Name: SciShow Talk Show: John Roach on Ecology & Freckles the Leopard Gecko
Uploaded: 2014-06-17T03:18:15.000Z
Duration: 12 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello and welcome to the SciShow Talk Show, the day on SciShow where we talk to cool people

This is Dr. John Roach. He is an ecologist and has been for quite a while, and I just

got briefed on his whole history. There is a lot to it. Start me off at the beginning

JR: Well, I took a turn from studying government and doing policy and realizing that it was

hard to advise people when I didn't understand science. So, when I had an opportunity to

work in Yellowstone studying coyotes, I packed my bags and moved from Washington D.C. to

HG: That sounds pretty awesome. Uh, when was this?

JR: Uh, this was in the mid 90's, so before wolves were introduced, when coyotes still

JR: in packs. So, they had large packs there, and people were keeping track of those, and

they were the premiere wildlife viewing during the winter. I used that as a stepping stone

to move on to do a Master's degree. So, I took some courses getting ready for Master's,

Part of the reason I was interested in those is the same sorts of questions occur around

pikas as did really about reintroduction of wolves. Do pikas structure plant communities

So, pikas are these rabbit-like creatures. They are in the rabbit family. They are about

the size of a hamster. They live in high alpine areas. They hide in rock areas because that's

safe, but there is not much food there so they have to venture out from the talus to

find something to eat, and the further they go, the riskier it is for them. So they tend

to concentrate that foraging on areas that are near the edge of the talus. And consequently,

they have a really strong and interesting impact on which plants you find where.

And this is the same idea, that people were wondering whether or not when wolves were

returned either by simply reducing the number of elk or by changing where they forage, if

JR: They are an interesting critter from a conservation perspective because they are,

uh, widely thought by some people to be a potentially "canary in the coal mine" for

climate change, because as the world warms species ranges are assumed to move uphill,

and if you are already on the top of the hill there is not much room to go. So there's certainly

some people that are interested in pikas from that perspective, but I wasn't. I was interested

HG: So that was your Master's research...

HG: I introduced you as doctor so you must have continued.

JR: I did! So I - one of the things I like about pikas was they're charismatic and they're

JR: Yeah! And so that was great. The difficult thing about working the high alpine is that

the plants there grow really, really slowly. So we set up this experiment and we watched

it for three field seasons, which is actually a fairly long Master’s and small changes

During that time I had been working with some people that did aquatic work. Aquatic systems

are fast. Algae grows quickly. So I moved to the desert where streams are uniquely defined

and started to work on urban systems and look at how they functioned. And they were nothing

like what I expected because they are artificial and they are canal water that's being moved

through them, that's been pumped from underground and it's collected over long periods of time.

But they are fast in terms of their ecology. Nutrients change quickly over time. Plants

grow quickly and so they are really nice systems to study how ecology unfolds.

HG: So you were studying the ecology of just general water systems in the desert?

JR: Well, our lab did. Our lab was focused on that, but I had a unique opportunity. One

of the things that the National Science Foundation has funded for long term, long time is something

called the LTER network, Long Term Ecological Research. And the idea is that ecology unfolds

over longer time scales than the typical PhD which is the average length of a study. And

they have these all over the place, including Antarctica, the tall grass prairie, etc. And

when I started my PhD they were starting two of the first urban ones. So there was an urban

one in Phoenix and Baltimore and that afforded me the opportunity to try and understand how

streams in a city might be very different than streams in the surrounding area. So we

focused on this strange, artificial watershed that lay in what was historically a dry wash,

where water only flowed during monsoon rains and now flowed whenever people opened a spigot.

JR: But it's neat. You can see these interesting ecological signals there so you can see areas

that are significantly cooler just because people irrigate so much more. They're greener,

they're cooler. And, they also track strange things, like income because wealthy people

have the money to irrigate and manicure their lawns in a place in a way that more impoverished

folks don't. So you see this real difference in the climates of different neighborhoods,

JR: So you have this weird interplay between what people do and how the ecology of the

city works, and this is part of what makes these urban LTERs so interesting is trying

to combine these individuals who are doing - these scientists that do social science

- with people like me that are more interested in ecology and link them to create a really

rich understanding of how cities function.

HG:Really cool. Um...Jessi from Animal Wonders I think is now going to show us some kind

of animal. So she will appear shortly. Where you're sitting and you will be scootched over

HG: Magic! It's a lizard. JKC: Yeah! Wait.

HG: More specifically... JKC: Yeah, yeah. Ok, this is a leopard gecko.

Her name is Freckles. HG: Freckles. God. (laughs)

JR: Of course. HG: So this is a leopard gecko. It is, I am

gonna to go ahead and say, kinda ridiculous looking.

JKC: Awww... HG: I'm not...there is nothing...I'm not...I

don't think I am going to injure its feelings. JKC: Its sensitive.

HG: Ok. Ooh...does it like that? JKC: Yeah! Wanna pet her?

HG: Ok, yeah. That's sorta what I expected you to feel like. I'm gonna stay in this part

mostly. JKC: Ok! Now feel right here. Kinda like rub

your fingers HG: Oooo...whoa...that feels like - like I'm

touching a bug. I would not- JKC: A bug?!

HG: Yeah. Like a grub. JKC: Yeah, yeah. There ya go.

HG: Yeah, it's more… more than a bug. JKC: Yeah. Be gentle with it.

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SciShow Talk Show: John Roach on Ecology & Freckles the Leopard Gecko

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