Science Slam: Kelly Willemssens

UComm Author

04/05/2018 Added

167 Plays

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Kelly Willemssens, natural resources.

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[00:00:02.228](birds chirping) (water burbling)
[00:00:15.510]Hey bear!
[00:00:19.180]What are you guys doing out here in the field?
[00:00:21.770]Me, I'm actually looking for something.
[00:00:25.630]And no, it's not a bear, a bison,
[00:00:28.590]or a wolf, or anything like that.
[00:00:30.650]I'm actually looking for something small,
[00:00:33.560]and well, now that you guys are here,
[00:00:36.100]would you mind giving me a hand, taking a look?
[00:00:40.540]Let's see.
[00:00:43.110]No that's not it.
[00:00:44.773](audience laughs)
[00:00:45.999]No.
[00:00:48.610]There it is, do you see it?
[00:00:50.330]Do you see the small beetle over there?
[00:00:52.520]That's what I'm looking for, it's a tiger beetle.
[00:00:56.530]And okay, I can already hear you thinking,
[00:00:59.720]why in the world is she looking
[00:01:01.500]for a silly beetle, when you're in Yellowstone,
[00:01:04.840]and there's so much other cool stuff?
[00:01:07.070]But, actually this beetle is really awesome.
[00:01:16.590]This beetle is so awesome, because first of all,
[00:01:19.940]it's living on top of a super volcano, okay?
[00:01:22.730]That's really cool.
[00:01:24.160]Second of all, it lives near thermal features,
[00:01:26.920]with a pH of 2.2 like sulfuric acid,
[00:01:30.380]temperatures of 65 celsius, which is about 149 Fahrenheit,
[00:01:36.420]some are radioactive, and then we have toxic heavy
[00:01:39.180]metals such as arsenic so, mind blown.
[00:01:42.930]How are these guys alive?
[00:01:44.960]It doesn't make any sense because everything else
[00:01:46.840]should die under such conditions.
[00:01:49.800]But for some reason,
[00:01:52.780]I mean it's pretty obvious, they don't need our help.
[00:01:55.100]They're doing just fine over here.
[00:01:57.695]Bow-chicka-wow-wow.
[00:02:00.440]Anyway, moving on.
[00:02:02.740]How are these beetles alive?
[00:02:05.280]To me that's my main question, I'm so intrigued by it.
[00:02:11.680]So in 2006, my advisor went to Yellowstone National Park,
[00:02:15.730]and he found these beetles.
[00:02:17.570]Fast forward 10 years later, I come into play.
[00:02:21.160]So I went to Yellowstone national park,
[00:02:24.160]and I was looking for one,
[00:02:26.280]10 years later, are these beetles still there?
[00:02:29.290]Two, where exactly can we find them?
[00:02:32.050]And then three, what kind of
[00:02:33.610]environment are they living in?
[00:02:35.290]So, I drove around the entire park,
[00:02:40.020]stopped at every thermal feature that was accessible
[00:02:42.898]to the public, and I looked for these Tiger beetles,
[00:02:46.180]and wouldn't you know it,
[00:02:47.490]I found them at five sites.
[00:02:49.730]So, jumping up and down, I was really
[00:02:52.260]excited because, yes!
[00:02:53.800]Now I can start my doctoral research and then I look over
[00:02:57.570]and I see all these tourists looking at me like,
[00:02:59.730]what is wrong with this girl?
[00:03:02.850]Made a fool out of myself,
[00:03:03.930]and probably making a fool out of myself now,
[00:03:06.410]but you know, if you're excited about science,
[00:03:09.350]you don't really care.
[00:03:13.765]So now that I had found the beetles, the next step came.
[00:03:16.540]Doing observational work.
[00:03:18.730]What time do they become available?
[00:03:20.600]What time, available?
[00:03:22.260]What time do they become active?
[00:03:25.350]When do they become inactive?
[00:03:27.430]What types of behaviors do they have?
[00:03:29.710]And, what kind of environment
[00:03:32.350]are they actually living in?
[00:03:34.400]So a really cool way to recognize
[00:03:36.980]these tiger beetles is they're predators.
[00:03:39.010]And they run really fast, and they stop.
[00:03:40.910]They run really fast and they stop.
[00:03:42.780]Because they run so fast,
[00:03:44.780]that their eyes can't catch up with them.
[00:03:47.500]So they literally turn blind as they're running,
[00:03:50.180]so they have to stop and look, where's my prey?
[00:03:55.230]When you're out in the field, and you see something
[00:03:56.930]run, stop, run, stop.
[00:03:58.290]It's probably a tiger beetle.
[00:04:03.820]After I got my first data about these tiger beetles,
[00:04:09.680]it was time to put together a permit
[00:04:11.680]so I could actually work in Yellowstone.
[00:04:14.190]And if I can just grab this here.
[00:04:17.570]It took a little bit less than a year
[00:04:20.130]and 40 pages later, back and forward
[00:04:23.390]with the park to actually get approved to work there.
[00:04:25.930]So a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this,
[00:04:29.950]but needless to say, I was really happy
[00:04:31.870]when I finally got approved.
[00:04:34.360]And, other than the scientific content,
[00:04:36.760]you know, what do I want to study,
[00:04:39.420]why do I want to study it,
[00:04:40.660]and how am I actually gonna do it?
[00:04:42.520]Yellowstone was very adamant about
[00:04:45.050]putting in a safety protocol, because you may have heard,
[00:04:50.100]it's very dangerous in Yellowstone.
[00:04:52.130]And deaths do actually happen.
[00:04:56.260]So we have to make sure that we avoid that at all costs.
[00:04:59.670]So part one, thermal features.
[00:05:02.780]So Yellowstone is on top of a hot spot,
[00:05:05.890]so that means that certain areas are
[00:05:09.200]thermally active, others are not.
[00:05:11.630]Just one earthquake can totally change it.
[00:05:14.300]So an area that's thermally active one day,
[00:05:16.740]can be not active the other day, and vice versa.
[00:05:22.623]Because it's active some of the soil
[00:05:24.210]could be eroded away underneath,
[00:05:26.140]so soil that looks perfectly fine one day,
[00:05:29.174]but you step on it, you fall through,
[00:05:31.460]and you burn yourself, you could die, very dangerous.
[00:05:34.230]So part of the protocol is this little guy,
[00:05:38.120]and we have to test the soil, move around.
[00:05:41.690]It looks stupid, but it's for your safety.
[00:05:44.270]And make sure that the soil is very sturdy,
[00:05:48.510]so that you can walk on it.
[00:05:50.460]Another way to test this is an infrared gun.
[00:05:53.820]So I look at the temperature of the soil,
[00:05:55.920]and if there's one spot that all of a sudden
[00:05:57.720]is really hot, avoid that area.
[00:06:00.660]Just don't go there.
[00:06:02.420]And there's other tricks that we know
[00:06:06.220]where to go, and where it's safe.
[00:06:08.550]And the second part is, wildlife encounters.
[00:06:11.650]And I'm sure you've heard about grizzly bear
[00:06:14.030]attacks and deaths, it happens.
[00:06:16.680]So a couple of the things we do is,
[00:06:19.120]we're always in groups of three.
[00:06:21.210]It's been shown when you're in a bigger
[00:06:22.730]group than three, hold that, two,
[00:06:25.760]bears are likely to avoid you.
[00:06:27.850]So we're always with three,
[00:06:29.630]we carry this little guy, our bear spray.
[00:06:34.291]To be honest I don't know if it would actually work,
[00:06:37.040]I mean if it wants to kill you, I'm sure it will.
[00:06:41.290]But you know, it's nice to have.
[00:06:44.665]And then we always have one person on watch,
[00:06:47.340]so when we're working, there's someone
[00:06:49.330]else that's always looking around,
[00:06:51.000]to see that there's no wildlife nearby.
[00:06:54.460]And then lastly we have to put
[00:06:55.960]something in about tourists.
[00:06:57.670]Now tourists are not gonna kill us, but
[00:07:03.250]you'd be surprised how many tourists think,
[00:07:05.480]oh, these people are working over there,
[00:07:07.590]so I can go there too!
[00:07:10.440]Yeah, that's not the case.
[00:07:11.850]We know where to go, how to get there,
[00:07:14.370]and there are a lot of areas that you shouldn't go,
[00:07:18.330]and they don't know that.
[00:07:19.570]So part of our permit, and why I'm looking ridiculous,
[00:07:22.880]is so that tourists know that we're official.
[00:07:26.330]We have to put a permit on display,
[00:07:28.250]so they know that we're actually working there for a reason.
[00:07:32.660]And then we also need to have someone
[00:07:35.400]on watch to make sure that these tourists
[00:07:37.860]are not trying to avoid us.
[00:07:39.650]Uh, avoid us, come towards us.
[00:07:43.460]So we've had a couple of incidences where
[00:07:47.840]tourists would bother us when we're trying
[00:07:49.650]to work and recording data, because I'm observing
[00:07:51.950]these beetles, and they'll ask questions
[00:07:53.680]and well, I just lost all that data.
[00:07:56.290]But, there was one instance where
[00:07:59.270]one tourist actually saved our lives.
[00:08:01.960]So I'm recording these beetles, I'm sitting down,
[00:08:05.320]I'm looking at the beetles, so you'll hear me loudest.
[00:08:08.630]But I want you to pay attention on what's
[00:08:10.400]happening in the background, okay?
[00:08:32.560]Running, stop running,
[00:08:36.610]Stop running,
[00:08:38.650]Stop.
[00:08:40.890]Running.
[00:08:45.310]Oh, shit thank you!
[00:08:48.670]Hey bear!
[00:08:53.239]Yeah, let's slowly back away guys.
[00:08:54.450]Yeah, so one person in our group wasn't
[00:08:58.810]paying attention and wasn't doing their job.
[00:09:00.820]Because there was a bear right behind us.
[00:09:03.120]So thank God the tourist saw and notified us.
[00:09:06.780]But to be fair,
[00:09:08.260]it wasn't an attacking grizzly bear.
[00:09:14.340]There you go.
[00:09:16.550]It was a little black bear cub.
[00:09:19.690]I was really angry at one of my undergraduate
[00:09:22.620]students for not following protocol, moving away
[00:09:25.970]and he took this picture instead.
[00:09:27.800]But obviously right now I'm
[00:09:29.110]really happy he took that picture.
[00:09:32.740]And then it came to the research.
[00:09:35.040]So like I said we did observational work,
[00:09:37.550]did pH, did soil samples,
[00:09:41.130]water samples, to look at what the environment is,
[00:09:43.770]what the toxins are.
[00:09:45.450]And it turns out, regular tiger beetles,
[00:09:48.960]when it gets too hot,
[00:09:50.050]they will run into shade,
[00:09:52.120]they will bury underground, or they'll do
[00:09:53.550]something like stilts, where they lift
[00:09:55.430]their body up off the ground to cool off.
[00:09:58.310]Our beetles, they did not care,
[00:10:00.200]they didn't do any of this behavior.
[00:10:02.010]And, they're faced with a lot higher temperatures.
[00:10:05.160]So what's going on there?
[00:10:06.740]And then, toxicity was a thousand times
[00:10:10.970]higher than the EPA threshold.
[00:10:13.410]It would kill us, but it doesn't kill them.
[00:10:16.980]So part of what I'm gonna be continuing to do,
[00:10:20.050]is have a colony in the lab,
[00:10:21.830]and actually see when they die.
[00:10:23.920]So it sounds a bit, you know, questionable.
[00:10:26.950]But you know, biology is use a couple, to save a lot.
[00:10:34.440]So then lastly I want to end by saying that,
[00:10:37.380]Yellowstone National Park was really
[00:10:39.230]the first time I felt like a real scientist,
[00:10:41.600]because rather than being told what to do,
[00:10:44.535]I had to come up with my own questions,
[00:10:47.740]I had to drive by myself in the park,
[00:10:49.830]and look for these beetles,
[00:10:51.450]had to put a permit together,
[00:10:53.070]and then now I'm taking undergraduate students with me
[00:10:55.700]in the park and I'm delegating and showing them,
[00:10:58.407]the ropes of research.
[00:11:00.570]So with that, I'd like to thank my advisor for giving this
[00:11:03.344]opportunity for me to grow as a scientist,
[00:11:06.550]and to improve myself everyday.
[00:11:08.930]But now I gotta go find beetles, so bye!
[00:11:11.759](audience applauding)

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Science Slam: Kelly Willemssens

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