, which means that they can actually photosynthesize and convert light energy into chemical energy. And Katie has this great line about how that's just about the plantiest thing on Earth, which is true. And the slugs are able to do this because they steal the chloroplasts from the algae they eat, and then they store those chloroplasts in their body for long periods of time.

And one species, you know, she talks about can go without eating its entire life as long as it just binges on algae just once in its youth. This is pretty incredible. Do we know if this skill set could translate to other creatures? Yes, there are some other creatures that are known to steal chloroplasts. They're single-celled creatures called dynophagulates. But, you know, their chloroplast stealing might represent a different intermediate steps. towards keeping the chloroplast more permanently in their cells.

You know, what's interesting is that we had a science fiction writer on a few weeks ago who was writing about colonizing Mars and talking about changing our genes. And one of the genes he wanted to change or add to humans was to put in a chlorophyll gene so that our skin would turn green and we could use solar energy. I would love that gene. On Mars. Would you like that, would you volunteer for that? I would definitely volunteer for that clinical trial.

All right, we'll let you know what it happens. Let's wrap it up with a story about ancient domestication of a creature. We wouldn't dare try this on now. Tell us about the story about the cassowary. Yeah, so I hope I won't offend bird people, but the southern cassowary is truly just a bird of nightmares. Has this really bright blue neck and very muscular legs, which I find suspicious in birds.

And, you know, they're normally shy and secretive in their native forest. in New Guinea and Northern Australia, but they can be very aggressive in captivity, which, you know, has led some to nickname them the murder bird, as one did technically wound, mortally wound, a Florida man in 2019. Do they have special skills that they can hurt people? So adults can grow as tall as a person. No kidding.

Which just means they can do a lot of damage, and they have these really powerful feet, which they can use as weapons. Wow. Do we know how these ancient people pulled this, off this domestication of them. So Asher Albine has a great story about this for the Times where he writes that, you know, as early as 18,000 years ago, people in New Guinea might have somewhat domesticated these

birds by collecting the eggs, hatching them, and then rearing the chicks into adulthood. And did they farm them or did they keep them around for what reason? I don't know for what particular reason. I know that they did eat their meat and they also did eat their eggs. And, you know, young cassowary hatchlings actually imprint on people. So they're just like little, little murderbird friends. But once they become adults, they can be troubled. So I don't know if they would, you know, live alongside the adults for too long. So were cassowary's proto-chikins than in ancient human society? Probably not. You know, chickens were domesticated 8,000 years ago and much later than the cassowary. But I feel like there's a reason we never fully domesticated the cassowary and probably should never try. too. You think? If you like living.

Yeah, I think I'll vote for that. I'll vote for living instead of casuaries. Thank you very much, Sabrina. Thank you so much, Ira. Sabrina Imbler, Science Reporting Fellow at the New York Times, based in New York City. We have to take a break. And when we come back, we're revisiting the invasive spotted lantern fly. We talked about it a while back. And, well, it may be in your neighborhood. So we'll see. this. We'll be right back after this short break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

Back in July, we brought you a story about the spotted lanternfly, the invasive insect with spotted and red wings. The kind of bug that makes you say, what the heck is that? Well, since the story has aired, there have been some updates in just how far the lanternfly has spread. Joining me now is sci-fright producer Kathleen Davis, who suggested we talk about spotted lantern flies earlier this year. Hi, Kathleen. Hey, Ira. Now, if I remember correctly back in July when you pitched the story, there was a personal reason for this, right? Yes. So I was

inspired to talk about this invasive bug because they had infested my neighborhood. Infested your neighborhood. They were everywhere. At the time, I was living in New Jersey, and it was so striking to me because I hadn't seen them before. And then suddenly they were everywhere. So I felt like I was seeing something scientifically important. Invasive species movement before my very eyes. And speaking of movement, you've moved since we ran that story, right? Yes.

So I moved to Brooklyn, New York this summer. And unfortunately, so have the lantern flies. The headlines here in New York this summer have been all about why we've got to beat back this bug. Did you kind of feel like they follow? you to the big city? Yeah, I did. But they didn't just move east. There was the story that came out of Kansas last month where a boy entered his bug collection at the Kansas State Fair, which triggered federal investigations. Can you guess why, Ira? Let me guess. I'm going to guess it wasn't for stealing cotton candy. No, no. The boy had a spotted lanternfly in his bug collection. And that really concerned people,

because the spotted lanternfly hadn't been found in Kansas before. Before that case, the furthest west, an adult spotted lanternfly, had been found, was in Indiana. Whoa. So I'm guessing you're thinking good time to rerun this story, right? Yeah, because here's the thing. These bugs are a problem, and they've got to go. We had one of the premier experts on lanternflies on the show. The message still applies. So let's remind our listeners why they're such a bummer. how we can get rid of them. All right, let's do it. Thank you. Sci-Fi producer, Kathleen Davis. Thanks, Ira. And now here is our memorable and important conversation from July about the spotted lantern fly featuring our expert, Dr. Julie Urban, Associate Research Professor in Entomology at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. Let me rewind a bit so we can talk a bit about how the spotted lanternfly became an invasive species. Tell us about the origin story there.

Yes. So the origin story actually spotted lanternfly was an invasive that first occurred in South Korea in 2004. And so there it was reported to damaged grapes, apple, stone fruit, and was a nuisance pest to residents. So we were all primed in the U.S. and looking for it anyway. And so it was first detected and reported to Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, September, 22nd, 2014. So they knew immediately what this thing was, confirmed what it was, and reported it to USDA, and immediately action was taken. And so it was suspected from where it occurred and from how we know it got to South Korea and what we know about the biology of other lanternfly species is that essentially they'll lay their eggs on anything. They don't require a host plant that they're offspring can feed upon to be a viable host for their. eggs. And so we suspected they were transported in that egg mess state on a shipment of stone. So they were

either laid on the stone itself that was shipped or on the palate. And that's how they got here from their native range, which would be somewhere from China, Vietnam, Japan, or India. So we're talking about tropical bugs, right? I mean, Pennsylvania isn't not really a tropical state? Well, now with the 90s we're having for the summer, you could, you could, you could argue that. I mean, how is it that they're establishing themselves so well in the northeast? And here's where we get into some complexity of lanternfly. Lantorflies are a family of plant hoppers called Fulgority. There's 500 species and largely most of them are tropical. That's what I study. But there are a few that occur in more temperate habitats. And spotted lanternfly

like Corma Delacutula is one of those. It's native range. You find it in Beijing, which is 40 degrees north latitude, which is the same as, you know, the north latitude of Philadelphia and New York City. So this is one of the very few lanternfly species that could get here. And it is able to survive these harsher temperatures, you know, winter temperatures, because it overwinteres in its egg stage. Not all lanternflies do that. Other species do other things. So this is just one of the few outliers of this particular family. And that's what makes them so good at spreading is that they can survive. Yes, that's one of the things. That's not the only thing. Okay. What else makes them so good at spreading? They're so good at spreading because they'll feed so broadly on such a

huge range of host plants. They're sap feeders. So more specifically, they're flowing feeders. And they'll feed on essentially anything except for conifers. So they feed so broadly. So there's plenty of different host plants they can feed on. Their biology doesn't have to be honed in just the timing of any one plant. Because they're feeding on so many different things, they're broadly diffused across the habitat. So it's really hard to know when they're there, right? Because they're kind of spread out. And then the other thing about them is that while they like a lot of things, they really like one host plant in particular that also comes from their native range, Ilanthus Altissima or Tree of Heaven. That's an introduced invasive that's here in the United

States, it persists throughout the United States, and it's generally found in highly disturbed habitats. So along railroad corridors and roadsides, you know, once you know what tree of heaven looks like or smells like, you're going to see it on the New Jersey Turnpike. You're going to see it everywhere. Is that the one with the long, thin leaves? Exactly. Oh, I call them junk trees. They're everywhere. It's the kids book, a tree grows in Brooklyn where the tree grows out of a crack in the sidewalk, right? Right. And so, so basically, because Lanterfly are always moving around and their eggs are laid on anything, that lets them move along with Ilanthus along these corridors. And so that's also how they're able to spread. And what makes them

so bad? I mean, if there's so many of these trees around, what are they attacking that we don't like? There's two answers to your question. The first, what are they doing? What are they attacking that we like? They're attacking grapes, right? They'll feed on different plants throughout their life cycle, but they'll feed on grapes throughout their whole life cycle, and they'll actually damage grapes. And so we've seen significant economic impact in actual vineyards. The only other tree that they'll actually kill is tree of heaven. Otherwise, they're just a stressor to other trees. They're not going to do a tree in and of itself. But the other way they're so damaging in terms of their direct impact is that they can move around, right? And so they can get into goods that have to be shipped,

and we have quarantines, you know, for protection to prevent land or fly from spreading. So the other place we're seeing economic impact is in the nursery industry. Because, you know, you can't ship nursery stock. These bugs will get into them, even if they're not feeding on those plants, like topiaries or conifers, they're not going to feed on them, but they'll certainly get into them. And they'll get into Christmas trees and lay their eggs on them. And so now we have these nurseries and Christmas tree growers who have to spend a lot of money to keep them out of their products before they transport them, but also anything else.

You know, if you think about them getting here on stone, they can get on anything. So this is a significant impact to any kind of company that transports anything over state or international lines. But the other reason spotted lanternfly is so bad is because they evade our regular bag of tricks we have to control insects. So, you know, one of the things we often use to monitor insects is figure out what is their chemical cue, what is their pheromone that they use in mating? Because then if we can use that, we can build a lure and build a trap, and we can use that for detection and trapping.

Well, nobody's found a pheromone for spotted lanternfly. No plant hoppers known to use a pheromone, so I'm not too surprised. So we don't have a really good lure or way to trap them, and they're really voracious. So it's really hard to rear them in a lab. I mean, we have a colleague at USDA in particular, Tracy Leske, who's doing a great job developing a colony. But basically, they live through one generation a year. You can't grow them in the lab. And it's really hard to grow them and say, hey, grape vineyard grower, let me put these on your grapes and kill them to understand their biology better. It's really hard, it's really hard to study them. But there are people who are going to say, just spray them with insecticide. Oh, yeah. We joke. Harsh language kills them. So it is an

effective way to go about it. But if you think about it, how you time that is very challenging depending on what they're feeding upon. We don't want to go and spray pesticides on everything out there, right? We don't want to hurt pollinators. We don't want to hurt beneficial insects. We don't want to just spread toxic chemicals everywhere. And so that's one of the challenges that we're trying to deal with. And then where you get a particular problem for grape growers is that Latterflies will persist in their vineyard throughout the year, and we actually don't even recommend additional insecticide sprays for the nymphs because what they apply for Japanese beetle will do them in, that's fine. But later in the season is when grapes are close to harvest. And so we call that the

pre-harvest interval. And so any kind of insecticide that you apply at that point can't be very long acting because you don't want that to impact the grapes when they're harvested. And so what you'll see in these vineyards, is that, you know, at that time of your first couple weeks of September, lanternflies do this, to me, fascinating thing. They move and you see massive flights. If you're in New York City, you haven't seen that yet, I bet you're going to see it in the next couple of years. And so you'll get thousands or tens of thousands on one particular tree.

And so for vineyards, you'll go into a vineyard and they'll spray a contact insecticide that'll knock them down and kill a bunch. And you'll walk through a vineyard. and you'll see just piles of hundreds or thousands of dead lanternfly underneath every vine. It looks like they've mulched with lanternfly. No kidding. And more and more will keep coming in. And they just can't keep up.

And they're spreading? I mean, we're talking about the Northeast, but I'm imagining that they're spreading throughout the country then. Well, yeah, that's what we're worried about. I mean, we've been working with California since 2018, right? They came out to look at this. Basically, they've shown up dead on shipments. to five other states that are not contiguous to Pennsylvania, including multiple times in California and Oregon. So we're really, really worried about the great growing regions. And because their food

preference is relative to what's around, right, they're going to have changing impacts as they spread. I understand that we know from our friends at public radio station W.E.S.A. in Pittsburgh, they told us about a story about a dog that's been trained to sniff out by the lanternfly eggs? Yes, I think that's really cool. So that's something that Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has, but also it's a program that USDA is working on. And so the idea here is that you're not going to have them running through the forest, right, really looking at trees, but in terms of pulling over cargo trucks that are shipping things,

how do you inspect a truck and make sure that there aren't lanternfly eggs on it? And so that's a really good use of snipper dogs in terms of trying to find egg masses on shipments and prevent spread that way. So with this insect, because it's almost, it goes through four different nymphal stages, an adult stage plus the AK stage. It's kind of like you have to think about those six different stages as it being a different animal in each stage. And so in terms of trying to prevent the animal that is the egg from moving on cargo, sniffer dogs seem to be a very promising, a very promising route. We don't have any silver bullet. We just need a lot of tools targeted across each of those different stages.

This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios, talking with Julie Urban Research Associate Professor in Entomology at Penn State University and State College, Pennsylvania, talking about the plague. It's like one of the plagues of lanternflies. Okay, leave us with your best advice for squishing them successfully. For squishing them successfully? Yes. I mean, that's what we're told to do. Is there a technique, a method, a time in their life cycle, whatever, that's the best time way to squish them?

Okay, for me, I like them. I would kill them but not squish them. Frankly, rather than squish them, if you poke them in the rear end or you put a bottle over their head or some kind of container over their head, you can get them to pop up into a container, like into an iced tea container, into a soda bottle, whatever, and throw them in the freezer.

That's how I would do it. I wouldn't want to squish. You can get a lot that way. Well, but now that you've got them in your freezer. That'll kill them. That'll kill them. Oh, I see. I see.

Yeah, yeah. That way you don't have to, you know, be all violent. That's that, okay, good words, because, yeah, I'm all for that kind of technique. How would you rate the attack, of this bug with other historic bugs that have attacked us before? It's different because, like, if you think about the Emerald Ashbor, you think about something that's, you know, targeting trees, which this thing kind of is.

Emerald Ashbor or something like that is taking out species diversity. This isn't, right? This is kind of across, you know, gypsy moth will defoliate and it'll like just knock down and kill a lot of things. Other than Tree of Heaven and Grape, nobody cares about Tree of Heaven. it's not really killing things. It's just more of a stressor in terms of its impact on the plants. And it's weird because besides the grape economic impact,

this economic impact when it comes to transport of goods is where it can just hit so many different industries. Like I was sitting in a meeting at Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and somebody in one of the early years. And they have an inspector that'll inspect like a certain percentage, 10% of the beehives that get shipped out of state because people raise beehives for pollination services that they'll sell to California. And they'll inspect those for varroa mites and that kind of thing. And they realize that like, oh my gosh, a lanternfly could lay its eggs on the underside of one of these beehives and get transported to an almond farm in California. And essentially,

you just have a Trojan horse that you introduce there. And so now they have to inspect 100% of their beehives that leave the state. Like holy cow. It's like things you don't think of, milk trucks getting infested with egg masses on them. And of course, if we're talking about going to California with all the grapes that are out there. Exactly. I mean, could we expect shortages or increases in the price of wine if this really gets moving? I think so.

I mean, I talk with people from California. I have funding from California right now. I mean, we're, they're very proactive, but they're very worried. We're just about out of time. I have one more question for you. What spotted lanternfly info do you want to leave people with before we go? What's the take-home message here? I mean, maybe this is too nerdy, but for me, who's an evolutionary biologist, you studies fundamental biology suddenly, like leading the national efforts on this,

it shows the importance of studying the fundamental biology of species in their native range while their native range exists because you just don't know when anything is going to be a problem. And you just better hope that somebody who is an expert is in the wings, you know, who can help solve the problem. Julie Urban, research associate professor in entomology at Penn State University and State College, Pennsylvania. Thank you, Dr. Urban, for taking time to be with us today and all this great advice. Thank you so much. This was a treat. That was our conversation from this July about the spotted lantern fly.

We have to take a break and when we come back, I'm the bearer of more bad news. A story about parasites and endangered species. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. No one thinks of parasites as friends, do they? They live inside or on your body. They come in all shapes and sizes, from fungi or viruses to lice, and of course, even worms. as uncomfortable as that thought may be. But the thing they all have in common is that they need a host,

whether that's a person, another animal, or even a plant to survive. Doesn't sound very welcoming. But sci-fi producer Christy Taylor is here with a sympathetic story about parasites in peril and why we should care. Hey there, Christy. Hey, Ira. What's this about peril? Well, Ira, I'm going to use a metaphor for something you actually like for this,

something that you may actually consider to be a friend, orchids. Yeah, you got my soft spot. Well, one thing we've talked about a lot on this show is how orchids have often evolved to have very, very specific pollinators. They might have a very special relationship with a bee or a moth that doesn't pollinate any other flower. And maybe it can't because it's evolved to only pollinate things shaped like that particular orchid. What do you think happens, Ira, when that orchid goes extinct or that pollinator goes extinct?

Well, it sounds like the bee is going to start. to death or that flower is going to have trouble reproducing. Exactly. And you can think of that same problem when it comes to endangered primates, apes, monkeys, and lemurs. They all have parasites, lice and worms and viruses and teeny little microbes, and some of those parasites only know how to live on one species of lemur or monkey or ape. And about half of the species of primates on earth are considered endangered right now. So guess what that means for the creatures that hang out inside and on top of them? Well, the parasites are going to die, and isn't that a good thing?

So I talked to Dr. James Herrera, a research scientist at the Duke Leamer Center in Durham, North Carolina. He just finished a big study that looked at all the species of primates and what we know about their parasites and concluded that as many as 100 species of parasite could be lost entirely if endangered species went extinct. And he's here to say that that's going to be bad if that happens. So here he is giving the first very important definition. what is a parasite? With disease ecology, we generally take the ecological definition of a parasite, which is any kind of organism that lives on or inside of another organism,

deriving their resources and then their benefits at some cost to the other organism, which we call the host. For us, it also includes not only the worms that we typically think of or ectoparasites like ticks and pleas, but also viruses. bacteria and fungi and protozoa that, you know, in the medical field, they usually refer to those as pathogens and not parasites. You know, the helmets we often call like a macro parasite is big enough to see. For us, it also includes viruses and bacteria. Why did it seem important to look at what might happen if the primates that host these parasites when extinct? We know that species are going

extinct around the world, largely due to human activities, but we're often focusing on the big charismatic species, the flagship species that we can all rally behind and support like tigers and pandas. But then there's this whole hidden biodiversity that's going extinct right alongside these better known species. And those are the parasites. We know that there's thousands of species of parasites that have barely even been described by science. Probably there's another couple thousand out there that haven't even been studied yet. So that's kind of why we started thinking about, hey, this could cause more extinctions than we realize. So we investigated how the ecological network of host and parasite interactions would be affected by the removal of the hosts, particularly

the threatened hosts. We used approaches that have been applied in networks of plants and their pollinators, as well as social networks of people. So this required combining and combing through all the literature of everything that's been written on the interactions between wild primates and their parasites. We then assessed how those host parasite interactions would be affected under different simulations of extinction. So we compared the changes in networks after removing the endangered hosts to the effects of just randomly removing the same proportion of hosts, but without respect to the endangered status. We estimated that as many as 250 parasites will be affected by the loss of their endangered hosts. Of those 250,

Some still have other hosts that are not primates. So they might have some kind of ungulate or bat that they also affect. And that's where we figured that it's something like 176 parasites that are only known to affect these endangered hosts. So they probably don't have any other hosts out there. They might, but it hasn't been documented yet. So if you were going to make like a Save the Parasites poster, like who would be on these posters?

Is it viruses like you mentioned, or is it things like ticks and louses and tapeworms? That's a great question. I wonder who would want to buy any of those t-shirts. But I would have to say, this is obviously my own bias, but it would be many of the helminth worms and some of the mites and lice, because those are some of the most specialized. So those are the species that really seem to only infect one or a few hosts. And the reason is because of their transmission. So they are transmitted typically by close contact, which means you've got to be coming into literal physical contact with your, you know, an infected individual for you to pick it up. This typically isn't happening between different species because, you know, different species

aren't huddling and sleeping together or grooming each other. So things like these lice and mites that literally spend their entire life on a single individual host, they are some of the most specialized. In fact, there's several mites and lice that are only found on these endangered leaners in Madagascar. Given that Madagascar is an island and, you know, it's been isolated for 60, 90, 100 million years, it's pretty clear that, you know, they're likely to be truly specialized. Maybe this is a devil's advocate question, but, you know, what if that louse or, you know, say, pinworm does go extinct? Does that matter at all? Should we be sad about the end of that species if the only ecosystem it was ever part of is an ape that is no longer on this planet either?

It might be hard to imagine, but some parasites might actually play important roles for the regulation of host populations, similar to the way predators do. So in that sense, they're really important to stabilize populations and prevent them from exceeding the environmental carrying capacity. So in that way, you know, you can think of the parasites shaping their host population dynamics, kind of the way the wolves shape the ecosystems in Yellowstone when they were reintroduced. I think that's not an exaggeration to think of that kind of analogy. One of the things we are hypothesizing is that endangered hosts seem to have fewer parasites than their non-endangered hosts. The parasites they do have are these specialists, that they're only occurring in one or a few

host species, and they're not the generalists that are infecting tons of different species. The reason what we see this pattern now may be that we've already lost a lot of these parasites in the process of the host becoming endangered. So what are the things that make a host endangered? Small population sizes that are fragmented so that they can't interbreed. Those are also factors that prevent the transmission of diseases. It's like our social distancing, right? So that may have actually already led to some extinctions.

Now, what effect does that really have with the lemurs? It's hard to say we really need to do a lot more research. But actually, we're seeing that in areas where the habitat is degraded by people, like people cutting trees and going to the forest to collect forest products, people can bring their parasites with them and introduce them to the lemurs. And so common generalist parasites, things like Giardia and Cryptosporidium, that are naturally not very frequently seen in the wild, pristine, populations, you do start to see those infections in the lemurs that live close to humans and where

there's more likelihood of interaction with humans. You know, losing these wild parasites and acquiring kind of these humanized parasites may really, that might be what's really negatively impacting their health. That's really interesting. Well, and I guess one of the questions I had is, correct me if my numbers are wrong, but something like 50% of primate species are considered endangered, 90% of lemurs, like the ones you work with in Madagascar, can understanding their parasites better help us in conserving those species and preventing them from dying off entirely? You got the numbers pretty much right, yeah, 90%, especially for lemurs, 90% of lemurs are considered threatened with extinction. The other thing I like to think about is that, you know, we just don't

know what many of these organisms are doing in their host. Many parasites are not necessarily causing disease in the host, and they may be performing really critical roles in modulating the immune system of the host. So, for example, Helmintz worms have a mechanism whereby they can kind of tune down the immune system of the host so that they're not getting, you know, kicked out right away. And if you, you know, there's actually several examples in humans where we see negative impacts when people are dewormed and we see positive effects when introducing helmets like in treating autoimmune disorders. So we were really just starting to dig into the meat of that question, which is what does it really mean to be healthy? You know, we see lots of

these organisms, you know, individuals who are simultaneously co-infected with nine, 10, 11 different kinds of intestinal parasites and ectoparasites. And it's not like the animals are just fallen out of the trees dying from disease. You know, they're foraging, they're socializing, they're finding mates. And so when we see, for example, in captivity, where animals and have, you know, now access to veterinary care and things, the animals still get sick. and they get sick with things like Cryptospiridium and Giardia, which are these common generalist parasites that we know can really grow out of control

when they're not kept in check by other potential interactions with a parasite. But there is really a growing consensus that there's more to it than just these parasites cause disease. And in fact, many of these, in fact, almost all of them have co-evolved with their host. come for tens or hundreds of millions of years. So, you know, if you think about a smart parasite, the smart parasite doesn't necessarily want to kill its host because then its food source is gone. The old way of looking at it was this evolutionary arms race

or the Red Queen, right, where each organism is running as fast as they can just to try to keep pace with the other. And the parasite is involving a new way to infect the host, and the host is evolving new immune defenses to more behavioral defenses, And really, there may actually be more mutualism to it than we've given credit to in the past. I want to take it back to primates, their endangered status. And again, this research that you just completed that found that, you know, we have maybe nearly 200 unique parasites that may also go extinct if these primates go extinct. What do we still need to know if, you know, the goal is overall the preservation of biodiversity?

Yeah, that's a really deep question because, I mean, at the most base level, we still need the basic natural history information. We don't even know how many species are going extinct because they've never been described. So we still need the basic natural history type science to document really at a species level, because oftentimes what we're dealing with are data like, you know, a fecal sample from an animal that you can put under a microscope and you can look for eggs of the helmets, for example. But the eggs of too closely related species look almost identical. You can't tell them apart. So if we really want to know, like, is this a unique species that's only found in this host? You've got to go to the genetic level. You've got to go to, you know, the next generation genomic level,

where you can really try to determine that the species or what we often call an operational taxonomic unit level. Because, you know, viruses and bacteria, what do we call a species, gets really tricky. So there's the one aspect, but I think kind of one of the areas that's like the next frontier on the horizon for studying in disease ecology is investigating questions of co-infection. So as I've been mentioning, you know, there are all these studies that show a single individual might have 10, 12 different kind of parasites at the same time. How do those parasites interact within their host? We don't know anything about that in most animals. So that's, and that's fundamental to going back to, like, what does it mean to be healthy? What does a healthy wild population look like?

It's not going to be some sterile population with no parasites. I mean, that's kind of the battle that humans are in now because we led this long war and campaign on germs, and we tried everything we could to sterilize our environment. And now we realize, oh, shoot, you know, we need these bacteria that we now call the microbiome that keep us healthy. So the same is true for the wildlife. You know, we need to understand what diverse communities of parasites exist in natural normal populations. Well, that sounds like quite the scientific adventure, I guess I should say, and maybe a bit of a dirty job. That's for sure.

James Herrera is a research scientist at the Duke Leamer Center and the program coordinator for their conservation program. He joined us from Durham, North Carolina. I'm Christy Taylor, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Thanks, Christy. I think I see your side now. What a good case for the power of parasites. And speaking of creepy crawlies, before we head out, I invite you to a treat for your ears, a sci-fri soundscape from Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett of the World According to Sound podcast. These are the mating songs of spiders. Spiders aren't powerful enough to vibrate the air and actually sing. Instead, they use the ground. Male spiders send vibrate.

down their legs and into whatever they're standing on. Nearby females hear the song vibrating up their legs. We're only able to hear these spiders because of a laser vibrometer, which records their tiny vibrations. Researchers in Damien Elias's lab at UC Berkeley gathered the mating calls of many different species of spiders. Those sounds are part of a communal listening series, The World According to Sound, is hosting this

winter. For more information about their 80-minute binoral events, visit the world according to sound.org. Charles Berkowitz is our director. Our producers are Christy Taylor and Kathleen Davis. John Dankowski is our news director. B.J. Leatherman composed our theme music. If you missed any part of this program or you'd like to hear it again or share it, you can subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday anywhere you are in the house. Of course, you can email us, too. The address is SciFry at ScienceFriaday.com. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato.