The Closing of Duke Herbarium

Okay, welcome to the crime pace. But botany doesn't podcast. Hopefully I
can, you know, not mess out. I haven't. I got this
new mechanism for recording over the phone. Hopefully I don't mess this up.
But I haven't used it in two months. But I'm here on the phone
with doctor Kathleen Pryor, director of the Duke Erbarium, and her husband,
doctor Michael Wyndham, curator of the Vascular Plants Deer Barium. And uh,
I want to say I just I just had such a lovely conversation with you
guys before we I almost wasn't ready to do the podcast because I wanted to
keep talking, you know, it was it was that level of fun.
So anyway, I got you guys on. You guys aren't speaker. If
it ends up being you know, sound levels issue, we could just take
it off speaker. But right now, let's just roll with it and see
how it goes. So, how are you guys doing, How are you
guys doing? What are we uh? What are you guys doing? What
are you going up to? Last few days? Well, it should have
been very stressful last two weeks because of this news that came down about the
Duke Herbarium. So I have suddenly found myself in front of cameras and on
on the phone to all kinds of people I don't know, and fielding two
hundred emails a day where people have been writing in just outraged and in an
uproar. I don't know if you've seen that. Somebody started a petition on
change dot org. Uh, and so many letters have have gone have come
through. So it's it's been rather challenging. I'm exhausted, to be honest.
Got two hundred emails I get, I get like seven, and I
just want to lay down in traffic. So so lets so let's tell everyone
what's going on with the rbarium for anyone listening, because we get everyone,
we get like academics, we get you know, just random Yeah, Rando's
listening to the podcast. So owner burium is it's basically like a museum,
a reference library of dried plant material, you know, sometimes with records going
back two hundred, three hundred years. It's immensely important to science. And
so what's going on with what's going on over there? To do? What's
what happened? Well, our herbarium is one hundred years old and the Duke
is celebrating its centennial this year and so the it's what's interesting way to celebrate
is to get rid of their one hundred year olds Hebarian. So what's happened
is that it has a long history and has had a lot of prominent botanists,
and so the collections are a little unusual from other places because they're very
strong in bri fights, very strong in lichens. We have a small all
fungal collection and algo collection, but our vascular plants are about, you know,
four hundred and fifty thousand specimens. They're all told, we just come
out under a million specimens or so. And so it's a large old herbarian
owned by a university. And in the last couple of years I was asked
to produce a strategic plan because every time a new dean comes on board or
a new chair, you will brought the problem up of when botany merges with
zoology to become a biology. And that's a big factor here. When Duke
was a botany department. In fact, I got my PhD at Duke.
I was here from nineteen ninety to and so my PhDs in botany and the
herbarium was a jam, a jewel, a treasure understood thing. When we
twenty five years ago merged with Zoology, I had come back as a faculty
member. I had been at the Field Museum in Chicago for six years.
Oh yeah, yeah, I love it. Oh my god. That was
my childhood was spent in those halls. I remember the smell in the perfect
way that the children's screams echoed in the Grand hallway, you know, because
kids we'd go there, the school groups that always be chasing each other,
and you know they're you know, just do you have overnight tapping as a
kid. There, No, God, I would have loved to, Oh
my god, there would have. Every once in a while they'd have these
camping nights. Kids would come and they camp out and whatever part of the
collection they wanted to and pretty crazy. Yeah, would pick the wel Witchia
diorama. In fact, when I die, I want my body to be
plasticized. If they could just sneak me in the back of that diorama somewhere
with the well Witchia, you know, just like it's the Namibian coastal fog
desert, you know, just they could they could have me waving or something
in the back. But anyway, so okay, so this so this is
basically and I've heard this happen and a lot of this has been happening in
a lot of American universities where they they say, well, botany's not really
strong enough to be its own subject. Why do we merge it with biology?
Why don't we you know, this consolidation And to me, I mean
I heard that happen in two thousand. To me, that's kind of a
red flag too. It's like, oh, all right, we're getting some
because that's kind of this corporate It seems like the thing that a company does
when they're trying to cut costs, which is not good. You know,
you it's this whole, this whole mentality I think that the United States has
been in for the last forty years maybe where you know, maximize profit,
cut costs. Uh, you know really, I don't know if it's Reaganomics
or what or where this kind of this mentality came from. But when they
start doing because it's there, you know, thirty years ago, universities had
a much different feel. Now it really does operate like a corporation. Yeah,
yeah, that's what and that's you know, it's it's like I used
to work for the railroad, and it was it got really bad there the
last few years I worked there. But you know what they started doing before
it got bad was all of a sudden, it was like, they weren't
going to cover half our half the cost of our boots anymore, and they
weren't gonna we weren't going to get free leather gloves anymore, because you know,
we're throwing switches and pulling cut levers. You can cut your hands this,
you know, this rusty iron. And and it was they they started
with these little things, and it was like, why are they skimping?
Why are they nickel and diming us on and this? And then sure enough
suddenly they started cutting crews, started cutting jobs. They were pissing off the
customers too, because box cars, you know, instead of getting deliveries every
other day, now they were getting them only twice a week. The trains
got longer, then you started getting these huge accidents like East Palestine, Ohio.
I mean, it was just this mentality that started in little baby steps
and by the end, by the time I left, I was finally like
this sucks. I'm out. You know, it just made it a more
miserable place to work, and it was all to you know, please the
shareholders make more money just by cutting costs, and it was yeah, it
was not so anyway, So this so they merged. Why did they choose
to merge botany and zoology into biology? That's really bizarre, Like they weren't
they didn't neither one merited enough to well, it was decided at the time.
They share the same buildings, so botany was on one side, zoology
on the other. And I wasn't here when that decision was made. So
I came back to a biology department. Was was were they going to?
Was the university going to somehow save money by doing this by lumping at the
game? They felt that Duke has a really big medical school, and so
they felt that in the grand scheme of things, it is what I imagined
that a biology department could compete better with a medical school program rather than having
a little piddly botany department or zoology. Seems I think it was a you
know, to make it gain additional oop. Yeah yeah, so well anyway,
so that's well, it seems like that was a bad sign. So
okay, so what so what's going on. I mean, how did we
get here where they're closing, you know, they're closing what's basically not just
a museum but but a reference library, you know, for scientific specimens like
it just seems wild to me, especially since we now know with with PCR
in the molecular go ahead. No no, I was agreeing. I mean,
now that we can get DNA out of one hundred and fifty year old
specimens, and the data that's locked up in there is who knows what we'll
be able to do in thirty years from now, right, So it's not
just this crispy, you know, pressed plant. Now, it's actually you
can get DNA out of You can get so much more data out of this
material, exactly beyond what the original collectors ever thought, you know. So
what do you think, What do you think is going on? What do
you think happened? I mean what it's obviously got to do with money,
right, But I mean, well, I think it's in the context of
a large biology department that has sixty faculties or so, there are just fewer
and fewer people that understood what it was. So when it was Botany,
it had you know, faculty lines that were associated with the herbarium, So
they weren't the faculty line budgets or salaries were not tied to a herbarian budget.
They were people that they had hired and they came and they built.
So Lewis Anderson came in the thirties and he died about fifteen years ago,
and he built a very strong moss herbarium. And Johnshaw came in the mid
nineties and carried on that tradition with the work he's done, especially on Sphagnum,
and the same thing for the Liking Collection. The Liking Collection was started
maybe in the forties and fifties with the Culdersons, a very famous couple who
pioneered TLC identification of chemical compounds from likens for their identification and so. And
then Francois Luzzone is currently the curator that's been here since two thousands or so,
and again a very strong program in lycnology readers. Vigilis is the fungal
biologist and he started up a herbarium collection and it's probably the smallest of our
of all the collections, it's about twelve thirteen thousand specimens. And then vascular
Plants had a curator here for about fifty years, so all these old guys
were competing with each other and trying to they really built up the collection very
strongly. And so when I arrived, that bioside building as we call it,
had all inside it with three floors, and each of those floors holds
one hundred and ten cases. So in that well within the Bioside building are
three hundred and thirty cases, so almost four hundred thousand specimens of cryptogon.
And when I was a graduate student, it had so outgrown that space that
there were cases in every hallway, in every stairway, on every floor.
It was ridiculous. I think the North Carolina Fire Marshal turned an eye.
But then in early say two thousand and five or six, they do got
money from Melinda French Gates. She I guess got her, and so her
family gave money to build what is now called the French Family Science Center.
And so that went was built just directly behind a very very large building to
accommodate chemists and biology and various other people. And so when they set about
constructing that building, we were ordered to get rid of all the cases in
the Biosie building because they needed to move people around, and they just couldn't
have that, So they moved five hundred and forty cases five miles north of
the biology building into a warehouse underneath a dialysis center. That what this is
like that scene in that movie Office Space where like that guy Milton, They're
like, we're just going to put him in a basement, you know,
just you could still Oh, by the way, he's not even getting a
paycheck anymore, but we'll just I mean, who made these decisions? Was
any was the person that made this decision? I mean, did they have
any were they like affiliated with I mean, I guess what I'm asking is,
like, are the people that are doing the budgeting affiliated with your Do
they have any background? And it is that do they not? They don't
understand the importance of it. They're just basically penzil pushures. So we had
floods, We had serious black mold on the walls, so bad that people
couldn't even go there to work. So we had one collection manager who was
so allergic she could go for like thirty minutes wearing a mask. But it
was so still conceived. It was just well, we have the Duke can
rent this space, and I don't know that anybody thought it through being under
a dialysis center and the risks of that. But there at CHATS for about
five years, so from two thousand four to two thousand and nine, and
Mike and I wrote a grant to NSF in two thousand and six, and
our goal was to bring because that was all the vascular plants that were off
right underneath that, and so our goal was to write a grant so that
we could bring the collection back to campus. And NFF has these collection support
grants that you can write, but you need to have for those that require
space, you need to have the university sign on to that space say yes
you can have that space, and that has to be in the proposal otherwise
you don't stand a chance of getting these grants. So we wanted to bring
all five hundred and fifty cases back to Duke and put it in a renovated
space that could hold compactors, carriages, put all the barbarian cases on carriages
and uh compact them on rails like you see in libraries where they compact d
have high density shelving. Yeah, you're you're talking about one of them?
Are you talking about one of those? Just like just like a normal rbarium
hairs where you turn the wheel and it opens up a different aisle, right,
like a professional ass serbarium, like a like a like anbarium you'd expect
to see at a university with what is it an eleven billion dollar endowment or
something. I mean, what that's just kind of blowing my mind. I
mean, this is like I could understand it. This was like a you
know, uh university and Hon Duras or something. No offense to Hon Durast,
but like a you know, or or or like a community like the
community college where I live in South Texas. The herbarium is literally in a
fucking closet. It's like a My friend Zach was working there for a while
and we were going through specimens, you know, the only collection of Euphorbia
antisephialitica that it's ever been collected in South Texas, which is I think a
different species. It's got a different syathium from the one the species in West
Texas. And it was all, you know, the specimens are all insect
eaten and just there's there's no window in there. It's just it's horrible.
It's like this this college just obviously could not give a shit less, like
I'm surprised they still have this this, you know, or barium there.
Yeah, so he did. He was digitizing all of it. And then
I think it's they were trying to like pawn it off to U T.
Austin or something, which is you know, they didn't want it either,
it was, but it's just I mean, it seems so obvious that,
like, so the writing was on the wall as early as two thousand and
five, that Duke didn't really seem to care, Like whoever was up in
charge of things up there just didn't see the importance of this and and kind
of like offensively just didn't value it, like they didn't see why they would
have stayed there forever. Probably and the courts several of us had some pretty
strong graduate programs at the time, so lots of grad students being trained in
biodiversity. So we have several students that are now like you know, my
first student, Eric Schupelt's chair of Botany at the Smithsonian. Another student,
wench And, was a curator at Berkeley. They learned at Duke and they
are carrying on the tradition elsewhere. Another one is at Cornell. They were
really trained well and do good science and so on. But we were able
to bring back that collection of bascular plants to campus because Duke agreed to give
me four hundred thousand dollars the space I identified they needed to cutch and just
paint the walls and put some tile on, and then I got the other
hat million from NSF to bring in the carriages and the rails so that we
could have a compact because we wouldn't have been able to fit five hundred cases
in that space without having it compacted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you
need. I mean, anyone who's ever been to a arbarium knows, you
know, you've got to have you can't. You need to have one of
those things that you know opens up the aisle between right, you know,
you can't the ouldarium that's good. The old herbarium that's in the Bio side
building, the one that has all the cryptogams in, it's stilled. The
original space is not compacted because it couldn't handle the floors couldn't handle the weight
or something. They have always just been you know, spaced apart so that
you're able to open doors. So there is no compaction on those three floors.
So you have three hundred and thirty cases all lined up with just enough
room to open cabinet doors. So okay, So the irbarium comes back to
Duke from the basement of the dialysis clinic in what year. Well, we
got the grant in two thousand and seven. It took a couple of years
to do the renovations, and then it had been classified according to a really
old scheme classification scheme by the former curator, and so we worked to bring
it all up today, rearrange. We brought the cases back, we rearranged
things according to the latest angiosperm phylogeny classifications, not just antio speerms, but
also the ferns. And so I think we had a big party, like
in two thousand and nine, we invited the department to come have happy hour
outside of the new facility, and we were doing crazy things like making because
we were very successful in getting so DOT in the last recent years has gotten
almost three million dollars worth of digitization grants from MSS. So all of the
bride fights are digitized, all of the lichens, maybe thirty or forty percent
of the vascular plants are so we've gotten you know, been very successful in
getting a lot of these grants. And I remember showing a dean how impressive
these high resolution images were, and his response was, Oh my god,
this is fantastic. Now we can throw all the specimens and use the space
as something useful. And I was a guest. I was like, no,
we can get DNA out of these things. We need to be able
to observe them under microscope to see measures and look for hairs and things like
that. Now we're going to open up a new We could open up a
new uh, you know, new like corporate lobby. The name man after
like some rich al loom, you know, given the purchase rights to the
god. It's that's not it's so crazy. I just don't. I just
I guess I just don't. I don't understand it. I mean, that's
a whole other that's a whole other can of worms. I want to get
to later. Is it is? What what has happened to the the idea
of botany in the mind of university administrators? You know? Like? Why
is it seen as just not an important science anymore? You know? Well,
I think the title of your show says it all. Yeah, I
mean, that's yeah, That's why people ask me where'd the title come from.
I'm like, well, it's on It's it's honestly, it's just it's
based out of a cynical take. You know that I realized years ago in
the big grants that you know, some some of these other people in our
enlarge biology department, right can bring in Yeah, you know, I mean
plants. Plants are just the base of the food chain, in the base
of the entire biosphere and planet Earth and the source of you know, eighty
percent of where our drugs are synthesized from. And you know it's right,
they're not there. Yeah, understanding their evolution and ecology isn't that important,
you know, at least not as getting like a new wing for the medical
school. So oh god, that's yeah, man, that's It's an interesting
correlation that Duke's interest in the irbarium always peaks whenever there is brand money coming
in. So they send it off to the basement of a dialysis facility,
probably not really intending for it to come back. But then you know,
we get NSF branch and and they kick in matching butt and we create this
this, as many people have said, a wonderful facility that's perfectly suited to
the rbarium. But you know, the NSF supported it and so in money,
we weren't going to get the brand and they agree to it. We're
surprised. And that sounds like they're just hoping that it all disappears. It
sounds like they're hoping that it just disappears. But they're trying to save face
and not look like sleeze bags on top of it, you know, I
mean, And so they're trying to do this dance of like, how do
we defund this thing and get rid of it because it's a waste of where
we want to put our resources without looking like you know, sleezy cost cutting.
And the digitization has been a mixed blessing. It brings in money from
the National Fiance Foundation. But then, as Kathleen said, then the next
thought from administrators is, oh, well we have pictures. Have you got
a picture? What do you got a picture? We don't need these candidates.
You've got a picture of its faith, Just get rid of it.
It's faith God. So really, you know, from comparison to a library,
uh, it's a narbarium is a lie is just like a library.
So a lot of the use of an erbarium involves loans. We send loans
out to other institutions for their study. We request loans in from other institutions
so that we can, uh we can study them and uh, but you
know what you're looking at. But then arbarium is a library full of of
first editions or or unique resources, because every one of those specimens is different.
Even if it's in the same species, you know, then it it
reflects in for a specific variation. So every one of those stetments is you
neque and you lose those and you lose access to a lot of your information
on biodiversity. Yeah, it's shameful, it's it's nuts. And I but
I think that I think that the part of the reason I wanted to do
this, this podcast conversation with you guys. I think we're probably going to
see more of this kind of thing, at least in the US, because
I think this is where things are going. It's like, it's there's just
so I mean, I I to me, it's a deranged mentality. I
think it's just it's the same mentality that says, why don't we get rid
of you know, we've got to maximize money. We've got to cost We've
got a cost cut. We've got to put our money on the things that
actually pay off, you know, financially. You know science, I mean
studying botany and evolution and earth sekisisms. It pays off immenseally, but just
not financially. And that's I think, that's what that's the only thing that
some of the people making these decisions are conned with. I mean, they're
so disconnected from from anything else I you know, and that's why you end
up seeing I mean not to make too too far of a stretch here in
comparison or an analogy, but that's why you see I mean the amount of
development I've seen in the Texas, in the southeast and the last in California
too, in the last uh, you know decade. I mean, I
remember when I was a kid, I was like, development's gonna stop,
It's gonna slow down at some point there's these crumbs of habitat are going to
be left, and but no, it just keeps going. It just keeps
going. And they're not going to stop. The people making these decisions aren't
going to stop there. They only really seem to care about money. They
don't care if they've created one of the ugliest landscapes in the first world,
where it's you know, there's more cvs you know, in ross dress for
lessons than there are you know, wild habitats too. I'm serious. It's
it's just so gross. It's the same fucking mentality and it's the same,
you know, and I I just think it's it's yeah, I mean,
I don't know where when it started or if it's always been there. I'm
sure it's always been there, but I think it's just it's become the the
kind of the guiding light of American society to the to our detriment. We're
getting dumber and more disconnected as a culture because of it. And I think
things like closing or barrier are great indicators. They're great red flags for this
kind of ship, you know that I'm seeing, uh throughout America, and
it's it's just such a bummer, man. It's like, how do you
get people to realize what really matters? You know? And it's I don't
know, it's it's such a cliche, but it's like, God, the
you can't you know, you just can't be focused only on money. Money
is important, but it can't be the main thing that dicta you know,
and just knowledge it's important too, right, I mean it's money's money's important,
But I just think that, you know, there's got to be there's
some things you do just because it's not only the right thing to do,
but it enriches society and culture, you know, in ways that money can't,
you know, like like art and science and these you know, these
like that, and there's no there's no value on those things. There's no
financial value attached. And that's why they end up getting the acts when the
wrong people are making the decisions. But anyway, so, so to go
back to this, so this I guess to bring it back the or so
the herbarium got moved out of the dialysis clinic back to Duke. And then
when did you guys first start getting hints that it was going to be closed,
that they were even eyeing it. Well, we couldn't never even imagine.
So when what the thing is that the five six faculty that are associated
with the collection are all getting close to retirements and they there have has been
no move too higher in our field some younger people and and at the same
time this building that we're in is seventy years old. It's never had any
serious renovation, and all of a sudden, Duke is willing to put some
money into renovating that building. And it does need serious It had has its
own leaking problems and uh and so on, but it's never had a face
even a face lift. So this this renovation is scheduled to happen in the
next to start and maybe in the next three years. So everyone in biology
is being asked, you know, what what do you need for swing space?
Where where can you go? What would your lab need? And most
of us that are close to retirement are like, well, when you start,
I'll be gone and and that'll be it. So it's a real cool
incidents in a way that they are taking advantage of that this retirement issue to
just get rid of the herbariums. So and I and I have to say,
they're not going to get rid of it. They love to say in
anything that's public that it is a fabulous resource, that it's they they know
it's worth, but that deserves to have a better call, It deserves a
better home, and and it's just and they also put a number on it.
They said, you know, to keep it the way it is,
we'd need twenty five million dollars. Nobody told us where they came up with
that. It's not like we're building a Nassa space craft. You know,
clients are dead. They don't need to water them. They just stay in
steel cabinets, right, Yeah, what's the cost like paying staff in the
electric bill? I mean, I just I don't that's it. They're so
good at the PR. You know, these kinds of people are so good
at the PR. That's what they go to school for. You know,
it's just the well, it's very sad actually because the two people that are
way you think, behind this, behind this are two biologists. They are
faculty members that have one has become the chair and one has become a dean,
and I have we haven't heard anything from above the deans at Duke and
so these people are biologists. They are letting this happen. It's not some
crazy administrators. That's kind of wild. Where have they been painted? What
happened? I mean, it's like, I don't. I again, I'm
just kind of trying to figure this out. I mean, I don't.
I just I can't imagine why suddenly something like an erbarium. You know,
a collection of eight plant specimen press plant specimens is no longer seen as worth
keeping around and showing out some money for, especially since it's not well.
It's a lot of outrage. There's been a lot of outrage, and I
don't think I'm very popular for having started it. And I'm just wondering how
much of this bad publicity can they take before somebody says, okay, let's
stop with this and let's talk. So there was no faculty discussion. Like
I said a couple of years ago, I was passed with writing a strategic
plan. It took me and a fellow faculty member a year to pull this
thing together. We handed it in and never heard anything, never got a
thank you, and never it never went circulated anywhere. And then a few
months Slater was told, you know, let's not getting traction. Do you
have a vision plan? Something you know I could really try and sell to
the administration. I took up architectural drawing and drew a floor plan and and
you know, classroom and a great little building that somebody, if we could
find a donor, then they could yank it all out of biology, put
it over by We have a wonderful you know, Duke gardens and be associated
with you know, life plants, dead plants, and it was laughed at.
And then the first thing I know, uh, it's that this is
coming down. But now the faculty are shocked and so in fact, in
the meeting I had to go to are some faculty members who cannot believe they
were not consulted. You know why is when we're considering hiring priorities for the
future, this not being talked about by the entire faculty. It's very unilateral,
and it is it's it is kind of a stain too, I mean
to be you know, oh yeah, Duke, that's the university that that
you know got rid of that trash, the orbarium that got rid of it.
You know, it's it's a recent university. But yeah, it's go
ahead. Sorry, pleading poverty as the the reason. You know, we
don't have the funds, We don't have the facilities to properly take care of
this or barium, so you know, we need to send it to a
new home. And there is no new home who can take eight hundred thousands.
There is no one place yet can just absorb it. So they did
this without even thinking, what are we going to do? Send them office?
Uh, you know some over here, the liverworks over there, and
then the whole legacy, the whole history of what is known to be in
the new karbarium will be lost. And really they may as well be throwing
it out because keeping track of things to be like those things used to be
a duke who's got them now? And I'll tell you we've had lots of
vouchers, of vultures, people who have been calling at least twenty five offers,
people sending emails saying, gosh, this is really sad. Say we're
really interested in the jedsonary aces. Do you think we could come by and
get all your collections and the type specimens too, And it's like, let's
go there. Okay, we're fighting the fight here and we hope this doesn't
happen, but no, you cannot take. And other people are saying,
we are in Florida and we have a hurricane proof built and we've got room
for more tropical collections. Could you send us all your tropical things? The
National Park Service? Uh yeah. Curator sent me an email the other day
saying that over time, Duke has requested permits from fourteen national parks, and
she listed them and said, we are going to be compiling because when we
request permits, we go off and do the work we've been bring the spent
specimens back and they are deposited in our collections but on permanent loan from the
federal government. And so they they she said, we're going to go through
and make lists and you're going to have to send those back. God who
can go through. I mean that there are thousands of specimens and they're not
like they're in a certain case. They're distributed throughout the entire Yeah, I
hold your horses too. You know. It's like just wait, just wait,
wait, wait, like some solidarity first off from from the universities and
second you know with I mean, yeah, it's it's kind of a it's
kind of disconcerting people. It's like, hey, let us get our stuff
back by the way, what's you know? I mean, why don't you
want they wait to see what happens? You know, they're acting well,
and it did. The message did come down rather hard, like you have
two and two or three years now to get rid of it. And a
point I've asked the administration over and over and having gotten an answer, is
that, as I've mentioned earlier, half the collection is in bioside building vascular
plants. The other half is in a different building right next door. It's
not that building that's getting renovated. It's biosize. So why does the entire
collection have to go? Right? Yeah, and now they want to shelve
it. They want to they want to cost cut. That's not so when
you when you got that that noticed a few years ago, saying, you
know, give us a plan, give us like a draft of what what
you do here? I mean, did you did you get the feeling that
the writing was kind of on the wall? I, oh, they're doing
this. Oh yes, And that's why we put so much effort into it,
trying to you know, show For example, we had an external review
of our department a few years ago, and what came out of it regarding
the herbarian I was never allowed to talk to anybody, but what came out
of it was that herbarium, you know, other than the faculty associated with
it, it's not really used by anyone. And I was like, it's
not a toilet, it's not a room everybody goes into. It's a facility.
You don't. The metrics by which you gave the worth of the herbarian
is not how many people in the building use it. It's how many loans
you have. So we have more than two hundred loans that are out around
the world, some of them small, some of them very large, and
we have almost as many loans here that we've made from other institutions. So
these other institutions are hearing about it and they're succussing you better send us back
your specimens. This is who's going to do that. There are two hundreds
of these, you know, loans made from various institutions, and it's been
tasked to us, the curators, to do it. And it's like,
you know, these are my golden years. I have lots of work I
want to finish on Thailand, so it's right and other things I do not
want to be you know self. Uh it. They really stick with it,
and they the Kiwis, they are on top of things. So we
haven't gotten any notices yet from us or area. As soon as they thought
they checked their records, they sent us emails saying, we hear your clothing,
please send our specimens back. Yeah. Well, Australia and New Zealand
are both countries too where I think, you know, they're they actually get
adequate funding as far as I can tell, you know, not like the
US, where there's not really any respect for quote unquote natural sciences anymore,
it seems, you know most That's what I've been hearing too from a lot
of friends that are professors and whatever. They're like, yeah, you know,
I would I teach. You know, a friend of mine taught botany
at U T Austin. He's like another friend taught botany at Saint Louis University.
And they'd say, you know, so many of the students were just
disinterested. They were there for the fields that would pay, like you know,
doctors or lawyers or got the fact that some of some of those people.
It's crazy too because I feel like I don't have health insurance now because
I'm an American, but back when I did have health insurance, when I
had a union job. You know, you'd go to these doctors and I
would say, like half of them just didn't give a shit, Like you
could tell they didn't. They weren't passionate about their field. They weren't passionate
about medicine. They were there because it paid well. They were just large.
They were grown up versions of like the kids that I encountered when I
went to school who just were doing it because it's what you did and your
parents tell you to go to school so you can get a good job.
And those are the people who are Those are the people who aren't killing the
world. I'm only half joking. You know, it's this just God,
what are you doing? Like you just this is your life? Like no
wonder, I mean, you know, no wonder. You are the way
you are. You should there's no life in your I mean you should be
you know, putting your time into things that drive you and make you,
you know, be so happy to be alive and passionate, stuff that keeps
you up at night thinking about in a good way because you're so excited about
it. Like that's what botany is from me if I was working in law
or something. I mean, God, I can't imagine. And I'm sure
there are some people that are really passionate about long love it, but to
me, it seems, you know, just soul sucking. But either way,
I just I think about that and I'm like, yeah, this is
where you know this is this is the mistake that so many kids make.
They go into things not because they genuinely like the field. They're just trying
to make money. And I feel like that again. It's it's it's just
another facet of this whole problem we're facing in the US, and it's it's
nuts. But I can imagine you know when you when you saw when you
got that that memo saying, oh right, tell us what you do here?
You know, what's just what's the what does this orberium do? Why
should we It was kind of like the why should we keep it? It's
again it's like I keep bringing back this movie, but that's scene in office
space where those two costcutters come in, you know, and they're like what
do you do? You know, they're like what do you you know?
They come they come in and set everyone down at a table and they're like,
what do you do? What's your job here? You know, just
trying to figure out if we can, if we can get rid of this,
if this is like a place to make a budget cut. It's just
wild. It's like okay, well what I mean, what is a large
space? And they don't like that, but it's you know, it's a
research university. It's a research university, and in our Buria, in our
barium's main point is for research. Why would you get rid of you know,
uh, this this fundamental tool that you need in your toolkit. If
you're a university that conducts that kind of you know, teachings, education,
if that, if research is your focus, it's wild man. I just
it just seems my hope, and it's probably a distant a dream that won't
come true, but my hope is that, Okay, maybe it's outgrown a
biology department, but it is still a facility. Like for example, we
have Duke has a Lemur Center and it nearly went under twenty years ago and
they rescued it. But it is a college level facility that reports to the
provos, so it doesn't have departmental chairs and deans and other faculties and mess
with. They can do their own reaching out to donors and so on.
But when you're in a department, you're really restricted. So we were always
encouraged to you know, outreach and maybe one day somebody will give in,
and in fact that's what happened. In August, I was contacted by a
reporter at Duke a Lum magazine. He said, I love her barrier.
I want to come and do an article on you. I was shocked and
I said, wow, timing is really peculiar because we are in peril.
And so he wrote a story and send you the link and he brought in
the whole Lady Gaga Ferns and it was titled Nowhere to Grow and it hinted
that you know it, it was at risk. And so that came out
in December and in January I got a call from the guy in development that
we were assigned, who's like, I'm sorry, pretty yeah, never mind.
Anyway, he called me and said, hey, guess what, You've
got a bite. And so he said, would you mind talking to this
guy, a potential donor on Zoom with me, you know, as the
chaperone. And so I had a delightful conversation with a Duke Lum, a
man in his eighties, very smart questions that he asked. She was a
graduate of the Diminity School in the sixth and he he said, I don't
know anything about this, but I love the story and I think her barrier
are wonderful. Oh he kept calling it a herbatorium. I'm going to have
to use that herbitorium. When did you So this was in August. When
did you guys get noticed that it was closing? So this was the I
was the No, this was in January, So in August I was interviewed.
The article came out in December. I had the conversation in January,
late January with the donor and at the end of our half hour conversation,
he said, you know, I would like to be part of a three
million dollar endowment. And I and he looked at the guy from development on
the zoom and he said, I'm going to put in the first million.
Duke has to come up with the other two millions. Well, guess what
happened to me The next day, that's when you got the notice. I
got called into the dean's office and said, no, we're shutting you down
that money. We're going after that donor for something else. Oh god,
really that was very sad to take my man away from me. Wait,
so this guy, this guy years kind of reached out and get some you
know, I was always hoping Lady Goga. So this guy offered a million.
This guy offered a million bucks of the herbarium and said, but but
the university's got to match it. And then they said no, and that's
when you've got the notice that this that they were bearing was closing. Exactly.
God, it's so many because as long as we can't attract money,
then you know, but we made a mistake. We attracted some money,
and all along they were plian was to shut it down. And so they
had to show their hands and they did and said no, no, no,
we're shutting you down. You have two three years to relocated collection.
You guys were on the chopping block. How long do you think this has
been on the chopping block for? Then? A few quite a few years.
It sounds like, I mean, honestly, it sounds like they started
fifteen years ago but exactly, but didn't know how to navigate. It started
let's say twenty years ago when it became a biology department. It's just been
getting worse and worse. And so it's is this a trend that you see?
I mean, let's talk about that too, because I've heard, you
know, I heard a friend of mine, my friend Martin Grantham, my
friend Martin Grantham, was ranting about that one. She's like Yeah, there's
a switch from organismal to molecular botany. There's less focus that less you know,
this is less important like actually going out and and doing field work.
I mean, is this a trend that you see occurring more often an academia
in the US or what. Oh, yeah, it's been going on for
more than for thirty years, I'd say. But this, if this happens
at Duke, this will be the largest and the oldest collection to be divested
from a university. There was the last big one, and it was not
our size, was the University of Louisiana Monroe, and they they needed to
put a new track stadium or something there, and they ordered them to get
up, and they didn't back down, and so for it the Botanical Research
Institute of Texas, you know, and yeah, yeah, for worth,
for worth, they they rescued it and so they I think it brought three
hundreds thousand specimens to and end to the to brit But that is sort of
the largest, but lots of little small herbaria do close up. It happened
fairly regularly, but Monroe one was about twenty seventeen, So this would be
this is big news. And in the sixties, places like Stanford and Princeton
got rid of their herbaria, but they are not active in biodiversity research.
They're not lead players. And a lot of places that did shut down their
herbaria are now trying to rebuild them because they can't compete for that kind of
money research money. Yeah, God, it's just you know, I'm looking
I'm looking at it. I mean, I guess the broader picture here.
I'm looking at a Science Direct article right now, trends in Plant Science,
volume twenty five, issue twelve, December twenty twenty, and the articles entitled
the end of Botany. It's like, you know, it's just and this
is the thing. So this is I mean, like that's again, that's
why I want to do this. It's not just about oh, this orbarium
is closing in North Carolina, this prestigious school. It's it's it's more about
a general trend in American society and how botany is a discipline is not really
seen as as valuable anymore, which again is fucking insane to me. That's
such a crazy and it doesn't seem to be a I mean, again,
this is an American thing. I don't see this happening in other countries,
other first world countries certainly as much, you know, like like Australia and
New Zealand, they don't seem to have as much trouble funding you know,
their university and it doesn't happen there either. Yeah, it's just it's just
I have research collaboration with several people in the Czech Republic and boy they are
they are well well supported. God, it's crazy. It's just like the
general decline of the USS Again, I blame Ringing, I blame Raagan,
but that's just me. We don't need to go into that, you know.
It's just that again, it's like this idiocracy is kind of like it's
everything's got to pay. Our focus is only on one thing. You know,
could this institute should be you know, can it? Can it validate
its existence? And can we validate you know, it's it's expenses at our
budget. You know, it's not just and and not onlike basically, can
we validate it by what it pays us financially in return rather than on its
own merits alone? You know, because this this kind of mindset only views
one thing as having any substantial worth, and that's you know, money,
that's I guess I just money talk. Yeah. The class, the class
that we teach called Plants and People. It's a majors course taken mostly by
seniors, some juniors, and it's a it's one of their it's part of
their diversity requirements. So they have a number of different courses that could satisfy
that requirement, and some of them show up in Plants and People. But
as we start the class, we always, you know, ask them,
well, you know, what, what kind of background, what have you
been taught about botany in the past, to try to get some measure of
where they are in understanding. And the majority of our students, who are
half of them at least, are premed tracks. But the majority of our
our students, but you know, say, well, the only significant botany
that I had was in high school or or junior high But a lot of
them just plead ignorance. Well, you know, I've never had a class
that that says much about botany. And that's that's the state of affairs that
we're looking at us is they haven't they have no information on botany. They
don't know that that plants at least it hasn't been impressed one and they haven't
taken it to heart that plants are the basis of the food chain, that
plants produce the majority of oxygen, right, that's necessary, and you know,
food shelter, that medicine that you know so much is depend it on
plants. And yet they they're completely unaware. Basically plants are part of the
background. They're not. Yeah, I deal with that ship all the time.
I deal with it all the time. And it's like when when people
do care, it's like, oh is it is it psychoactive? Or can
you eat it? It's like, give a fuck if I could eat it,
don't care if I could eat it, or you could put it in
your mouth, and dia know, that's like the least interesting thing about it.
It's most interesting. How about the Yeah, and how about the fact
that evolved in a you know, to grow in a place where plants shouldn't
shouldn't be able to grow. And it's a part of this living network.
It's connected to fungi in the ground that we don't even many of which we
don't even have you know, species names for yet it's it's it's making energy
from the sun. It's evolved all these cool secondary metabolites that prevent things from
eating it, some of which, yes, are medically useful or useful in
other ways. I mean it's to me, it's like trying to quantify like
art or music. It's like what what what's the purpose of this? Like
what is it? Why? Why learn to play guitar if you're not going
to be able to to uh you know, why? Or why I learn
to paint a portrait if you're not gonna be able to like monetize it somehow?
What's the purpose? Like why I learn? Why learn to play music?
If you can't do that, if you can't make it into a career
and make money out of it. Why learn to play Why I learn to
play music? Well because it fucking feels good and it fills a hole within
myself. That's why it prevents me from you know, wanting to go out
and murder or like you know that's joking, of course, but you get
my point. I mean, it's you know I do. Yeah, it's
just crazy. It's like, God, have we have we have we become
that dead and dry as a society, that that we're only focused on like
this boring ass shit, you know, Like what it's just yeah, just
money, like a career, long term press. I mean, it's that
doesn't mean anything. You can't take all that stuff with you when you die.
What you can take with you are your memories, the relationships you build,
the times you've left your ass off, the good feelings you've had,
Like, that's what makes a life fulfilling, you know. And this I
feel like there's this whole generation. I mean, there's many generations where the
majority of people are just they don't understand that, they don't understand what really
makes the life rich, you know. And it's not having all this dumb
shit that doesn't it doesn't mean anything. It's you know, it's just crazy
to me. And that's where plants fall into this. Here's another article,
Our botanists becoming the dinosaurs of This is so dismal. Our botanists becoming the
dinosaurs of biology in the twenty first century by d W. Woodland. This
is two thousand and seven. Yeah, this is part of a general trend
throughout the field of organismal biology, not just botany. But again this even
in this article, the guy says or whoever wrote it, the number of
botany students, botany classes, botany departments and universities and botanists attending conventions has
been declining over many years in North America. In North America, you know,
it's like the specific focus on North America, like there's something there's something
specifically happening in the United States, maybe in Mexico to an extent too culturally,
where suddenly plants aren't important anymore. Again, they're just that's that's something
I encounter all the time. They're just background greenery. There's something you know,
if you have like a wedding convention or or a wedding or a corporate
convention, some sort of private event, you want to make it look nice,
you put some little plants in there. Maybe in that the lobby of
your office building, you get some That's that's where plants belong, not not
as the living skin of the earth, you know, right with all the
bugs and the snakes and things around them. Ooh yeah, yeah, totally.
Where I live, it's like that, like they they people want to
clear land. I mean, it's the brush here, which I'm in love
with. The thorn scrub is seen is is kind of icky and why would
you want that? You know? Yeah, it keeps you. It restrains
your ATV, right, yeah, yeah, and it's you know, you
just want that nice lawn and the nice open lawn, and there's no no
one looks closer at the things. It's it's it's crazy, man. But
you know, I don't know how to reverse this as a culture. You
know, A really telling example, I bought I bought stamps, you know,
from the post office recently, and I'm always looking at the things,
the different offerings they have for stamps, and one of the sheets the last
time I went in was endangered species. So they had these beautiful photographs of
about twenty, you know, different species that are on the endangered list.
And they were all animals. Yeah, and in fact, they were all
vertebrates except for one of the twenty. And you know, they're all cute
and looking at you with the cute eyes, and they're furry or feathery or
and that. But that's that's the representation of species of endangered species. You
need to save these, not a plant on it. Yeah. One reason
that those animals on the endangered species postal stamps, one of one of the
reasons that they're endangered is because their food supply, you know, their environment
has been co opted. Their food suppli has been wiped out. Uh,
and what's the food supply right right? Plants and and and also the insects
that depend on the plants. There's no there's no greater understanding of the concept
of of of an ecosystem or the food chain itself, or how all this
stuff is tied together, you know. I mean, and it's we're just
not taught that in American society. It's just not it's charismatic nature shows featuring
yeah animals, you know, or I don't know. I'm amazed crime paces
has been able to do well. I don't you know. I think it's
just because I you know, and like loudly cursing at the ground and throw
it in jokes. I don't think plants on their own, at least in
this society have enough you know, charisma to which is crazy because you look
at like you look at it just seems like during the quote unquote Enlightenment or
or maybe a little bit later, like like you know, nineteenth century.
I feel like all all these quote unquote great minds of European society, uh
had you know, if they had they were taught an interest in botany,
they were raised with an interest in botany or a focus on botany or the
importance of plants, and and and now it just yeah, they up until
that time, Up until that time, medical doctors were botanists, right,
because they needed to know the diversity of of plants out there and the secondary
metabolites and how to probably use those plants to cure disease. There's almost for
a while there almost a one to one correspondence between between medical doctors and but
right, yeah, I remember, like when I was at Cornell, they
had all these copies of old herbals, you know, these three hundred four
undred year old books that were just it would detail what plants, you know,
plant like basically a plant by plant account of all these different species in
what they were used for and where they grew, and then notes about them.
And that was I mean, those were medically relevant texts at the time.
But I just feel like this, I mean, plants just as a
as an example, as a model organism, is a case study for the
quote unquote natural world, which again is just the real world that's not don't
even like the word nature. They're so important just as something that like a
hands on way to experience the rest of the biosphere. You know, the
same way that kids go outside and play with lizards and look for snakes and
roly polis and stuff. You know, they learn about the plants around them,
you know what plants are growing there. But again, it's more habitat
gets destroyed and there's less places to you know, you live in a cul
de sac suburb and there's there's nothing wild left around you. Where do you
encounter that? You know? At least that's the situation I feel like in
Texas. God, do you fly over places like Fort Worth or Houston.
You're like, Wow, there's nothing left. It's just it's just CVS.
And I'm so mean to CVS. I could pick a different depressing corporate retail
chain, you know, I could pick Ross Dress for Lesser, Panda Express,
or any of these names. I wish I didn't know, but uh
yeah, I don't know. When I taught at the Organization for Tropical Studies
in Costa Rica, I haven't been out of the country all that much,
but flying from from the US from North Carolina down to Costa Rica and it's
incredible. You fly over Florida and it's almost solid development and the contrast with
that same flight line takes you over Cuba, and Cuba there's so much of
the island. You know, that's that's Christine. People look down on people
look down on that because well, you know, they're not developed to they
they you know, someday capitalism will move in and they'll prosper in that prospering.
In that prospering, they will lose their their environment, right, Yeah,
Yeah, someday they'll have a host of metal, their population will have
a host of metabolic diseases, and one of the ugliest landscapes in the world
as well, you know. I just and yeah, a lot of CV,
a lot of opportunities, a lot of opportunities for the market to prosper.
Yeah. I just you said, Florida's mostly development. You know,
pretty soon it's going to be mostly ocean. I guess that's the you know,
I guess that'll that'll be kind of a cleanse. You know, Florida
is about to get a colon cleanse. I guess I think where where I
go with this too, is I just I guess to look at the brideside.
At least this is only happening in the United States, Maybe in China
too, I think China's pretty much demolished a lot of their natural resources.
But you know India, Yeah, in India, Yeah, yeah, population
pressure, the combination of population pressure and uh, lifestyle, So our population
is is lower, but we have higher expectations in terms of lifestyle, and
so it's that's it's that that balance of population and lifestyle that either too much
of either one and the system's going to collapse. Yeah. I think with
our lifestyle though, it's like we're kind of being farmed as consumers because our
economy has been centered around these things that are not very practical, you know,
like car ownership and retail consumerism, and we've we've gotten rid of all
our manufacturing. So I'm kind of like, when does the way I think?
And I'm like, when does a new model come up that offers us
a better way that than this, Because i mean, obviously some people would
say, oh, this lifestyle is so great and blah blah, but I
look at it and I'm like, well, obesity and diabetes are through the
roof because walking has basically been made obsolete. Now we just drive everywhere,
especially if you're in the sun Belt or the Southeast, you know, there's
place there's entire cities without any sidewalks. There's you know, I mean,
it's kind of killing us in a way. And now like culturally we're getting
dumber, which of course is good for the economy if you're a consumer economy,
but it's not really good for needing people who come up with ideas and
innovative ways out of this. You know. That's why I'm like, I
don't know. I guess it's there's a there's a breaking point where the quality
of life goes up and then it it starts to go back down. And
I feel we're I feel like we're seeing that in the United States, Like
the quality of life is certainly starting to go back down here. And you
see that with again the health issues and the mental health issues as well,
in anxiety and depression. It's no, it doesn't surprise me that they're through
the roof, those rates of you know, mental health issues are through the
roof. I look at the landscape here and I can't imagine like being a
kid growing up in some of these places, and I'm like, yeah,
no shit, it's I'd be depressed too, you know, I'd be Obviously,
you know, things like drugs start looking good when you grow up in
a place where you can't walk and you can't go run through the woods or
look for bugs or any of that, you know. So anyway, well,
I didn't mean for this conversation to sound too depressing, but I'm glad
we I'm glad we had it, you know. I mean, yeah,
yeah, humor is important. Yeah. I had so much fun talking to
you guys before we've even started, you know, I mean, that was
Yeah, I'm really excited for next week's podcast on Tara Dacey. So okay,
well, let's touch on tarod Acey and the Kyle Anthroid actually the desert
fern subfamily of tarod Acey really quickly, unless you guys have anything else to
say about the herbarium issues right now? Do you anything else you want to
throw in there before we segue into uh Gaga, just wish us luck.
Yeah, I was still fighting, but I've been giving tours of the herbarium
all week and I'm exhausted today. I'm not even going in because I can't.
Yeah. I got to give it to you, Kathy, because you're
you're real man. The work you're putting in in the it's it's pretty phenomenal.
I mean, I don't know, you're you're you know, this seems
to just such a huge weight to pull, uh, you know, and
you've got a lot of support, which is cool. I've been seeing this.
I've been seeing it everywhere. Like I was, my Google news feed
was recommending Duke or Barium articles to me. So it's it's you know,
I mean, that's obviously partially because they're tracking me and they know that I'm
you know, they're they're data tracking me. But I've I've been seeing people
post about it on Instagram and all over the place, so I know a
lot in New York Times Science, Yeah, Carl Zimmer, Washington, Carl.
You got Carl Zimmer, right right, Yeah, he wrote Traine article
for and Elizabeth for Science. Carl Zimmer. That's great, He's man.
Yeah, I got his evolution when I was when I was teaching myself all
this stuff, you know, just in the Locomotive cab. Carl Zimmer's evolution
textbook was like a you know, integral piece of my myself curriculum. So
that was cool. That was cool to see that. Yeah, that's that's
great. So there's a lot of people rooting for you, and hopefully the
university has a change of heart and realizes the importance here. But like I
said, I mean, this general trend in the US is looking kind of
dismal. Right, but concern and your interest in yeah, yeah, no,
thank you, thank you both for for being down to do this.
But but well we're not done yet. Hold on, let's talk about So
let's talk about really quick, okay, because you guys are both fern wizards,
specifically my favorite clade of ferns, the kylanthoids, the desert fern clay.
You know, I mean, ferns growing in the desert first off,
is insane. And Mike, we're gonna obviously do our I'm gonna interview you
on the full, the full gamut on this this subfamily next week. But
to just touch on it, let's talk about Gaga and let's talk about how
Gaga as a genus came into being. And uh, yeah, I guess
let's just jump right into it, man, Like, So, so,
what's up with Gaga? There's a genus of fur named after Lady Gaga,
but also after a DNA sequence as well, right right, So, uh,
within this group of ferns that shows unusual adaptation to yric environments the kyl
Antho what are called the kylanth ferns UH. The genus kyl Anthe is when
we finally have a phylogenetic tree of the total of the diversity, are sampling
probably two thirds of all the known species in the group. We discovered this,
this little clay, this cluster of nineteen species that even though it was
called kyle Anthes at the time, it was nowhere near Kylanthes tree, so
it was not related, not closely related to Kylanthes. And since our classification
we try as much as possible to make it reflect how evolution has occurred,
you know who m Then it needs it would need a new generic name.
And so we were aware of this as soon as we started doing the bilogeny
of Kylanthis burns. And we had a graduate student come from Taiwan, Feyway
Lee, who's now at Cornell, and he absolutely loved for and UH and
he was knew the ferns of Taiwan, and but he said, for my
project, I would like to look at the first little project. Yes,
I would I would like to become familiar with ferns from another part of the
world. And so we you know, looked over our phylogenetic tree, and
there's this what we're called uh new genus number two at the time, uh
and said, well, this is Mexico, most of Mexico down to Argentina
in South America. Uh and and you know it's going to need a new
generic name. And you know, so can you study it and look at
at the evolution of uh of that group over time and and look closely at
what its relationships were? Uh So yeah, he did. Uh did field
work and molecular and and morphological studies, and the molecular studies put it as
most closely related to a series of four species in California and adjacent Mexico.
Uh and and but oh, the confirmation that it was something distinct from everything
else the way looked at the gene matt K, and so he's Matt K.
And at a certain position in the DNA sequence was the sequence g A
g A and no and no other sample, no other species in the Kyle
anthoid study had GAGA felled out at that particular position in Matt KAY with a
molecular sign. So you knew, you knew right then, right, it
was like this needs to happen, This is a that was Actually it was
an afterthought because we were thinking of, Okay, what are we going to
name this thing? Well, we were thinking about Mexa terras because the species
are mostly in Mexico and the name terrace is a very common ending for generic
names. It burns, and so we were thinking Mexa terrace. But then
Kathleen was watching the Grammy and Lady Gaga was was featured and the outfit that
she was wearing looked just like a fern. Communified, oh you know what
I've seen that. I've seen the comparison photos right right right, and I
knew she was speaking to us. I knew it, and everybody had her
music and the love and loved what she stood for. So that's the evolution
of it, the name Gaga. So we moved seventeen species out of Kyle
Anthy's things that had been named before, moved those over into Gaga, and
then named two species new to science that were discovered from Beyway's molecular work.
And one of those we named Gaga Germanada, which is her family name,
and the other we named Gaga monstra parva, which is little monsters, little
monsters. The Latinized version of you guys went all you guys went the full?
Did the full run on? Is this this hilarious? So? How
many species of Gaga are there now? Because I'm not saying twelve observed?
But are there more than that? Or what they're nineteen nineteen? So?
So in other words, the seven remaining are the very rare, and there
are some very rare, including monster parva. Monster Parva is only known from
the from a single specimen in the Duke University of Arria. Oh god,
a man, that's because you know, the field trip went out, they
were randomly collecting things. They grabbed this plant and you know it, it
got included in the molecular work and hey this is where where was it?
Where was it collected? You know, Central Mexico? Oh wow, yeah,
damn, I'm looking at Gaga membranesia. What I'm looking at Gaga membranesia
right now. That's a cool one, Jesus. That's why I can't tell
that that's the underside or what it looks all frosty. I guess I guess
that's the underside. There's some amazing things in the genus. M hm.
So something checking out to lady at Lady Gaga saying your ferns are going to
lose their home. Do something. Yeah, yeah, really, I mean
yes, it's a good one million, two million bucks. Has to be
like chump change there. You know, maybe she'll maybe she'll have heart,
maybe she'll come through. But uh, that would thing. I'd love it
to call it the Gaga Herbarium instead of abarium. Yeah, that'd be way
better. That'd be that you don't at least the you know, you'd get
someone that actually respects the herbarium. Okay, So Kylanthea, it's weird that
these were in Kylanthes before. So Kylanthes is a genus of course, you
know, pre you know, PCR and DNA sequencing was just kind of the
dumping ground for any any fern that was obviously in this this clade, in
this subfamily of the fern family, Pterodacy, any fern that you know,
grew out of it was a cosmo fight, grew in a rocky, somewhat
arid place or seasonally arid place. They just threw everything that looked like that
into kyl Aanthes. But this is obviously way different. I mean, this
thing doesn't this thing looks that the the I always mess up my fern,
uh my fern anatomy. But the fronds, the leaflets on the fronds look
way different. It's not as fuzzy or scaly as as like a myria.
They're more linear, narrowly oblong, not and one of the characteristics is that
they essentially have no hairs. Yeah. And majority of true Kylanthes are are
hairy. Yeah oh yeah yeah, or Mariopterus, which is now the North
American formerly Kyelanthes. I mean, those are all super scaly and Harry and
astro Alepus was always astro Alypus, right, that was never in Kylanthes.
No, it was in kyl Anthes. Actually, astro Lepus was named by
a graduate student Dale Benham and I in nineteen ninety one. Wow. So
before before that it was actually either in kyl Anthes or North Aleena. It
was sort of popped up in either one. Nobody could decide what it what
it was, you know, what it should be, And that ninety one
paper we established how it differed just morphology. We didn't have at that time
the molecular data. And about seven years later after we named astro Leapus the
first molecular data came out and we were we won, we were right.
So you're the you're the guy that created the genus astro Alepis. Yep,
Well, sir, I'd like to shake your hands, thank you. I
think that's what that's probably my favorite genus. I think that I've never seen.
What's the one in high elevation Costa Rica. Is that Jamisonia, the
really freakingenting one looks like a like a longer astrolepus. Is that the the
genus? So that's not actually not a kylel aanthoid, that's a that's a
that's a teroid. That's oh my god, really, that's I've never seen
it in person, I've only seen photos. But it's convergent evolution dry hostile
habitat because even though that thing is up at at alpine, there aren't alpine
and plants are exposed oftentimes to as much drought and stress as anything down in
the desert. Right, God, that thing is so weird. Oh yeah,
it doesn't have it does? Yeah, it doesn't. It's God,
that's that thing's nuts. Oh no, it is, harry, but it
does. It does look slightly different. That's wild. God, that looks
like I'm looking at a picture of it the Wicked, the Wikipedia photo.
It looks like a fucking like a fight or something. God, that's such
I've got I want to see this one in person at some point. I've
always wanted to. That's it. That's primarily a genus of the paramo.
Yeah. God, man, the habitat must be insane there too. I
can't imagine what other wild ship is growing there. I mean, aside from
what I already know. You know, but it actually grows with Gaga germanata.
Oh really, Yeah, that's what you grow side by side at the
top of the Sarah Demerte in Costa Rica. But this is not kyl anthoidy.
This is just the subfamily territory. Wow, that's wild that's so cool.
God, it looks like a coral Yeah, it looks like this thing
should be growing on a coral reef under the you know, under like twenty
feet of ocean water or something. That's nuts. Oh that's cool. So
okay, Well, yeah, I guess I'll save the us. I'll save
the rest for the podcast we'll do next Wednesday. I want to keep going
on. I mean, there's so much, there's so much to talk about
with that. But so, well, how is it received When you guys
created the genus Gaga, the people that people appreciated what oh some people were
were just luminous you know, her Gaga fans. So it certainly along the
lines of people who appreciated Gaga. I mean, you know, Lady Gaga
and and but then the naysayers were a combination of people who hated Gaga,
mostly old white men who would have preferred named named it after them. And
oh yes, yes, some stiffs. There's always gonna be a couple of
stiffs that I wonder if any there's gonna be like a botanist who's a Swiftie.
You know, there's gonna name a fur after Taylor Swift. One student
told me, now, you should have called it after Taylor Swift, because
you know she's not Her music's not too bad. I'll be honest. You
know, I'm generally can't stand most pop music. But it was you know,
I've I turned into a little bit of a swiftye myself. I've heard
of a couple songs and they're not. My daughter actually made me play a
song for her. I was like, okay, I didn't know really who
she was before that. But yeah, that's man, that's cool. So
so Kyle Anthy's got split up into how many separate genera? And when did
this? When did this happen? Like ten fifteen years ago? Most of
it, well, it's been it's been incremental because in let's see, so
nineteen ninety one, as I said, we named Astralipis, and that that
was at least some people were treating that as Kyle Anthy's. The majority of
people were treating that as Kyle Anthy's time. And but on the on the
more recent end of things, got Gaga and Meriopterus came out at about the
same time twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, and Gaga being a new name.
Maryopterus was a resurrected name that was originally proposed in the eighteen fifties. And
then I told you about the genus Baja, which we just named in twenty
twenty. But we have we have a whole new set that we're we're working
on there. We're going to pull another half dozen genera at least out of
Kyle Anthes in a paper that is supposed to be submitted in the next couple
of months. Yeah, yeah, right right, Yeah, so yeah,
kyle anthes, the kind the South African kyl anthes will be no more,
right, Yeah, there will be no kyle anthes in in Africa. True,
kyle Anthees is restricted to South America and Australasia. It's pretty cool because
clearly it originated in South America and then spread to Australasia. And you know
that's all clearly a group of related, closely related species. It's probably a
single dispersal event. Wow. God, that's cool. And you can infer
all that for what genes were you looking at just Matt Kay, you were
looking at probably quite a few, right, Matt Kay. That's like fifteen
hour base bears. That's where Gaga was. What else? Right? So
with with most of these, it's a three gene set that we use three
plastic genes because we've only just recently, you know, developed the ability to
to do new clear that's still under constru diruction. Uh. So r B
c L is always part of it. Uh and one of the a t
P I think a t P P and t R n l F for an
inner genic spacer to get you a greater variability between nucleotides MM hmm, but
you mean that's that's in it and study the new The new one is those
three giens, but multiple multiple, low size, So I can that thing
with. It's like with if only plants were as easy as fungy. Well
still, r b c l is is the cornerstone. T t r n
g r gives you a little you know, because it's non coding, it
gives you a little more variability. That helps to fill in the gaps.
If two species aren't distinguished by rbs y L typically t r n l f
is is sufficient to get traction to distinguishing them. Mm hm oh yeah,
I'm looking here to go back to Baja Baja Brandigi. That's not the only
species in the genus, is it it is? Oh, it is okay,
and it's and it's in Baja, which is I mean probably that's you
know, the Gulf of California, I would presume was the source of vicarians
there. And why this this branched off? And I what is it most?
What's its sister too? What is the genus Baja's sister to sister to
the genus Bomia. Oh god, I forgot about that. Where and those
are very different looking that's why nobody, you know, and it Kyle Anthys
or now Baja Brandigi has always been in kyl Anthes that no one has ever
proposed a relationship to Bommeria or indeed to any of the the the things in
that region of the tree. In fact, it's always been considered very isolated
evolutionarily. So they were right about that that it was certainly isolated evolutionarily from
Pilantes, where it was put. Yeah. God, that's a cool one.
Yeah, man, another another Baja California endemic. That whole peninsula is
so cool. It's got so much I mean, yeah, it's had six
million years for you know, for everything there to diverge wildly from this stuff
on a Mexican mainland that it might be related to. Yeah, that's cool.
Well so anyway, So but the point I mean that, I guess
the reason we should also mention too that all this stuff was lumped previously was
because again there's not there's pre you know, DNA sequencing and molecular analysis.
There weren't many traits. There were only a handful of traits that go on.
There's no flowers obviously because they're ferns. There's sporesis there's I mean,
how many traits are there to look at morphologically in this group of Well,
when you really dig in, so they fantastic thing about the molecular data is
you see all these patterns and you see, oh, you know, people
have called this the same these two the same species. They're clearly not.
They're not related to one another in the tree. Same thing with the genera.
And then you dig in on the morphology and look at all of the
characters that you can you can delve into, so they look, you know,
superficially at macro morphology, they look very similar because they've converged on a
particular adaptation to allow them to survive under those harsh environments. A limited number
of ways with macro morphology that you can adapt you know, become adapted to
xeric environment. But there are a whole nother range of characters that weren't considered
important, that nobody paid attention to, and especially microscopic characters that if you
don't have a molecular tree, then it's hard to make sense of all of
these other characters. But typically when the molecules say that two things are different,
and we go back and look at the morphology, then we find the
correlate. You can see it. It's kind of like, oh, okay,
yeah, there we go. Right, you have to you it's reciprocal
illumination. You know, you get molecular data and then go back and check
it against the morphology, and then extend that morphology to things you don't have
molecular data for, and then go get the molecular data. Yeah. It
refines the it refines the lens. Yeah, like it makes it. Yeah.
I just realized too, I didn't. I guess I've seen Baja Bran
DGI. My photo is the tax on page photo on Ininat, so I
didn't know. John Rebbin must have done that. I didn't know. Yeah,
where was that? Oh BA that was in Baja California, Sir l
plus Serra BCS that must have been in Sierra La Lagoon. I can't remember.
I don't know. That was twenty eighteen, I saw. I forget
half the stuff I see. Man. That's why ain At is so helpful.
It's like, you know, people are like, oh, well,
people use ain at just to compete with each other. I'm like, I
don't use it to compete with that. I don't you know, I don't
look at other people's stuff. Really, I use it just so I can
remember what the hell I saw because I'll forget, you know. It was
yeah, oh yeah, Kaylanth's I guess it was maybe originally labeled as Kyle
Anthes brand DGI. I see that. Well, that's cool twenty that we
recognized the genus. Oh yeah, okay, so they went through and and
did a tax on swamp. That's cool god man. Okay, Well,
well that was a primer for next week's episode. So yeah, thank you
both for being down to do this. I really appreciate it. Is there
anything else that you want to say about any of this stuff put out there
before we before we split? I just want to say You've been a fan
for a long time. Discovered you around COVID and thought I I would have
preferred to have students watch you then be zooming with them. So thanks for
what you do. Yeah, no, thanks for the support you that that.
Well, we're maybe instead of lecture today, we should do your podcast.
It's hilarious. I'd love to hear the commentary from all the pre med
students. Well was this guy? He just goes there and says, look
at that a bunch and then curses and screams and then goes climbs to what
is the point? What is the point of this? I don't understand.
That's hilarious. Yeah, that's uh yeah, I just I'm happy to just
create records of all these these cool habitats and species I see, you know,
some of which probably won't be around in forty years, so you know,
it's hell awesome. Yeah, yeah, so a lot of cool.
Uh not Alena during a peote survey in West Texas two weeks ago, like
Notthelena, Greggy I and I think it was Greg. You know what,
Mike, I might have to have you look over some of my uh naturalist
observations and tell me what you think actually, so I can get get decent
ideas on them. Anyway, Thank you so much. And I hope,
uh, I'm hopeful about things with Duke. I mean, it seems a
lot of noise has been made and a lot of people are really upset and
passionate about this, and maybe there's a way to convince people in charge of
making decisions you know that closing it is the wrong thing to do. So
yeah, yeah, well, thank you both so much. Thank you.
Cool all right, great talking to you guys. Take care week. All
right, I'll talk to you then I'll see you in Listen in a week,
buddy, all right, okay, all right, take care bye,