Hannah Chin
speaker
696 appearances
10 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2025
last heard 17 Aug
Hannah Chin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
It just came out.
And lastly, we've got one more story about pests.
This time it's how the bug-repellent DEET could have a major Achilles heel.
It's true.
Today on the show, adaptation for better and for worse.
You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
In this case, it's caterpillars.
So, Sasha, in a study out this week in the journal Science Advances, researchers described how when caterpillars munch on bean plants, a compound in the caterpillar spit causes the bean plants to release a chemical signal into the air.
Think about it as a kind of distress flare that calls in a fleet of wasp bodyguards.
So this is Adam Steinbrenner.
He's a plant biologist at the University of Washington, and he's one of the authors on the study.
He says some of the wasps eat the caterpillars.
Others lay eggs inside the caterpillars' bodies so their babies can eat them, really effectively removing the threat to the bean plants.
Yeah.
And these are both chemical responses, right?
But the specific compound that attracts wasps is really only triggered via caterpillar spit.
So the bean plant doesn't call wasps in if, say,
You cut a leaf or if you damage the plant in a different way.
And Sasha, this is just one of multiple ways that plants have really evolved to defend themselves.
If you think about the thorns of a rose or the spines of a cactus or bitter, poisonous leaves, or I guess in this case, this strategy, right?
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