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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hey, Meredith.
Hey, Benji. How's it going?
It's going well. How's it going?
Excellent, excellent. Yeah, is now a good time to talk? I know you're pretty busy today.
Yeah, this is perfect. We just wrapped up.
Yeah, yeah. So Benji Jones, senior correspondent here at Vox, covering the biodiversity, the environment. I mean, usually I feel like I'm catching you between reporting trips to, you know, bat hospitals in Australia or chasing cougars in Mexico. So I'm glad that I caught you on this field reporting trip. Where are you now?
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Chapter 2: What is the quest for a new species in Prospect Park?
That's a leafhopper.
Oh, that's an interesting one, yeah.
Wow, that's so cool. To your knowledge, has anyone discovered a new species in Prospect Park?
To my knowledge, no. But again, most of the wildlife studies that have been done in Prospect Park are the usual suspects. You know, the dragonflies and damselflies, butterflies and moths, bees.
No one's gone out looking for flies here yet?
I don't want to say nobody, but we don't have a fly list. We have a list of some other insects.
Yes. We don't have a fly list yet. We are in eyesight of the trap, and I can describe it if that's helpful. Perfect.
Yeah, I'm really curious.
Okay, so... Part of the reason why signage was very important to say what we're doing is that it does just look like a tent from the distance. But if you can imagine just like a sheet of black mesh that is supported by tent poles and some white mesh that drapes over it in an arc.
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Chapter 3: Why is it important to discover new insect species?
Because... taxonomy is quite complicated, the system that we use to catalog life on Earth. So I guess the first thing I'll say is that there's an important distinction between discovery and description. So discovery is like, okay, we find something, we being like usually scientists, taxonomists, find something that we don't think anyone has found before. There was recently, for example, a big
announcement of of expeditions across the oceans to try to discover new species and they found like 1100 newly discovered species so things that taxonomists thought have not been found before um but when that comes to like fruit flies yeah so when it comes to probably a little different yeah so like you and me walking around pretty much anywhere we're encountering flies all the time um also we have a bunch of kids here hold on
Okay, hold on one second. Oh, kids seem to have fallen so long.
What are you doing?
We're sampling insects.
Oh, great.
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Chapter 4: What are parasitoid wasps and scuttleflies?
Okay.
Very sweet. Okay, so your question about, like, how do we know if something is new, what it means to discover a new species. Yeah. So... Description is the formal process for actually determining that something is a new species. That's when you name it.
And that basically means you have to publish a record of the specimen that you found with evidence that they're unique among all the other flies or wasps that are out there. And then you also have to comb through different museum collections, all these old academic articles to make sure that no one has described the species before.
So it's this whole sort of due diligence process to prove that this is actually new. And at that point it is like officially a new species.
Got it.
But it's like surprisingly complicated.
Yeah, yeah. So you have like, there's the like, oh, I think we've seen something new. Exactly. But that's a very different, or just like the start of a very long process. Yeah, it's a ton of work. Finding a fly in a haystack.
Literally. And like, just for like, if it's helpful for this project, so we are going to, the first step after we collect all these insects through our trap is to barcode them. And that basically means we will sequence a portion. And by we, I mean, I'm not doing this. A lab in Canada is doing it called the Center for Biodiversity Genomics. Okay.
will sequence a portion of the genome for each specimen. And that portion of the genome is called a barcode. And they basically have databases of genetic barcodes of all these species that scientists have collected. And so when we start sequencing our specimens, they can compare the barcode of our specimens to databases of barcodes to see if there's a match.
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Chapter 5: Why search for new species in a city like New York?
But it was, I mean, back in the 14, 1500s, whatever, So much had been undescribed. I mean, there was a point in history where, like, Western scientists were like, look, a giraffe. Let's name that.
I'm thinking giraffe has a good buzz to it.
Exactly. So it was easier to visibly see new stuff hundreds of years ago, obviously. But in some ways, I think we're actually in sort of like a golden age of discovery now because of... these new sampling techniques. And because of the simple fact, as I mentioned, that just still so much of these smaller animal groups are totally unknown.
Yeah. Do you think there'll ever be a point when we'll know all the species on Earth?
I... I don't know, because, I mean, part of it is that even the term species is squishy. Like, no, because I think there's a point where we will know all... vertebrates, so stuff with backbones, birds, fish, mammals. I think for insects, it's possible. When we get into smaller stuff like nematodes, bacteria, fungi, that stuff is just so hard to discover, so hard to find.
And at that point, we're like, talking about such enormous quantities of species that it's like, does it make sense to find every species of nematode? Maybe, but I think as you get into smaller and smaller organisms, it is much harder. And so I think we could discover at least most animal species if we see investments in discovery taxonomy, less likely when we go into even smaller animal groups.
So it's sort of like, where is that line for it to be worth trying? Yeah.
Yeah. I think for bacteria and fungi, like, it just seems hard.
Right. What does it mean to sign up for just, like, this kind of... impossible project then in terms of like the quest of finding cataloging understanding a whole family of flies that could have millions of potential unknown dark species yeah I mean I think that if you are
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