Transcript

6.4.26 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Radiowized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader
0:05
Speaker 1: is Kelly Taylor. Then I'll have articles on those topics.
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Speaker 1: But first a reminder that radioi is a reading service
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Speaker 1: intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities
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Speaker 1: that make it difficult to read printed material. From BBC
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Speaker 1: Science Focus magazine, we have an article that's headlined more
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Speaker 1: than a billion birds die each year after colliding with
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Speaker 1: US buildings. Here's why this is dated May twenty First,
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Speaker 1: birds often collide with buildings because they have difficulty distinguishing
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Speaker 1: glass from open air, mistaking reflected sky or vegetation for
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Speaker 1: the real thing. Light from buildings at night can also
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Speaker 1: draw migratory birds into urban areas, where collisions are more likely.
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Speaker 1: A twenty twenty four study estimated that over one billion
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Speaker 1: birds are killed annually as a result of colliding with
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Speaker 1: buildings in the US alone. This is larger than previous
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Speaker 1: estimates as it considers birds found dead at the scene,
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Speaker 1: but also those that survived the collision only to die
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Speaker 1: later in rehabilitative care. The researchers call for more buildings
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Speaker 1: to be made bird friendly, such as by adding visual
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Speaker 1: markers to windows. Now an article from Smithsonian. This Greek
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Speaker 1: volcano seemed quiet for one hundred thousand years, then it
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Speaker 1: erupted again. Should scientists take a second look at quote
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Speaker 1: extinct volcanoes? This is from May first. The last eruption
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Speaker 1: of Greece's Methana volcano was around two hundred and fifty BCE.
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Speaker 1: Ever since that event, which was recorded by the Greek
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Speaker 1: historian Strabo, the mountain has lurked silent just across the
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Speaker 1: Saronic Gulf from Athens. But the volcano's calm exterior could
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Speaker 1: be masking a tumultuous and potentially dangerous inner life. Quote.
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Speaker 1: It's important for our society to understand that four volcanoes
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Speaker 1: quiet doesn't always mean safe, says Ras von Gabriel Popa,
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Speaker 1: a volcanologist at eth Zurich in Switzerland. In a study
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Speaker 1: published April twenty second in the journal Science Advances, Popa
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Speaker 1: and a team of geologists documented the past seven hundred
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Speaker 1: thousand years of the Methana volcanoes history, which included thirty
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Speaker 1: one eruptions. Given the eruption around two hundred and fifty BCE,
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Speaker 1: which is relatively recent on the grand scale of geologic history,
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Speaker 1: Methana is considered an active volcano, not an extinct one,
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Speaker 1: but its newly detailed past reveals that scientists might need
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Speaker 1: to rethink the classification of some volcanoes that are currently
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Speaker 1: considered extinct because they could have hidden activity. Typically, in
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Speaker 1: volcanoes like Methana, just ten thousand years of quiescence is
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Speaker 1: long enough for geologists to declare them extinct, never to
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Speaker 1: erupt again. But the new analysis revealed that Methana underwent
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Speaker 1: a roughly one hundred thousand year period between about one
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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty eight and two hundred and eighty thousand
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Speaker 1: years ago when it didn't erupt at all. Then it
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Speaker 1: began belching out lava once more. The prospect that volcanoes
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Speaker 1: might lie dormant for tens of thousands of years before
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Speaker 1: erupting means that scientists need to reevaluate the hazards some
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Speaker 1: of them may pose. Quote. Part of that calculation is
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Speaker 1: how recently to have erupted, says Adam Kent, volcanologists at
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Speaker 1: Oregon State University. Quote. In that sense, there are probably
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Speaker 1: volcanoes out there that are threatening but not evaluated as
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Speaker 1: such because they haven't erupted for a while. End quote
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Speaker 1: h Cover Methana's history. Popa and his team collected and
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Speaker 1: analyzed more than twelve hundred and fifty crystals of the
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Speaker 1: mineral zircon from the volcano's ancient lava flows. Zircon crystals
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Speaker 1: are incredibly durable and form as magma cools, locking in
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Speaker 1: small amounts of radioactive uranium. By calculating the amount of
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Speaker 1: uranium that has decayed, geologists can determine how old each
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Speaker 1: crystal is and when it formed in relation to the
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Speaker 1: lava flow they found it. In quote, we wanted to
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Speaker 1: study Methena because this volcano has a huge advantage. The
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Speaker 1: different lava flows are not piled up and don't bury
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Speaker 1: each other. Popa says. The flows are spread across a
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Speaker 1: large area, with each eruption forming its own hill, so
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Speaker 1: that geologists can easily access rocks of different ages. To
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Speaker 1: their surprise, Methana's peak and zircon generation was during the
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Speaker 1: one hundred thousand year gap between eruptions. This means magma
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Speaker 1: was actively accumulating beneath the b volcano even when it
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Speaker 1: appeared dormant from above. The reason they realized was the
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Speaker 1: chemistry of the magma Methana is above a subduction zone
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Speaker 1: where one tectonic plate is sliding under another, so its
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Speaker 1: magma comes from melting pieces of the ocean floor that
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Speaker 1: have sunk beneath the Earth's crust. That ocean floor is
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Speaker 1: saturated with water, making the magma water rich or superhydrous.
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Speaker 1: Deep in the Earth's crust, where the rock above exerts
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Speaker 1: enormous pressure, water helps superhydrous magma stay molten, but as
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Speaker 1: it rises toward the surface, the pressure slackens and the
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Speaker 1: water molecules start to escape from the magma. Quote they
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Speaker 1: ascend through the crust, they start bubbling like a fizzy drink.
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Speaker 1: Popa tells Reuters. This gas bubbling triggers crystallization, making the
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Speaker 1: magma sticky and viscous, and it slows down a lot
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Speaker 1: by a factor of one hundred to one thousand and
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Speaker 1: becomes so lazy it can't continue towards the surface. The
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Speaker 1: result is that magma accumulates quietly below ground, creating a
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Speaker 1: large and potentially more dangerous reservoir. This discovery could be
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Speaker 1: worrying for people living near subduction zone volcanoes thought to
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Speaker 1: be extinct. Subduction zones occur around the edge of the
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Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean, as well as in the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas.
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Speaker 1: Olivier Bachmann, a volcanologists at ETCH Zurich and co author
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Speaker 1: of the study, says in a statement that the research
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Speaker 1: has implications for volcano authorities all over the world, from
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Speaker 1: Europe to Japan, Southeast Asia and the Americas. Quote this
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Speaker 1: means re evaluating the threat level of volcanoes that have
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Speaker 1: been quiet for tens of thousands of years but show
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Speaker 1: periodic signs of magmatic unrest. Now from earth dot com
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Speaker 1: we get a story about coral reefs that may be
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Speaker 1: hiding a natural pharmacy. Scientists are only beginning to understand.
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Speaker 1: This is dated May twenty fourth. Sea sponges have driven
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Speaker 1: most of what reef scientists call marine drug discovery. The
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Speaker 1: chemistry they produce is unusual, varied, and well documented. Other
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Speaker 1: reef organisms that are visible sent further down the list.
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Speaker 1: For example, reef building corals were barely on it. A
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Speaker 1: study that just cataloged the genomes of hundreds of their
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Speaker 1: resident microbes found out why that was a mistake. The
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Speaker 1: samples came out of a Pacific Ocean voyage that ended
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Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. Researchers aboard a schooner named Terra pulled
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Speaker 1: more than eight hundred coral fragments from reefs across roughly
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Speaker 1: thirty islands. Shinichi Sinagawa, a microbial ecologist at ETCH Zurich,
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Speaker 1: led the team that pieced those fragments into microbial genomes.
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Speaker 1: The work turned up six hundred forty five microbial species, bacteria,
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Speaker 1: and ancient single cell organisms called archaea. All were living
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Speaker 1: on or inside three groups of reef building corals. More
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Speaker 1: than ninety nine percent of those species had never been
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Speaker 1: recorded in any genome database. Sunagawa explained that they were
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Speaker 1: essentially unknown to science. The researchers checked whether these micros
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Speaker 1: might have drifted in from open water. They hadn't. When
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Speaker 1: the team compared coral samples with seawater taken at increasing distances,
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Speaker 1: the coral microbiome was largely absent past a few feet
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Speaker 1: from the host. Even within one reef, different corals carried
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Speaker 1: different communities. Across the three coral groups studied, ninety five
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Speaker 1: percent of microbial species turned up on only one host type.
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Speaker 1: It resembled the way human skin and goes microbes stay
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Speaker 1: tied to specific body sites. This host specific arrangement was
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Speaker 1: described in a recent review. These microbes are not idle
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Speaker 1: to defend against pathogens, predators, and competitors in a crowded ecosystem.
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Speaker 1: They appear to manufacture chemicals. Many of these are the
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Speaker 1: kinds of small molecules drug companies spend fortunes trying to invent.
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Speaker 1: The team scanned every genome for the genetic instructions marine
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Speaker 1: microbes use to assemble those chemicals. Reef microbes carried more
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Speaker 1: of those recipes per species than the group had found
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Speaker 1: in an earlier study across the open ocean. About sixty
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Speaker 1: four percent of those gene blueprints had never been described before.
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Speaker 1: These aren't tweaks on compounds already sitting on a chemist's shelf.
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Speaker 1: They are recipes for chemistry that hasn't been built yet.
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Speaker 1: Fire corals, named for the painful steam they inflict on
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Speaker 1: swimmers who brush against them, were not expected to dominate
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Speaker 1: this analysis. Most reef research has traditionally focused on stony corals,
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Speaker 1: the primary builders of coral reefs, but fire corals turned
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Speaker 1: out to host the richest microbiome of the three different groups.
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Speaker 1: Per species, Their microbes carried nearly twice as many chemical
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Speaker 1: production gene clusters as the soft coral microbes that older
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Speaker 1: studies had focused on. Reading chemistry of a genome is
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Speaker 1: not the same as proving at works. The team picked
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Speaker 1: a few promising targets, then they ran them through the
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Speaker 1: full process, turning genetic instructions into a functional enzyme and
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Speaker 1: finally into a testable chemical. One target stood out, a
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Speaker 1: poorly studied bacterium from the coral microbiome carried instructions for
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Speaker 1: a small protein decorated with ring shaped chemical groups that
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Speaker 1: show up across many marketed drugs uggs. When researchers rebuilt
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Speaker 1: the assembly machinery and a lab strain of bacteria, they
11:05
Speaker 1: produced the modified protein in a controlled system. It blocked
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Speaker 1: human neutrophil elastase, an enzyme that drives tissue damage and
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Speaker 1: inflammatory disease, at concentrations low enough to interest drug developers.
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Speaker 1: The team also showed the assembly enzyme works on shortened
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Speaker 1: versions of the protein and on proteins built to do
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Speaker 1: different jobs. That flexibility is what biotech labs look for
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Speaker 1: in a starting tool. Natural products have been turning up
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Speaker 1: in marine ecosystems for decades, but systematic searches inside reef
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Speaker 1: building corals barely existed before this work. Three coral genera
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Speaker 1: went into this analysis. Several hundred more exist sponges, molluscs,
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Speaker 1: and algae hosts their own untobled microbial communities, Almost none
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Speaker 1: surveyed at this resolution. Each could be a source of
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Speaker 1: new enzymes, antibiotics, or drug scaffolds, and each is shrinking
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Speaker 1: as warming water threatens the habitats around them. The case
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Speaker 1: for protecting reefs is long leaned on tourism, fisheries, and
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Speaker 1: coastal protection from storm waves. Their molecular value was thinner.
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Speaker 1: Occasional drugs came out of ref organisms, but no full
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Speaker 1: inventory of what their microbes carried existed. The inventory now
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Speaker 1: covers three coral types across one ocean basin. Reef microbiomes
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Speaker 1: hold more chemistry and coding genes per organism than the
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Speaker 1: surrounding sea. Most remain unread, but one voyage produced a
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Speaker 1: working enzyme of pharmaceutical interest. Quote. Molecular research on coral
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Speaker 1: reefs offers enormous potential for biotechnological and medical applications, said
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Speaker 1: Orn Peel, a chemist at ETCH Zurich. The challenge ahead
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Speaker 1: is time reefs are vanishing faster than the chemistry inside
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Speaker 1: them can be read, and most of what's lost will
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Speaker 1: never be sampled again. Now, let's turn back to the
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Speaker 1: topic of volcanoes for a second and popular mechanics as
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Speaker 1: an article. The most dangerous volcanic threat to America is coming,
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Speaker 1: and it doesn't need an eruption to begin. This is
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Speaker 1: dated May twenty seven. After Mount Saint Helen's erupted in
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, experts were faced with a precarious question, how
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Speaker 1: can we best prepare for when, not if, the next
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Speaker 1: volcanic eruption in the Cascade Range occurs? Triggered by a
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Speaker 1: five point one magnitude earthquake, the Mount Saint Helen's volcanic
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Speaker 1: disaster devastated nearby communities in Washington, taking fifty seven lives
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Speaker 1: and causing eight hundred and sixty million dollars in damage
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Speaker 1: to roads, railways, local infrastructure, and the logging industry. And
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Speaker 1: for researchers, it was a wake up call for establishing
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Speaker 1: better seismic monitoring and eruption preparedness. But if scientists weren't
14:15
Speaker 1: necessarily figuring out how to plan for streams of lava
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Speaker 1: or plumes of ash billowing out of a volcano in
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Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest, region. They knew they needed a blueprint
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Speaker 1: for taking a lesser known danger when they could wreak
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Speaker 1: havoc on communities without volcano even erupting. The ruin brought
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Speaker 1: by the Mount Saint Helen's disaster had less to do
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Speaker 1: with the eruption itself, but rather the huge lahar the
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Speaker 1: event generated. Experts warn these violent volcanic mudflows could be
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Speaker 1: the biggest looming threats to people, towns, and the environment
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Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest, and the race to analyze lahars
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Speaker 1: before it's too late sits at this center of this
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Speaker 1: popular mechanics feature. What makes a lahar so perilous start
15:07
Speaker 1: with its unpredictable behavior as a slurry of sediment, rocky debris,
15:11
Speaker 1: and water begins at the top of a volcano and
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Speaker 1: travels down slope, moving very quickly and covering large distances
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Speaker 1: in mere minutes. A lahar can flow down a volcano
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Speaker 1: and level anything in its path. Quote. They are complex
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Speaker 1: phenomena that change a lot during transport, says National Autonomous
15:32
Speaker 1: University of Mexico volcanologist Lizethe Cabalero Garcia. Quote. They can grow,
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Speaker 1: they can dilute quote, and there's a good reason why
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Speaker 1: United States Geological Survey researchers have deemed lahar's the most
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Speaker 1: threatening hazard in the Cascades. They pose a direct danger
15:53
Speaker 1: to surrounding communities. For instance, around one hundred and fifty
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Speaker 1: thousand people live in Washington's Pierce County, in the middle
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Speaker 1: of the projected lahar path of a volcano, Mount Rainier
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Speaker 1: that's located just around sixty miles from Seattle. But an
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Speaker 1: eruption or other seismic event doesn't even have to occur
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Speaker 1: for a lahar to set off, and that's a crucial
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Speaker 1: reason why scientists have spent decades trying to understand the
16:23
Speaker 1: risks that communities near Cascade Range volcanoes face. Everything from
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Speaker 1: damn failures to heavy thunderstorms have spurred fatal lahars around
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Speaker 1: the world, and these no notice lahars worry researchers, especially
16:39
Speaker 1: those studying Rainier. A landslide beginning on the western side
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Speaker 1: of Rainier, scientists say, could demolish the towns of orting
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Speaker 1: Puyallup and Sumner in just half an hour, and it
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Speaker 1: would affect over sixty thousand residents. No notice lahars are
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Speaker 1: the thing that goes bump in the night, says former
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Speaker 1: Cascades Volcano Observatory geophysicist Andy Lockhart, it creeps me out.
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Speaker 1: That's why it's vital to keep researching lahars and get
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Speaker 1: better at forecasting their volatile behavior. To improve their analysis
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Speaker 1: of lahar destruction and impact, scientists have developed some key
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Speaker 1: experimental sites, including a custom flume in Oregon's H. J.
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Speaker 1: Andrews Experimental Forests funded by the USGS, for replicating lahar flows.
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Speaker 1: The Cascades Volcano Observatory has also created an extensive network
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Speaker 1: of monitors throughout the Cascade Range to not only detect
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Speaker 1: lahars and volcanic activity, but also relays signals back to
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Speaker 1: emergency managers in impacting communities so they can take appropriate action.
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Speaker 1: So when could the next lahar or another seismic event occur?
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Speaker 1: Research warned that it could be scarily imminent, and that
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Speaker 1: possibility keeps scientists going working to evolve la harve research
18:07
Speaker 1: in hopes that with another disaster like Mount Saint Helen's
18:11
Speaker 1: will be better prepared to respond and react. Turning now
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Speaker 1: to popular science, we have an article that's headlined how
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Speaker 1: squirrels actually find all their buried nuts. As someone who
18:30
Speaker 1: routinely hides things from myself, and that hides in quotes,
18:34
Speaker 1: car keys, receipts, even my cell phone while I'm actively
18:38
Speaker 1: talking on it. I felt instantly validated by Sarah Silverman's
18:42
Speaker 1: joke that squirrels forget where they bury eighty percent of
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Speaker 1: their nuts, and that's how trees are planted. Silverman concludes
18:51
Speaker 1: in her Netflix special A spec of Dust. If these bold,
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Speaker 1: bushy tailed little train wrecks are able to thrive despite
18:59
Speaker 1: that kind of chaos, I figured there might be hope
19:01
Speaker 1: for me. Turns out it was too good to be true. Quote.
19:06
Speaker 1: I appreciate Sarah Silverman's comedy, but actually they're remarkably good
19:11
Speaker 1: at it, says doctor Noah Perlut, professor at the University
19:15
Speaker 1: of New England School of Marine and Environmental Programs, who's
19:18
Speaker 1: leading a long running gray squirrel research. Quote. You can't
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Speaker 1: be an average squirrel or you'll die. It's only the
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Speaker 1: above average squirrels that survive and make babies. End quote.
19:30
Speaker 1: Every fall, squirrels spend weeks racing against winter to stash
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Speaker 1: thousands of nuts and seeds across their territories. When food
19:37
Speaker 1: becomes scarce, they rely on these caches to survive the
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Speaker 1: cold months, so how do these exceptional squirrels relocate the
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Speaker 1: thousands of nuts they've hidden? According to Perlot, squirrels don't
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Speaker 1: use a single strategy to recover their stashes. Instead, they
19:54
Speaker 1: draw upon a skill set that includes smell sight and
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Speaker 1: even cues from other squirrels movements and scent marks. Quote
20:04
Speaker 1: they used the whole tool kit, Perlet says. But when
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Speaker 1: it's time to dig food back up, spatial memory seems
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Speaker 1: to do much of the heavy lifting. In one field experiment,
20:17
Speaker 1: scientists tried to trick squirrels into misplacing their meals. They
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Speaker 1: created fake nut stashes that looked identical to the real ones,
20:26
Speaker 1: and even swapped the grassy patches between them so the
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Speaker 1: impostors carried the real scent. The result, the squirrels didn't
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Speaker 1: waste time going down that rabbit hole. Almost without fail,
20:40
Speaker 1: they ignored the impostors and dug up their actual caches.
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Speaker 1: Decades of research from that nineteen ninety nine experiment to
20:49
Speaker 1: earlier field work on gray squirrels all point to the
20:52
Speaker 1: same conclusion. Squirrels are far better at recovering stored food
20:56
Speaker 1: than Silverman's viral joke suggests. One nineteen eighty urban study
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Speaker 1: estimated that gray squirrels retrieve roughly eighty five percent of
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Speaker 1: their cached nuts. More recently, a twenty twenty three study
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Speaker 1: reports that red squirrels living in an urban park quickly
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Speaker 1: found the majority of nuts they had cashed, even when
21:16
Speaker 1: faced with stiff competition from other squirrels. Another common misconception
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Speaker 1: that all squirrels stashes are buried underground. Quote We commonly
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Speaker 1: think of these caches as being buried in the ground,
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Speaker 1: But imagine being a gray squirrel and living in a
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Speaker 1: place that has a lot of snow or ice. You
21:34
Speaker 1: can't go out and dig through two feet of ice
21:36
Speaker 1: every time you want a single acorn, says Perlt. Instead,
21:40
Speaker 1: squirrels in colder climates store food in tree hollows and branches,
21:44
Speaker 1: further evidence of how sophisticated their mental maps can be. Quote,
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Speaker 1: they have to rely on remembering where inside many trees
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Speaker 1: they placed food, Perlet says. Most tree dwelling squirrels, including
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Speaker 1: the familiar eastern gray that's common in the east in
22:00
Speaker 1: midwestern United States, are what biologists call scatter hoarders, stashing
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Speaker 1: thousands of nuts across a wide area rather than keeping
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Speaker 1: them all in one place. Some squirrels can beary up
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Speaker 1: to three thousand nuts in a single season. Other species,
22:17
Speaker 1: like red squirrels, prefer larder hoarding, a fancy scientific term
22:21
Speaker 1: for stockpiling food in a single defended pantry. Considering the
22:26
Speaker 1: average squirrel's home range is spanned six to eight acres,
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Speaker 1: roughly the size of four football fields, and can include
22:33
Speaker 1: several nests, that's a lot of terrain to keep track of,
22:37
Speaker 1: and they're not only tracking their own assets, they're keeping
22:39
Speaker 1: tabs on everyone else's dinner plans too. Squirrels are not territorial,
22:44
Speaker 1: and they are watching each other's caching behavior, stealing their
22:47
Speaker 1: food and then cashing them in other places. Perlet says
22:51
Speaker 1: their memory, in other words, isn't just about where did
22:54
Speaker 1: I put my food, but also where did that other
22:57
Speaker 1: squirrel put theirs. Perlat notes that a squirrel's memory remains
23:04
Speaker 1: excellent for about two weeks and can stay strong for
23:07
Speaker 1: up to two months. They're also smart about retrieval timing.
23:11
Speaker 1: Acorns from white oak trees sprout quickly, so squirrels prioritize
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Speaker 1: eating those before slower germinating red oak acorns. When hunger hits,
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Speaker 1: many squirrels rely on a tried and true strategy year round.
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Speaker 1: Theft a strategy researcher is politely referred to as pilfering. Essentially,
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Speaker 1: Perlat says, squirrels visualize a color coated mental map of
23:36
Speaker 1: their territory. One quote color for where they bury their
23:39
Speaker 1: own nuts and another for spots where other squirrels has
23:43
Speaker 1: stored their food from a tree branch. They can scan
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Speaker 1: the ground and remember not only their personal pantry, but
23:49
Speaker 1: also the best place is to steal from when it's
23:53
Speaker 1: time to eat. Pearlut believes they often opt for theft first.
23:57
Speaker 1: I think they tend to try to rob, and then
23:59
Speaker 1: if the robbing fails, to go directly to their own cash.
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Speaker 1: He says, although squirrels don't intentionally share food, they rarely
24:06
Speaker 1: punish one another for the occasional acorn heist. Still, some
24:11
Speaker 1: performative misdirection is fair game. A squirrel may go through
24:15
Speaker 1: the motions of burying a nut that's actually still hidden
24:17
Speaker 1: in its mouth, a fake out designed to mislead anyone watching.
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Speaker 1: Believe it or not, this system of mutual thievery is
24:25
Speaker 1: usually enough to keep the peace among squirrels. It's so efficient,
24:29
Speaker 1: in fact, that it affords them a leisurely life most
24:32
Speaker 1: of the time. Quote. Great squirrels spend an incredible amount
24:35
Speaker 1: of time not foraging. They're resting, watching, and socializing. Perlet says.
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Speaker 1: That just shows me how effective they must be its
24:43
Speaker 1: stashing and stealing to be able to do that and
24:46
Speaker 1: not have to be busy all day long. End quote,
24:51
Speaker 1: and now will turn to the New Scientist magazine. This
24:56
Speaker 1: article's headline is a sweet reckoning. This expose of the
25:01
Speaker 1: true cost of industrially farming honeybees in the U s
25:04
Speaker 1: as a tragic tail, but there is still room for hope.
25:08
Speaker 1: This is dated May twenty six. Industrial farming at his
25:13
Speaker 1: worst conjures images of cows or pigs shoulder to shoulder
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Speaker 1: in windowless warehouses pumped full of antibiotics with little regard
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Speaker 1: for their welfare. Now replaced those images with bees in
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Speaker 1: bitter honey big aggs threat to bees and the fight
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Speaker 1: to save them. Social scientists and environment writer Jenny Durant
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Speaker 1: reveals how in recent decades United States honeybee colonies have
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Speaker 1: been industrialised, stored in refrigerated warehouses, and fed on sugar
25:44
Speaker 1: syrup drips and protein bars. Each year, around three million
25:49
Speaker 1: colonies of honeybees are shuttled around the country on flatbed
25:53
Speaker 1: trucks rented out to pollinate farmers crops. Many of these
25:57
Speaker 1: colonies teeter on the edge of collapse and must be
26:00
Speaker 1: regularly replaced, all of which is coming to bear on
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Speaker 1: our food systems, but Durant argues that there is hope.
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Speaker 1: Humans have managed bees for at least eight thousand years.
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Speaker 1: A cave painting in Spain depicts someone hanging from a
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Speaker 1: cliff with one hand and with the other hand scooping
26:18
Speaker 1: honey out of a hive. Gradually, practices intensified, with Indigenous
26:23
Speaker 1: Americans calling honey bees white man's fly because swarms from
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Speaker 1: domesticated bees often arrived before human colonizers. Meanwhile, honeybees in
26:34
Speaker 1: the US began out competing native bee species, whose populations
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Speaker 1: would be fifty times bigger than they are without honeybees.
26:42
Speaker 1: Enthusiastic consumption of nectar and pollen. Eventually, the invention of
26:48
Speaker 1: artificial hives in the nineteenth century, a design that most
26:52
Speaker 1: hives are still based on, turned bees into livestock. But
26:56
Speaker 1: it was the rise of mono crops liberally sprayed with
26:59
Speaker 1: pestie sides and devoid of wildflowers, combined with pathogens, mites,
27:04
Speaker 1: and poor nutrition that wiped out more than a third
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Speaker 1: of honeybee colonies in the US in the mid two thousands.
27:12
Speaker 1: Rather than addressing the root of the problem, beekeepers joined
27:15
Speaker 1: farmers on the pesticide treadmill, further weakening colonies. You can't
27:21
Speaker 1: blame beekeepers for all of this, suggests Durant. When cheap
27:24
Speaker 1: and adulterated honey from overseas flooded the US market in
27:28
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, many had to turn to offering pollination
27:31
Speaker 1: services to stay afloat. Having spent several years in the field,
27:36
Speaker 1: Durant offers an insider view of their lives and the
27:39
Speaker 1: conundrums they face. Often, these families have been in the
27:43
Speaker 1: business for generations. They clearly loved their bees, walked miles
27:47
Speaker 1: in search of lost hives, and can tell how healthy
27:50
Speaker 1: a hive is by its hum My heart sank when
27:53
Speaker 1: I read how one man lost half his hives when
27:57
Speaker 1: he and his bees were sprayed with a concoction of
27:59
Speaker 1: fun and insecticides by the farm pest control advisor. Well,
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Speaker 1: that is all for today's Diary of Science and Nature.
28:11
Speaker 1: We'll let's leave that article unfinished. Stay tuned now for
28:16
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