Dr. Sarah Gaughan:
Victoria:
Our guest this week is Dr. Sarah Gaughan. She is the instructor at the College of Science and Technology at Bellevue university. She got her bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology from Texas A&M University at Galveston and her PhD in Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
As a scientist, Dr. Gaughan uses genetics to determine how fish evolved and determines how they can adapt to their changing environment. She is really passionate about native species conservation and inspiring others to care about their environment.
This week’s questions were submitted by the listeners through emails and on social media and by students at Bromwell Elementary in Denver, Colorado.
Thank you so much for talking to us today, Dr. Gaughan.
Dr. Gaughan:
Thanks for having me.
Victoria:
We are very excited to learn more about your research. Do you want to give us a little introduction about your research, or should I just jump right into the questions?
Dr. Gaughan:
So a little bit about me, and what I do. Basically, what we do is we look at an organism’s genetic material, so what they’ve inherited from their parents and how that environment has interacted with those genetic markers, to determine what stays on the landscape and what kinds of species are going to persist in the future. So that’s kind of what our ultimate goal is about, is helping species stay around.
Victoria:
(Sheamus- Did you always know that you wanted to be a scientist?)
That is awesome. With that, our first question today comes from Sheamus. Did you always know that you wanted to be a scientist?
Dr. Gaughan:
Well, Sheamus, I always knew I wanted to help people. And so, growing up, my dad was an airline pilot, and we used to travel all over the world. And so, I got to interact with all different kinds of people that did very different jobs. And I always wanted to be a part of whatever community we were living in and to help the community survive. And it turns out that science is one of the best ways to help a whole community thrive because everything is dependent on the natural world around you. And so, when you can really foster that relationship with the natural world, everybody really succeeds.
Victoria:
(Frankie – what inspired your to become a scientist?)
Oh, that’s wonderful. Here’s a good follow-up question from Frankie. What inspired you to become a scientist?
Dr. Gaughan:
So there was a very special lady scientists a while ago. She has since passed away, but her name was Dr. Eugenie Clark, and she used to run the Mote Marine lab. And she was actually a good friend of mine for a long time. And so she was always kind of an inspiration because she did her research back in the day when there weren’t a lot of lady scientists around, and she really broke a lot of boundaries. And so growing up, it was great for me to see that there were other women that really wanted to make a positive impact in their communities. And she did that by helping people, see kind of the truth about sharks and kind of break down these barriers that sharks are these evil mean creatures that, you know, are just these man-eating machines. And so through her research, people got to see a different side of a really important creature in our ecosystems. And so that really inspired me to really look at the ocean to make a difference.
Victoria:
(Sheamus- What’s the best part of your career and why?)
That’s incredible. Okay. Another question from Sheamus, what is the best part of your career and why?
Dr. Gaughan:
You know, the best part of my career is I really do feel like the research that I’m doing makes a difference. And I really enjoy seeing people take my research and do something positive with it. Whether that’s saving a species, or helping a farmer build a better farm, or help him feed his family or her family. And I love seeing it’s like everybody wins and I love being in career where I really feel like everybody can win. That’s really rewarding.
Victoria:
(Jacob- What is the hardest part of your job?)
That sounds amazing. Kind of switching gears a little bit. Jacob wants to know what is the hardest part of your job?
Dr. Gaughan:
So the hardest part of my job is I think people have a lot of misconceptions about what geneticists do. So I don’t get to bring dinosaurs back to life. I don’t have those skills. The technology doesn’t exist. And it’s not even something you probably should do cause where’s the dinosaur going to exist nowadays. So there’s a lot of ethical implications. And so when you say genetics, people are like, oh, you’re like actually altering the genome or you’re changing things. And we don’t, I don’t change anything. All I do is I get to see what kinds of impacts our world has on these organisms’ genetic material.
So for example, we have unfortunately a lot of climate change going on, which raises the temperature of a lot of water systems, and a lot of fish can’t survive those increase in water systems. So a lot of fish will die. Well, some individuals might be a little bit better situated in terms of rising temperatures. And so those are the individuals that are going to survive and make babies for future generations. And so those genetic markers are going to become more prevalent in that group of organisms.
And so that’s what I look at, is I look at how the world impacts the genetic markers that are there, and what kinds of genetic markers can we, as people that want to save species, what should we focus on? Like, how are these organisms adapting to these changes? And, you know, does that provide any insight for how we can make changes in our world? And so the hardest thing is having these conversations with people and working out these misconceptions. We can all be friends and we can all talk about these things and we can all learn a lot from each other. And I think once we’re able to come to a table and have a really good conversation like this, I think everybody wins. That’s the goal.
Victoria:
(Jack – What is the coolest discovery you have ever made?)
That is a good goal. A good follow-up to that, I think, is a question from Jack, what is the coolest discovery that you have ever made?
Dr. Gaughan:
So it’s actually something that I’m working on right now. And so there’s a lot of debate in our world about what makes a species a species. And so, there’s genetic components to these organisms; there’s how an organism behaves; and it’s the environment that the organism is living in. And so it’s this dynamic interplay of all these things that make an organism and a species thrive. And when you change any one of those three major components, you get variation within these groups of individuals. And so, we’re calling that a species spectrum. It’s all of this variation that you see within a species.
And that variation is really critical because when the environment changes, and if there’s one thing that we see as we live on this earth for a long enough period of time, the only thing constant is change. That variation is going to allow some individuals to survive. And so maintaining that variation is really critical, and accepting this idea that a species is not a fixed entity, but a spectrum of variation.
And so I think that’s been, I want to say my biggest contribution so far, and hopefully from that, we’ll be able to do more population type studies and do larger scale studies that look at how that impacts on an ecosystem type situation. Indeed, you have to look at research as scales, right? So it can affect an individual, it can affect a group of individuals in an area or population, or it can affect effect like a continent or the world overall. And so building these scales is really important to make a big impact.
Victoria:
(Sheamus- What do you like to do?)
Oh, that is very cool. Another question from Seamus, what do you like to do? I think he means outside of work.
Dr. Gaughan:
So when I’m not fishing, and I do a lot of fishing, I have a horse, and him and I like to go jumping, and he likes to get baths. So I get to go out there and brush my horse, and, you know, make his mane and tail all pretty. And we like to go riding in the countryside. I’m kind of a country girl at heart. So, I’m the one that’s, you know, riding on the dirt road with the fishing pole in the back and a lunch. And then usually, I have a German Shepherd Husky next at home. So she’s usually trailing behind the horse. And I like to be out in nature. I think nature is one of the few places where it like reaffirms your soul. It’s just such a healing place to be. And I love just being out in nature.
Victoria:
(Adria- Do you go fishing a lot?)
Cool. That sounds wonderful. And that also answers Adria’s question. Do you go fishing a lot?
Dr. Gaughan:
I do, Adria. I go fishing an awful lot.
Victoria:
(Sheamus- Who is your favorite scientist alive or dead?)
One more question from Sheamus. Who is your favorite scientist, alive or dead?
Dr. Gaughan:
Oh, that would probably be Dr. Clark. just because she had such a big impact, especially for other women scientists.
But I also was really enamored with Charles Darwin. He wrote a lot of the really early evolution type theories, as did Wallace. And so the two of them, and they had a lot of good debates between each other. they really kind of spurred this idea as to how do organisms change and adapt to their environment. And without those kinds of conversations, my work would never have been possible. So I owe both of them a lot.
Victoria:
(Nataliya – What is your favorite fish?)
Okay. Let’s get into some more fish related questions here. Nataliya wants to know what is your favorite fish?
Dr. Gaughan:
Oh man. There’s so many to choose from. So the thing I love about fish is that fish makeup over half of all the vertebrates on earth, 53% of all species are fish. And so what’s amazing about that is there’s so much diversity, and no matter where you go, whether it’s a river or a lake or an ocean, or even under an ice glacier, there’s a fish. And I think you can’t say that from very many things.
But my ultimate favorite fish would be the great white shark. And I love sharks because they have this really cool feature, when they go to bite at a fish, they actually detach their jaw, and they thrust their whole jaw forward. And that just is so amazing to me that efficient adapted this, you know, or evolve this trait. And who doesn’t like something that eats. So. Very cool.
Victoria:
That is so cool. I wish I could do that.
Dr. Gaughan:
Right? Me too. I’m like, man, that would be the cheesecake, you know, that would be perfect. All my holiday drama right there.
Victoria:
(Chiara – Does using genetics mean using fish DNA?)
All right, let’s see here. Here’s a good, kind of clarifying question from Chiara. Does using genetics mean using fish DNA?
Dr. Gaughan:
It does. So genetics is any of the genetic markers that you have, so it can be what you inherit from your mom and your dad. It can be how those genes are expressed. So what kinds of proteins those genes make? And it can be how the prevalence of a gene changes in a group of individuals over time? So all of those are included in what we consider to be genetics. And there’s lots of schooling to understand all of those different components. But they all work together to make the organisms that you see. Good questions.
Victoria:
(Lukas – What classes do you take for a PhD in natural resources?)
They are good questions. Speaking of schooling, there’s a couple of questions about your school and schooling. Lukas wants to know what classes do you take for a PhD in Natural Resources.
Dr. Gaughan:
Sure. So Natural Resources are any of the things around you that contribute to how the world works. And so you take classes in hydrology, which is how water moves. You take classes in genetics. So like what we’ve been talking about, an organisms, genetic material. You take classes in geology, so you know how do rock formations, how are they created, and how do they move around and change over time?
And depending on what you’re really interested in, you may take more classes in a specific field. Like I love genetics, so I took every genetics class I could get my hands on. But people that are really into ancient organisms may study more paleontology, or geology. So there’s a lot of different avenues you can take with to understand how these resources came to be, how do these resources work in the current environment, and how might those resources change in the future. And so there’s a bunch of different ways you can go about studying that, which is really neat.
Victoria:
(Jamila – How many grades of school did you do?)
Awesome. And another follow-up to that. Jamila wants to know how many grades of school did you do?
Dr. Gaughan:
Oh my goodness. So many grades. So typically, when you work in this kind of a field, you do an undergraduate degree. So after you graduate high school, you’re usually about 18 and then you do four years in an undergraduate degree. And people get all sorts of degrees for their undergraduate degree: Biology, Wildlife Science, Natural Resources. The sky’s the limit. It doesn’t really matter. With your undergraduate degree, you want to get it good solid foundation, whether it’s science, or business, or whatever, you want a really good sound educational base.
And then you usually go on to some sort of a graduate program. Now I chose to do a master’s degree first, which was a two-year program. And typically, in a master’s degree, you want to demonstrate that you can ask a scientific question and a hypothesis and then test that hypothesis. So you usually get two years to do that.
And then after a master’s degree, or some people who are really hardcore go right into a PhD right after their undergrad degree. And that can be anywhere from four years to eight years, depending on if you’ve already done a master’s, how big your project is, how much funding you have. That’s a much larger type of research program. And so typically, you’ll have a larger research project. So you’ll conduct research if you’re in the sciences, and then you’ll write that research up in a dissertation, and then you’ll defend that research to your research committee. And so it’s a group of individuals that you respect, and that work with your educational institution. And they come and they say, well, you have a really good solid foundation, and this is really good research. And so we will accept you as a colleague in the field; or, nope, that’s not going to work, go back and reevaluate. And so there’s a lot more than just like, you know, going to class and passing exams. At some point you need to start contributing to the scientific community. And that’s what I really love about graduate programs, because it teaches you how to give back to the community.
Victoria:
(Ashley – What is the coolest sea creature you’ve seen studying Marine Biology?)
All right. One more school question from Ashley. What is the coolest sea creature you’ve seen when you were studying Marine Biology?
Dr. Gaughan:
So I used to live in Hawaii, which was a lot of fun. And when we go out in the boats in Hawaii, they have these really giant fish called Mola Mola. And they’re huge disk-like fish. And these guys would lay on the surface of the water, like on their sides. And what they were doing is they were exposing their sides to birds. So birds would come and pick off parasites of these guys. And it was a great adaptation for the fish because they didn’t have to deal with the parasites, and the birds got a free meal. And so, one these fish, they literally look like dinner plates, swimming vertically in the water. So they look really cool. And they’re huge. They’re bigger than I am. And I’m like 5’3. So these huge fish, like huge dinner plates, swimming through the water, that then lay on their side on the surface. It’s really fascinating.
Victoria:
That is so cool. Oh, wow. Hawaii is on my bucket list for sure. I’d love to see those.
Dr. Gaughan:
Oh, very neat.
Victoria:
(Lakshmi – Do you ever study fossil fish?)
Alright, so other fish questions here. Lakshmi wants to know, do you ever study fossil fish?
Dr. Gaughan:
I have. It’s really hard to study fossils. Because when a fossil was formed, there’s not very much of the original material left. And so, as an organism decays, it gets filled in with rock, like carbon and whatnot.
And so as a geneticist, it can be really difficult to collect genetic material from fossils. But they do have some luck in some regions of the world. So, if an organism dies and then gets like caught in an ice sheet, sometimes you can still collect genetic material. And so that’s kind of where I focus, not kind of on the typical fossil. But it’s fun. As technology has improved, we’ve been able to do more in that field. So, again, it’s a perfect time to meet technology and people’s education and curiosities. And so, this is a really neat time to be in this field. And it’s a really neat time to get excited about these types of topics.
Victoria:
(Tatiana – How is climate change affecting fish environments?)
Awesome. So let’s get into some more of the meaty questions about fish. You touched on this a little bit in the beginning of the interview, but let’s get into the details. Tatiana wants to know, how is climate change affecting fish environments?
Dr. Gaughan:
So climate change affects fish in all sorts of ways. One of the, probably the biggest ways is that as that air temperature increases, so do the water temperatures. And that means that fish tend to be moving where they are typically found. So like tuna, they like these really cold-water type areas. And so, all of the sudden, it’s becoming harder and harder for them to find these cold-water gyres or current flows. And that’s going to affect fishing because people rely on tuna as a major source of protein.
And it’s gonna affect, you know, where organisms decide to live, and how organisms can breed. And so, we’re facing this new era, and we’re not sure how it’s going to affect them. But we know there’s new selection pressures, particularly this increase in temperature. And the best thing that you can do is try to mitigate whatever you can, and then hopefully predict how these organisms can respond in the future.
Victoria:
(Brandon – Can climate change affect fish DNA?)
All right. Brandon wants to know can climate change affect fish DNA.
Dr. Gaughan:
It can. And so anytime you have a change in the environment, some organisms are going to be better adapted to survive those changes than others. And so remember we were talking a little bit earlier about how with climate change, you typically see an increase in the surrounding temperature. And so some fish are going to be better adapted to survive those changes for others. So if anybody out there is really into trout, trout don’t like warm water. And so how is that going to impact our local fishing? And, you know, it may seem like a little thing, but fishing is a huge financial commodity for a community. And for some people, some people really rely on fishing, for their primary food source.
And so it’s really essential to understand which species are going to be affected, and how they’re going to be affected. And so now all of a sudden with these really big ecological changes, we’re being tasked to answer a lot of these really big questions really quickly. And it’s not just for the other species, but it’s also for our species, and how do we continue to provide for our communities and for our people?
Victoria:
(Brooklyn – How did fish evolve?)
(Frances – How did fish first start to walk on land? Did they use their fins or their tails?)
Oh, man. Yeah. And getting to the origins of fish in the beginning, this is a pair of questions that go together. Brooklyn wants to know how did fish evolves, and Francis wants to know how did fish first start to walk on land, did they use their fins or their tails?
Dr. Gaughan:
Oh, such good questions. So fish have been around for millions of years. And the cool thing about being around so long is that they’ve had so much more time for this natural selection to act on their genetic material. And so, there was a specific, we call it a lineage, so like a section of fishes, that were eventually evolved to walk on land. And they use their fins. And so the bones in the fins changed structure a little bit, and they kind of redistributed. And so eventually, we are what we are today. So we have evolved from a fish lineage, all tetrapods have. So that’s kind of amazing to think about. Isn’t it? That, you know, some 0.1 of your very, very, very, very old ancestors was a fish.
Victoria:
Oh, my goodness. That’s so cool.
Dr. Gaughan:
Right? Just kind of mind-blowing.
Victoria:
(Isabelle – Is it true that scientists are trying to bring woolly mammoths back and if so, is it possible?)
Yeah. Oh, man. Okay. Switching gears a little bit to genetics kind of question. Isabelle wants to know, is it true that scientists are trying to bring woolly mammoth back, and if so, is it possible?
Dr. Gaughan:
So, remember we were talking about, if you get really lucky, sometimes you’re able to get genetic material from fossils. And one of the great ways to do that is if an organism dies in a glacier. And the nice thing about that, I don’t want to say nice, cause it was very sad that something died, but all of that genetic material was preserved.
And so, scientists have had some luck. Actually, we are recovering eggs and genetic material from woolly mammoth that have been previously frozen. And so, it is theoretically possible at some point to bring an animal back from extinction, and that process is called de-extinction. The problem is that once an organism dies, DNA degrades, and so you may not have a full genome of an organism after it’s been dead for so long. And so whether or not there’s enough genetic material to clone that animal, and to bring it back to life is still something that they’re trying to figure out.
Now, if you’ve seen Jurassic Park and many people have, in Jurassic Park, the solution was to fill in those gaps of genetic material with really closely related organisms. And so there is the possibility to create this hybrid between the woolly mammoth and our modern day elephant. And maybe bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction. Maybe not exactly what it was, but at least some of that genetic material back to life.
Now, the big question with that is, should we do that? And that’s something that as you kids grow up, and you learn all of this information, the best part about this is you get to make those decisions as voters. Is this something that you want to support? And that’s one of those ethical questions that you’re just going to have to wrestle with. Like, should we bring it back? What do we do with an animal once we bring it back from extinction? It’s not just that organism. What’s that organism going to eat? Where’s that organism gonna live. And how are you going to interact with that organism? Because we didn’t really evolve to live around a woolly mammoth. I know my dog sheds a whole lot, but she’s not like woolly mammoth material. So I don’t know if modern day humans can live with that.
And so those are all questions that we may not be prepared to answer now. So this is an emerging field that, you know, it’s going to grow and we need to be able to have those kinds of conversations. Because we have to decide those things as a community.
Victoria:
Oh, wow. Very, very intriguing discussions to be had.
Dr. Gaughan:
Yes, you guys are living in such a neat time.
Victoria:
(Isaac – What chemicals or poison kills fish?)
All right. And back to fish now. We’re jumping around a little bit, but we’ll come back to fish. Isaac wants to know what chemicals or poison kills fish.
Dr. Gaughan:
Well, if there’s enough of it in the water, just about anything will kill a fish. And so even if you have too much salt in the water, you can kill a fish. Fish are really sensitive. They don’t like it typically when there’s not a lot of oxygen in the water. And so, if there is an overgrowth of plant materials, sometimes there won’t be enough oxygen, and you’ll have a fish die off. Sometimes if there’s too much agricultural pesticide that gets runoff, so nitrogen, phosphorus, the fish can’t survive, and it’s really bad for their body systems, and they’ll die. Sometimes, we flush a lot of antibiotics down the sink just because we don’t necessarily have, you know, dosing figured out perfectly. And as a result of that, some of those chemicals are really harmful for fish.
So we consider fish to be what we call sentinel species. And the neat thing about that is that when you look at an organism, that’s that sensitive, when you start seeing a lot of fish die in an area, it means that there’s a problem in the ecosystem overall. And it’s something that we have to address because if it’s affecting fish, it’s also affecting other species around it. And so it’s a really good indicator species to say, whoa, guys, we need to make a change here. And we need, you know, for the whole ecosystem to thrive, we need to come together and figure this out. And so, they’re really good species to do that.
Victoria:
Okay. Well, keep an eye on fish.
Dr. Gaughan:
Fish are very important.
Victoria:
(Tamaya – How does fish genetics work? Is it like hair color from my parents?)
Yeah. Okay. Here’s a question from Tamaya. Getting back at the fish genetics. Tamaya wants to know, how does fish genetics work? Is it like hair color from my parents?
Dr. Gaughan:
Exactly. So the great thing about genetics is it’s kind of universal barcode of life. So everything that is living is tied together with this genetic code. So the same genes that you have, fish also have. And the neat thing about that is those genes tend to work in very similar ways. And so the more we learn about you and your parents and your parents’ hair color DNA, the more we can also learn about fish, and how color pigments come into, like, why are fish spotted and why do some fish brown and some fish pink? And what does that mean? Like, does it matter, or do you just want a pink fish? And sometimes the answer is, I just want a pink fish. So, it’s neat. I love this idea that we’re also intertwined together with this barcode.
Victoria:
(Sean- Do you study more fish in lake and rivers or more fish in the ocean?)
Yeah, that is very cool. Shawn wants to know do you study more fish in lakes and rivers or more fish in the ocean?
Dr. Gaughan:
Well, I used to study more fish the ocean when I used to live on the ocean. But anymore now that I live in the midwest, I study more fish particularly in rivers and streams. And something that I didn’t appreciate until I moved back to Nebraska is that, Nebraska doesn’t have a lot of fish in terms of diversity. So when we talk about diversity, we’re talking about the number of fish species. And there’s reasons for that. And so, as somebody who is, you know, somebody who studies fish, which is ichthyologist and a geneticist, you don’t necessary put that in the bigger context. And it turns out that in Nebraska, Nebraska used to be covered by all these really big glaciers. And as those glaciers receded, and even went over the state, a lot of those fish species were pushed further south. So Missouri has a lot more fishes than Nebraska does. And so, even, you know, thousands of years later, we still have a lot less fish diversity here. Now, is that going to change as our environment continues to change? Maybe. It might get worse; it might get better. We don’t know. But it’s a great way to kind of tie in all these different entities and really see how all these processes work together, to dictate what lives around us.
Victoria:
(John – I only know three different types of fish but how many species are there?)
Wow. That is fascinating. Speaking of species, John wants to know, I only know three different types of fish, but how many species are there?
Dr. Gaughan:
Oh man, you guys are so smart. So there are over 83,000 species of fish with more being described almost every day. Like I said earlier, fish are the biggest taxer around. And so if you want to find a new species, study fish, cause the odds are in your favor to find a new species. And the neat part about that there’s fish everywhere, I mean, even in the Arctic, we have fish living in temperatures that are below like negative 30.
And it’s so neat because they’ve been around for so long, and they’ve adapted to all these environments, we get these unique insights into how we can adapt to our environment as well. Because like we said, it’s a universal code. And so we have those same genes. It just may not work quite the same way. And so it’s such a fascinating field.
Victoria:
Wow.
Dr. Gaughan:
So many different ways you can live and survive.
Victoria:
That is just incredible. I had no idea they were fish in temperatures that cold.
Dr. Gaughan:
Yeah. And actually, they’ve used those genes for medical research. So they’ve actually used some of that genetic research on Arctic fish for organ transplants. So kind of neat.
Victoria:
That’s so cool.
Dr. Gaughan:
Yeah. An application I would never have thought of. Somebody, you know, smarter than me in a different field thought of that one. And it’s like, wow. You know, not only do I get to help species, I get to help people.
Victoria:
Yeah. That is incredible.
Dr. Gaughan:
Yeah.
Victoria:
And this is a question that has been asked on the podcast before. So this’ll be a fun question for you, too. If you discovered a new species, what would you name it and why?
Dr. Gaughan:
Oh my goodness. So, for a long time I had this wonderful dog who was half coyote. And so she actually kind of inspired my research with genetics because I didn’t understand, you know, how can a coyote have a baby with a dog, and how do these hybrids survive? And so what is a hybrid, and what does that mean? And all those things. Her name was Jersey. So somehow that would be included in the species name. Just to kind of pay homage to my friend and kind of all of her inspiration in my career.
Victoria:
Oh. So sweet.
Dr. Gaughan:
So, kind of amazing where you draw inspiration from, right?
Victoria:
(Amelia: What would be the effect of fish going extinct?)
Yeah. Okay. Let’s get back to some fish questions. Amelia wants to know what would be the effect of fish going extinct.
Dr. Gaughan:
So every species in an environment, whether it’s a fish or an insect or a bird, they have, what’s called an ecological niche. And this niche is that species job in its environment. And the problem when a species goes extinct is you don’t know if another species can step up and do that same job. And so if that job can no longer be done in an environment, how is that ecosystem going to continue to thrive, and how are the other species going to continue to function? And so, you see this in a lot of instances where, you know, the loss of a species, or in some cases, when a species becomes too plentiful, has these majored like disastrous impacts on an environment.
And so a great example of this is actually, if you’re ever out in the Pacific Northwest, they have these beautiful kelp forest. And in these kelp forests, they have sea urchins and sea otters. Well sea urchins love to eat this kelp beds. And. It’s kind of a problem because it destroys the kelp which then destroys all the fishing grounds. Well, the otters come along and they eat the urchins, and they keep that urchin population in check. And then the kelp forest overall can continue to thrive and continue to maintain breeding grounds for a lot of important fishes that we eat. And back in the day, a lot of people like to hunt sea otters for their firm because they make beautiful coats. But when there’s no otters, there’s nobody to keep that sea urchin population in check. And so not only are you hurting the otters, you also hurt all the other fishes in that environment, because they don’t have any place to live, because all of a sudden the kelp forests are disappearing. And so, it’s keeping the ecosystem in check.
And so, if you’ve ever seen the Lion King, they had the best way of teaching this. It’s, you know, we’re all part of this great circle of life, and we all have a role to play, and we have to appreciate every organism’s role in the environment.
Victoria:
Oh, wow. I had totally forgotten about that in the Lion King. That is a great way to teach that.
Dr. Gaughan:
Yeah. Mufasa was King. Now, what can I say?
Victoria:
(Marlowe – What is the most interesting animal you have studied?)
All right, this next question you may have already answered with Ashley’s question, but I’ll go ahead and ask it again. This is from Marlowe. What is the most interesting animal you have studied?
Dr. Gaughan:
So it’s not necessarily an animal. I love this idea, that species test boundaries. And so I like to study hybrids. And most people think hybrids are kind of a pain, because they don’t really fit in a box, like we like to stick them in. But when a hybrid is formed, it really tests whether or not we’ve defined a species well. And for those organisms that have hybridized, it gives them a lot more variation and the ability to adapt changing conditions.
So I was telling you about my coyote hybrid. In Texas dog and coyote, hybrids are actually really common. And that’s where I actually got her was in Texas. Because down there a lot of coyote populations are disappearing. And so that’s who they get to meet with, is the dogs that are in the area. And those hybrids are actually usually able to withstand drier weather a lot better. And so they tend to persist on the landscape better than pure coyotes.
And so what does that mean for conservation is do we let hybridization occur? Do we remove the hybrids because they’re not what we consider pure coyote or a pure dog? And we don’t have the answers to that. Those are all the different types of questions that I like to wrangle with. Because in the end, well, what I want to do is I want to give species the best possible chance for survival, because I want them to be able to continue to fill that role within the ecosystem. They have to be able to do their job. And so how do we facilitate that? And sometimes the answer is we don’t really have all the answers. And so it makes us really think about big picture stuff. And that’s what I really love.
Victoria:
That is so cool. I never really thought about hybrids before, but thinking about them now is fascinating.
Dr. Gaughan:
Right? Cause you’re like, well, you shouldn’t exist or you don’t belong here. And the answer is, well, maybe they belong here more than anybody. We don’t have a good answer to that.
Victoria:
Do you ever think about, or do you work with ligers?
Dr. Gaughan:
I don’t work with ligers. So most tigers and lions. I like to work with natural hybrids. So, if you put two organisms, they’ll choose to mate on their own. Ligers don’t usually do that. It’s usually something that’s coerced by a human. And the problem with a lot of those hybrids is they have a lot of medical problems. And so I, as a geneticist, like I really want to give an organism the best chance of survival. So I don’t want to promote anything that is going to hurt that organism in any way. And if I know a mating is going to result in a situation where, you know, they could not be able to breathe as well, or they’re not going to be able to survive as well as they could. I don’t think that’s very responsible. And so I really liked let mother nature kind of make those decisions.
Victoria:
Oh gosh, that’s so sad. I had no idea that ligers had such problems.
Dr. Gaughan:
They can, yeah. And they can get too big so they can have a lot of spinal problems. They can have a lot of breathing issues. And so, you have to do right by organisms.
Victoria:
(Crissandra – If you were a fish, what fish would you be?)
Oh man. Yeah, definitely.
Okay, this is our last question, and this is a very fun question from Crissandra. If you were a fish, what fish would you be?
Dr. Gaughan:
Oh, I would love to be a sea dragon. And so sea dragons are these really neat little, they kind of float in the water. They kind of look like sea horses, but they’re really long and slender. And they just kind of chill on coral and kind of hang out. And they’re really pretty. And the other nice thing about that family is the males have babies. So I don’t have to worry about raising any kid. That’s all daddy’s problem. It’s your problem, right, honey. So, it’s really unique and different, and there’s such a unique family of fish. So I think that’s what I would choose to be.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s fun.
Yeah. All right. Well, that’s all the questions from the students, but do you have anything you want to add or any questions of your own to ask them?
Dr. Gaughan:
So I have no questions. I hope you guys continue to stay curious though, and keep wanting to be a part of the world around you. You guys ask such good questions, and I just hope that you wanted to fulfill your own role in the community and continue to make our world a better place. So hopefully this inspired you.
Thanks for all the really good questions guys. I appreciate it. I love talking about my work. And if you ever want to learn more, come check me out in Bellevue university, I’d love to have you.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much. I learned so much in talking to you. I’m sure the students and the listeners did too.
Dr. Gaughan:
Good.
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