KZYX The Ecology Hour

Our guest, Dr. Mayumi Arimitsu of Ocean Bight LLC, is leading research on the pelagic (offshore) components of the food web, and also monitors forage fish that are the key link in the marine food web. She was formerly a Research Ecologist with the United States Geological Survey, Alaska Science Center. In this interview she takes us into the world of forage fish, what they are, why they matter, what is affecting them, and how that affects almost everything else in the marine environment. Much of her research involves marine heat waves and their effects on the food web. With the return of “The Blob” and a “super El Niño” we are concerned about another potentially catastrophic heat wave along the eastern Pacific.

Interview with Dr. Christina Pasparakis, Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology at the University of California Davis, Bodega Marine Laboratory. She conducts field and laboratory research on marine toxicology - how toxics enter and affect marine organisms. Much of her work involves microplastics, an emerging concern, and her work is advancing our understanding of their effects.

Re-run of an interview in 2022 with Dr. John Marzluff, who studies how humans affect birds through habitat fragmentation and increased urbanization, as well as the challenges of conserving birds on islands. Conversely, he is also interested in all the ways that birds affect people—how, for instance, birds influence art, or language. He focuses primarily on corvids—that is, ravens, crows, and jays. These familiar and nearly ubiquitous birds are endlessly fascinating to observe, and as it turns out, to study scientifically.

Dr. Marzluff’s research has revealed many insights into the myriad and complex ways corvids function in the changing world. Perhaps most famously, his work demonstrated how American Crows can recognize individual humans, form opinions about them, and communicate those ideas to the rest of the flock.

Our guest, Dr. Peter Weiss-Penzias is a Faculty Researcher and Continuing Lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz and runs an Environmental Chemistry Laboratory there. He has discovered that fog is carrying minute but detectable quantities of mercury, which is moving inland and appearing in the food chain.

Dr. Konrad Meister, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Boise State University, tells us about his research discovering that fungal spores and other tiny particles cause rain by condensing water vapor into droplets. Given the importance of rainfall to most terrestrial ecosystems - not to mention the existence of agriculture - this is a big deal!

Fantastic interview with Dr. Emily Taylor, Professor of Biological Sciences, California Polytechnic State University and Director of the Physiological Ecology of Reptiles Laboratory. She is a herpetologist conducting research on lizards and rattlesnakes, with particular interest in the ways they manage heat and moisture.

Interview with Dr. Víctor M. Ortega Jiménez, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He conducts research into the ways in which animals interact with their immediate environment – applying physical principles of fluid dynamics and electrostatics to understand how they move and capture prey. His work is innovative and fascinating, and we had a great time hearing about it!

Interview with Dr. Mark Davis, emeritus Professor of Biology at Macalester University and author of the textbook on "Invasion Biology."

Sea Otters were once abundant from the Aleutian Islands to central California, before being hunted nearly to extinction. Dr. James Bodkin of the US Fish & Wildlife Service devoted much of his career to studying these charismatic marine mammals, particularly in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster. On The Ecology Hour he reunites with his old colleague Dr. Robert Spies and brings us up to date on what has been learned about sea otter ecology, populations, and some of the fascinating ways they influence ecosystems.

We talk with Dr. Marc Epstein, Senior Insect Biosystematist at the California Department of Food and Agriculture for Lepidoptera, about moths and their taxonomy. Dr. Epstein has worked for the last twenty two years at the Plant Pest Diagnostics Center in South Sacramento and is also a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. While identifying Lepidoptera of potential threat to agriculture, he researches their evolution and classification with an emphasis on the moth family Limacodidae, and the history of entomologists who were his predecessors. He is author of “Moths, Myths, and Mosquitoes: The Eccentric Life of Harrison G. Dyar, Jr.”, published in 2016 by Oxford University Press.

The Ecology Hour goes viral this week when hosts Bob Spies and Tim Bray talk with Dr. Tony Goldberg, veterinarian and pathobiologist at the University of Madison-Wisconsin. He studies viruses and the diseases they can cause in everything from mussels to humans, everywhere from the Appalachians to Africa. He particularly focuses on "zoonautic" diseases - those that can jump from one species to another. In a fascinating and surprisingly humorous conversation, we learn many amazing things about both the hosts and the viruses.

Mountain Lions are a frequent topic of conversation in Mendocino County, and there is often concern about them preying on livestock or pets. We talk with Dr. Quinton Martins, principal investigator for the Living with Lions project, a partnership between Audubon Canyon Ranch and True Wild. Dr. Martins explains why Mountain Lions are so secretive, why they hide their food (and even their scat!), and how to prevent them from preying on livestock.

Our guest is Dr. Mark Hoddle, Distinguished Professor of Extension in Biological Control at the University of California - Riverside, a renowned expert in the field of biological control of invasive insect pests. He presents the checkered history of efforts to find organisms that target damaging invasive species, including some early efforts that succeeded and some that backfired. His work is grounded in that history and follows a rigorous and demanding process to identify such organisms. A major part of his work is understanding the mechanisms limiting predation or infection to target species, so a biological agent can be released without harming non-target species. Join us for a fascinating look at the intersection of hard science and agriculture.

Eleven years ago, a mysterious disease killed most of the adult starfish off California and Oregon. The most severely affected, Sunflower Seastar, was the main predator limiting the spread of Purple Urchins. The sudden disappearance of a key predator triggered a "trophic cascade" that led to an ongoing ecological crisis, including the collapse of the kelp forests. After a decade of painstaking research, the pathogen responsible for Seastar Wasting Disease has finally been identified.

Gray Whales were once nearly wiped out by commercial whaling. Once that ceased in the late 20th century, they staged a remarkable comeback, reaching a population of around 26,000 by 2016. But since then many have died on migration, and a new estimate indicates their population has been cut in half. We talk with Dr. Aimee Lang of the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center about that estimate, and what might be causing the decline of these iconic marine mammals.

Just when you think you've got life all figured out... scientists find something that redefines the whole concept. Ecology Hour hosts Bob Spies and Tim Bray talk with Dr. Karen Lloyd, Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California, about her research into alien life forms right here on Earth - what she calls "Intraterrestrials" in her new book. Some of these organisms challenge our basic understanding of life: their metabolic processes function so slowly that individuals may live for hundreds of thousands of years. Some of them can breathe Arsenic; others eat methane and produce formaldehyde. Their discovery has created a new and wild frontier in scientific research, and Dr. Lloyd is in the vanguard.

Have you ever seen an Albatross? They are an awe-inspiring sight and there are hundreds of them off the Mendocino coast right now. Many of them are coming here to get food for their chicks, which are more than two thousand miles away, on remote islands in the Hawaiian chain. Ecology Hour hosts Bob Spies and Tim Bray get the whole story from Dr. Jonathan Plissner, Supervising Wildlife Biologist at the Midway Island National Wildlife Refuge, where millions of Albatrosses nest.

We hear a lot about the immediate effects of a major oil spill, but what happens later? Our guest Dr. Jeffrey Short is a biochemist who has investigated ecosystem effects of major spills. Working with our host Dr. Robert Spies after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, he discovered that large quantities of oil persisted in the subsurface long after the spill - a finding that was quite controversial at the time. More recently he came out of retirement to work on assessing the damage from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, where he showed that the official estimates of bird mortality were at least an order of magnitude too low. That mortality in turn caused a dramatic population increase in Menhaden, the key link in the Gulf of Mexico food chain and the second-largest commercial fishery in the US. The population explosion has led to malnourishment and greatly decreased the economic value of the fishery, as well as its ecosystem function.

Tim Bray and Bob Spies talk with Erin Zulliger of the Institute for Wildlife Studies, who has been studying Elk in northern California. Always an impressive sight, these fascinating animals have a long history here and are currently adapting to changing conditions. Listen to find out more about their lives, their predators, and their populations.

Robert Jamgochian and Doug Nunn talk about the SONAR program (School of Natural Resources) they created and ran at Mendocino High School for several years. Students learned how to follow scientific protocols, collect field data, analyze it and write up their findings in scientific reports. Many have gone on to pursue education and careers in environmental law, engineering, or biology. Some were active in getting the Big River estuary included as a Marine Protected Area.