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[piano intro] - Hi, there.

I'm Frank Graff.

What are North Carolina researchers studying in the Galapagos Islands?

We'll take you there.

Can foxes, coyotes and bobcats live together in the mountains?

One of them is a newcomer.

And tracking North Carolina's newest salamander.

We're talking connections with habitat, people and creatures, next on Sci NC.

- [Announcer] Funding for Sci NC is provided by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

[gentle music] ♪ - Hi, again, and welcome to Si NC.

We start with a happy 10th birthday to the Galapagos Science Center.

It's a partnership between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador.

Why the Galapagos?

Well, the Galapagos Islands sit about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador.

The islands are isolated and the unique organisms and ecosystems, it's all fascinated scientists ever since Charles Darwin explored the area in 1835.

What he found inspired his theory of evolution.

So let's head to the Galapagos for a look at how the health of algae could be a measure of the overall health of the ocean.

- Working here at the Galapagos Science Center is wonderful.

It's an environment where I feel I am challenging myself and that I am growing as a student, and as a scientist, and as a person.

I'm doing a bunch of research that eventually will help my own country, so that's very rewarding.

And then in general, I can only say that I feel like one of the luckiest marine biologists of all, because I am able to work in this paradise and in something that I like a lot.

My name is Isabel Silva Romero.

I am originally from Salinas, which is a beach town in the coast of Ecuador.

And right now I am a graduate student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill at John Bruno's lab.

[water splashes] [calm music] So we use this apparatus, this device called CISME, it's spelled C-I-S-M-E. And specifically we are using it to measure respiration and photosynthesis.

We are trying to unravel how primary productivity shifts in these subtidal rocky reefs.

Primary production and specifically primary producers are the base of the food web.

So all the ecosystem is sustained by primary productivity, specifically in these reefs here in the Galapagos and all over the world.

So basically by knowing how this might shift in the years ahead, we can speculate or have predictions of how the community structure and the community dynamics are going to also change.

Woo-hoo!

My lab is the best lab in the world, in my opinion.

And I have worked with John and Maggie for a few years now.

And I can only say that they are the most wonderful mentors, the advisors that I could ask for.

The focus of our lab of Bruno lab is marine ecology and conservation.

And we are very, very clear and interested in pursuing that conservation aspect of all the research that we do.

So our aim is to produce high quality scientific data that can be used by important institutions to help come up with important strategies and conservation policies for the archipelago.

The world is changing, so in the context of climate change and ocean warming communities are also going to change.

So we're gonna have new losers and new winners, and having healthy oceans is crucial for human survival here in the planet.

- Still in the Galapagos where UNC researchers are also studying the link between food and water issues and the overall health of the people who live on the island.

[gentle music] - In every place I have studied, I have heard it multiple times in multiple different languages that water is life.

And water truly undergirds everything that we do.

Before I was even at UNC, I didn't know that people lived on the Galapagos.

And then I started to work with some of the anthropologists, like Amanda Thompson, Peggy Bentley, and started reading the amazing work that's coming out of the labs at UNC, and was really shocked to learn just the potential for collaboration and meaningful engagement.

- So that's one of the hallmarks of research at the Galapagos Science Center is we talk about interdisciplinary research a lot, but given the scale of research on the islands and on the interdisciplinary nature of who comes to do research on the islands, it's really this unique opportunity for people to work together across disciplines.

For the past, I don't know, six, seven years or so, we've been looking at how water and food impact health, and particularly in places like the Galapagos where you see a lot of economic development, you see people being able to afford things like packaged foods, or not being able to afford things like fresh fruits and vegetables.

What we conclude from that is that the Galapagos actually suffer from a triple burden of ill health so that they're having this infectious disease, they're having these chronic diseases alongside high levels of mental health and distress.

And so we're really trying to get a sort of comprehensive picture of people's health.

Like all of our research has really been community-based, I'm working with local research assistants, trying to be responsive to community needs, but while we're in the homes, we were just asking moms, like, what do you think are the biggest problems for health on the islands?

And there were lots and lots of responses about, you know, this water isn't as good as it is on the continent.

We're worried about our children drinking it.

The food quality isn't as good.

- It's not always about availability, although that's certainly an issue.

I think what's really interesting here is folks who making those same types of decisions, but around quality.

So a lot of households know that the water isn't necessarily safe to drink so they purchase bottled water.

Yet they might still cook with that, or they bathe with it.

Some of the most salient commentary was people talking about how water issues would lead to domestic issues.

If they would say that if I don't have enough water, sometimes I have to decide whether I will eat or my child eats.

You can imagine the stress of not trusting that your water's safe and trying to provide safe water for your family.

Sometimes science can operate in a vacuum.

And what I appreciate here is that people are actually trying to make a meaningful difference.

So with our project, we have the mayor's office and the municipality involved, so that hopefully the findings that we are generating don't just stay in a lab or just some stuffy scientific publication, that they actually are being implemented at the policy level.

- [Amanda] What Darwin termed the Galapagos in his journals when he first saw them, it was a little world within itself.

And I think that that's true, that what we're seeing here is sort of a microcosm of what we're seeing in other places.

So the lessons that we learn here, we can then apply to other contexts, which might be a little bit more challenging to measure.

- That relationship between food, water, land and people is what Western Carolina University researchers are studying.

Their subjects are the fox, the bobcat and the coyote.

Coyotes are new to the region.

And the question is, does the forest provide enough resources for all three?

- And so, as you could see, we're on a ridge.

So the ridge goes up this way, and then it goes out this way.

And a lot of these carnivores like to travel those ridges.

And so when we came up here, we found there was coyote scat, there was bobcat scat.

So we're just for diet analysis and purposes, we wanna look here for more scat again.

Yeah, we can do the epithelial swab first.

So the first thing we do is swab the outside of that scat.

The animals will shed in their intestinal lining, which has these epithelial cells.

And so if you swab the outside of the scat soon enough, you can get a definite idea on what species left that scat.

And then we could look at diet.

Looking for hair, looking for bones, looking for seeds and identifying those throughout the year to see what these animals are eating.

So are they eating berries?

Are they eating insects?

And how much the does their diet actually overlap here?

- [Host] That's right.

Scat is exactly what you think it is.

- [Student] Do you need a label on that too?

BC two.

- [Aimee] Yep.

- [Host] Scientists learn a lot from what animals leave behind.

- [Aimee] So remember a thumb size to go in here.

- [Host] And scat is one of the tools biologists are using in a unique research project in the hardwood forest that cover large parts of Western North Carolina.

- [Aimee] Yeah, so I labeled the stem winder and I labeled it the trap location.

- [Host] They wanna learn just how well three carnivores are sharing the land and its resources.

- What we're looking at is the interrelatedness between coyote and bobcat and fox.

And so coyote are relatively new to the area.

They've been here for about 30 years.

We've gotten a pretty good idea of how this new predator to the system impacts our prey species, such as white-tailed deer and wild turkey, but we don't really have a good understanding of how they impact our other carnivores or other predators, like bobcat, and gray fox, and red fox.

When you have a new predator move in, that's larger than the other predators that are currently there, they can turn into a dominant or an apex predator.

And that turns the other predators into what we call subordinate predators.

So we're collecting blood to check for distemper.

And so while we capture the predators, one benefit of having the animals in hand is that we can draw blood.

We can look for ectoparasites.

So we did pull ticks off of a number of these individuals.

- [Host] GPS collars were put on two sets of bobcats, coyotes and fox.

- [Researcher] You're good, chica.

- [Host] The collars collect hourly data for five days of where the animals are.

- So when you have times where resources are plentiful, animals, in general, aren't going to spend the time and energy it takes to defend a territory, if resources are plentiful.

But when resources start becoming limited, that's the time where they'll start defending and fighting for their resources and space.

We now have a lot more coyotes on the property, but no fox.

Our species diversity in general has declined.

Our raccoon captures are going down.

So there are a number of different reasons.

One, it could be very much related to habitat.

It could be that there's no decline at all.

It could just be that the fox are becoming more urbanized and that they're moving to these urban environments.

We know they're urban adapters.

We know they'll go to urban environments.

We also know coyotes will move to urban environments.

- [Student] Whenever I find the signal, there's like a range.

I usually figure out where it's weakest to the left and then figure out when it's weakest to the right.

And then the strongest signal is in the middle of that.

And that's when we will take the bearing of like, that'll be the direction that the bobcat's in.

[navigation signal humming] - You're good.

You're good.

Wow.

Okay.

[laughs] - Thanks.

- [Aimee] So we're about right here on the map or the signals it about in this direction right here.

So they can take a bearing on the compass and map that direction.

- [Gilbert] And what'd you find?

- [Aimee] It's a male bobcat.

- Gives you a time and a date for each of these points, looks like July 6th, 2019, and further up here, July 10th.

Yeah, so it looks like he's been making their way out this way.

- [Host] The findings so far, bobcats, foxes and coyotes are staying within a few miles of each other.

- You know, one of the big parts of the study is to see how the different predators affect each other.

Yeah, we're pretty much just trying to see if the presence of one is affecting when the other is there.

And that could be important for someone might see a fox in the daytime, think It's rabid, when in all actuality it's just that's when it's kind of allowed to be there safely and comfortably, so.

- [Sabrina] The Blue Ridge Parkway runs along the top of the ridge that you can just barely see.

- [Host] The residents of Balsam Mountain Preserve, a heavily wooded community and nature preserve near Silva, are helping with the study.

- So, you know, here's a lot of different aspects to having a house in their territory basically.

- And we also try to alleve some of the fear that people come with when they're in this kind of community, 'cause there's a lot of wild here.

We like to think that we provide the homeowners here with a barometer of the health of their 4,400 acres.

But we're not under a bubble, so everything that comes in and goes out, these animals, the coyotes, the bobcats, they move.

The black bears, they move on and off the property.

- North Carolina's newest species of salamander has found its connection with habitat in a tiny sliver of the North Carolina Sandhills.

- [Jeffrey] Couple of good logs over that way.

- [Host] You could call these scientists detectives trying to solve one of nature's mysteries.

- [Jeffrey] Well, we just like to see, get some idea of what the adults are doing.

- [Stephanie] Those look like they might really be good logs.

- What the populations are like.

We like to try to find these salamanders in new places.

We found them in this area before, so we know they're here, but sometimes we like to come and just make sure they're still here.

- [Host] They're searching for the Carolina Sandhills salamander.

It's a newly discovered and rare salamander species.

- Wow.

This looks good.

There's some sphagnum here.

It's like opening Christmas presents.

Just look under there and you find a surprise, and it might just be leaves, it might be a millipede, it might be an earth worm.

- [Host] Or you might just find a salamander.

- [Jeffrey] Yeah, they have spots along and on the the sides.

- [Host] North Carolina's diverse geography makes it home to the greatest variety of salamanders in the nation.

- [Jeffrey] This is an Atlantic Coast slimy salamander.

This Plethodon chlorobryonis.

The salamanders in the genus Plethodon are all terrestrial.

They kind of defy the word amphibian.

They don't use water to breed, but they have to stay moist and wet, but they undergo their whole life cycle on land.

- [Host] Finding any salamander is exciting.

- [Jeffrey] He left on cue.

- [Host] But this is not the salamander researchers were looking for.

- [Stephanie] Oh, that's thorn.

- [Host] Carolina Sandhill salamander is the state's 64th confirmed species.

- Yes.

They're fairly rare.

Even though this is where you look for them.

You still can look and look and not find one.

- [Host] The Carolina Sandhills salamander is only found in the Sandhills region.

[water sloshes] It lives in springs and along blackwater streams in what's left of the longleaf pine ecosystem.

Longleaf pines used to stretch from Southern Virginia to South Florida.

Only about 3% of the ecosystem remains.

- [Stephanie] There's an earthworm.

- [Host] Besides its limited range, what also makes the Carolina Sandhills salamander unique is the story of how it was identified.

- And so it's quite exciting to be able to show that we are still able to find new species of vertebrates right here in North Carolina.

- [Host] Our salamander tale starts in the wet lab of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

The lab preserves multiple species of all of the animals found around the entire state for research purposes.

- All these specimens are documentation of what we have here, where they occur now and where they used to occur.

We tried to document the range of species to the extent we possibly can.

- [Host] Specimens of the Carolina Sandhills salamander were first collected in the 1960s.

- We determined that there was a strange salamander.

It was a bit different in the Sandhill.

I set about trying to find out as much as we could about it, where does it occur?

What kind of stream?

What kind of habitat?

What did they look like?

How long is the larval period?

Where did they lay their eggs?

Anything we could find out about 'em.

- [Host] At first glance, scientists thought this new salamander looked like a two-lined salamander, but not exactly.

- That form that they were finding in the Sandhills physiographic region of North Carolina was different in coloration, and a little bit different in size, and certainly different in its natural history, the kinds of streams that it would occupy in the Sandhills, compared to other two-lined salamanders.

- [Host] Compelling evidence, but not convincing.

Species can differ in appearance simply because of geographic location.

- Even if everything in the Sandhills did look differently, it still could just be an ecological variant and not a distinct species.

- [Host] Enter genetics and DNA sequencing.

- [Bryan] And we decided to take a fresh look at this salamander using modern genetic techniques that are now available to us.

So by sequencing many genes of the Sandhills salamander compared to its relatives in the two-lined salamander group, and then looking at the morphology, the size and shape of the animal, using our preserved museum specimens that go back all these decades and comparing those to their other close relatives.

- [Host] The result, drum roll, please.

[drum roll] - We have found that that unusual looking two-lined salamander in the Sandhills of North Carolina is indeed a new species to science.

- [Jeffrey] That's what we're looking for.

Carolina Sandhill salamander.

That's a female.

Their larval stage is at least a year or so.

And she's gotta be probably two or three years old.

- [Host] And here is the Carolina Sandhills salamander in the wild.

It's much more colorful.

- [Jeffrey] It's best to handle amphibians with wet hands.

There's something about the Sandhills that makes it advantageous for this species to be reddish with reduced stripes.

But the genetics confirmed that it was distinct.

That's the exciting part, using new tools to confirm something we've suspected all this time.

- [Announcer] Do you want to explore more cool science facts and beautiful images of North Carolina?

Follow us on Instagram.

- Now to an insect that has adapted to live pretty much anywhere.

There are 4,600 species of cockroaches.

Adrian Smith at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences captured amazing video of how all those cockroaches start their life.

- These two sequences of baby roaches hatching from their egg cases have to be some of the squirmiest bits of insect footage I've ever captured.

The full sequences as you'll see in a minute are both kind of gross, but also fascinating to watch.

Usually when I film insects for research, I'm using a high-speed camera, and I'm seeing them in super slow motion, but sometimes it's just as fun to do the opposite, capturing only a few frames per second, and playing them back at a faster rate to take long sequences of behavior and compress them into shorter time-lapse sequences.

For instance, on the left, after months of raising the larva, it took weeks of filming to capture this moment when an ant lion adult first emerges from its sand encrusted cocoon.

Or on the right, the few minutes, it takes for a meal worm beetle pupa to shed its last larval skin.

But capturing one of these opening is my new favorite time-lapse sequence.

This is the egg case of an American cockroach, and in it are 16 or so developing roaches.

There are two rows of them in here, all lined up with their heads pointing towards the ridged keel, which you see here at the top.

Females will deposit these egg cases about a month before they hatch.

Sometimes they glue them to debris, which is what you see stuck to all these.

About an hour before hatching, the egg case starts quivering as a roaches squirm around inside.

When they've wiggled enough, finally, the keel breaks open and they all shimmy their way out.

[gentle music] ♪ These are adults of a different species, the German cockroach.

And instead of depositing their egg cases, these females carry them around attached more or less until they hatch.

But a day or so before they do, you can encourage the females to drop them, which I did to end up with this shot.

From above and through the case, you can see the dark patch of gut of each of the nymphs as they're packed in shoulder shoulder.

[gentle music] ♪ These nymphs will darken as their cuticle hardens and molt through several larger developmental stages over months before they become adults.

As an adult, a single female German cockroach can produce half a dozen or more of these cases and a hundred or more of these young roaches.

So a little gross, but also I think really cool.

- That is amazing.

Speaking of adapting to a habitat, that is really important in a wetlands.

What's a wetlands?

NC Culture Kids explain.

- Hello, everyone.

It's Brandon here, and I'm at Haw River State Park.

I'm joined by Ranger Lindsey.

- Hi, Brandon.

- We're going to explore the wetlands today.

So Ranger Lindsey, I have a question.

Other than the wetness, I guess, what makes wetlands wetlands?

- Well, the wetness is a big part of it.

So there's lots of different types of wetlands out there from salt marshes to cypress swamps, but all wetlands typically have three things in common.

They have water saturated soils, plants that can tolerate really wet conditions, and the dynamic presence of water.

- Great.

Well, let's go take a look.

- Sure.

- So the ground might be covered by water part of the year and other times it might just be water logged soils like we have over here.

- If there are many different types of wetlands, what kind of wetland are we we in today?

- Well, the wetlands here at Haw River are known as riverine wetlands because they're in the flood plain of the Haw River.

So the water in these wetlands is fresh water.

It comes from precipitation or underground springs instead of saltier, brackish water, like you might have near the coastal marshes.

We have a lot of flood tolerating plants here, like pickerel weeds, swamp rosemellow, buttonbush and silky dogwood.

Plus, larger trees like sycamore, sweet gum and tulip poplars, just to name a few.

- So what is it that makes wetlands so important?

- Wetland ecosystems are special because of their ability to hold onto water.

So wetlands act like a sponge after heavy rain events, which reduces flooding and erosion downstream.

And it also keeps this area really wet in times of drought when other areas might be very dry.

The plants and soils in wetlands also improve the water quality.

Pollutants in the water can settle out here and get buried under thick layers of mud and detritus so that also takes them out of the water.

- So what types of animals live here?

- So wetlands are especially important for animals with young aquatic life stages.

Dragonflies lay their eggs in the wetlands.

And when they first hatch, they live completely in the water.

- [Brandon] You mean that's a dragonfly?

- Yeah.

So this is a larval dragonfly called a nymph.

They actually spend most of their life at this stage.

They stay in the water, and they don't have any wings.

In the open water, these animals would make easy prey for larger predators, but here in the shallow wetlands, they have a lot of places to kind of hide and feed until they can grow larger.

Our wetlands also provide food for lots of migrating birds, like scarlet and summer tanagers, blue grosbeaks and Louisiana waterthrushes.

These migrants fly all the way from the tropics of Central America to feast on the plentiful wetland insects.

Year round, you can also find wood ducks, great blue herons, pileated woodpeckers and belted kingfishers.

As far as mammals go, we have a lot of swimming mammals here, like river otter, beaver, mink, and muskrat.

With plenty of water, nutrients and sunlight, our wetland producers provide lots of energy for thousands of different animals.

In many places, people have drained wetlands because there are difficult places to build houses or farm crops, but wetlands do so much for water quality and wildlife, that it's important we protect them.

- Wow.

The wetlands here are amazing.

But where exactly is the Haw River?

- These sprawling wetlands are actually near the very beginning where headwaters of the Haw River.

It flows about 110 miles north of Greensboro before connecting with the Deep River and then connecting with the Cape Fear River and finally emptying out into the Atlantic Ocean.

So protecting the wetlands here goes a long way.

- Absolutely.

We all need clean water.

Well thank you for showing me how important the wetlands are here.

- Absolutely.

- And that's it for Sci NC for this week.

Be sure to check us out online.

I'm Frank Graff.

Thanks for watching.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] Funding for Sci NC is provided by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

[gentle music]