lost in the fog of a cosmic storm floating on
whimsical wavelengths is the norm dancing through
the stars chasing spectrums of light riding the
waves that are just out Welcome back. I love
doing this podcast because I learn new things
every single time. The fascinating universe we
live in and today is going to be into something
pretty obscure. Before you groan and suggest
every episode is about something obscure, well,
maybe you have a point. But no matter, the angle
of understanding the obscure can have very clear
impacts on how we understand the world. Okay,
to get to it. This is another trip to entomology,
looking at insects. In this case, a specific
group is called the twisted -winged parasites
in the common parlance of people, if that ever
comes up, or its name, group and order name,
Strepsistra. It's a relatively small group by
insect standards, with around only 650 species
described, and of those, 43 we actually only
know from the fossil record, because they got
trapped in amber specifically. Now for a bit
of a detour, but an apt one. Aliens the movie.
The aliens were designed off of parasitic wasps,
where they have the young burst out of the insect
that they've been parasitized. But these wasps
have some visceral similarities to strepsistra,
or twisted -winged parasites. See, it's a parasitoid,
an organism that spends a significant portion
of its life attached to or inside a single host,
which eventually either kills or sterilizes the
host. I think most of us find the movie Alien
terrifying, or at the very least disturbing.
But for millions of insects on Earth, that movie
could be a documentary. In my background for
the episode, Strepsistora was also referred to
as an endoparasite. More broadly, that means
that they live inside a host body, like their
intestinal tract and tissues or blood, deriving
nutrients while causing harm, such as malnutrition,
diarrhea, or severe infection. The other term
above, parasitoid, is a subset of something more
extreme. Just to clear it up now, these little
guys, Strepsistora, do not infect humans. but
there are others that do like tapeworms the malaria
parasite and a whole bunch more we don't need
to talk about today strepsistra only infects
insects generally living in their abdominal cavity
from evolution to how they accomplish this It
is just incredibly strange from a mammalian point
of view. And more importantly, these little insects
have big shoes to fill scientifically. Understanding
their evolution has been complicated, from their
lineage to their DNA. Understanding them used
to have a moniker, the Strepsistora problem.
What is the closest group that shares a closest
common ancestor? What was it? Is it? It's a problem.
we will discover the answer to here on the episode.
But it has been a very contentious problem within
academia. They are also a help to us humans as
they parasitize many insects that we call pests
and are super important for the food web. These
little aliens might be the reason your local
farmer doesn't have to spray as much pesticide
on our food. There is one more technical term
to mention, which is behavioral hijacking, which
is, at least to me, brings up the idea of zombification,
basically getting the host to do something they
wouldn't do otherwise. Before checking your own
skin, breathe. Humans do not have parasitoids.
We're too big, too complex, and our immune systems
are too loud. Insect immune systems, on the other
hand, are much simpler. Of course, I could not
attempt this topic much further than this intro
without a guest. Okay, please welcome here to
Whimsical Waves Lengths, Dr. Rebecca Jean Millena,
who is currently a postdoctoral fellow in biology
department of the University of Rochester with
the TropBio Lab and obtained her PhD from the
Comparative Biology PhD program at the American
Museum of Natural History's Richard Gilder Graduate
School with the WARE Lab. Yay! So, well, the
first question is always often, at least here
on Whimsical Wavelengths, is how did you begin
your or how did you get into your specific STEM
field, science field? Because it's quite varied.
And I think listeners should realize that not
everyone is just born a scientist. Some of us
discover it early. Some of us discover it late
and discover there's distinctive fields only
after getting to university. Which were you?
Sure. So I was one of the lucky ones who was
kind of born. My parents like to joke that I
was born without a sense of survival, a good
sense of survival, because I even when I was
little, I would just pick things up that were
crawling on the ground because I thought they
were exciting. So I have been obsessed with bugs
since I was quite small. And it worked out really
well that. My parents, instead of getting really
freaked out about it and kind of banning me from
picking stuff up, they instead bought me books
so that I could be informed about it and pick
stuff up safely. So that encouraged my love throughout
the years, and I got lucky in that entomology
is a profession that I could aspire to. So I
kind of was the token bug kid all throughout
grade school years, and it just compounded. Well,
it sounds like your parents did a pretty good
job. I mean, we as a parent nowadays and myself,
we went through little monsters. It's always
like trying to give them the tools so they don't
kill themselves. Yeah, I think that's precisely
what happened. So I'm very grateful. There was
a time, though, where my first pet kind of officially
was a tarantula, a gift from a family friend,
and it did get loose. And then I was banned from.
having tarantulas in the house. So there was
a balance. But you had lots of bugs in the house
at one point, I would imagine. Oh, yes. Yeah.
Well, it kind of moved to the backyard. So instead
of having tarantulas, I ended up staying smaller
and staying local. So there were a lot of box
elder bugs from a tree in our neighbor's yard
that would make their way into our yard. So I
kind of... grew a colony of those in a recycling
bin for a long time my sister and I called them
tappers and then the same with ladybugs I would
just kind of keep colonies of things okay so
I'm going to come back to that colony yeah because
I think I have a question with that colony of
bugs and our current subject today so in the
intro I tried to set the stage if you will but
I want to hear it in your own words who is the
subject of your PhD research and the episode
today. Yes, so my favorite bug, my favorite insect
and the thing I have essentially dedicated my
life, hopefully, to studying is Strepsiptera.
The common name of this group is the twisted
wing parasites. So Strepsiptera means twisted
wing, and that's the Latin name for the order.
And they comprise something like 650 or so species
of really bizarre little twisted wing parasites.
Is 650 a large number or a small number? It's
quite small. So relative to other insect groups,
if you think of things like beetles, which incidentally,
maybe this is a spoiler, you can cut this out.
No, no, no, we're going to keep it. We can re
-enter every which way. This is the messy part
of science and discussions. Excellent. So in
regards to size, when you think of Strepsiftera's
closest relatives, which are beetles, the consensus
is that they're derived from or most closely
related to beetles. Beetles are an order of something
like almost 400 ,000 species. So when you think
of Strepsiftera having 650, you can see why.
I might think it's a tiny order. Right. Okay,
so... It's very fun. What makes them unique or
special, though? Like, you've dedicated your
life to them. There must be something about them.
Many, many things. Stroke Sifter is fascinating.
You almost asked me, like, how much time do we
have? Yeah, I could probably talk about them
for many hours. There are just so many facets
of them that... I can't believe are real. I don't
know. They're stranger than fiction. Fiction
is stranger than fact in this case. They have
such a distinct look. They're very iconic, at
least the males, because they have these raspberry
-looking eyes. Insects have compound eyes, but
with Strepsiptera, they have even more... They
look like raspberries. They're described as berry
eyes a lot of the time. And then the thing they
have that kind of no other insect does are the
twisted wings that they're named for. Their four
wings are kind of these club -like structures
in the males. And the closest thing that they
look like, or the closest thing to them in other
insects, are fly hind wings. So for a very long
time, people thought they were related to flies.
And they have fan -like... strepsipterans have
fan -like hind wings which is also very unique
in that the whole group has that the biggest
thing that they're known for and that is kind
of sensational is the sexual dimorphism so the
males and females look very different that's
what dimorphism means the males are that iconic
kind of insect that i just described but the
females are basically worms And they live and
die within their host. So both of the male and
female strep septum, they both develop within
another insect, which is what makes them endoparasites
or parasites of other insects. But the male will
eventually be able to fly out of its host, whereas
the female stays there forever. So many questions.
Yes, of course. Let's start with... the male,
when it flies out, let's skip everything, all
the other questions, because you just focused
on that one little bit. When it flies out, does
it also kill the host, or does it somehow survive?
So the host can stay alive for quite a while
afterward. There's actually ongoing research
with this happening in multiple facets, but something
that's very fun is that my current lab has a
couple different projects running on survival,
and this is possible just to... Plug how incredible
my current lab is. We have lab stock of strep
sifterans, which is something that is very difficult
to do because you have to be able to rear their
hosts as well as the parasites. So you need to
know two different life cycles and how to keep
them alive. So I'm stoked every day at this existing,
this system. But yeah, we find that the hosts
do stay alive. for a while after the males emerge.
And anecdotally, I've also seen the same thing
with a couple other species. When the male has
left, the host still lives for what sometimes
I think is the natural life cycle. And there's
also a chance that they might die on chance prematurely
because of infection that might come in through
the wound that the parasite has left. So when
I was doing my background research for this,
the movie Aliens came up. Ah, yes. I realize
it's not the, what is the word, the muse or the
inspiration behind them. Those were the jeweled
wasps, I think. But nevertheless, this is like
some have termed it the alien model. Yes. So
there's lots of these and they don't infect humans,
right? They do not infect humans. I know. I love
thinking about that. I have given actually a
couple talks about the parallels between xenomorphs
and strepsipterans. So last year in 2025 at the
Museum of the Moving Image in Brooklyn, New York,
they held an event called Creature Feature, the
Science of Monster Movies and Community Filmmaking.
And the screening that they showed that afternoon
was alien. And I got to give a half hour -ish
long talk about how xenomorphs can be seen in
real life, like in nature, and how those mechanisms
exist already. We don't have to look into space
to find them. They're already here. And I took
the opportunity to kind of hijack it and use
it as a way to brag about Streps sceptera. So
it's perfectly on the nose. They are really good
explanations for each other. okay so just to
kind of go down the life cycle a little bit more
yeah um let's pretend we already have a male
and female the male first so like a xenomorph
jumping out of a human's chest which is visceral
and scary it has these raspberry cute eyes and
these twisted wings and it flies around and what
does it do just kind of go hey there's another
ant i'm gonna go pester it and hope there's a
female inside of it like how this isn't like
You know, it's not a cricket. It's not making
noise. What's going on? Yeah, that's a great
question and something that is very fun to answer
because it turns out they have really good sense
of smells, basically. Senses of smell. They have
a ton of sensory organs kind of concentrated
in their antennae, but also on their legs and
a lot of sensory hairs. they can smell the female
essentially with pheromones so she puts out a
really strong chemical signal and the male can
pick up on it wait so let's go back to my idea
or my example they can infect ants right yes
but actually it's fun you bring that up because
only the male infects ants and then the female
of the same species that infects ants the female
is found in crickets katydids and other orthopteroids
okay so the female do not infect insects that
live in a hive so there are many other species
that are best known actually for infecting insects
that live in hives but they're in a different
family right i meant specifically these ones
because i was curious because if You're females
producing all these pheromones that smell to
get the male. And yet that ant then walks back
into the nest. They should smell like the female.
That's where I was going. Oh, I see. So the male
has left the ant. No, I know. But you just answered
the fact that the females don't infect the ant.
Oh, yes. Yes. We'll get to that. host i guess
in a moment we don't even know okay so yeah somehow
the female produces pheromones outside of the
insect that she's living inside yes okay so something
i didn't mention thank you for asking this for
clarification something i did not mention is
that the the fun thing about strep sceptera um
is that they protrude a little bit from their
hosts upon maturity yeah yeah so i'm glad you
asked that because i kind of take it for granted
that it's just like a tumor that sits on their
belly yep yep yeah that's that's almost exactly
what it looks like there's just a lump in between
the host insects segments basically and for the
female which stays there that's her head her
head is just kind of a little bit outside of
the host And she can emit pheromones that way.
Wow. Yep. Does she also breathe that way or does
she breathe from inside the insect? For a large
part of the development, the female is getting
oxygen from the circulatory system of its host.
So I believe that actually does not change. I
don't think they have spiracles on their cephalothorax,
but I could be wrong. Neat. Yeah. So they have
a whole separate way of... breathing than most
other insects because they're living inside an
insect yeah but yet the males still must be able
to breathe like other insects do yes upon maturity
so while he's within the host insect it's the
same kind of system as the females but as soon
as he pupates and emerges he has to be able to
breathe on his own okay so he finds the insect
or he finds the female attracted in by the smell
and uh the other insect just goes hey yeah let
me present my abdomen to you the female bursts
out like how does this all work so yeah so the
female is at that point as emerged as she can
be her head is probably the furthest out that
it ever will be in her life because she's calling
for a male she's sending out pheromones the host
insect depending on what it is, may or may not
have been influenced to be somewhere or stay
alive for a certain timing to optimize this encounter.
So if it was a hive insect initially, with the
parasite developing within it, it is now not
acting like a hive insect. It'll act like a...
perhaps. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, they won't
necessarily participate in the same kind of nest
activities, which is very fun. And they will
still, though, video anecdotal evidence given,
the host will still try to kick off the male
sometimes. Like, it doesn't necessarily like
something else tiny buzzing around its abdomen.
Right. So there is still risk that the male will
get fended off from the female by the host. But
the males are actually very zippy. So they're
very quick and agile. And I like watching videos
of them trying to get at females because it's
really interesting. Okay, so they managed to
find a female. They impart their genetic material
through the head that is extruded through the
abdomen. yes and then the male goes off and dies
yes precisely the uh a fun thing that i would
like to mention about the imparting of genetic
material that can happen through something called
traumatic insemination where the male just sticks
his genitalia anywhere in the female interesting
Yes. And how does the genetic material get to
where it needs to go? It goes through her hemocyle,
her blood, essentially, and then it just makes
its way to the eggs. Is that a common occurrence
in the animal kingdom? Or is there anyone else
that does it? Yes, in fact, yeah. Bed bugs are
well known for it. Oh, gross. I know. They're
nasty. Oh my goodness. And now you know. Now
I know. Okay, so. The male goes off and either
mates with another one or doesn't and dies. And
now the, like, surely the female ends up killing
their host because now they have to rear a whole
bunch of eggs too, right? The host is still alive.
At this point. But then what happens to, which
I assume because it's an insect that lays eggs.
So they do something called oviviparity where
the eggs essentially hatch. inside the female
and she becomes a bag of larvae so she is the
host for her parasitic young yes so that is called
also technically matrophagy or eating mother
where the mother is entirely consumed at least
in this case resource wise by her larvae and
she isn't actively laying actually they're just
crawling out of her head Wow. And she survives
this? Yeah. She keeps pumping out approximately
hundreds of thousands, like 750 ,000 is one of
the recorded numbers in literature. How would
you even measure that? That's a great question.
You don't know the answer to that? No, I've tried.
I have. collected a gravid or pregnant female
before and i did sit for a very long time just
watching the larvae crawl out of her because
it was fascinating that was the first time that
i've been able to witness it and over the course
of even just a couple hours i could not keep
count there were hundreds okay um so going back
to your bug collection did you ever find one
of these in your bug collection yes so as a kid
growing up you Oh, no, I did not know. So I actually,
that's a great question because it leads back
into kind of what brought me on this journey.
I'd always been obsessed with bugs, but the way
I was introduced to parasites specifically was
at UC Davis, my alma mater for undergrad. I was
impatient to start taking entomology classes.
So as a freshman, even though I couldn't take
uh my upper div entomology courses yet i enrolled
in a general ed entomology course taught by the
grad students where every week was a different
topic and jessica gilling who at the time was
a ta she specializes in parasitoid wasps and
watching her lecture was the most excited i had
felt in a very long time about insects. I was
always excited about them, but that one kind
of was like a lightning strike about how cool
they were. So I ended up doing my final project
for that class on parasitoid wasps. And then
every other entomology course I took after that,
that had a field component or a final project
component, I did on parasites. Okay. But you
didn't find them in your insect menagerie, if
you will. Okay, well, I think we're going to
learn a lot more about Strepsiptera. We're going
to learn a lot more, but I think it's time we
now introduce the paper. And in full, just being
open in episodes that weave together the past,
the present, the future, I struggle to keep the
episode length down, especially when I know so
little about a topic and I'm already asking way
more questions than I had planned. And I had
a sense that was going to be the case, but it's
also a terrible segue to say that the papers...
title, Strepsiptera's Systematics, Past, Present,
and Future. I guess let's start with the past.
What makes this group, in the words of the paper,
among the most obscure and enigmatic orders?
I mean, we've already talked about why it's so
cool and special, but why is it so obscure? Yeah,
so Strepsiptera as an order wasn't recognized
as such until 1813 by this entomologist William
Kirby. Before then, no one really knew what it
was. It was grouped with Hymenoptera, which is
the order of bees, wasps, and ants, the first
time it was ever seen in, I think, 1700s, late
1700s. And after it was seen, people didn't really
know where to place it because Before DNA data
was available or even recognized as a thing that
existed, we all had to depend on what things
looked like in order to group and name them.
So strep sceptera, as you can imagine, look pretty
bizarre. Not to mention the fact that the males
and females look the way they are. So you can
kind of imagine also that it was very difficult
to figure out where they belonged in the... the
tree of life that was forming at the time. But
was it an obscure thing because they didn't know
where to put it or because they were so hard
to find? Both. Definitely both. So those are
the two big kind of famous obstacles to studying
strep sceptera in general. It's hard to describe
something that you can't find much of. And yeah,
they're tiny too. Was there a difference in age
about when the males were discovered versus the
females? That's a great question and something
I don't have off the top of my head, but I'm
pretty sure that... Yeah, I don't actually know
that in specific. That's a great question. I
mean, it is known for the myrmecal acids, the
ones where the males infect ants and the females
infect katydids, crickets, mantises. Those ones...
There was a 94 year gap in between the description
of the species versus the reunion of the male
and female, at least in our taxonomy. But regarding
not the whole order, but the separation of the
sexes as an order, I will look into that because
now I also want to know. Well, if you give it
to me before I get around to recording the intro,
I'll add it there. Okay, that would be awesome.
Yeah, I'll double check because that's a really
great question. I've only ever looked into the
history of the order as a whole in taxonomy.
Just to go a little further, I mean, in my background,
it seems to be that some species are only known
from the males or only known from the females.
So we still haven't merged some species, male
and female. Yes, a great many. It's crazy to
think about it. yeah we found a lot of the males
but we have never found the females and we found
a few females over here because we dissected
this creature and found them but we have never
seen the males you're like wow you know it just
goes to show that there's so much more we can
learn and understand that we just don't know
about the natural world around us i mean we're
still finding uh new species and stuff too oh
100 every day every day every single day but
i think we're also kind of dancing around what
the next question is because um i read this in
multiple papers in the in the background here
especially the older ones not so much the newer
ones the past understanding it was also given
the strip sister problem and i'm sorry if i automatically
very all right yeah i've mentioned i mentioned
earlier that strip sifter was so infamous and
it was difficult to tell like what it was grouped
with and that was given its own name as you mentioned
the strepsiptera problem is the title given to
this dilemma of not knowing what they were the
problem itself was the question what is the sister
group to this species or to these to these animals
these weird little parasites what did they arise
from evolutionarily and it was a problem because
there were just no good consensus did anyone
just throw their hands up and go aliens honestly
yes yeah there were some it's very funny looking
at very old or not very old but the past literature
um i guess it is very old because it's been like
200 years since some of them all right Not quite
200, you know. Yeah. More than 150 years for
some of them. Well, you got to remember that
my modern day science, geology, geophysics really
only got going in the 60s. So. Oh, that's fascinating
to me because I would think that it's been around
forever, you know. So like. Yeah. But when you
don't understand, can't map the seafloor to see
plate tectonics and you can't measure the age
of the Earth until you understand atomic. uh
decay that's a really good point this is cool
because yeah it's the same kind of thing where
i don't know as much about the physical sciences
so hearing about this and those logistics are
really interesting yeah so in this particular
case though we're going back to the topic before
we get completely derailed into a yeah understandable
about geology and geophysics um so people didn't
have a good idea of what these things were or
how to put them in the tree of life. And I gather
this all comes down to the theory of evolution,
right? Yes. And so were people like, okay, the
theory of evolution is broken or did they just
go, we're missing a key piece? It was more the
latter. Yeah, I know. It would be funny if we
could blame strip sceptera for kind of a breaking
of theory. But no, it was essentially that it
seemed like there was a missing link, because
there were kind of common characteristics that
they seemed to share with some groups, but not
all of them. And for some people, some sharing
of traits was enough evidence, but not for a
lot of other people, and vice versa, depending
on the group. So it was a very... contentious
debate for quite a while so what were the main
candidates here you've already mentioned beetles
i think you mentioned wasps and ants yeah yeah
the first group that they were placed in were
wasps and my thought and my understanding was
that because they were seen to be parasites there
are a lot of parasitic wasps and because they
fly etc um and then the other thing was flies
because they look like flies, and they have that
little club -like structure, the twisted wing,
which is the haltier in flies. That's what it's
called. So given all of those, those were kind
of the three main groups that people figured
they should be in. Is there anything at all analogous
to having that dilemma that you're aware of in
science in the last 200 years? Where you're stuck
going, is it one of these three really large?
I have the creature right here, but I don't know.
That seems very unusual in, let's say, even by
the 1920s, right? Well, it actually happens a
lot more often than you think. Just because I'm
immersed in the field of taxonomy. The field
of taxonomy is very dramatic. Oh my goodness.
Yeah, there's a lot of this, especially in paleontology,
but in essentially every group in the animal
kingdom. Well, paleontology I understand, because
we don't. Yeah. They're still at appearance,
because, you know, you can't really do anything
else. With the live ones, we can observe them.
We can observe their move and how they fly or
not fly, and I would expect that the... stuff
living today would be no no yeah so it's a very
it's a very uh human judgment field it's it's
surprising because it's one of those things where
you think oh we have such overwhelming evidence
we have so much technology we can record everything
that these animals do but the thing to remember
is that taxonomists the people who are determining
what is related to what and what is a species
we are all human and humans have opinions so
it can get surprisingly heated so what you're
saying is it's not completely qualitative yes
quantitative sorry it's a little qualitative
and not completely quantitative sometimes it
is very rigorous i have to say it's not just
like i'm discounting yeah all of taxonomy but
the thing about it is that You have to be very,
very specialized and detail -oriented. Or you
don't have to be specialized, but it ends up
being the case that taxonomists become very specialized
because in order to describe something, you have
to know it inside out, literally a lot of the
time, morphology inside and out. And taxonomists,
to describe a species, have to choose the characters
that they... with their best educated judgment
to be the things that are informative about what
sets this group apart from everything else. So
that involves staring at an animal or a plant
or a fungus for a very long time and determining
the tiny little differences between it and something
that looks really similar to it except for this
one little character. Okay. well we still use
this technique obviously today as i just learned
but we do have some modern stuff as well right
like um now we're kind of diving so we just talked
about the past and how it's muddied the past
yeah what is it related to hard to find uh not
many people talked about it just because it's
not causing us problems and we'll get around
to why it's a good thing for us overall probably
closer to the end but At some point, science
moves. We get new tools to conduct science and
collect data. And we started to be able to sequence
genomes. So I assume this is, I guess, two parts.
One, how does it change the dynamics? But first,
how does that change taxonomy? How does that
change that process? Because now you have something
that is very data -driven. that has no subject
matter like it's it's this and only this how
did that change this whole classification scheme
yes wildly that's also a great question so dna
and genomes but starting with just like even
singular genes being sequenced that changed the
game because it just exponentially increased
the amount of data available for comparison So
they are actually treated in much the same way.
The morphological characters that people would
use to compare, they can be looked at in the
same way as nucleotides in DNA. So the AGCT,
there's like millions of AGCTs in a sequence,
hundreds of millions. you can compare each of
those to the next letter in the sequence for
another species. So by doing that, it makes it
so much more robust in a way to have this genetic
code that we can compare because ostensibly the
genetic code is what makes that appearance and
what makes those appearance changes. So knowing
that, it made... checking species identity a
lot easier in some ways and then gave rise to
different problems in other ways. But it was
very exciting because it meant that now there
is this way to double check kind of how well
our judgment of morphological characters actually
lines up with this like huge database of comparison
that happens with DNA. Right, so I assume because
these are obscure, there was a bigger database
to begin with for all these other orders, and
then this was compared afterwards? Yes. Okay.
Yeah, the first genome wasn't sequenced until
2012. But I don't know what that compares to,
because I don't know when the first insect genome
was sequenced. Yeah, so the first genome... in
general, was sequenced in 1976, and it was an
RNA bacteriophage. Right, I meant first insect.
Yeah, 2000, exactly 2000. Okay, so 2000 was the
first insect, and the first strepsiptera was
done in 2012, you said? Yeah, so it's true that
the kind of genomic revolution, as it's termed,
happened quite fast. Like, once we started being
able to sequence whole genomes, whole DNA sequences,
then the technology just kept speeding up and
it became easier and easier and more accessible
to get these codes. So then what do you do? Like,
here is all the codes for the Scripsiptera. This
is all the codes for beetles and flies and wasps
and who has the most likes, like, or like, like,
like similar DNAs. It's just. that simple? Or
were there key ones that are more important than
others? Yeah, so before we actually got to genomes,
the precursor to this was just genes, like not
just, but you know, it was singular gene sequences,
or multiple that were concatenated, or put together
back to back. And the thing that wasn't really
fully accounted for at the time was that genes
have different evolutionary histories so they
can change faster or slower depending on what
is being affected by the environment that they
encode right it's the same reason that when you
get a species into a brand new environment or
quote -unquote virgin environment like arriving
in Hawaii or something like that or the famous
ecuadorian finches right like they the genetic
diversity explodes because they can fill all
these niches and everything else. Yes, precisely.
The finch that was on the mainland may hardly
change at all, but these finches on this little
tiny island have this crazy changing. I assume
that's kind of what you mean? Yeah, it's similar
because it's reflected in the DNA. So different
genes, like a gene that encoded the beak for
the finches. Maybe because they went to that
new environment and they exploded, that gene
changed a lot because it was advantageous for
it to change a lot. So knowing that, if you compare
that gene for the beak against a gene for, I
don't know, your heart function, that wouldn't
change because if it changed, then you would
probably die. Or you'd be behaving very differently
at the very least. Yes, exactly. If you keep
that in mind, and then you try to make, like,
an evolutionary history based on the changes
of that, like, those two genes, they would tell
a very different story. Right. So it was that
with Strypsipter, basically. The first couple
of genes that were sequenced and used to try
to infer what it was most closely related to,
those told a different story. than the rest of
the genome eventually did later. What? Was it
just by pure random luck they picked a couple
of genes? It was because those were the easiest
to sequence at the time. Okay, and what did those
genes control? They're 16S RNA, so they were
mitochondrial genes. So mitochondria is the powerhouse
of the cell, and they were genes that relate
to that. So how do we get from there? And you've
already gave it away already that it's beetles
they're most closely related to. So what was
it that they were trying to say we were more
related to before we had the whole genome? And
then why were we able? How did that come about?
Like, what is the key that told us that it's
probably beetles? The first, so those genes,
the 16S RNA, et cetera, 18S too, those showed,
well, the story that they told was that strip
sifter is most closely related to flies. Okay.
So based on the data they had, they suggested
the most reasonable explanation for it was they're
closely related to flies. Yes, precisely. And
then once more data. were added including the
genomes those pointed towards the story of them
being most closely related to beetles and that's
just based on the sheer number of shared genes
that hadn't changed yeah or that are most similar
all of them have changed right because everything
has gone through you know the same amount of
evolution but the genes go through different
speed of change right okay you mentioned that
these twisted wings they're similar to another
uh fly species right they're just similar to
flies in general so flies one of their defining
characters yeah all of flies they have that hind
wing that has turned into like a club like it
looks like this right okay yeah so all of us
are listening along because there is no video
at all oh yeah sorry i keep forgetting she held
out her arm a bit like a club that she was wielding
towards me menacingly in the camera but I was
more referring going back to the idea that is
this a case where beetles also had a similar
wing structure and then lost it or is this like
a new evolutionary like two different groups
evolving the same wing structure Yeah, thank
you for asking that too. I wish I could show
visuals, but I think I can guide the listeners
to look up pictures perhaps. So Beatles have
an elytra. If people, I don't know, if anyone's
listening to this and they play Minecraft or
have kids who play Minecraft, then they might
know what that is. But be understandable. Even
the one in Minecraft is not exactly what it is
in real life. beetles have a hard shell most
of them that's their elytra so that's actually
their forewing and their forewing is what has
formed that case so thinking about that beetles
and strepsiptera then both have a modified forewing
and at first you think of things like ladybugs
and you're like well that doesn't look at all
like a club but there are beetle families that
very closely resemble strepsiptera. So rhipiphoridae,
r -i -p -i -p -h -o -r -i -d -a -e, rhipiphoridae,
that is a family of wedge -shaped beetles, that's
their common name, and they look a lot like strepsiptera
in males. There are even some rhipiphorids where
the female stays larva form or worm -like. And
therefore they have very, very similar life histories.
Wow. So they're a really good case. Okay. So
genetics solved at least the strep siftra problem,
at least as we understand it right now. But did
it also change the number of species we had identified?
Like, was there a whole bunch of species that
was like, actually, no, these are the same or
actually, no, these are separate species? Yeah.
yeah that is happening right now as we speak
like there is there is ongoing research and there
has been very recent research that has been looking
into this exact question with different groups
specifically because it takes a lot of time to
like analyze all of these genomes as you can
imagine there's just a lot of data so for the
genus stylops which is one of the most speciose
it has the most many many species in it that
group infects mining bees or this genus andrena
andrena those have been looked at by mary latinaro
who is uh a colleague and she's really cool she
looked at stylops and checked out cryptic species
in there so there's there's been kind of this
overhaul um looking at all of those to check
out like how many species there may or may not
be and what they're using as hosts and things
like that there's also a family of strepsipterans
also the most speciose family actually and it
is made up of a family that infects wasps all
wasps which is fun and that is xenidae which
is the group that we study in my current lab
actually So Daniel Benda in 2020 did this huge
overhaul of that family with DNA data and found
a bunch of cryptic species there as well. So
they were more than expected. So you used a term
there that I wasn't expecting. I know what it
means just by the nature of how you're using
it. Cryptic species. Yeah. So what are we talking?
Just species that you didn't know were there.
So they're cryptic. Yeah, yeah, that's precisely
it. Because crypsis is another word for camouflage,
basically. And in this context, it means they
look the same. They were like hiding amongst
other species, but they're actually different
when we look at how much they've diverged by
DNA. Crazy. So just out of random curiosity,
the parasitic wasps, are they sometimes parasitized
by these as well? Yeah, in a manner of speaking.
So it kind of depends on how you see parasitism,
because I think of what I'm thinking of for a
lot of them are actually like predators more
so, I suppose, because their larvae are what
are eating the caterpillars and things. But yeah,
there are definitely like layers on layers of
life history. And it's very fun to think about.
Even strepsipterans themselves can be infected
by other things. Sweet. A parasite of a parasite.
Yes. Yes. Pathogens and parasites and parasites
infected themselves by pathogens. So it's a whole
tangled web. So there's insects that will parasitize
these critters as well. There are microbes. Yeah,
I'm talking about microbes. But I still think
it's fascinating. I know it would have been kind
of nuts if there were things like parasitoid
wasps. Yeah, basically. Yeah, I wish. I would
love that. But yeah, what I'm thinking of are
things like Wolbachia, which is a gram -negative
bacteria. So it's a bacteria that infects...
insects. It's most widely known for that and
other arthropods and nematodes, but it can be
found in Strepsiptera host systems, which is
something that I did during the course of my
dissertation was find this, which was really
cool. There are a couple other labs who also
found it around the same time. And this thing
is neat because Wolbachia is known to be a reproductive
parasite in insects. So it can kind of hijack
the reproductive system of the insect that it's
infecting and we use it as humans we use it to
control mosquito populations so yeah if you infect
a mosquito with a strain of Wolbachia and the
natural population is infected with a different
strain of Wolbachia then they can't produce fertile
offspring crazy it's really cool Okay. I think
we need to change gears because we're getting
really off the beaten track now, which is all
good. I'm all for all kinds of different jumping
off points and distractions and deviations and
detours. But we've gone through the present and
the past and now the future. So where is our
understanding for this obscure little creature
going? And more importantly, is why is it important?
Like, why do we need to know more about this
particular insect? Yeah, the future of Strepsiptera
is just finding more Strepsiptera, honestly,
because we know they're out there. And as you
mentioned, there are so many species that are
only known from one of the sexes. So there's
definitely a lot more to be uncovered. And they
just play such a complex role in their ecosystems
that... Figuring out what they're infecting and
how they're infecting them and everything is
something that I think is a noble and exciting
endeavor. To be fair, the why is it important
is always very easy for me personally to say,
but kind of hard to receive because I love them
because I think they're exciting. But that doesn't
necessarily get you grants. for sure although
you never know where science is going to lead
you and i think back to the last time i did anything
bug related was actually on spiders and pheromones
and how black widows find mates and uh being
able to figure out what pheromones exist and
you can start to control insect populations instead
of gassing them in chemicals. So I would imagine
that having a healthy population of these strepsipteras
is important to control different pests as well,
right? It may be. Yeah, there are actually some
that infect things like plant hoppers that are
found in rice fields and other agricultural contexts.
And since strepsipterans... in some cases, for
those plant hoppers or plant hoppers like them,
can be found in relatively high levels in the
population. They could be an avenue for control.
You did also remind me, though, that actually,
as part of this lab, one of the ways I can push
for them being important and exciting is that
Strypsipterans, some species, it has been documented.
or at least one species, we know that they can
extend the lifespan of their host. What? I thought
they also occasionally made them infertile and
things. Yes, they do. They do, but they also
extend the lifespan. So something really cool.
I can't believe I left this off and didn't immediately
answer with this, but something really cool about
the system we study. is that we're finding that
the infected workers um okay let me explain this
specific system in our lab it's between the strep
scepter and xenos peckii and the common paper
wasp polystes fuscatus that is found in north
america no they're different they're kind of
reddish But you'll find them along the East Coast.
There are other polystes all over the U .S.,
but polystes piscatus is the one that we study
specifically. And the cool thing about those
is that in paper wasp nests and in their social
system, because they're a relatively social insect,
there are workers, there are gines, and there
are foundresses, and there are males. um foundresses
like start a nest but giants can they're they
become the reproductives uh later in the season
so giants can overwinter and then start another
nest so they're like the foundresses um giants
live longer than than workers like workers are
kind of the first wave of uh offspring by a foundress
and they'll work to keep the nest and then care
for the brood and things but the gines are different
because they have to overwinter and be able to
start new nests so we found that when a worker
is infected it lives as long as a gine like it
is able to overwinter and in the context of like
humans that's like a person instead of living
70 years living like 600 years. Wow. So it's
9 to 13 times longer, the lifespan. Don't tell
the anti -aging community, please. We get enough
pseudoscience from them that we do not need to
see this. Well, the fun thing is that University
of Rochester is known for its, like, for aging,
for investigating aging. So that's where a lot
of our... funding is coming from is looking into
this phenomenon because what our lab looks at
are specific genes and mechanisms. You should
have told me that right from the beginning. We've
done a whole episode on that on its own. I know,
it is fascinating. Yeah, it's cutting edge right
now. We're working on multiple different projects
that are approaching this from different... angles
and i'm here to be like the parasite person but
they have been working on this for a number of
years now in really cool ways so they're all
also very um very knowledgeable about this parasite
system so i'm kind of excited to come in and
also approach it from a different kind of parasite
centered focus and learn about the host in the
meantime too sorry I'm a little flabbergasted
here. I'm like, what? That's why I love doing
the podcast. It's just like all of a sudden going,
wait a minute. And you start with something like,
oh no, this really strange bug that I don't really
understand. And yet you're like, wait, it's tied
to increasing the lifespan of a particular, like,
how does that affect the wasp's life cycle? Does
that have any ongoing effects? Like. Yeah. Okay,
so that is one avenue of the future of where
this is going. It is. I'm sorry I left it out.
It's so funny because... You brought it right
to the climax of the episode, although people
now have to listen to this point to even get
it. I know, to get to it. It's funny because
it's my every day. So it's things like this that
remind me that what I'm doing is actually really
cool because I'm excited about it all the time,
but I forget really, you know. But again, everything's
connected to like... Every single one of these
I've done that is centered around a paper, I
feel like there's something there that all of
a sudden I go, what? Yeah, that makes sense.
Even when I have a colleague on that's like about
volcanoes, I'm still like going, wait, really?
Oh, nice. There's so much. Yeah. Science never
stops giving. There's a... Oh, I was just thinking
about how in Rochester and in cities really around
the world, there is something called Nerd Night.
And I just went to one and the person who went
was talking about geomorphology. Yeah, and she
talked about sand physics. So I was just thinking
about how that was a wild time. Okay, well, I've
only got one more question. And then it's starting
to wrap everything up. So museums and their catalogs
came up in this paper as a source, as a kind
of like a sausage making of science. I don't
know how I can follow up that grand finale. This
is almost like the epilogue, I guess. I feel
many fail to appreciate the wealth and data that,
you know, many of these museums hold, both culturally
and, in our case, scientifically. How important
is that back catalog in the museums to the work
that you guys do? Oh boy, howdy. It is the lifeblood.
Yeah. So museums, I don't, yeah, people don't
really realize. I feel like a lot of people have
been surprised when I took them, when I was still
at the museum, when I would take them upstairs
and show them how the sausage is made, that museums
are active places of research. There are people
upstairs or downstairs or behind the walls actively
looking at the iceberg, the rest of the iceberg
that's underwater, because the things that are
displayed are just the tip. There's a fraction,
a tiny fraction of the things that you see on
display at museums are the collection, essentially,
of the collection. And museums are kind of a
library. of life because taxonomy and systematics
so taxonomy describing and classifying things
and then systematics finding out how they all
relate to each other those depend on us being
able to see the specimens and access the specimens
for sampling perhaps so museums are the most
important thing i would argue to the study of
life and evolution as a whole, because they provide
the foundation for that research. So appreciate
your local museums, but also know that there
is so much below the surface that you're not
seeing. And some exhibits are doing a really
good job in places like the British Museum and
the AMNH especially, and the Cal Academy of Sciences,
my three favorites. those all have great exhibits
about like what their scientists are actively
doing and i would encourage people to look into
it because so many more people than i realized
are surprised that you can work as a scientist
in a museum yeah awesome i mean i don't get to
get out to enough museums as it is and i find
closer to where i live there's lots of cultural
museums i'm more of a science guy i'd love to
go to the Museum of Natural History in New York
and the others and just wander around, get lost,
be nerdy. I did that every night. Well, especially
for my first year there, I was just wandering
the halls at 3 a .m. Jealous. It was awesome.
But this is also the time where you can call
out one of those buddies that were on those 3
a .m. walks with you, if there was anyone, because
it's time for the call -out. So this is your
chance to, you know, other work. colleagues,
upcoming things, maybe a STEM group that you're
or something that you're doing in that regard
of communication, whatever you got. Oh, that's
very sweet. Well, just because today I was thinking
about them, I would love to give acknowledgement
to my office mates and lab mates at the AMNH.
Anna Eichert in particular is, she studies stoneflies
and the systematics of those and has a really
cool project too with collaborating with fly
fishermen because they're very familiar with
aquatic insects just from a different point of
view. And she's going to be hopefully defending
her dissertation this year too. So I'm just thinking
of her because that is a really difficult journey
to go through and the rest of the WARE lab. whom
i miss dearly well i was thinking about nerd
night because i think it's cool and things like
story collider so science communication and your
podcast like i love doing things like this because
i feel like if you're a scientist but you can't
communicate what you're doing to the world you
can't get it out there and you can't get everyone
interested in learning about what you love to
learn about then it's kind of difficult to enact
any change in the world so i just want to appreciate
you for doing this podcast oh thanks yeah it
if no one understands the science then we it
gets lost like when you can't connect it back
to the humans or how it affects their lives nobody
cares and so when you can't have those conversations
it's like nobody really cares about a doctor
until you get sick right it's the same idea yeah
you have to have those conversations because
People are not going to interact with an entomologist
on their day -to -day lives. But the podcast
is a way where we can bring somebody into that
intimate conversation about how science gets
done and why it's important. So it's great. But
now for something really silly. It's time for
the traditional, infamous last question of the
show. Tell us your favorite science joke. Okay.
Excuse me. So, um, option number one. Just give,
just give us, just go for it. Okay, so, um, this
one's kind of derived from my favorite joke that
I've heard my AMNH advisor, Dr. Jessica Ware,
tell at a campfire. It was very funny. Here goes.
There is a man and, uh, his pet millipede basically
and every morning they kind of have a routine
going where the man will walk downstairs and
then the millipede will wake up and the man will
like start breakfast and stuff and the millipede
will go fetch the mail and then they'll have
breakfast together and just hang out but one
day the mail arrives like super early so the
guy comes downstairs and he's like oh my god
Like, I can't go outside yet. So he turns to
the millipede who's just waking up and goes,
hey, can you go fetch the mail? And the millipede
goes like, and goes to the other room. So the
guy starts breakfast and he's just kind of like
waiting around and the breakfast's ready. And
he's just like, where, what's happening? Like,
where's the millipede? What's going on? And he's
finished breakfast because it's gotten cold and
he's tired of waiting. And the millipede comes
back in. And he's got the mail. And the guy's
like, well, what happened out there? Like, why
did it take you so long? And the millipede said,
well, I had to put my shoes on. Nice. And then
I have one that is a bit more relevant to the
subject matter of this conversation. So you told
us your favorite joke and now you're going to
tell us your favorite strepsitra joke. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. So if I were a wasp, I think I would
hate to have the ability to understand like other
species because then I just constantly hear the
muffled conversations of the strepsitra in my
stomach. But it's no problem because I'd be able
to hear them clearly in a couple days. That one
was especially dumb. They're all great. It doesn't
matter. The crazier, the sillier, the less understandable,
the better. Oh, bless. Thank you so much for
coming on. And yeah, cheers. Yeah, thank you.
This was really fun. So real quick here, because
I know this episode was super long and super
awesome. Loved every moment of it. But just to
quickly tie back into something that happened
during the episode, the first time that... a
species from sepsistera was found, they only
found the females. They didn't find the males
until almost a decade later for the first time.
So that's really cool. Amazing. I hope you really
enjoyed the conversation. I know to the heck
I did. And I'll see you guys here in two weeks.
So chaotic, so misbehaved Echoes of melodies
remind us it's always Colors weave stories painting
the sky Swaying to rhythms as the galaxies fly
by