Beetles Team with Fungi to Eat Trees - Jonathan Gershenzon
Alisa Nappa
Bark beetles have decimated millions of hectares of conifer forests in Europe in recent years and are attracted to trees that have a certain partner fungi already eating the tree. When the certain fungi starts metabolizing the spruce resin compounds they release pheromones to attract the beetle which starts their symbiotic relationship. We sit down with Jonathan Gershenzon to talk about his research and how we can use these new findings to protect millions of hectares of trees.
TRANSCRIPT
0:11 Welcome, welcome. You are listening to the mushroom revival podcast. This is your host Alex Dore. And we love diving into the wonderful, wacky, mysterious, interesting world of mushrooms and fungi, we bring on guests from all around the world to geek out with us and go down amazing rabbit holes of what their niche and interests are, what they are studying and dedicating their lives to these mysterious fungal allies. So today on the show, we have Jonathan, and we're going to talk about the symbiosis between trees, beetles and fungi. So Jonathan, how you doing? 0:52 Good. You. 0:54 Great? Yeah, it's, um, I'm really excited to talk to you. But for the listeners who don't know who you are, who are you in? What is the work that you're doing? 1:05 Okay, um, yeah, I'm, I'm a scientist in Germany. I was born in the United States. I grew up in California. And I got my PhD actually, in Austin, Texas, which Oh, no way. Cool. That's actually right. UT Austin, is so I have great memories from there, and always good to connect with somebody from Austin. So I went to I went to Germany, to work on chemical ecology, I got a chance to help set up a new research institute in the former East Germany about 20 years ago. And that's, that's where I've been ever since I was in the United States. I was I was studying plant biochemistry. And I was really, really focused on the plant side. But I've come around in the last few years to realizing that, that fungi, that mushrooms are really what it's all about. And it turns out that they're pretty important in some of the plant and insect systems that I've been working on. So I've, yeah, I've been also on a real voyage of discovery as far as fungi and other microbes are concerned. So yeah, so that's why I don't have a great background in all of mycology. But I'm, I'm an active learner. 2:34 Likewise, yeah, every every day, I'm learning something new, which is so exciting to be in this field, where it's relatively new for everyone, right? We've only discovered such a small percentage of them and learning more every day. And this topic is going to be brand new to me, which I'm super excited for is just diving into your research and was blowing my mind. I have I have a million questions. But the first one is just a clarifying question. The whole basis of, of this part of your research is about, you know, the relationship between trees, the specific bark beetles, and various genera of fungi. And you write about how the the fungi and the beetles have a symbiosis. And I'm just just a clarifying question, is it that the fungus starts to degrade the wood? And that makes it easier for the beetles to then eat and digest? Because it's a little softer, and then the beetles help spread the fungi by eating them and then carrying them to different trees. Is that the right symbiosis? 3:48 Yeah, I think you've got, you've certainly got part of it right, at least as far as, as far as we know. So yeah, the, the beetles are for the fungus. The beetles are sort of the buses, it's called, they hit show ride, and they get taken to the next tree, and the beetle makes a hole for them. And the fungus goes in and goes to town so that as far as what the beetle does for the fungus, it seems pretty clear. They wouldn't get to the next tree without the help of the beetle. And in fact, these fungi are only found in places where beetles are you don't find them out there in the forest all by themselves. But the other half of the question is still a little bit of a mystery. Although we're, we're hoping to push back the frontiers of darkness a little bit. It appears that the fungi could be breaking down by breaking down the wood and giving beetles more access to it. But we It could also be that they are just absorbing nutrients from the rest of the entire tree and the beetles are eating them. so they could be actually supplying specific nutrients like, like sterols like amino acids, that things that are some vitamins that are maybe in short supply in wood, and that rails are benefiting that. So yeah, so we and we also, there's actually a couple of more that we don't know, we think that that fungi actually helped kill the tree, which is actually good for the beetles, because it keeps the tree from, from responding and shooting resin in their face and doing all sorts of things like that. And it might also, they might also help keep away pathogens from the beetles. So if you can imagine life in a dark, wet place, like a tree bark, there can be a lot of other microbes around and in order to keep the beetles healthy, they might actually take advantage of having a fungus that they can rely on to keep away the pathogenic one. So lots of ideas about what the fungus might do. But we at this point, they're not really proven yet. Oh. 6:10 And I was I was reading another paper that I think you're a co author on, which was about young gypsy moth caterpillars preferring to feed on black poplar foliage infected with a rust fungus. And they don't like to eat uninfected leaves. And that was because the the ones that were infected with the the rust fungus had higher levels of the sugar, alcohol mannitol. And so the the caterpillars actually had a higher density food, eating the the foliage that was infected with this fungi, and I think had higher growth rates as well. And so it it was this symbiosis symbiosis as well, is this pretty common with with insects and and fungi infecting plants? 7:08 Yeah, we think it might be but just at this point, don't have too many examples. People haven't been really careful enough looking to see what insects are actually eating sometimes. And in this case, we found that they really prefer to feed on the fungus. And we found that they get healthier doing so. So the there's always been a thought that, you know, fungus can weaken a tree and make it more susceptible to insect attack. But there could be a very direct relationship that it really makes the food more tasty and healthy to the, to the insect itself. So yeah, the jury's still out on that one, too, I'm afraid but it's a good that you. Yeah, good that you looked up that paper, I think there's an it's an interesting connection there. Of course, you have a fungus that lives by itself, this rust gets on from tree to tree without the help of a beetle. And you have another insect coming along and just eating on the plants. But it's there's some interesting parallels to the, to the bark beetle. 8:13 Yeah, it's funny, you know, I'm, I'm mostly coming from the field of entomopathogenic. fungi, which attack the insects and, and in part, sometimes live part of their lifecycle in symbiosis with a tree or another plant. Or, you know, I've studied like leafcutter ants, which farm fungus. But this is a whole nother route, which is a really interesting story of, you know, the, the insect and the fungus having a symbiosis with where the plant is kind of having the short end of the stick. So, you know, and if the trees are really having a short end of a stick, I mean, millions of hectares of conifer forests in Europe are being decimated by by these, these. These bark beetles, what, what is the destruction? And is this are these bark beetles? How did they come about in Europe? Like, were they were they brought here? Are they kind of a new threat to forests? Or have they been around forever? 9:25 Well, we'd like to blame them on somebody else, but I'm afraid they're their native native European beetles. And they've been around for, you know, probably millions of years ever since we've had spruce certainly in forests, which really date since the last ice age. We've had some good forest in fact, the spruce forests survived ice ages in refugee in Europe. So the Beatles have probably always been there, but they've normally have never been so destructive as in the past few years. The damage in the last last 10 years has, you know, been an order of magnitude more than anything in recorded history. So it's really shot people, and especially here in Germany, where we take our trees very seriously. When you see them dying on a scale like this, people get really worried and try and try and figure out what what's wrong. So we think the problem really is we can blame it on like a lot of things on global warming. So it appears that they're being able to have more than one brood that they had somewhere between one or two broods, in other words, right. After they, you know, the young would go off once they were raised and find a new tree. And then they would, they probably wouldn't get around to finishing it or killing it or spreading, because it takes a while to kill the tree and then disperse. And it often they would overwinter. But with the warmer climate, they're, they're more they're really reproducing more rapidly. And the other thing we think is that the warmer climate is putting the trees under more stress, so that they're less able to defend themselves. So it's sort of a perfect storm, if you will. And it's really tipped the balance against the tree and for the beetle. And that's given us billions and billions of beetles, and quite a few less hectares of spruce trees. 11:27 Is this just a European phenomenon? Or are they in other parts of the world? 11:34 Think bark beetle invasions have Bailey been booming and lots of the world that over in, in North America, you may have read about the Western United States, there have been some big outbreaks in the last five or 10 years. Also. 11:49 Ash Borer, the emerald ash. 11:53 The emerald ash borer is is also Yeah, is you can consider it a bark beetle in that. I mean that I'm not sure if that one is a is it that's an invasion, but it may not be a climate invasion, why the ash are more susceptible. But it's, it's also a new outbreak. There's an insect that came from elsewhere. Whereas the bark beetles in North America are also like ours in Europe here are considered to be native, but they're just doing so much better now. You know, I think the story is out in North America is that because of the warming, they're getting into high mountain meadows, where there have never been bark beetles before. And so they're basically attacking trees that have never been never seen beetles before and don't have evolved some of the defenses. So it's really a question of insects getting into new places, that they haven't been within recorded history, and therefore, the plants are sometimes not resistant to them in the way that they might otherwise be. 12:57 Right? Yams I'm so curious, you know, because this is so under studied, I wonder that if some of our biggest agricultural pests like locusts or the Asian corn boar, or spot in spotted lantern fly, you know, Asian citrus psyllid, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, termites, like all these different agricultural pests that attack plants, if they all have this sort of symbiosis with a fungus, just like these bark beetles that are just going unnoticed, right. I guess that's something to figure out to find out. 13:45 I mean, people who love who love fungi and microbes are in business, because I think it's largely true. We think it's true for every one of the major insect pests have trees that I mean, wow. Basically, trees are just tough, you know, are tough sledding to really feed on a on bark, is is a tough way to make a living. And it looks like almost all the pests that we have some sort of associated microbe that they either truck around with them or somehow introduce it to the tree. And that helps them at least nutritionally or another thing I hadn't mentioned before was that the trees can also be full of chemical defenses like resins and some other and phenols and things like that. And the fungus may also help them with that break down some some some of these compounds. So it does appear that insects have often gone the route of getting help from the microbial world. And sometimes these are not just fungi that are outside. But sometimes you have to think about also the microbes in the gut like like we do. I mean, we're basically I'm sure if you've done these kind of podcasts before people have told you that we're all basically just boxes for for our microbes. And that's it's not a bad reason to be to be alive. But it sure makes you think about our place in the, in the, in the grand scheme of things. And it's possible that also insects, the the microbes in the insect gut may also be very, very important in contributing to all these sorts of things breaking down into the defenses of the tree or making nutrients available just as they are to us. So, in some sense, in this study, we're kind of we're looking at the whole tree is kind of an external gut, it may all be that it for the beetle, the fungus is out there doing some of its digestion or breakdown for it. And then the beetle chews up the evidence afterwards. So but in either case, the microbe the microbial world is critical in allowing the insect to survive. 15:56 And on on the flip side, as well, you know, in, in, not too long ago, we've discovered they're not just trees, right? They're a whole symbiosis of many different organisms, from mycorrhizal fungi to endophytic fungi. And then even, you know, we brought on someone on the podcast talking about how fungi have their own microbiome, and there's bacteria living inside fungi that are even helping control the fungi that are controlling the plants. And so it's, you know, every layer that we're uncovering, it just goes deeper and deeper, that there's some other smaller organism controlling the smaller organism that we thought was responsible. And yeah, I'm curious if if anyone has done any research about, you know, whether there's endo fights in the plant helping create the phenols that are defensive chemicals attacking the beetles, or if you know, there's some other fungi already living in the tree that are are helping defend from the other side? 17:09 Haha, yeah. So it's basically fungal warfare by by by proxy fungi. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, my microbes are better than yours, right? 17:22 Well, I have a tree. Well, I have a beetle. 17:27 I think you're, I mean, we don't know that much about the microbiome of the tree in this case. So it's possible that there are, I mean, there's certainly the kind of micro Rise of the root fungi that are bringing in, in nutrients and things like that. And they are certainly on the tree side. But they're there, there could well be others. And we have an interesting observation that we think that our fungi are actually bringing along some bacteria of their own for part of the as well. So it's not a simple system, they may also have snuck in some brands, they're at another level. And it may be more complicated than just simply the fungi. And as a scientist, this is not easy to DESeq because Tony, every time you open something up, you know, there's something for, right, we can look at the genomes, we get good data and try and figure out whose genes we're dealing with. If we can do that, then we can kind of get an idea that, you know, the genes of this organism are doing this, and then this doing this, but it's not always easy to separate the DNA, as well. So and then putting it back together, of course, is the is the is the real fascinating part, how it functions together. So no, you're absolutely right, I think we are we're in an age where we're just just beginning to be aware of, of how important the little guys really are all along. And just because we can't routinely see them in our daily lives doesn't doesn't, says nothing about how important they are to some of the basic processes that really support our lives. 19:04 Yeah, it. It's really funny, I was thinking about yesterday, how, you know, before we came up with the germ theory, you know, like, how we describe these phenomenons before we even knew that microbes existed, you know, and about getting sick or about curing meat and, you know, infections and things like that, like how, how we describe them, before we even knew that microbes existed. And I'm just curious and like, you know, a few 100 years, if we'll look back at us now and be like, Wow, the way they described things was so archaic, you know, and what you're just describing about how hard it is to do this work, and to figure out what's going on. One thing that's really perplexing me is that one of your latest papers was was Talking about when the fungi is metabolizing, the spruce bark, it releases volatile compounds that the bark beetles recognize through specialized olfactory sensory neurons. And they're able to, in simpler terms, they're able to smell the fungi degrading the tree and be attracted to that scent. How, as a scientist, are you able to figure that out? 20:31 Well, I guess I should start out by saying, I have lots of good smart people working with me. I just sit here and do these interesting podcasts. There are, but are we raised the money, you know how the story goes? Right? Right, the papers raise the money. But there is it's not. I mean, in this case, we really we started with the beetle and the fungus. And we realized that the when we did these little, we put beetles in a little petri dish with a bunch of fungi there, they would always choose the fungi, their special fungi, the ones that they carry into the tree. So you can you know, you can, you can give them a choice of different fungi. And the ones that they're used to hauling around with them, their their special friends, they will recognize them right away. And we also realize that they recognize them without actually touching them. So that there was a volatile smell, we let them get close to them. And then they had to make a choice that and then they fell down this little tube, and we're sort of trapped there. But they made that choice about where to fall down before they actually touch the fungus. So we decided that there was some smell, volatile cue that they were using to find their, their fungus. And if this fungus is as good as we think it is, and does some of the things that we talked about providing nutrients or breaking down defense compounds, or helping to kill the tree, or keeping away pathogens, if that does that, they really want the right fungus to carry with them. And we discovered they could make these distinctions. And they especially steer away from pathogens. So we figured that they had to be doing this. Yeah, so they had to be doing this by smell. So the next step was to actually look for the, the neurons that are controlling this smell and test them. And for this, what you have to do is you take, you take a poor beetle and a living beetle, you just have to restrain it a little bit. And you take some really small electrodes, which you can under the microscope, and what you do is you so the, the these bark beetles have these spikes on their antennae, they have about 150 to 200, which are olfactory neurons. And each each one of these spikes has a has basically a sensor. And what you can do is Colding the electrode there at the base, you can then we call it we puff a little bit and odor past it. So you open a bottle of something under the next to the insect, you just let the smell waft over the antenna. And then you can see if there's a signal from that neuron and electrical signal. And if you do this over and over, we had, we had a mixture of about 70 different odors that we use for each of these particular sensor, the sencilla, these little hairs that we tested. And the person that did the project, he spent about three months doing this, going from one little sensory organ to the next and testing it with these compounds. But in the end, he discovered that a lot of these were very specialized for fungal compounds. So a lot of them, they smell their own pheromones so they can smell each other. Some of these sensors are important for smelling the tree, but a bunch of them are really seem to be specialized for smelling the fungus. And so that kind of opened up a new window for us that said, Okay, we know that they're attracted to the fungi. And now they seem to be smelling odors, which we already knew were coming from the fungi. So we we had actually raised the fungi and actually check to see what kind of odors it made. And we also put it together in the bark in the tree. And so we had a nice collection of different molecules that we knew the fungus was producing. And so it was really exciting when we found out that the beetle itself could detect them and in fact had some neurons which seemed to be really nicely tuned to to find these compounds. So those those were really the two biggest steps in this thing. And then at the end, we had to, just because the neuron is detecting the odor doesn't mean whether it's good or bad, you know, takes the rest of the brain to do that. So we actually had to do, we did behavioral experiments where we saw which chemicals actually attracted or repelled the beetles in, in the laboratory. And so this gave us sort of completed the picture. And we were able to show that they were attracted to a lot of these fungal compounds. And we're really, we're not happy when they were volatile compounds coming from pathogenic fungi. And so that was really what, you know, gave us really helped help clinch the deal that we really were talking about. Yeah, a bouquet for The Beatles that they were smelling the fungi, and I'm more attracted to them. So 25:52 and what so that's 25:53 full of the grip of the story. 25:58 Did you test at all? I don't know, if you're able to isolate just, you know, the pheromones from decomposing spruce resin compounds just like that individual smell without any fungus to see if it's attracted. Or it's also, you know, like very attracted to that specific fungus as well. So like the bouquets what you're talking about? 26:29 Yeah, yeah, now they use a range of chemicals so that they are attracted to the resin smell, you know, that that sort of piney smell that we smell when we walk through a pine forest on a warm day. Those chemical compounds are part of what they're attracted to, but they are actually more attractive at lower doses to some of the breakdown some of the things that the fungus, so the fungus will turn those compounds into something else, put an oxygen on them and make a different compound, which has a different smell. And it turns out that that is more attractive to the Beatles, although they do sense the presence of the basic pine smell as well. So they, they have a pretty educated nose when it comes to the things that are important to them. And they can detect a whole lot of different chemical compounds in the tree and a set of those are ones that seem to be pretty much made exclusively by the fungus though. So they they seem to have been set up just to be able to find the fungus in the in the in the in their system somewhere. And we think this helps in when they choose trees. And we also think that helps. So yeah, I mean, this is a good question. When are they finding when are they smelling the fungus in the beetle lifecycle, so they they're raised in a tree, their parents, you know, they, they made it in a tree and their eggs and larvae, and they they bore into the tree and they grow as larvae in a tree and eventually reached the pupil stage. And then they hatch as adults. And then their job is really to find the next tree where they can go ahead and start the lifecycle again. But it turns out interestingly, that they feed for a few days in the tree, as they're kind of getting their wings set and their cuticle is hardening and things like that. And one, one of our hypotheses is we think that this is the time when they are smelling the fungus. And they go around and see it in the tree and they find it and carry it with them to the to the next tree. The other possibility is that they fly and they already come to a tree that has some fungus in it. And then maybe here the smell is also important because it helps them It helps them know where the fungus already is in the tree because that would be you know, tree is for a little beetle, a tree is a pretty big place to come live. And so it might help to know where your friends are. And the fact that you have fungi that are going to break down these resins which could be toxic to them is important to know. So at either end of their journey, we think that this the ability to smell the to be able to smell the fungus might be important. 29:29 Have you have you heard of any cases of entomopathogenic fungi attacking these beetles and maybe fooling their sensory olfactory neuron system to pretend that they're quote unquote, the good guy and then you know, go undercover, so to speak and then when, when this beetle comes and thinks thinks it's it's it's simply a symbol of fun Die. They're actually you know, a pathogenic fungi in in a in a, a all factory disguise and then they attack? 30:12 Oh, that's a great idea. That's yeah, I can see whose side you're on this so first of all to answer your question, there are entoma Pathik, and Tomo pathogenic fungi in our game. So every now and then we see beetles that have been killed by fungus. And in fact, as part of our research, we have to raise the beetles in the lab in a colony and we had some, we had some bad moments when fungi got in and really started killing our beetles. So they are susceptible to these fungi that will kill them. 30:48 Do you Do you know what? genera or species of pathogenic fungi? 30:54 So Beauveria bassiana? Was one of them? And another one that starts with an M metarhizium? I think or I'm not Yeah. Okay. Thank you for it's good to be on this to be talking to a real, real mycologist 31:13 I don't I don't know anything. Yeah, I'm learning every day. 31:18 Okay, well, I. So I think it could, it would be neat. It really if if a fungus was mimicking? You know, one of these pathogenic fungus was saying, hey, take me out. In fact, you know, given the way natural selection goes, it could be possible that they were doing this. We, I think I'll look for it. Thanks for the hint. But so far, we haven't seen. There are a lot of different volatiles out there that are produced by some of these different fungi. And we've, we've shown that the the the ones made by the pathogens are not attractive to beetles. But of course, this is a game of natural selection that's probably going on all the time and event, my pathogen would probably would do really well, if it could convince a beetle to carry it somewhere. 32:07 Yeah, I mean, if if you were, if you err on the side to try to protect these forests, right, and you wanted to develop a product that was this entoma pathogen and maybe coat it with, you know, you make us a spore slurry of this, you know, blueberry, Bastiaan or metarhizium. And then, you know, coat it with these pheromones to kind of trick the Beatles into thinking it's that, that symbiote, but really, it's, it's just a Trojan horse waiting to infect this beetle population to come to as bio control for that for the trees. You know, it's interesting as well, there's a case with desert locusts, where metarhizium Agrium infects the desert locusts. And there's this phenomena called terminal investment, which happens with multiple, many different insects being infected with, with fungi, including the masa spore that got really popular in the news that infects cicadas and injects it with psilocybin. And amphetamines is this phenomena where you know, some males or females, when they normally will mate with the opposite sex, when they're infected with fungi, they don't care anymore. And terminal investment is when you know you're going to die. And so the urge to spread your seed clouds your judgment of like, what, what is normal? And so and then and then if you're in your injected with a bunch of drugs, and then then really, I mean, it just opens up the the doors for this fungi to spread even further. And I wonder if these pathogenic fungi are clouding the beetles olfactory system? And if they're able to that that is the doorway through different drugs that it's infecting the beetle with etc. But maybe, yeah, maybe you could have one of your PhD students figure it figure out a it'd be a very lucrative business to to save, you know, millions of hectares of trees. I'm sure there'll be big agencies willing to pay a lot of money for that. 34:41 No, I think you're you're it's actually a really good idea to try and develop a fungus that would smell like one of the Beatles zone fungi. I mean, I think I think your idea of sort of suspension with the chemicals is not a bad idea. A lot of these are volatile, though they may not lasts that long in the field. But if you actually were able to perhaps breed a fungus, I don't want to say transgenic, but you have a fungus that up and until pathogen that would naturally make some of these same compounds, you might really be, it could be a very effective, effective control against against the beetle. So, you know, out with them with the odor, and the compounds themselves wouldn't be dangerous in any sense, because they're just odor compounds that are out there. But yet, they would attract the beetles, and they would pick up the pathogen, which would eventually kill them. 35:39 Yeah, people really took root on it, people really don't like the idea of genetically modified and some of the pathogens, though. It's, yeah, it's a scary thought, especially with, you know, The Last of Us TV show just coming out, you know, people are, people are a little frightened about the the idea of genetically modified cordyceps, you know, getting out into our environment, but I'm sure there's a way to do it. Do it effectively. 36:13 Ya know, no, I think I mean, one of the nice things about genetic engineering is it can show you there's often the variation is out there already, and you just have to find it, it can help you test some things, but it doesn't have to be the way to do things. So I mean, in our cases, we actually use it when we're interested in altering a trait in an insect or a plan in order to test an idea. But I mean, to actually use the, you know, either either one or the other as sort of a intervene in agriculture, you can often get away without actually, without without using the engine genetic engineering techniques themselves. In fact, actually, we have another idea that we've actually tested already in this is that we can use these chemicals, or use the fungi directly to attract beetles to the traps, that they're the catch. The main ways of controlling beetles is to make these pheromone traps which are basically releasing compounds that they normally use when they all aggregate on a tree and attack it. And these are chemicals that they produce. In order, the the argument is that you need to get several 1000 beetles on a tree before you can kill it. And that helps them all helps when the tree is dying, then then they have some fresh wood that's undefended in order to raise the brood. But so what they people do as you you put these pheromone traps out there in the field, and the beetles come in, and then they fall into the bottom and you can kill them and alcohol and you can get hundreds and 1000s of beetles and in the big gap. But in these big epidemics, they have not been that successful. They're just so many beetles out there. And there's pheromone everywhere that they're just not attracted to these. But what we we did some experiments last summer, that actually suggested that if we added some fungus to the traps, so we actually just put in real fungus or some of the volatiles, we could increase the catch quite a bit. So it might be possible to use this odor of the fungus against the beetles as a way to just trap trap beetles and reduce the population. When you get these huge outbreaks, it's almost impossible to do anything unless you want to save that particular tree or two. But on a landscape scale, once an invasion is a little bit under control, you may be able to use methods like this to be very effective in keeping the population down. 38:47 Well, wait, you said they fall down into alcohol? How does that work? 38:52 Yeah, so there's just to kill. I mean, this is a trap. So that, you know, they don't come out of the trap, or you don't actually have to kill them. You can if you just want to hold the trap away, but they're basically you know, either, you know, they're constructed, they're these big fins that attract them, and then that spread out and then release the odor and that they sort of intercept them in the flight. And then they that basically the insect just smells it goes down into this jar and then doesn't come out again. While either they just love the smell and stay there or they get stuck down there. Then they'll come out. So it's the standard way of of have been controlling one of the standard ways of controlling bark beetles in your so it's using the chemistry 39:44 right yeah. One other thing that I was reading was that these beetles interact with three genera of fungi from Grace mania, endo can community of four And Orpheus stoma? How much do we know about these three different genera of fungi? Are they always in symbiosis? Or is this just one species of beetles? Or the or is, you know, the bark beetles is that many different species of beetles, all just in one group. And one species interacts with only a specific species of fungi, or is that one single species of beetle can interact with many different species of fungi in these three genera. Size? That makes sense that question? 40:39 Yeah, no, it's it's another good question that I can't answer that. Well, you've laid out about five years of research to do it, what can I say? It looks like all bark beetles that attack and kill living trees. So that's not all of them. There's some that actually come in later after trees are knocked down and dead. We have some species in Europe, too, that come in later after the original beetles of guff kill the tree. But when you take the the ones that really attack living trees, almost all of them have fungi. And some of them are very closely related in the same groups. So we think this is really a general pattern. But it's hard to say which ones are it when, from our experiments with these three that you mentioned, they all seem to make odors, but they make slightly different odors. And we don't necessarily know in each individual bark beetle invasion, or this year, what fungi are out there, we haven't been monitoring that well. So for instance, one of those, I think this endogeneity of Faora was one that was studied for a long time, but now seems to be on the way out, maybe because it's too warm. And the other fungi that do well, in warmer weather might be winning the battle. But it looks like that our bark beetle always has a mixture of fungi, it doesn't seem to have only one, although in North America, I think, in the southern United States, there's one that I think that has basically only one fungus. So yeah, you maybe it's can't make a general rule out of this, but they may eat it, there could be a number of fungi out there that are similar. And I would guess that all bark beetles have one or more of these different fungi with them. And this is basically this is their their trick or one of their tricks to carry these fungi with them to help help them help them successfully infest the tree. 42:41 And you said that these specific kinds of fungi don't grow in areas where there's not this beetle. I'm guessing they don't really have any other relationships with other insects that we know of. Right now. 43:01 Ya know, for these, we've never these have only been only been found in association with with bark beetles. So yeah, so you can't you know, if you're looking for fungi, I don't know where you go for look for fungi. But if you go out into the forest and put out Petri plates or, you know, you know, you know, inoculate things from the ground or from the leaves or from wherever you do that, you won't find them unless you have a bark beetle invasion going on. So they, they really seem to have a niche, you know, this is what they do. And they do when we've we've actually been doing experiments, competition experiments, we want to see how tough these fungi are, can they protect beetles from the pathogens, for instance, pathogenic fungi. And in most cases, they're kind of wimps, where we're still working on this. So they may just, they just can't live anywhere. They really develop the lifestyle that goes along with these beetles. And, and that's their identity. That's what they do. So it'll be interesting to find out more ways in which they may have evolved to go with them. For instance, do they have special sticky spores that stick to the Beatles, or they're the Beatles, some of the Beatles seem to have special ways of carrying the fungi around? And maybe there's some interesting adaptations there. Yeah, it would be it would be nice to know what more ways in which these two organisms have really kind of joined themselves evolutionarily. 44:35 You know, I was in Ecuador in 2015. And we were staying at a research station, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. And there was this old researcher there that was with his assistant and they're studying beetles and fungi in the guts of beetles. And I never got his name and And he kind of kept to himself and now that I'm having this conversation with you, I'm like, kicking myself that I never got his name or his contact or anything. And now I don't know anything about his research, but hopefully I run into him somewhere in the world and it'll connect you guys but but that's all I got for now. But it seemed like, you know, a pretty interesting thing to study and it's funny that you brought up like, I don't know where you I don't know where you look for fungi or mushrooms. But you know, I love talking to people that look for fungi in in some of the niches weirdest places. And some of the most interesting relationships, you know, it's when I go out to look now I you know, looking for kind of big cap and stem mushrooms that everybody else is looking for, kind of it kind of bores me now. It's, it's like, not interesting enough. It's like, I want to look for the fungi, this attacking the insects, or I want to look at, like, you know, the weird little stuff that no one's looking for. I'm like, looking under leaves, um, you know, and everyone else is looking at the ground. And they're like, why are you looking and leaves right now? And, and, and it's, it's important, you know, these conversations could save, you know, millions of hectares of trees, potentially, or just, you know, help us understand about the vast unknown of mycology and just life as we know it, you know. And so, yeah, thanks. Thanks for Thanks for studying beetles, fungus and trees. 46:47 Well, thanks for having me on your, on your podcast. It's been great talking with you. And yeah, I buy. Yeah, I'm, I'm, uh, I might be that old guy in that forest camp in Ecuador one day? I hope so. About fungi? 47:03 Yeah, no, I'll go with you. I want to rebook a trip there. So yeah, let me know if you want to go. Yeah, well, we'll get 47:15 we'll start packing. Yeah, I mean, especially, it's a good point that when you get to tropics, in places where people are, you know, at least Western science has not penetrated vary farther, it'd be amazing to just go and look at some of the interactions there places and see what fungi are up to, for instance, and in in habitats like that. 47:35 So what, what are you hoping to you personally, and then as the field, what are you hoping to study or uncover in in save the next 510 years? Plus? 47:54 Okay, before I before I get older, and go to Ecuador, okay, well, I'm already old, but I think I'd like to try and get a better understanding of, it's kind of your first question, what the fungus is really delivering to the beetle? Why do they take so much trouble to find it and carry it around? And is there something special about it, it would be really neat to figure out where, you know, we're, we're trying to seem that right now, they can break down some of the resins and other defense compounds. And that could be if so, I'd like to know a little bit more about that. And then I kind of like to circle back to the tree at some point, because I kind of started out with the tree and how it protects itself and think about what the tree can you know what the tree's defenses are and how they're failing in these big invasions, and maybe try and understand a little bit more about about that. So, yeah, I'd like to fit as many of the pieces together as we can, there are a lot of other creatures in there there, yeasts and mites and all sorts of other microbes in the tree. And it takes a lifetime to really have a good understanding of it. But if we can get a little bit farther down the road, and maybe help, help, well, I'd like to help protect the forests that I've really grown to love and, and keep them from being decimated by beetles, at least for the next while we endure the global warming, that would also be 49:19 so you can figure all the pieces out before they destroyed. 49:24 Yeah, we don't have much time left. But I think we've got a nice, really cool, wet spring in Europe this year. So it might not be as much of a big beetle years, it's been the last few and that might help. But it'll be interesting to see how things develop. So no, I it'd be fun to find out a lot more about the interactions. And I mean, putting in a general way I think, as you've said really well there's so many of these interactions that we're just beginning to understand that it would be nice to be able to study a few more of them and and begin And to put them in some sort of framework like what kind of things can fungi do for insects? In regularly? And how often are these relationships around? And what are we overlooking that we've missed so many of them before? And that would, you know, that would that would really push things forward as far as understanding what makes sense X tech, as well as plants? 50:22 Where can people follow your work and keep updated on what what the fungus is doing? 50:31 Okay, I'm not really we have, we put out some press releases. I'm not a, I've never been a Twitter guy. I've got a couple of people in my group who do that. We have a website, if you Google my name, and bark beetle, you'll come to we have a it's a site hosted by our Institute in Germany. And there, there's a bunch of pictures and description of some of the other projects that are going on, about Beatles and fungi. So that that's probably the best I can do now. But if you want to go ahead and and write to me, or, you know, pick up somebody on our, we have someone who helps answer the mail a lot of time and we've we've, our work has gotten a little bit of publicity in the last couple of years. So we're happy to try and answer questions from people, and German or English. And if you own a forest or not own a forest, whatever, we get some questions from forest owners a lot about what they can do. And so we try and give them help and try and try and figure out some things that at least help people understand what's going on a little bit. It's a pretty amazing phenomenon. For me, I started really studying caterpillars munching on leaves. And if you scale up from that, to watching 1000s of beetles kill a, you know, a tree that's 20 or 30 meters tall, you realize how amazing that is, and, and then now that we realize it's all done by the help of microbes, that kind of puts puts it in perspective pretty well. So it's, it's a, it's a privilege to kind of go out and witness some of these interactions, and hopefully in fun to learn a lot more about him. 52:14 Cool, well, it is been a great conversation, and you've definitely piques my perspective on what is going on in our weird, weird, wonderful natural world and all the different interactions that are happening. Yeah, it really, really helps peel the layers of what is really going on beneath, underneath the curtain, you know. And so thanks, I really love having these kind of perspective shifts of, you know, looking looking at things around me and realizing that I have no idea what's going on, beneath everything, which is really humbling and really exciting at the same time. So thanks for coming on. And thank you everyone for tuning in and tuning in to another mushroom revival podcast episode, wherever in the world that you're listening from. I couldn't do this podcast without you. So thank you for for listening and being an avid supporter. If this is your first time listener, or your longtime listener, thanks for tuning in. And if you want to support the show, I don't have a Patreon or anything that you could monetarily donate to. But if you want to support the show, we have a website mushroom revival.com, where we have a bunch of functional mushroom products, from powders to gummies, to tinctures, to capsules. And so if you want to support your own health or get it for a family member, friend, head over there. There's also a bunch of free ebooks and blogs and fun educational resources there that you can learn more on the website. And so with that, keep spreading the wonderful news of mushrooms if you learned something cool in this episode, tell a friend tell a stranger on the street. Tell a family member and keep keep spreading this. This love for mushrooms and fungi and with that much love and may the spores be with you Transcribed by https://otter.ai
