by Santosh Rajus – Working on the Coffee White Stem Borer, observing them in the field in their modified ecosystem, and my recent observation of a huge gathering of beetles feeding on the secretion from tree barks ,makes me wonder, what happens to the insects when we modify their ecosystem? How do they find their host? How far do they go in search of their host?

We all know that insects play a very important role in our ecosystem. Insects are really good at playing their part and I think modifying their ecosystem just puts them in a puzzle. A few insects may be able to solve this puzzle, thus making them survive in large numbers and eventually making them a PEST. Citing this example of the Coffee white stem borer; how their natural hosts were removed, leading them to choose the Coffee plant, how they adapted to using this plant as a host and eventually becoming a pest in the coffee plantations; leads me to several questions – What made these borers choose the coffee plant? Did the beetle get attracted to coffee because it had features similar to its previous host or is it simply just the lack of availability of other hosts? Hope I get my questions answered soon.

All questions aside, understanding the ecosystem is very important before we modify it, as it will give us an idea about host plants and its natural enemies. Insects are not pests; we create an environment where they become one. Let’s think before we act!

by Suhrid Ghosh  – Sitting in the Fly Room on a Saturday afternoon, amidst thousands of vials and the smell of the fly food, I can’t help but lose myself in seemingly futile imagination as I stare at this photo on the back of a book. Did Thomas Morgan (3rd from right) ever foresee that the fruit fly would become the model organism it is today? An un-revolting animal donating its life in a major way to possibly every field of biological research.

Picture: T.H.Morgan(3rd from right) and his associates at Columbia University, 1919, to celebrate the return of Alfred H. Sturtevant(with beer and cigar) from World War I.

A year back, I was working with Shannon in Lachen valley in the Himalayas. I remember the conversation we had on the basic differences in approach to ecology and cell/molecular biology. The unpredictability quotient in any field research is almost many-fold higher than lab research. This makes any kind of field research highly subjective, with inadequate controls, as one may expect in a laboratory phenotype. Then does it make field studies less true? Not necessarily. Both fields have their own caveats. Consequently, it opens up new avenues for fruitful collaborations. In my opinion, a single piece of study which describes a biological event or phenomenon, should hold good in both scenarios – the valley and the vial.

Coming back to Dresden, the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics is one of the best places where my dreams of connecting the two realms is starting to be realized. Although I must say, it took me quite some time to learn the ways of a fly geneticist. It is almost a wonder the way an insect is tweaked and turned to get answers.

Dresden is a wonderful city with strong Bohemian influences and the river Elbe, whose green banks serve as basking grounds for us, of course, with some locally brewed wheat beer.

by Pavan Kumar Kaushik – Students were running away from school like a scene from a prison break. Except these were graduate students escaping the talks describing excellent research during their grad school orientation. Among the escapees were two guys in a deep argument over a shallow issue. How obedient are the gardening staff? Like diligent students of the methods of rationality, they came up with a test and the weather cooperated with them. It started pouring; the monsoon had started. Will the gardeners switch off the sprinklers which were meant to maintain a temperate grassland in a tropical dry forest? The answer needed time and the rain was a great distraction. The rain had brought a puzzling expression on one of the lads. Initially it looked like joy, and on careful observation one could see the pain, questioning the injustice, the reason for this inequality. If you grew up in a desert and you experience tropical monsoon, this is how it might be. Meanwhile, the other boy was oblivious to these emotions, racing barefoot on the slippery grass. But then their eyes spot something. A dark blob flying amidst the severe downpour. They chase it to no avail, too fast. And the rain seemed to do anything but slow down. The two boys were sprinting to prevent a psychological hypothermia. Then they spot a 2.54cm long insect walking on the ground. It was a Beetle. The outer hydrophobic coating on the elytra made the rain water into glowing beads. Then they spot another, and another and some more. Like a geiger counter beeping faster as you approach a radioactive site, they spotted more and more beetles. Then they spotted one more, except this one seemed like it was burrowing in the ground. But on a closer inspection, the very round Beetle had raised its abdomen high up and a tiny finger like projection wiggled at the end. In a short while, a black object was flying nearby in loopy paths. It finally landed a few meters away from them in a very beetle-like fashion. Keep flying, bang onto something, crash, shake yourself up. A successful landing. The flying hummer started walking towards them and it reached the bent down Beetle. In a swift motion, they embraced in union, and the boys realized what they had just witnessed. A search flight amidst heavy rain by the male guided by the pheromones emitted from the female after a synchronized emergence. The union was brief. The visit culminated with an elegant takeoff flight. The female then started walking, stopping momentarily and walking again. It was laying eggs. From this episode one could ask many things. How do the beetles fly in the heavy rain? Do the females bending down while exuding the purported pheromones serve any function? How does the male detect odor amidst the rain? Among all these questions, does the behavior occurring amidst heavy rain reduce predatory pressure? The sun was way below the horizon now and the two boys left the lawns and they had resolved their argument. I was one of the two boys and the sprinkler was still meticulously doing its job though the rain had long stopped by then.

Thanks to (Art)ScienceBLR for visiting our lab and discussing science together! Here is a great clip of Pavan showing why we do what we do – for the love and excitement of discovery!

by Cheyenne Tait – I believe that a big part of being a scientist is being ready and willing to share your knowledge and passion with others. I was also inspired by the other members of NICE lab and their recent outreach activities with students in Sikkim and Bangalore. So I seized an opportunity to travel back to my own high school in the Catskill Mountains of New York state, to take over the high school biology class for two days near the end of their school year. They’d just finished talking about evolution, adaptation, and Darwin’s finches. So it was the perfect time to introduce them to the system I work in: the Rhagoletis genus of fruit flies.

It’s a topic that I could talk about for hours. Rhagoletis is a system containing various sibling species that evolved via either allopatric or sympatric mechanisms, with complex contributions from ice ages, parasitoids, and host-associated adaptations, amongst many other factors. But rather than simply talk, I gave the biology students the barest introduction to the flies, then had them try to recreate the evolutionary relationships of the genus, first only with the wing patterns, then knowing the host plant and biogeography of each species, then with mock genetic sequence information. And by the end, with all types of data, thinking and investigating like real biologists, they actually got close to the currently accepted phylogeny.

After they accomplished that, we took our workshop outside to the playground, and split into groups to create evolutionary trees of the birds – in chalk on the blacktop. They discovered that it was much more difficult with this expanded group of more distantly related organisms. Ultimately, no one’s tree was right or wrong, not with the little evidence that they had been given (pictures of the birds and some natural history). More importantly, they learned firsthand about the collaborative process of making and rejecting hypotheses.

Going back to my high school, teaching in the very same classroom where I first heard about Darwin’s finches approximately 10 years ago, was strange but exciting. Discussing the process of science with young people, especially the often misunderstood phenomenon of evolution is important. It wasn’t something that objectively needed to be done: their teacher was there and would have used the days to review for finals. However, in my opinion, yes, it was needed and yes, I would do so again.

Thanks to Mr. Ed McGee and his curious, enthusiastic 9^th and 10^th grade biology students for two awesome days of evolutionary biology!