Dr Karl Podcast

00:00 This is a Triple J podcast. 00:02 Hello. Welcome to another episode of Science with Dr. Carl in your podcast feed. And this episode is perfect as we head into spring. It is all about the botany and the bees. This week, we were joined by Clancy Lester, friend of the show and expert on all things bees. This guy... loves bees. We've had him on before. He got into all of our bee questions. And we had Rose Kerr. She's a science journalist. She works for ABC Radio's national science team, All In The Mind. And she's someone who really loves botany. 00:32 She's got to focus on botany, the study of plants. So she answered all of our plant questions. And of course, your regular questions for Dr. Carl. It's a jam-packed episode. Let's get into it. 00:44 Dr. Carl is across from me. Dr. Carl, we're in good company this week, aren't we? 00:48 We're extra. We're not talking about space or quantum mechanics. We are talking about the living world around us. Can you introduce our wonderful speakers today? 00:56 Of course. So let's start with Rose Kerr. Now, Rose, this is your first time on Science with Dr. Carl. Welcome. Thank you. So happy to be here. Now, you are no stranger to these halls, I guess. You've worked on different ABC science programs. You are someone who is a science journalist. Your area is botany. Tell us about your interest in it, where that started for you and why you wanted to go a little bit deeper. 01:19 I grew up in the southwest of WA, which if you've never been there, it is actually a biodiversity hotspot, meaning we have so many amazing both plant and animal species. But the plants just always spoke to me. And I remember being in high school and everyone saying animals were more interesting when we're studying them. But I disagreed. I was always a plant girl. Maybe it's because of my name. Yeah, Rose, so sweet. 01:41 So I went on to study it at uni and when you study botany, you learn things about their structure, how they grow, the classification and also how they fit in the broader ecosystem. And I did work as a botanist for a hot minute, but then the theatre kid in me came through and I decided to do broadcasting instead. 02:00 You said, I want to speak about it. I want to use my voice. Now tell me, you are from WA. Are there any particular plants or any favourites that are native to the area that you want to shout about? 02:11 Well, at the moment, there are a lot of endemic orchids around Perth and around the southwest. And one in particular that I love is called the cowslip orchid. And this thing is like teeny tiny. It's bright yellow. And it looks like a little star. So when you're on a bushwalk and you see it, it's just like seeing little fairies all throughout the bush, which I think is so whimsical and wholesome. 02:31 That's beautiful. Someone who is very excited about the endemic orchids is our next guest, Clancy Lester. Now, Clancy, you are a friend of the show. You've been on before. You are the bee man. You are all about the bees. For anyone who's meeting you for the very first time, where did your interest in bees begin? 02:47 Oh, it definitely... It definitely was exacerbated by going up to Arnhem Land to learn about native bees with the First Nations people up there, the Yongnu First Nations. And I just was absolutely so intrigued and learnt so much and loved it. And thanks for having me on, Dr. Lucy and Dr. Carl. I'm so excited to be here once again. 03:06 Oh, my God, I wish I'd known that segue from Yongu Fever from Baker Boy into, you know, you being there and learning about native bees. 03:12 He's a celebrity up there, don't you worry. 03:14 Oh, the prince of Arnhem Land. Now, Clancy, what have you been up to? Because you're big on socials, you're always doing explainers on bees and their habitats, et cetera. What's been happening in that world? 03:24 Oh, so much. I feel like one thing that's been getting me super excited is everyone's getting around native plants and native bees. It's like this thing that I don't feel like has been as much in the public eye until more recently. And I'm just been loving riding that wave. 03:37 Well, let's get into some questions. Rose, what kind of questions can you answer this morning? 03:42 I am so happy to talk about plants, whether it's gardening, what you've seen on your bushwalks or anything in that kind of nature field. And it will definitely feed into questions people have for Clancy as well, because as we know, pollinators and plants are very closely related. 03:57 Yeah, they go hand in hand. And of course, some regular questions for Dr. Carl as well. If you want to throw those in the mix, 0439 757 555. Jade in Brisbane, you are kicking us off. Dr. Jade, what is your question? Good morning, doctors. 04:10 Good morning. 04:12 So I've got a question. So how do I pollinate my fruit trees when our bees have disappeared in our area? 04:22 Clancy, do you want to kick us off? 04:23 Yeah, absolutely. So this is a bit of a sad one at times when we're seeing what the impacts of varroa might have happened on the European honeybees. 04:32 But one of the tips that I would love to provide is to plant native plants and to build an ecosystem of an incredible biodiversity in your garden. Because if you encourage biodiversity of native plants, then you'll attract all sorts of other native pollinators which will pollinate those fruit trees and make up for the loss in the European honeybees. 04:55 Rose is there anything that you can speak to there about that process of pollination? 04:59 Yeah I know I have seen videos and heard from friends of people hand pollinating the plants that they have in their gardens. My partner's mum actually does it which is really cute for her fruit plants but yeah I would agree with Clancy if you can encourage any kind of pollinator into your garden that's going to help over those yeah times we don't see quite as many bees around. 05:20 Does that help Jade? Yes, thank you. Hell yeah. Alison in Wodonga, what do you want to know? 05:25 Hi, doctors. My question is particularly for Dr Rose. I love your enthusiasm. 05:32 So this is in reference mainly to plants that you would expect to be like leafy and green. I noticed in cold weather they might change their leaf colour to like a purple or a red. 05:44 And I was wondering like what that is. My instinct is that it's some kind of protection or some kind of hibernation. 05:52 That's a great question because in Australia we do largely have evergreen plants. They don't tend to change colour, but we do see them around occasionally. 06:02 Over winter in places like the UK where it gets really cold or it may even snow, plants lose their leaves. And during that process, you'll see the leaves change to orange or red or all those kinds of colours. And the reason for that is as they decide to lose their leaves, they actually reduce the amount of chlorophyll, which is the green pigment in leaves. That's what they use to photosynthesise. And you're left with these pigments called carotenoids. I hope I'm saying that correctly. And they give them that red or... orange colour the purple ones as well I remember learning at uni about some plants have slightly different leaf colours to get different parts of the light spectrum and then also sometimes they look different again if they have things like lots of hairs on their leaves because that might make it look shiny or silver and that's more to do with reducing water loss oh 06:52 Interesting. Does that answer your question? 06:55 Yeah, I think so. Beautiful. But yeah, in Australia, we don't generally see plants lose their leaves because our climate is a bit more sunny year round. So plants don't want to lose their leaves because they're like, I need to photosynthesize at all times. Whereas places where there's less sun over winter, they're like, too many resources going to these leaves, got to lose them. 07:15 Dr. Carl? 07:15 Yeah. So, Rose, can I ask you, I've long had the impression, which could be wrong, that chlorophyll is expensive to make and that the plants draw it back, the trees draw it back from the leaves back into their wherever and then send it out again when the new leaves grow. Now, tell me how wrong I am. 07:35 No, I feel like that's how I understand it as well, because over winter, it sounds counterintuitive, but for places where it snows, for example, the water is ice. So they can actually have things like reduced water accessibility. So they're like, I need to keep all my resources to stay alive. And on top of that, frost can make cells in leaves burst. So basically, yeah, having leaves is expensive. And if it's not going to be worth their time, they'll pull those resources back. Thanks, Alison. 08:05 Awesome. Thank you. Yay. And we've got Petra in the Hunter Valley. I like that you wrote, I got a question for the bee man. What do you want to know? 08:13 Hi, doctors. Yeah. My question is, we have a large garden and this season, we've just noticed a whole heap more of flies, like blow flies and less bees. And so I was wondering, is it like, you know, snakes where you have a red belly and you have less brown snakes? Is there a bit of a a challenge in the ecosystem going on or do they complement each other? So if there's more flies, are there less bees and vice versa? 08:40 Yes, thanks for that question, Dr. Petra. That's a very interesting observation you've made there. 08:46 One thing that happens around each season with the different climates, different rainfall, sometimes you might see more of a particular pollinated flies, for an example, sometimes if there's extra water around. And What's really interesting about pollination and their competition or sometimes they can also boost the pollination when there's more. And a way that they've studied this was they looked at the pollination of a flower and if this flower got 10 visits from the same pollinator, say a European honeybee, versus if that flower got 10 visits from 10 different pollinators. 09:20 And the efficiency of the pollination was actually improved having a diversity in the amount of pollinators or the different types of pollinators because they have different structures, different behaviors, they're different sizes. They might be at different times a day, different times through the year. And so having that diversity will actually really help the biodiversity of the plants as well. So it can actually be a really, really good thing so long as resources aren't limited and they aren't directly competing with each other. 09:46 Oh, that's really interesting. And another great reason for diversity. 09:50 Yes, exactly, Petra. We love it. Okay. 09:53 Thank you so much, Bee Man. 09:54 Thank you. Yes, the Bee Man. Thanks, Dr. Petra. Yeah. Glancy Lester is with us, the Bee Man, answering all your questions about native bees. And we've got Rose Kerr with us, who knows all things botany and plant science. 10:07 We are getting bombarded with questions. I love this. Keep them coming. 0439 75 7555. But Dr. Carl, maybe this is something you can speak to. We've got Nick in Melbourne here. Nick, you're a tradie. What's your question? 10:20 Morning, doctors. How are you? 10:22 Good. How are you doing? 10:23 Good, good. I probably should know this because I'm a tradie, but it's always inquisitive of me. How do they put up those big cranes for the, obviously, the big towers in the city? Do they need a bigger crane? And then how do they get it up to the top? 10:38 Nick, I've wanted the same thing. 10:40 It's fun watching them do it. So they start off with a small crane that has a self-jacking capability. So they bolt it together and they put a crane thing at the top and then there's hydraulics that lift the top section up by what they call one section. And then while it's at that level, it drops the string down, the steel rope, and it pulls up the next section and the workers then bolt it into that missing section. It then lowers itself a little bit, puts the weight on the new section, then pushes it up one more section and then now there's a gap and they keep on inserting the new sections. 11:12 It gets messy as you get higher because you have to then bolt yourself to the building and I'm always amazed by these so-called Derek cranes. which have got a narrow base maybe two metres across and there's just this vertical stick and then horizontally you've got a person in a box going backwards and forwards and some counterways and they never fall over. I love that bit to pieces. And then when they get to the top, normally they'll get another light crane. which they'll bring up internally, to then dismantle it and pull it down, to pull the big crane, the little crane down. 11:49 And by the way, that little crane that they're putting up at the side, I left that bit out, it pulls the sections for the big crane up that goes to the top of the building. And that one then stays there and it lifts the really heavy sections and then that gets then dismantled, the big crane, and then it gets lowered down by the smaller crane or even a smaller, smaller crane. 12:08 It's a complicated thing. Can you go on? Yeah. 12:11 So does that mean that as you go up higher, it gets smaller and smaller? Because I have to obviously keep on inserting pieces from the inside? 12:20 Well, what's the hit getting smaller? 12:23 Like, you know, because you're going from smaller crane to then building the next side. Is it also going, you know, is the crane kind of going smaller in size? 12:31 Oh, no, it's still the same diameter all the way through but bottled onto the building to give it some stability. So you have the small crane climbing up the side, then it pulls up the sections with the big crane, they then leave that on the top of the building and then will dismantle, either use the small crane to dismantle the big crane or they'll use a smaller, smaller crane to dismantle the medium crane after the... It's pulled down the big crane. 12:55 There's so many cranes. You need to see a video on it. 12:57 There's many cranes. 12:58 I now understand why you don't know, you know? 13:03 Yeah, it just seems like a loop. 13:04 Yeah, exactly, a loop. Yeah, I was going to say, if they were smaller at the time, it would be like a Russian doll of cranes just going inside each other. 13:11 Yeah. It is wonderful just to spend the time. I'm sure that somewhere on YouTube is a slow motion video of it somewhere. 13:18 True. Yeah, stop motion of exactly how it all comes together. Nick, does that give you a start though? 13:24 It does. Thank you very much, doctors. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Dr. Carl. 13:27 Thank you. Nathan in Gippsland, you've got a question about beehives. What do you want to know? 13:34 Morning, doctors. Clancy, I've got one for you, mate. Love what you do. Love your work. I'm talking about frequencies in hives and where the queen would be in the frequency of the hive. Frequency? 13:51 Frequency. Yeah, well, this is a very, very interesting question, Nathan. And so I'm not as well polished in around the frequency of the hive, but I know that there's a few different ways that frequency comes into the bee world. And one of these is through buzz pollination. And so what happens here is there's particular species of bees, like a lot of people have heard of the blue-bounded bee. And what these bees can do is they can actually access pollen that's hidden within the different parts of the flower. So it's not like a flower where you can readily access the pollen. 14:23 So what they'll do is the blue-bounded bee will actually headbutt the flower 350 times a second. 14:29 And other species will actually vibrate their flight muscles, which is almost like revving a car while it's in neutral. And that will, the vibrations and the frequency that will actually like dislodge the pollen from the flowers. So that's a very interesting way of using. And I've heard that it's in a sea. I'm not sure if I have to get a fact check from a musician or someone, but apparently that frequency is able to dislodge the pollen through buzz pollination. Yeah. 14:58 Someone called Charlie Puth. That's so interesting. Wow. Nathan, thanks for your question. 15:04 Yes, thank you very much. Thanks, Dr. Nathan. 15:06 We've got Anna in Brisbane. Now, Anna, talk to us about what you've noticed with your outdoor furniture. 15:12 Hello, doctors. Yeah, so I was talking to my kids yesterday because we got a new outdoor dining set and it's in the full sun. And I was telling them how the sun's going to basically disintegrate the plastic and fade the plastic. And then we started thinking about plants and trees. And there are some plants and trees out there that have been there for years and years and years, and they haven't been disintegrated at all. So I was just wondering what the science about that. 15:40 Sunlight does damage the trees with chemicals called flavonoids, reactive oxidative species, but trees have... Sorry, flavonoids are the sunscreen that the trees have to protect themselves. So firstly, sunlight does damage the plants, but secondly, the plants have got their own sunscreen and they're constantly repairing themselves and they're throwing off the dead bits. 16:05 Dr Rose, can you speak to this at all? 16:07 Yeah, I would say as well, especially if you're in Brisbane, our native plants, our trees, our bushes, all of them are really well adapted to high levels of heat and high levels of sun. So some adaptations you actually might be able to go out and look at with your kids because they're quite easy to see are things like a waxy surface on the leaves. It's called a cuticle and that can help reduce water loss. I believe sometimes it can reflect a little bit of sunlight and Then you've also got hairy leaves. So on each leaf, they have tiny, tiny, tiny holes called stomata. 16:38 And that's how they do their gas exchange for things like photosynthesis and respiration. And those hairs kind of protect that a little bit. So less water is drawn out of the leaf in transpiration. And essentially, those things help the plant lose less water which means when the sun is baking hot they're less likely to get all shrively and brown and i will say as well with the sunlight high temperatures and lots of sunlight can also reduce photosynthesis a little bit if it's too hot for them and if it's really really hot it can kind of burn and kill off cells i once accidentally put some cacti on a black balcony in the middle of a heat wave and oh my god did they get uh yeah a little worse for wear to say the least yeah 17:23 Even if you leave, I left a pillow out on our porch for a little too long and it's completely paled, the material. And even if shoes, you've got to be careful. Anna, does that help for now? 17:36 Yes, I can't wait to tell my kids. 17:37 Thank you. Yes, play this back for them. Thank you, Doctor. Yes, I will. Yay, Josh in Newcastle. Now, you've led your question saying you've been stung to bits by honeybees. 17:49 Yes, that's true. I was... 17:52 I had to put the frame down of honeybees that I was just checking. 17:58 My queen bee died a couple of weeks ago and I was wondering what was going on inside. But apparently you want to talk about native bees. So I've actually got an adduction hive on my, what are they called? Tetragonula carbonaria, I think they're called. A what? 18:17 Tetragonula carbonaria, but they might have changed their name. 18:21 I'm sure the bee man can strike me out. 18:23 Yeah. That's the common name for like, or that's the fancy name, sorry, for the like charcoal stingless bees, which is a common native bee species that people will keep the honey in Australia. 18:34 Oh, I see. And what is an abduction hive? Abduction hive? 18:39 Yeah. So as a tree lopper, I come across like hollow logs and stuff all the time. So after I got my first hive, I stuck one on the front entrance a couple of years ago, but then it was like swarmed by another, like an outside hive was trying to take it over. So I moved the original one out and tried to let it move in and that didn't work. So I stuck it back on and now they're kind of building up into it and I'm wondering like, What's going on in there? Like, I can crack it open and see a bit, but I'm not sure if there's eggs or... Are they going to build a new hive into it or is it going to just turn into one big hive or...? 19:18 Clancy, what's going on? 19:20 Sounds like another very interesting story and observation. Thanks, Dr. Josh. So one thing about the Tetragonula carbonara, which is very interesting, is they're the only or one of the few species in Australia that it's observed to have like territorial conflict between the different colonies of the stingless bees. And so what you might observe there is a takeover from from a hostile colony. And what they'll do, the workers will grab each other and they'll like wrestle and then it's just one verse one to the death. 19:53 And then whoever has the most leftover will take over usually. 20:00 Yeah, just to clear up, I suddenly thought of the word adduction. So in anatomy, ab means away. You abduct somebody, you abduct your arm away from the body. And ad means towards. So an adduction hive is a hive or a structure that, is this right, it attracts the bees? 20:18 It's actually eduction hive, E-D-U. So... 20:23 Oh, well, that comes from a different root, which means... Yeah. So the word education literally means to draw out from a person what is their natural skill. E means out, duko, dukare. And the classic example is of somebody going into a class and the teacher says, all of you, okay, you're here at high school for the first time, I want you to write an essay on what you've been doing in the holidays, but you, pointing to one person who's sitting there tapping their legs... I want you to write about music. And so they draw out of them, and this is a true story, and they end up being a big-time producer because that teacher recognised she drew out of that person what they were. 20:57 But a knee-duction high, I've got no idea. 21:00 But, Josh, thank you so much for also, hey, you could be our secondary B-man, our deputy B-man at this stage. 21:07 Well, thanks. I just actually cracked open the adduction hive and they've got all these little circular spherical things that they're building in there. I'm guessing that's just still honey. 21:14 I'm not sure if this has been done before. We've got a live dissection on the radio here. 21:19 Josh, thank you so much. 21:21 All right. You guys have a good day. 21:25 We are getting into the plants and the bees. We've got Rose Kerr with us, who is a regular, really, amongst ABC Science, but joining us for the very first time here on Science with Dr. Carl and answering all of your botany and plant science questions. And we've got the bee man, Clancy Lester. to talk all things bees alongside Dr. Carl. Hey, Dr. Carl, earlier you answered a question about how cranes were built. We've got a few people texting in about that. Someone's saying for the crane question, search YouTube for how does a tower crane climb? 21:57 I like that. Love it. Someone else saying something about the diameter of the cranes, how, yeah, the inserts are a smaller diameter than the one it sits on. 22:10 We'd have to see the video. I know. But certainly at the very end, in many cases, if they're putting up a mini-mini crane, it has to be small enough to be taken down in the biggest elevator they've got. 22:18 There's a whole science to it. Caroline in Bulleye. Dr. Caroline, your son was given a bit of a gift. What was it? 22:26 Good morning, doctors. Yes, he was given a beehive kit. And I'm embarrassed to say we've had it in the garage for two years, but I've decided this year is the year. 22:37 Go, Caroline. I love it. 22:41 So, yeah, we're new to the world of bees and obviously we need the bees. 22:46 And I'm just wondering where we start. Should we look at doing a course or what we should do? 22:52 Well, you're talking to the right person, Clancy. Where do they start? 22:54 Thanks so much, Dr. Caroline. I've just got a quick clarifying question before we get started. Is this a beehive kit for either European bees or stingless bees or is this a bee hotel kit for native bees? 23:08 Oh, gosh. 23:09 Do you know what it might look like? 23:10 Do you remember any? 23:11 It's a wooden box. 23:13 Not that that helps. It was a gift from, I think it's from like Native Bees. 23:20 Yes. Okay. Fantastic. 23:23 So if it is a native bee hive, then there's a few names for you to remember to go and look at some of their YouTube videos and some of their resources. Toby Smith is a great native bee expert with... with stingless bees and so is Tim Hurd. And so there's some really good people to learn from around native bees and beekeeping as well. And I'm always an advocate for Facebook groups. A lot of the apres and beekeepers live in Facebook groups. So that's a great way to get started. 23:55 And in terms of bee hotels, if it happens to be a bee hotel, these are one of my favorite things ever for, you know, getting... getting all sorts of people involved, people that have a garden and want to see some more biodiversity in their garden or getting the kids involved with something that's a bit practical that they can learn to engage with their nature. And bee hotels are awesome for this because it's providing a house for the native bees that don't have a hive or a queen that just need a little hole in a bit of bamboo or in a bit of wood. 24:28 And this is perfect for that because only 11 out of all the 2,600 species of bees we have in Australia, only 11 actually have hives and have a queen and make honey. So these bee hotels you can make are for the solitary ones that live alone. So it is such a great way to get started. Yeah. 24:49 By getting started, you can learn all about the biodiversity of native bees. And I'm sure that it's no good to have a hotel without a restaurant. And so I'd love to throw to Dr. Rose to talk about what you could do in terms of providing the restaurant or the plants for the bee hotel. 25:06 The buffet breakfast, so to speak. Rose, what have we got? I'm obsessed with that analogy. That's fantastic. I mean, depending on where you live, there's going to be different plants native to wherever you are in the country. So my recommendation would be to either go for a bushwalk and see if you can spot any native plants that potentially have some native bees around them or even just some insects doing their pollination thing in general. Or if you go to a native plant nursery and... Talk to some of the people there. They're always really knowledgeable. And you can ask them what grows in your area. 25:37 And that might give you a bit of a hint as to what the bees would like to eat at the restaurant. But I know in my own garden, a plant that the bees really love is called Eremophila. And these occur pretty much across all of Australia. They're native to Australia. And they've got these gorgeous, brightly coloured, tubular shaped flowers that the bees seem to love. Apparently also birds, but I've mostly seen bees. So that would be how I would start. 26:01 scientific name or is that like the genus sometimes they call it emu bush it depends because there's so many species of them okay yeah I've kind of started to encourage bees by planting lots of natives in the front yard so um I'm on the south coast so um yeah growing in the front yard trying to encourage the bees because I've also got a vegetable garden And the pollination hasn't been happening. So, yeah, I'm trying to get the bees back. 26:30 Caroline, you've got it all. And you know what? Good on you. 2026, this is the year that the bee kit, it happens, okay? 26:38 Text us, actually text us in December and tell us if you did it. 26:42 Okay. No pressure. No pressure. I've given you a deadline, Caroline. We've got Julia in Canberra here. Dr. Julia, we were talking about the sun before impacting, you know, outdoor furniture. What do you want to know? 26:56 Yeah, so I was doing away washing the other day, doctors, and I noticed I put a shirt out that had a tomato stain in it. And I was like, oh, there's no way it's going to come out. But I put it out in the sun and then went back a couple of hours later and the tomato stain was gone. So I wanted to know why the sun was so good at removing tomato stains. 27:14 I'm guessing you didn't have a handy nonna nearby to give you the advice. So the active chemical is called lycopene. There are many active chemicals. There's a whole family of them in the tomato bushes. And the lycopene has all sorts of health benefits. So following the advice of Claire Collins, I'm trying to eat at least one tomato every couple of days. Mm. 27:33 If you'll get a chance, I'll just go and grab one. The trouble is that this chemical, while it has various good properties for your health and don't go into the whole superfood thing, this chemical also is really good at staining. So if you're going to store a bolognese of some sort and you've got a plastic dish, unfortunately, coat it with a thin layer of olive oil which stops it attacking the plastic and impregnating into it. So with regard to washing it, you just do a regular wash first and then you hang it out in the sunlight and And it turns out that this chemical, the lycopene, gets knocked apart by the ultraviolet. 28:08 So the old wisdom is right there. So the sunlight actually works. And if you happen to be an American and intend not to dry your clothes on the line, then the tomato stains will just stay from generation to generation as it goes washer, you dryer back around and around in a circle. So it's the sunlight, the ultraviolet, breaking down the lycopene, L-Y-C-O-P-E-N-E. 28:30 Great. Well, thank you so much. Rose, do you have anything to add to that? 28:34 Oh, just that I'm so happy you got that tomato stain out because as a messy girl, that is happening to me a lot and I'm going to have to try this. 28:40 I'm going to try this too. Julia, thank you so much. Thank you. And we've got Marcus on the Central Coast. I love this question, Marcus. What do you want to know? 28:49 Hi, doctors. How are you going? 28:50 Good. 28:51 Right. My question was, are we actually closer to what Avatar portrays than we actually think? Because... 29:00 You've got species of orchids that will attract wasps for pollination because they look like the wasp and they also release like a pheromone or their perfume is close to a pheromone of a wasp. 29:16 You're so right. That is one of my favourite orchids in the world. There's a few of them that do this. It's called sexual deception, which I think is so funny. 29:28 And yeah, like you say. How does a plant know to imitate an insect? If the insect hasn't imitated the plant, it's the other way around. It's incredible. 29:39 Isn't it just amazing? Like the way that evolution has made this beautifully specific relationship and orchids have a few really cool ways that they make the most of the environment they live in. Like they can only grow when they have a partnership with a mycorrhizal fungi. This is a fungi under the ground that helps get them nutrients, which is especially important when they're just a little seed. But yeah, they basically, reproduction is so key to evolution and I am sure pretty sure it would have been the case that the plants that were somehow luring these wasps over for a good time and then getting pollinated they survive the best survival of the fittest they keep going and yeah we get these delightful orchids like the hammer orchid and the flying duck orchid that use their wiles to attract a wasp and trick them into pollinating them yeah it's just amazing though that like how has a plant developed to do that like that 30:39 And that's why you sort of look at Avatar and go, well, maybe it is true. Maybe everything is connected. 30:43 Yeah, very true. Hey, Rose, have you seen Avatar in a minute? No, I haven't. 30:49 I will admit I have not. Are there any scenes in particular that got your attention? Yeah, Marcus. 30:55 Oh, no, it was just the whole movie. It's all of that connection, like the, well, the home tree and how it, You know, it radiates out to all the other plants and everything is connected together and it's all, yeah. 31:07 Clancy? And I'm a massive fan of seeing ourselves as a part of nature. It's one way we sort of see ourselves a bit disconnected sometimes, especially if we're inside four walls all day or inside city life. But we're a part of nature. You can't escape it. You know, every breath you take, that's thanks to the trees and the phytoplankton. 31:27 That's it. 31:27 And if you want to read up more on it, Zoe Keane, a friend of the show, she is kind of an evolutionary biologist and she's written stories about exactly the sort of things that you're describing and how over a period of time the two different species tend to favour each other so they have more babies and then you end up with the perfect match but you don't see the millions of years before it. Zoe Keane. 31:47 Zoe Keane, yeah, she's the best. Zoe Keane, Si, if you want to check out more of her stuff. Marcus, thank you so much for your question. 31:53 Cheers, thank you. 31:57 We're doing science with Dr. Carl. We've been joined by Rose Kerr and Clancy Lester talking all things botany and bees. We've got one last round of questions. Fletcher in Darwin. Hey, Dr. Fletcher, you've got a question about colour blindness taking us to a different topic. What do you want to hear? 32:14 Yeah, how are you going, doctors? 32:17 I was just wondering why people are born colour blind and how does it work? 32:22 Ah, the way that we see colours in the world is that in our retina, when light lands on the cones, there's three different types, they give off electricity. The cones are sensitive mostly to red light and another one to green light and another one to blue light. And so if you have yellow light landing on your retina... The red and green cones, they're stimulated. They give up a lot of electricity. The blue cones, not much. So that's your so-called normal vision. 32:55 Now, at one extreme, you've got people who can be sometimes fully albino with no pigments and pale as a tea towel and they literally have no cones. For them... That's black and white. Everything's black and white. And I have to wear sunglasses because the rods that do the seeing are optimized for low-level seeing. But what's common in our society is the common color blindness where you have a variation on the cones, one in 12 for males, one in 2,000 for females. 33:29 It's to do with the X chromosome. I'll stop right there. And... The typical one is called red-green colourblind, which means you've got a blue cone, you can pick up blue light, and you've got either a red or a green. 33:41 And then the way that our society deals with this is that it puts into the green traffic lights, it puts a hint of blue. 33:51 So that way you can tell the difference. There's a blue one and a yellow one and a red one, and that's what the people who are red-green colourblind can see. Interesting. Cleansing. 33:59 Yeah. So in terms of the bee world and vision, one thing that's interesting in humans, we have the visible wavelength of light that we see. And when you go to one side, you have the infrared light and you go to the other side and you've got the ultraviolet light. And bees and some insects are actually capable of seeing ultraviolet light. So if you actually have a flower... and then you have like a bright ultraviolet light and you shine it on that flower, it will actually show you a different array of colours. So you might be looking at a flower that's completely yellow to human vision, and when you look at it under UV light, it might have a little target on it to show where the bees should collect the pollen from. 34:35 Over here, dummy, come over here. Literally, yeah. 34:38 Fletcher, thanks for your question. 34:40 Yeah, bloody oath. Thank you, guys. 34:42 We've got Josh in Tassie now. Josh, you are a keen fly fisher. What have you noticed? 34:48 G'day, doctors. How are you going? Good. 34:50 That's good. 34:52 Yes, I'm a fly fisherman down here. I guess you could call that. I'm not very good at it, but I just wanted to call through and ask about a question I've been pondering on for the last sort of week or so. I fished a lake up in the sort of higher altitude part of Tassie recently, last weekend, and we've had some pretty warm still weather here, which is strange for this time of year. 35:14 and one thing that took me by surprise was I saw really large amounts of damselflies breeding or mating on the sort of around the reeds and on the top of the water throughout the day that I was fishing and that seemed a bit early to me so I looked it up and it seems that most of this activity is usually expected from damselflies around November to December but usually more January and February and I wanted to ask is this sort of insect activity happening early indicative of just small pulses in weather variation like with the weather we've had or is it more of a sort of representative of a long-term change in our weather patterns that could be bringing out these insects earlier and therefore we could sort of attribute part of it to climate change or all of it? 36:05 Yeah, actually both. So if you really spread the window wide, the damselflies will do their flight activity between October and March. But as you mentioned, they tend to concentrate in a narrower range. Now, the damselfly starts off as a nymph underwater. Yeah. and what happens is you don't see anything. So firstly, when it's cold, the nymphs are underwater and they're just sort of developing very slowly. It warms up and then they get a bit more development and then you start heading into a bit of extra warmth and the adults emerge and then you get a still warm day and then suddenly they just erupt like crazy and because you haven't seen the previous stages... 36:44 you think, oh my God, they just came from nowhere. And what you're seeing is a sudden burst of activity due to a short-term change in climate. But then long-term, yes, climate change is real. And the insect and the plant species are shifting earlier to coming out when it's warmer, like we've had a very mild winter here in Australia. And so, Rose, can you tell us about how the plants, which you're involved with being eaten by insects, how they're adapting to climate change? 37:15 Yeah, so plants know when to flower based on the length of day, the sunlight and the temperature. And so if those change over time, you do see plants reacting to that. I know in Perth, even in my own garden, I've seen plants flower months ahead than they normally do. And so because, yeah, they're reacting to what is happening around them, my, you know, just... 37:42 personal uh suspicion is that yeah as the climate changes that's going to change and that can cause flow on effects as clancy has mentioned everything in our ecosystems interact with each other and you don't want to see things not well timed you need the pollinators coming out at the same time as the flowers. I don't know if you have any exact examples, Clancy, that you like to draw on in this case. 38:03 I absolutely do have an example. I'd love to draw on Rose. And I know I've probably got some listeners today that might be driving along the highway. And if you look out your window and, or if you remember going for a drive and you see those big gum trees and they have these things called mistletoes, which I like to call the Robin Hood plant because they will steal the big gum trees resources and will give it to the poor because they'll flower and give out nectar and so they're like the Robin Hood because they sort of, these big eucalyptus, they have all these big resources and don't share it apart from a few weeks of the year. 38:38 And these mistletoes, some of these mistletoes will have specialist bee pollinators, so the box mistletoe for an example. And there might be particular bee species that only visit this mistletoe. And we see this right across a lot of different species where there's species of bees that spend their whole evolution around their morphology, their life cycle, where they're distributed, the time of year they're active around the plants that they've evolved to pollinating. And so if that plant suddenly in the last few decades is flowering a month earlier, that bee is emerging, you know, when it usually emerges and then he's looking for that flower and going, where enough is this? 39:17 Like why isn't it flowering and it might have already finished? 39:19 And you can see a terrible example of this when you've got plants that die and are reborn every year so they can evolve rapidly. But on the other hand, the flying birds might have a lifespan of 10 or 20 years and they migrate from one side of the equator to the other and they arrive on time and the plants have already pollinated. It's too late. They starve. Yeah. 39:40 Oh. Well, Rose, is there anything to add to this one? 39:45 Yeah, I would just say that's why I really encourage people to plant species that are native to their specific area because hopefully if the timings don't get out of whack, at least they're in the right place. The native birds where I live, they like to visit the plants in my garden that grow in the area naturally as it is. So that can help a little bit. But I hold a little bit of concern about, yeah, like, if the plant species are growing further north and then the birds and the bees aren't in that exact spot like how's that all going to affect it it's a very complex web of interactions between everything that's a really great note to end on rose is there anywhere we can go to check out more of your work or what you're up to You can follow me on Instagram if you like. 40:28 I'm Rosie underscore Zed Kerr or dot Zed Kerr. Actually, I don't even know. And I also work on a psychology podcast called All in the Mind. So if you're up for hearing more about how we behave and why we behave the way we do, sometimes I pull some plants into that as well. Highly recommend taking a listen. Oh, Rose, you can do it all. Rose Kerr, thank you so much for joining us for the very first time on Science with Dr. Carl. 40:49 Thank you. And Clancy Lester, similar to Rose, do you have anything that you want to end on here? Any kind of message that you'd want to put out to people listening about bees? 40:58 I would just say, just connect to your local environment, you know, learn something, you know, open up a book, go for a walk, just do something to experience nature. So then you can more connected to it and then you're going to be more likely to care about it and want to look after it. 41:12 Oh yeah. And you keep us connected on socials. Where can we find your work? 41:15 Yeah, at Bees and Blossoms on everything. Go and look it up and go and hit follow, comment, harass me, whatever. I love it. 41:22 So good. At Bees and Blossoms. Dr. Carl, we'll catch you next week. 41:26 Peachy keen. 41:28 And that's it. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Science with Dr. Carl. A big thank you again to Rose Kerr for coming through for her debut Science with Dr. Carl and Clancy Lester, who we've had on before. If you want to check out previous episodes with Clancy, take a scroll through the podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. This week's episode was produced by Ella Carter. I'm Lucy Smith. I won't catch you next week. I'm actually off for three weeks. I'm going for my Euro summer, a little Italy, a little London. So I'll see you on the other side. 41:59 Tanya Bunti is going to be filling in the next few weeks. Make her feel welcome and make sure you send through your science questions either on the text line or we have a Google link for you in the show notes for you to submit your questions early. 42:12 All right, I'm getting out of here. Bye. 42:15 Dave Marchese here from the Triple J Hack team. Hey, if you love Dr. Carl's podcast like I do, you might enjoy the Hack podcast as well. Each day we bring you the news that matters to you, from the latest science on climate change to what's happening in politics and news around the world. The Hack podcast. It's your daily fix of the news you need to know. Get it wherever you're listening now.