Welcome to the Zoologist's Campfire, the podcast where animal professionals share their best
stories.
Today, Professor Miquel Arnedo from the Institute for Research on Biodiversity of the University
of Barcelona joins us around the crackling fire to share some of his many adventures.
Miquel is an evolutionary biologist who studies life's incredible diversity by investigating
isolated ecosystems such as islands and caves.
He focuses on spiders to understand the threads that make up the web of life.
Miquel's research has taken him around the world and his findings have been published
in hundreds of scientific papers.
Miquel, welcome to the podcast.
Hi, Arie.
How are you?
Thank you for having me today.
Yeah, well, I'm glad to have you.
It's nice to have a fellow arachnologist.
So before we get into your stories, I know you have some.
I know that you are particularly interested in spiders and I can completely imagine that,
of course, I love spiders as well.
But what is it that you love so much about spiders?
Well, actually, once I reach that point, I will say everything.
But the funny thing is that sometimes people ask me about that.
That was kind of like a long life love for spiders.
I guess some of my colleagues, maybe yourself, you started as a kid, kind of going to the
field and getting obsessed with spiders, with bugs in general.
I have to say I was not like that.
I mean, when I was a kid, I loved nature.
But I was not somebody who would go and collect and have his room full of all these bugs all
over.
I actually got interested in spiders once I started my PhD.
When I was looking for a topic, at that time, I was really interested in phylogeny and evolutionary
biology.
So I was really ready to work with any organism that offered me the opportunity to work on
phylogenetics.
It happened at the time that there was this professional, Carlos Rivera, with the spider
specialist as well.
He had this project to study this group of spiders in the Canary Islands from an evolutionary
standpoint.
So I just joined him in that research.
Once you start to with spiders, I have to say there is no way out.
Then you'll absolutely fall in love with them.
They're amazing creatures.
Basically, the last 30, 35 years of my life, I've been fully devoted to spiders.
There's no way back.
And traveling everywhere, climbing mountains and going down into caves.
Right.
Lucky.
I've been so lucky to have the opportunity to do a lot of field work in very different
places.
As you were mentioning in the introduction, I didn't particularly focus on isolated systems,
mostly islands, but also mountaintops.
But I also had the opportunity to join other colleagues in other trips and different places.
Basically, every time I have the opportunity to join somebody to go to the field, and I
have less and less time for doing so, I always try to join in.
Yeah.
Once you get big and important, you get to do less and less actual research.
Yeah.
That's a sad story.
But we shouldn't say that because otherwise the young generation will have to follow it.
Well, they can change it probably.
And you're taking a lot of students with you in the field as well, right?
Yeah.
Well, most of the field work is always associated to funded projects.
And most of the time, this project also involves PhD students or master's students or undergrad
students.
And I guess part of the training we offer is basically taking them to the field as well
and getting them to learn basically how to...
All the procedures, all the methods, which are basically focused on field work.
Right.
And so you've had some adventures and you've thought about some of your best ones today.
I'm really curious.
So let's start with your first story.
Where did it happen?
What were you going to do?
What was the plan?
Yeah.
I tried to take samples from different moments in time and in different places as well.
One of the...
One story...
Well, I don't know how fun is that.
But I mean, at that moment, it was terrifying and also unlovable.
That was actually one of the first international congresses I joined.
And that was in...
We're talking about 2001, right?
Like more than 20 years ago.
And that was the International Congress of Technology in South Africa in Bad Blast.
And because it was such a long trip.
At that time, I was part of Hawaii.
So it was pretty close to the world to go there.
So I thought that I would be also...
After doing all this, to spend some time then collecting.
So I joined a group of author technologies that were planning to do some field work there.
And because that was my first time in Sub-Saharan Africa, I thought it would be a good opportunity
to get to learn a little bit despite of how they are.
So I joined them.
And it was an amazing trip.
We spent like three weeks collecting all over.
South Africa is an amazing country, right?
Oh, no.
That was crazy.
That was absolutely crazy.
In Central Asia, such a different ecosystem.
And well, being born and raised in Europe, really, I mean, it's difficult for you to
imagine that you can be surrounded by things again anytime it can hit you or just basically
crash you.
So it's kind of an experience.
And at that particular time, we were actually visiting this nature reserve.
It was called St. Lucia.
That was a wetland, not far from Durban.
And that was my first encounter with this usually like kind of like...
At least in the cartoons for kids, these are always happy animals, the dark typos, hippopotamus.
You know, remember, we were actually taking this guide.
We were collecting in some of these wetland forests.
And the guy just kind of like stresses that, you know, hippos are not like...
It can be very, very dangerous, especially when they are on land, you know, because they
are very short-sighted.
And, you know, when they hear some noise, they basically kind of like run into you.
But they also can be pretty nasty when they are in the water, especially, you know, you
kind of like bothering them with a boat or something.
So anyway, so he basically was giving us some hints, you know, about what to do and to do
some tips.
And basically we had to take this boat, this very basic boat.
Basically it was a very narrow boat, kind of like old-fashioned canoe.
I think there were five people one after the other in a line, you know.
And we were basically crossing this river to go to this island that was like in the
middle of the river to collect there.
Of course, yeah.
Yeah, basically we were like, you know, going with a boat with this guy.
And he actually points, you know, a herd of hypo, you know, nearby.
And all of a sudden, I mean, after actually we got these tips, you know, be careful with
hypo, these hippo start to like to disappear, you know, they start to like sink, you know,
to go underwater and disappearing from our view.
And I was really uneasy.
And all of a sudden this boat got stuck into a sand bank.
Okay.
And so we basically had to jump outside the water, into the water and try, you know, to
reduce the load, the boat, and try to move the load.
And I walk, you know, carrying the boat to, I will say, maybe 50 meters.
And you know, that experience of doing that with the hypo disappearing like just 100 meters
from you, that was quite the experience.
Nothing happened, I have to say.
But you know, I had the time of my life.
So when we arrived to the island, it was the happiest person ever.
So that was kind of, at that time it was terrifying, but then we were thinking about that, it was
kind of fun.
Yeah, I mean, if they would have stayed at the surface, you know where they are.
Yeah, exactly.
I literally couldn't spot them.
You're right, right.
Yeah.
But that, no, they disappeared just at the time where you have to think, you have to
jump outside the boat.
So that was not a very kind of reshoring situation.
But anyway, we survived that.
It was just, you know, I mean, I kind of like to think about that time because that was
my first introduction, you know, with like real wild, big animals, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, in Europe, basically, the only thing that can kill you is probably another human
being.
But, you know, these places are real big animals out there, you know.
And it's kind of, again, it's a funny feeling for somebody who is not used to that.
Yeah, and hippos kill more people than lions, I think.
Oh, absolutely.
They're the first, I think, in accidents with a wild fauna in Africa.
I remember other places that we go on this trip, you know, there was this, it was hunting
a reserve.
And actually, in that place, we had to go with guys with rifles because, you know, a
week before, a lion had eaten one of the visitors.
So yeah, so I mean, I know for me, I remember that time.
I was quite young as well.
And my first experience, like in a real kind of like, you know, place where you have like
still like big animals kind of like roaming around freely.
And that was, you know, I have, you know, some of these situations, you know, stick
in my brain.
So you were happy to get to the island?
Oh, no, I was so happy, you know.
Yeah, I'm generally happy to arrive to the island.
I eventually have to go back.
Yeah, but at that time, you know, the guide or the driver of the boat was careful enough
not to get stuck in any sandbank.
So that was okay.
It wasn't a long distance.
It just happened to be, you know, very inconvenient sandbank.
We got stuck.
So but anyway, that was that was kind of awesome.
I always remember that that time.
Yeah.
So terrifying and fun.
Yeah.
South Africa is just a gorgeous country.
I am looking forward to go back one day.
Yeah, me too.
Me too.
I have to say, I mean, I haven't been back the only time I've been in South Africa.
I never returned again.
And I would love to go back there.
It really was a great trip.
It was a great trip, really.
Yeah.
But you got some spiders on the island, I imagine.
We did.
And at that time, that was a kind of like general collecting.
So I mean, which is actually not so common for me, because I mean, most of the time,
I usually I do feel were to collect specific groups.
You know, we are working with most of our research is actually focused in particular
groups.
We're trying to understand evolution of this.
Yeah.
There's a family of spiders.
So most of the time we were going after something very particular.
This particular tree was just like general collecting, you know, where a mixed group
of technologies with different interests for myself, because I was actually that time was
funded by the University of Hawaii.
And I was also working in the mission museum.
It was just an opportunity to improve their collections of spiders from different places
in the world.
So I was actually collecting a kind of spider.
So it's kind of fun as well, because you get the opportunity to see a lot of different
things, you know, most of the time, just like so focused in one particular group that I
cannot see anything else.
You know, I think collecting spiders, for example, in the I've done a lot of field
work in the Canary Islands and I've been like collecting I mostly work in this family.
So these very red devil spiders that they are ground dwellers.
They're nocturnal, you see.
So basically, we collect them when they are kind of hiding from light and they usually
are under stones or under flocks.
So most of the time, I'm just like turning stones up, you know, looking for spiders under
stone.
I've been in the Canary Islands with, you know, turning up stones with like big lizards,
you know, these genus Galotea like that.
And I couldn't see a lizard.
I was just looking for a spider.
I just had to go up and say, oh, there's a big lizard.
Don't bother me with the lizard.
I'm looking for a lizard.
Yeah, exactly.
Remove it.
Yeah, remove this lizard from here.
But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Most of the times I actually I'm a little like that.
I really narrow my focus a lot.
It's amazing how the human brain can only spot particular things when you are only interested
in these things.
Yeah, no, if you're looking for a spider, you just walk past a snake or a lizard without
even seeing it.
Right.
Well, you know, this is a funny experiment where actually they show this video to people
where actually people are dancing.
Oh, yeah.
And all of a sudden a gorilla shows up and people cannot see it because, I mean, they're
not paying attention to a gorilla and paying attention to people.
Yeah, no, I've done that.
I did not see the gorilla.
No, no, no.
Absolutely.
So yeah, so if you only want to look for one thing, you're only going to be able to spot
that.
Yeah.
And if you're bringing people in the field and they say, oh, he always finds the lizards
and the snakes and the spiders.
You're like, well, I can only look for one thing at a time, actually.
No, no, absolutely.
Sometimes people say, oh, you were collecting these things.
Did you see this particular?
I didn't see anything else.
My spider, sorry.
Oh, yeah, it's even worse with scorpions because you bring a scorpion light and they light
up at night.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, something great to have those.
You don't have spiders, but you don't see any snakes.
That's the problem.
Yeah, yeah.
I have to say I have a problem with snakes.
Funny enough.
I mean, you can handle anything except snakes.
Really?
Yeah.
I have a very hard time with snakes.
OK.
Yeah.
So yeah, I never got over that.
I mean, I love it.
I think they're amazing animals.
It's just I don't like to find them.
And again, because I'm like, you know, spending a lot of time turning stones up, it's not
uncommon to find snakes there, you know.
And in some places, you really don't want to find them.
Oh, there's your archivist again.
Awesome.
Well, you know, you're making it sound pretty glamorous already.
Hawaii, South Africa, Canary Islands.
That's not bad.
What can I offer you now?
OK, that was it.
That was the other story.
And that was actually a little bit more, unless, not so good memory, I have to say.
So this time we were in Turkey.
That was 2006, I reckon.
And again, we were joining this party of people who were actually doing mostly caves.
But at that time, I was telling you before, I was in this group of this family of spiders,
the red devils.
These are the most Mediterranean families.
I didn't try to collect them all over.
So I joined these people because actually they had the permit to collect in Turkey,
especially around the Black Sea coast in the northern part of Anatolia.
So it was at that time, it was not such an easy place to go and it was difficult to get
the permit.
So I was happy to be able to join these people.
So we actually, we organized this trip and we were basically driving from Istanbul towards
Ankara and we just crossed the strait and they were on the way to Anatolia.
And then we said to go to this place where some of the people were supposed to do caving.
So I was actually collecting outside.
And again, I was doing my work thing, going around, turning up stones, big stones.
And this particular one, we were about to leave.
So somebody said that he had enough, so he said, okay, guys, let's go to the next place.
And of course, I had to turn up the very last stone.
There was a huge stone.
So I went there, I started to try to turn this thing up.
And all of a sudden, it was so heavy that it fell on me.
Luckily, I was right at the border of an embankment, like a steep downhill.
And me and the stone, we both go down rolling.
And that was amazing.
I was feeling like, you know, these cartoons of the wild coyote and the road runner.
It was basically like that.
I was feeling like the wild coyote.
I mean, what's going down with the stone?
Literally, I couldn't get, I mean, remove the stone from me.
We were like one single unit going down the hill.
Yeah.
It felt like I was falling for like hundreds of meters, probably was just like three or
four meters.
But I mean, you know, at that time, the time really goes very, very slowly.
And unfortunately, at the very end, we were right at the base of the hill.
I mean, the stone just fell into my hand, my left hand.
And kind of squashed it.
Yeah.
And two of my fingers, little finger on the next one, they literally opened like, you
know, like a banana, like peeling a banana.
You could see the bone.
So it was not a very nice view.
So luckily, one of the guys in this group of people, he was trained like in first aid.
And he basically, you know, and he was amazing.
Actually, he kind of like calmed me down because I was getting a little bit anxious.
So he basically wrapped up the fingers.
Just imagine the guy was cold enough to actually find my nail because one of the nails fell
down.
He collected the nail as well.
So he wrapped the whole thing in.
And yeah, and we were like in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, the thing was like bleeding like hell.
We were in the middle of nowhere and we were about like three hours drive from Ankara.
So basically, the guy said, okay, I mean, we go straight to Ankara because, you know,
that really looks nasty and you better find like a good hospital, you know, to take care
of that.
So basically, we start driving.
At that time, I was like basically hallucinating because I lost a lot of blood, of course.
But then the guy said just by the way we were, I mean, while we were driving, they called
to the Spanish embassy in Ankara.
We were all a party of Spanish people.
And the Spanish embassy looked for a clinic, a hospital who was specialized on hand.
I mean, can you imagine?
I mean, there was this hospital which actually specialized in taking care of hand accidents.
So we went straight there.
Turned up the doctor there.
Just came back from Barcelona.
So the guy was fairly in love with the city.
So he really gave me a very good, he treated me very well.
And yeah, we just arrived there and we went straight to the surgery room.
And then I got like the full, I mean, I got sleep completely.
That was the only time in my life actually I got the full anesthesia.
And then yeah, I mean, they kind of fixed the two fingers.
They put the nail back actually.
The guy was especially interested in the nails.
It turned out to be a good thing because he told me that without the nail, it's difficult
to regrow the nail.
So you have to have the nail fixed.
Actually, the cell at the bottom of it, they can regrow finally.
So yeah, he actually, the two fingers, they kind of like put them back in the right place.
I was there for a couple of days.
Yeah.
And yeah.
So, and after that, I spent two weeks collecting there with one hand only.
So I had, I need somebody who helped me to turn up the stones.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I was there.
You went right back into the field after that.
Oh yes.
Yeah.
After two days, we were back to the field.
Yeah.
And I was there for like some first aid.
Well, basically I had to go like every two days to some hospital to clean up and kind
of like revise the stitches.
And that was great.
I have to say, I mean, at that time, I really come to admire the health system in Turkey
because I mean, any place we went, everything was kind of like subsidized by the states.
It was free.
It was also free for foreignness.
So I really got the best treatment.
But yeah, that was one of the, I mean, I have to say, I'm going to talk truth here, but
that was the only serious accident I've had in the field.
And I was lucky enough to keep like, you know, cleaning and collecting afterwards.
Yeah.
I mean, falling with a big rock.
I mean, it could have landed anywhere, right?
Your hand is...
No, no, absolutely.
... but your head is a little bit...
Absolutely.
And on the top of that, I was lucky because at that time I was actually wearing several
rings, like big rings.
And actually, two of them, no, actually the one in the second finger, I mean, it was completely
squashed.
It actually probably saved the finger.
I still keep the ring.
I should make something like a necklace or something of that.
It's completely squashed, but it was, yeah, that was a favor.
So yeah, that was one of the down stories I have.
No, no, it's good to know that things like this happen.
The fact that you just went straight back to the field after that.
Some people would go home, Michele, I think.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, I at that time, and I'm still like that.
I mean, so I'm so getting to that, I mean, to the field, but it's both in terms of the
nature that I love, but also of the places.
One thing that really motivates me to go to the field, it's also the cultural part of
it.
So especially because I've been doing a lot of sampling in the Mediterranean, I really
love this mix of nature, but also culture, kind of ancient remains, gastronomy.
Yeah, there's a lot of old culture around the Mediterranean, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And that really motivates me a lot.
And at that time, Turkey is always a place that I have been obsessed with.
I really love it.
And that was the opportunity to go to the Black Sea coast, which is not so visited.
We went to Cepsand.
Some of the places where as a kid, when I was reading books, travel books, always wanted
to go.
So yeah, that kind of like actually pushed me to keep doing the fieldwork even after
the accident.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Well, you may be pushing me to go to Turkey too, because I've never been and it sounds
like...
Oh, you should definitely go there.
I mean, I will say, yeah, if I get lost, just go and look for me in Turkey.
Right.
I still love it even after, yeah.
Part of Turkey crushed your hand.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, you know, they're not responsible.
Actually, the only thing that's funny is that my little finger is kind of like pointy at
the end now, but other than that, it's okay.
Yeah.
Even as a nail on it.
Right.
It'll still happen.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Well, yeah, that's a good one.
I mean, I haven't heard many, many that serious incidents with rocks.
I mean, people always drop a rock on their foot or something or scratch your leg or something.
Wow.
Yeah, I guess it's one of the downsides of working with spiders that have the habit of
hiding under rocks.
Scorpions too.
Yeah.
I have the right, yeah.
But you guys take advantage of the fact that they at night, you can see them and spot them
at night and then for the time they are moving around.
So that's good.
Yeah.
It's also the more pleasant time to be around in those hot countries.
Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Do you also have the effect...
In the beginning, we were doing field work without gloves.
And then after a couple of days of turning sharp rocks, you have no more fingerprints,
right?
No, absolutely.
Well, that's absolutely right.
I mean, I've been trying then to use my fingers to open my phone.
You know, at the time, they actually were using that and you cannot.
I mean, just basically you lose all the fingerprints.
That's absolutely right.
Yeah.
And now we use gloves all the time.
That's much better.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that when you're younger, I mean, you feel like nothing can destroy you.
So you really don't care about anything.
You know, you get older and you have more experience.
Okay, no, no, no, no.
I'm not going to go for that.
You know, I have to keep what is left of myself.
I have to take good care of.
Awesome.
And yeah, so it's mostly around the Mediterranean.
And have you ever gone to any tropical countries for the spiders or is that...
We did quite a bit of work.
We had this project in Panama, actually.
That was in 2008 and 2009.
We did a couple of expeditions to the cloud forest in Panama.
And that was, yeah, that was quite an amazing experience.
That's really been together with South Africa, the northern parts of South Africa that was
getting a little more tropical.
That was, you know, one of the only tropical places where I've been doing like, let's say,
professional collection of spiders.
And that was amazing, you know, the cloud forest in Panama is really crazy.
Panama, I have to say, has some of the best preserved tropical forest in Latin America,
Central America, for sure.
And especially because of the Panama Canal, so they have to preserve all the watershed
around the canal because actually the water they get to fill it up comes from the watershed.
So they have to preserve all the forest around.
At all in that, even like going all the mountain range, the dorsal range going up to Costa
Rica, you know, the mountain cloud forest is very well preserved.
So that was an amazing place to collect.
Yeah, we did, in this case, we did some standardized collecting because we wanted to compare the
spider communities in four different spots.
So we actually have this kind of, you know, transect in four spots along the Cordillera
going from La Campana, which is more or less close to the canal, all the way close to the
border with Costa Rica and the National Park Lamixtat, which is a share park between the
two countries.
And then we had like these four spots where basically we had this four spots that had
plots of 100 by 100 by 1 hectare plots.
And we did continuous collecting for, I don't know, altogether, it was like, we were like
six people collecting for five hours a day for three days.
So we had a lot of collecting.
Yeah.
So the idea was basically having like a complete inventory of the spider community there.
And that was a place that we had some like bad encounters with like serious snakes there.
Yeah.
So that was quite scary.
That's your favorite.
Yeah.
But other than that, that was a great experience.
One of the places actually I love, I really like, and I've been lucky enough to visit
several times and that's going back to the island.
It's Juan Fernandez Archipelago.
Where is that?
That's, this is off the coast of Chile.
It's right in front of Valparaiso.
Not far from Santiago.
Yeah.
It's about like a 300, 250 kilometers into the sea from Valparaiso.
And these are mainly two islands, Robinson Crusoe and Alejandro Selkirk, which in the
tournament, actually quite far apart.
I mean, I think they are the closest to the continent, which is Robinson Crusoe.
It's about 250 kilometers.
And then the two of them are separated by another 200 kilometers.
I mean, it's not really too close.
A close archipelago is more like two islands, more or less isolated.
And these are volcanic islands.
Yeah, yeah.
These are volcanic islands as well.
I think Robinson Crusoe is about 3.5 million and Selkirk is 1 million.
And since 2000, we started there.
That's a project I've been doing in collaboration with my good friend, Gustavo Ormiga, who is
an alphanat agnologist.
He's also, he was born in Spain, but he has done most of his career actually in the States.
He's a professor at the George Washington University.
And we've done a lot of state work together and we had shared some projects.
And we started this project in Juan Fernandez in 2012, I think.
And it's basically about the evolution of this group of spiders.
They are linifids.
They are dwarf spiders.
Yeah.
They are all over.
I guess it's the most diverse spider family in terms of number of species and probably
also genera.
They're all over.
But this particular group, the Rigonites, they managed to colonize the archipelagos
and they underwent in Vargana an amazing radiation.
So we basically wanted to study this group.
So starting in 2012, we have been visiting the islands, I think, four times already.
Okay.
And also Chile to look for other groups.
So actually, we just went to Chile, to the southern part of Chile, last, when was that,
in February, February, March.
That was great.
That's amazing.
That's another amazing place, Chile.
But these islands in particular are, you know, are quite an experience.
I would say it's both a natural and sociological experience, you know, because, I mean, they
are remote.
There's only one village.
All the people that live there is in one single village in this Robinson Crusoe.
And in the other island, there is no permanent village.
There's only a temporal village.
I think during eight months a year, the inhabitants of Robinson Crusoe are allowed to go to Selkirk,
basically to fish a lobster.
But I mean, the whole economy of the islands is based on lobster fishing.
And they actually deliver to restaurants all over, actually alive.
They mostly send them to Japan.
Okay.
Yeah.
So the whole economy of the place is based on these lobsters.
So basically, 85% of the people, I guess, is fishing lobsters.
And the rest of the people are just providing services for them.
So it's quite a place.
It's quite a place.
It's difficult to arrive there.
But still, there's a regular flight to Robinson Crusoe, but it's super expensive.
So it's not...
And when you're there, you're really quite isolated because after this, there's not a
whole lot of tourism because it's very expensive and there are not so many things to do.
But the place is really incredible.
Yeah.
Small, tiny island.
Yeah.
And then going to Selkirk.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not remote in terms of how far it is because Hawaii is much far away from everything
else.
So it makes you really feel you are in the middle of nowhere because it's more difficult
to arrive.
And again, I mean, there's flights going to Robinson, but to go to Selkirk, you basically
have to rely either on some fishing boat that goes there or there is one merchant boat, a
big ship that goes once a month to provide supplies for these people.
Okay.
So it's quite a challenge.
And actually, we've been there four or five times, but we only managed to go to Selkirk
twice and that was basically like, you know, a convincing from fisherman to take us there.
But going with a fishing boat, it takes you about eight to nine hours to go to the island.
It's an overnight.
And you know, yeah, we have a lot of stories of basically, you know, going through, you
know, from one island to the other in these eight hours, like basically, you know, as
my colleague was always saying, feeding the fishes because basically you start like vomiting
after five minutes, maybe that you are there, moving up and down.
And then you try to sleep and it's pretty impossible and you have to go down to the
to well, this one room used for, you know, to sleep and also to store stuff, to put lobsters.
So it's not the perfect spot to have a proper nap.
But anyway, it's quite a, it's got an experience.
Yeah.
Well, actually, when we're going towards there, they are typically what they do is they go
to the Selkirk island to load the lobsters and then go back to deliver them by plane.
But that was this, this the first time I actually went to Selkirk.
That's an amazing place because the island is as big as the other one, but basically
it's only these temple village, which probably about 200 people or more than that.
And the whole island is empty.
So basically it's only like people from the village can spend, you know, what they like
to do when they are not fishing, when they have some free time, where they go, they go
up to the mountains to chase, to hunt goats.
Okay.
So interestingly, these goats, which are also a pest, because basically they are eating
everything there.
Yeah.
They were introduced, so basically the islands were discovered by this Portuguese sailor,
but I see here they were working by the Spanish Armada.
So they discovered these islands and basically the Spaniards, the colonizadores, they were
using this island as a stepping stone to go from Chile towards Peru.
And basically what they did, and that's something they used to do commonly with these islands,
and they were not very interested in colonizing, is they free forks, they free goats to have
food, fresh food when they come.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So that was the reason of these goats.
And by the way, that's very interesting, it turns out these goats belong to a breed
that is already here in Spain.
So in a way they also have some kind of conservation interest and cultural interest.
Yeah.
But there's been a lot of NGOs, conservation NGOs, have been trying to get rid of the goats,
because they're basically eating all the endemic vegetables.
But then you get in conflict with the local people, because for the local people, culturally
speaking, the goats are important because hunting goats is like a big thing.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's exactly the same situation in Hawaii.
When I was in Hawaii, it's the same habit with the wild pigs.
They had these pigs, the pigs went feral, they're basically introducing all kinds of
introduced plants into the forest, because they eat the plants and they eat poop in the
forest and then you have all the seeds.
And they're trying to control the population and then the locals, they want to even hear
about getting rid of the pork, because part of the culture has to do with hunting the
pork.
In the case of Juan Fernandez, they go.
But anyway, we went to these two circuits.
So we're going with people from the CONAF, which is the governmental agency that takes
care of conservation.
So the rangers actually were helping us there and providing guidance for the...
Because they are not really kind of trails, basically.
So you walk around places that people know more or less where to go to.
I went to go up to the mountain to do some collecting up there.
So I went with this guy and we were basically walking up, because basically that's just
a mountain, it's a big volcano.
So you have to keep walking and going up.
And at a certain point, we decided to stop in this place and to put together the tent
to spend the night there, because we were doing night collecting.
And the time say, okay, well, I'm going to leave you here, guys, you do your stuff and
I'm going to go and take a walk.
Well, the guy was carrying a rifle, of course, so the guy went to hunt for goats.
So off he goes, we were standing there, again, mounting the tent and doing some collecting.
And after a couple of shots, and after an hour or so, the guy shows up with two goats
kind of like hide up, dead, lying on his shoulders, coming to us.
And the guy is like, do you guys have some knife or something?
And my colleague with that was, he had like a Swiss army knife.
I said, yeah, I have that.
Oh yeah, sure, no problem.
He takes the guy, gets one of the goats, he hangs the goat from a tree and he skins the
goat with a freaking jacket.
We were like in shock, like, no kidding me.
I mean, you leave me here with a goat, I wouldn't know what to do with that.
So the guy just like, you know, kind of skin the goat, remove everything, remove all the
cleaning.
I put a symbiosis there because by the time he was doing that, there were a couple of
endemic hawks on the island.
You know, they were already sitting there, you know, waiting because they know that,
you know, the hunters are going to remove the internal organs, you know, they're going
to throw them away, so they actually are feeding on that.
Yeah, the guy got the goat ready prepared the next day when we walked down, he actually
was scaring the skinned goat.
The next day we actually took the fishing boat back, the guy with his hat, and in the
middle of nowhere, I mean, the middle of the sea, he actually prepared a barbecue and he
barbecued the goat.
So that was our lunch for the next day.
Yeah, so that was quite an experience.
I imagine it was a very good goat.
Oh, no, that was actually amazing.
You know, I mean, you have to feel sorry about that, but you know, that was, but I was saying
you before that part of this, of this, I'm going to call it cultural, but social experience,
you know, you go through that.
I mean, because as a urbanized, because, you know, I was born and grew up in a big city
and when you have these opportunities, I mean, really, I mean, if you imagine yourself, you
get maroon in an island and you know, the only thing you have is like a machete, let's
say, and you have to provide food for yourself.
We will be so helpless.
I will be so helpless.
And this guy was skinning a freaking goat with a Swiss army knife.
Yeah, which is a tiny little knife like that.
Yeah, providing, you know, so you really, you know, you have to survive, but you really
feel like, you know, you don't belong there.
I mean, you just, you do that two hours in any of these places.
That is very cool to see, right?
That people can still live like that.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm talking, I mean, these people have, you know, I mean, all the commodities
where they are, but I mean, they know, they know their, you know, their surrounding, they
know the nature, they know how to provide food and stuff.
Again, that was quite amazing.
It was another very nice story.
And then just to change a little bit of the perspective, it also has to do with this kind
of connection, you know, with the past.
So basically some of the, of the collecting we're doing in these islands were basically
following the track, following the, the places that were visited in the fifties by this guy.
He was called Boris Malkin.
Okay.
He was a guy born in Hungary.
And during the fifties, sixties, he was hired by the American Museum as a professional collector.
So basically the guy would go to places funded by the American Museum to collect, you know,
everything.
He was mostly focused on bugs and insects mostly, but he did a lot of spider collection.
So some of the actually pieces that we were after were collected by him in the fifties.
And they were, I mean, they were stored at the American Museum and then somebody else
in the seventies, no, in the nineties, early nineties, actually, still there, I mean, the
first species and that was how we started to get into that.
But this guy wasn't like a hero for us, you know, because all the time we were like, oh,
we have to go to this locality that Boris visited.
And you have to think, I mean, I'm the fifties to go into this particular place.
It takes you like, even if it's small tiny islands, it will take you like a day to go
there because you have to go up and down volcanoes, you know, cross for like very deep forest,
very steep places.
And we, I mean, this guy is our freaking hero.
So I know we were in this fell kick again in Thailand and we were attacking with some
of the fishermen and some of the guys all the time say, oh no, I saw that.
My mom was mentioning about this Boris guy.
And actually this guy, Fernando and somebody else, they actually went with Boris to the
field.
Who what?
Cool.
Yeah.
So we went to look for these guys and yeah, I mean, these guys actually, they were in
his eighties or something like that.
But yeah, when they were like 10 years old, something like that, they actually went with
Boris to some of these places with one of the markings.
Oh wow.
It was kind of like some mystical experience for us, you know, like getting in touch with
somebody that actually helped with our hero Boris Malkin.
Wow.
Yeah.
That was a remarkable thing.
Right.
Absolutely.
But this kind of thing, you know, I mean, when you do this kind of, you're visiting
these places when you're, especially when you're off the track, you know, yeah, you
can do a lot of traveling, you can visit places as a tourist and that's great.
And it's really exciting.
The good thing about doing field work is you get to go to places and contact people that
is complete off the beaten track, you know.
And this is, yeah, you always have these kinds of experiences with actually kind of like,
you know, return everything you have.
I mean, that is, I mean, that is a very remote place and that's an amazing connection, of
course, to talk to those people.
But in my experience, even when you are in very touristic places, if you're after animals,
you go to places that tourists don't go.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
But believe it or not, I mean, I've been working a lot in the Canary Islands, I was telling
you before, I did probably 20 times in the Canary Islands, I have never ever in my life
go to the beach.
I've been twice, but just for collecting.
I've never actually swim in the Canary Islands, you know, when I talk with some of my friends,
just like what's wrong with you.
But yeah, that's how focused we are.
Oh, no, you don't go to, I have been to the beach in the Canary Islands, don't go.
No, that's not the best, the most remote place for me to stay.
No, but it's amazing.
Just the barrenness of them is quite amazing.
And I can only imagine that those islands around Chile are even more, especially if
you come from Robinson Crusoe Island.
Yeah.
The isolation is already in the name, right?
The funny thing is that this is not the original names of the island.
The islands were originally named Mas Adentro and Mas Afuera, the closest and the farthest
away from the continent.
But then I think it was in the 70s or in the 80s, the tourist office of the Chilean government
decided that I was not catchy enough for Chilean.
So they replaced their names by Robinson Crusoe, which because actually, I mean, I forgot to
mention that, but these actually are the islands where Robinson Crusoe, the novel of William
de Foy is based on.
So the history is based on this Scottish sailor, which is Alejandro Selkirk, the name that
was named after the other island.
He was maroon in this island, I think it was in the 18th century.
And the other interesting thing is that Selkirk was not, I mean, he was not maroon there because
he sank his boat.
No, no, they couldn't stand him.
So they kicked him out from the boat.
So of course, de Foy had to make some changes to make the character more appealing.
Yeah.
I mean, what do you have to do to be kicked over?
To be a ship, you know?
So yeah, so apparently he was not the most popular guy there.
Amazing.
Yeah.
It sounds like you have been to some amazing places.
Are there any places that you still have on your list?
Always.
I mean, that's the reason to keep doing what I do.
Yeah.
Well, next thing is not so ecstatic.
We have a project now where we're going to be doing a lot of similar to what I was explaining
to you about the Panama.
We're doing this standardized sampling in plots for doing comparisons of spider communities
across big gradients.
And this particular case, we will be focusing on spider communities in Cork Oak Forest,
which as you know, is a forest typical from the Western Mediterranean.
Yeah.
So basically, we're going to be mid-May to mid-June.
We're going to be in the field.
We're going to be visiting these plots, which are distributed all over the Bering Peninsula
and Spain mostly.
Yeah.
We'll be, you know, basically, there are 20, 20, yeah, 24 plots.
So we're going to do it two years.
We want to visit 12 plots this year, 12 plots next year.
And this is really driving all around the peninsula.
The Bering Peninsula is about 400, 5,000 kilometers of driving altogether.
The whole tour.
And basically, we're going to, every day we'll be collecting one of these plots.
And the idea here again is we'll be trying to find out, you know, how environmental changes,
most of them actually related to human activity, both in terms of climatic change, but also
in terms of like, of taking profit of this Cork Oak Forest, mostly because of the cork,
but also because, I mean, they use sometimes to feed, you know, the special brand of a
breed of Iberian pig for jamon.
So basically, there are forests that have been like traditionally quite exploited.
And then you have all these different gradients of very open forests or very close forests
that have not been, you know, used in the last decades.
But also forests that are continuous, like mostly in the south, southwest Spain and Portugal,
or like small pockets, like for example, in northern Spain.
There are places actually where I was not even aware that were Cork Oak Forests, like
in the Basque Country, for example.
So in the Basque Country, they have like five hectares of Cork Oak Forests.
Should be very different.
It's very much wetter.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So it offers us great opportunity to see, you know, how these different, you know, climatic
gradients without the use by humans may affect in this case, either communities.
So yeah, that's what comes next.
That sounds like an amazing road trip.
Yeah, it's not exotic, but it's going to be amazing for food, for example.
Yeah.
And after there are some beautiful places, as I say, and they're very interesting.
As you're well aware of.
So yeah, that's what's coming next.
Yeah.
And if people want to keep an eye on you and find out what you're doing, where do they
go?
Where we can find them?
Yeah, we keep this Twitter and Instagram account where we, you know, when we go to the field,
we try to upload some pictures.
Oh, great.
I can provide you with a link maybe.
Yes, I'll put it in the description of this podcast.
So if you're listening, you'll see what Mika is up to.
I will send you.
Right.
This is the Spider from Systematics Evo from Evolution.
So this is, you can find us there on both Twitter and Instagram.
I mean, sometimes we're not so active, but you know, especially when we go to the field,
we always try to upload some pictures and make some comments so they can track us there.
At SpiderSysEvo.
All right.
Right.
And Sis is with a Y.
All right.
All right, Mikael, thank you very much for your amazing story.
That was a real pleasure, and congratulations on this initiative.
It's really amazing.
I mean, I think you're doing a terrific job.
So thank you.
I'm glad you're doing this.
That was a real pleasure.
Absolutely.
And I'll catch you very soon because we're both on the Defense Committee.
Right.
And we'll speak in real life.
But for now, thank you very much.
Until next time.
Thank you, Eric.