WEBVTT

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The next thing I
want to do is just

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to say a little bit
about manduca sexta.

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Manduca sexta is not a very
good picture but the tobacco

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hornworm, you probably seen
it on your tomato plants.

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It's very common here,
its native host plant

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here is the sacred datura.

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And I have some specimens and I
encourage you to open the lids

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and take them out.

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They're very easy
to open, they're

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feeding on synthetic diet,
which is just made up

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from crushed beans and whatnot.

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And they're pretty
big caterpillars

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and they've got sort of feet
with big suckers on the end.

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So here's the live creature,
you see they're quite big.

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And normally they're
green but these guys

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are blue because the synthetic
diet has no carotene in it

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and the yellow carotene and
the blue of the caterpillar

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naturally normally make the
green, so what you're seeing

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is a little bit weird.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But you can pick them up,
I've got two boxes of them.

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And it's kind of fun to
pick them up and feel them

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because the suckers on
their legs, on their abdomen

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are very strong and, of
course, very important

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for holding them onto the
plant, and these things

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specialize on their plants
in the potato family.

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So pass it around,
I'm going to read

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a poem, which is an old poem.

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It's called "On watching
a tobacco hornworm."

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And it started because I was
working with a post-doc who

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worked on these guys and we were
interested in water loss, how

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they regulate water loss
in the heat of the desert

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because these things
live in the desert.

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OK, they're on
datura plants but we

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were interested in how they
regulate the water loss

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and stop getting dehydrated.

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So we would measure the feeding
and pick up all the feces

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and measure the water,
that kind of thing.

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Anyway, because we watched
them for a long time at once,

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it encouraged me to
write a poem about that.

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It's called, "On watching
a tobacco hornworm."

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"Tightly turgid
and lettuce green,

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with a thin black
terminal whips weighing,"

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and actually this
is often black,

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"your six little points
of front legs cradle

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leaf but the great
stumps of back feet

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do the work of holding
your mighty weight,

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each with its porridge dish
of a sucker hugging the plant,

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the hours pass as it
were to rest and feed

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in monotonous rhythm, until
I become the sensations,

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you demonstrate in your fleshy
fashion, eating, resting

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at intervals, you lift your back
end with its fine black whip

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and slowly extrude a perfectly
sculpted wet slug of processed

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food" [LAUGHTER]

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"the soothing detail
of the idle day

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changes suddenly
at about hour five,

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a brisk leaf fly bursts
into center stage,

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you'd lunge and jeb your
green cigars of a body,

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you slobber and spew a viscous
green from both ends, as you

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twist and turn and
spread the mixture,

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hiding the tidy script marks on
your sides, your bog glistens

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and shudders with weight

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but only for a second, the
agile parasite has eggs to lay,

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eggs that will become
maggots and turn your body

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into a swarm of new
flies, she wants you

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with the biological urgency
of her genetic future,

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but the briefest touch repels,
she must learn elsewhere

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to wipe her sticky feet
many times she tries,

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compelling bias in me
for a sumo hornworm

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transformed into wet
batter green then,

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the fly unexpectedly
retreats I sit back,

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I return to a
complacent afternoon.,

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such short lived victories
make up our lives."

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OK, so I'm going to move on now
to a little bit of the science

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that I'm involved with.

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I'm a behaviorist
and to me behavior

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is key because it's in
the middle of everything.

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But what-- [LAUGHTER] So I work
a little bit on neurobiology,

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a little bit on physiology,
ecology and, of course,

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evolution is the center of
everything but behavior--

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behaviorist is how
I describe myself.

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And so I do a lot of watching
and recording in nature

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and I spend many
hours out there,

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which is great fun because
I see all kinds of things

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I never did expect.

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But I also go there to
monitor and record and try

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to get some quantitative
information on things

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that interest me, questions
that interest me in biology.

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And one of the
questions that came up

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was really about the
importance of predators.

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And, you know, it's
easy for people

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to study parasites
of these insects

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because they just
bring them into the lab

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and see what comes out but
it's a very different thing

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if you're looking at
predators because you

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have to be there to see them.

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And so I think, with students,
what I call 1800 caterpillar

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watching hours, and
this is just to give you

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an example of the
sort of information

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we get by sitting out
there and looking.

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The risk of predation in
the field during feeding

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is very high, is really
what the summary is.

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And you'll see that the
risk of death during feeding

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is five times higher
than when they walk

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and actually 90 times higher
than when they're actually

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resting.

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And it seems like a
sort of a small point

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but the interesting
thing about it

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is that because it's so
important, because this risk is

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so big, it's terribly
important that they feed fast.

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So you're talking
American restaurants

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versus a French one,
[LAUGHTER] any one?

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You get your feeding done
as quick as possible.

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And the other interesting
thing about that

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is that the selection
pressure to have

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jaws that get it in fast.

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So the jaws are not just
to process the food,

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they have to be adapted to
get their food in and a very

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fast rate so that they
reduce this risk here,

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so that takes me into a
whole other issue of why

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I studied jaws.

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But just to give you
an example of why

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some of this
observation in the field

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has an interest
beyond what it seems.

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My current projects involve
woolly bear caterpillars

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and including one
called Estigmene.

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And Estigmene is the one
I'm going to tell you

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about most today but there
are a number of woolly bear

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caterpillars here in Arizona.

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And they're just
hairy caterpillars,

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they're not poisonous--

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they don't sting you but they're
poisonous to predators usually.

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And estigmene has a
beautiful adult moth,

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this is her, sort
of ermine soft moth.

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And the other one that I'm going
to show you caterpillars of

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is called Grammia.

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And I've got a box here.

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Even though I have
the adult moths

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of two of these woolly
bears and also specimens

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of the painted lady which
I talked about earlier.

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So I'll pass this
around to the back.

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Anyway, this is Estigmene who is
one of our sort of heroes here.

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And it lays its eggs on the
undersurface of sunflowers,

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and you can see the
little eggs here hatched

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and here are the caterpillars.

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They lay a great bunch of
eggs on the undersurface

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of the sunflower leaf.

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And that's adaptive because
the sunflower-- well,

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obviously the undersurface
is a good idea

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because they're doing it
in August during the storm

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so you want to be
underneath the leaf.

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The other thing
is that sunflower

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has what we call
extrafloral nectaries,

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so that's nectar produced on the
leaves, and that attracts ants.

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Now the ants don't
like the caterpillars

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but the presence of the ants
prevents a lot of predators

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from attacking the caterpillars.

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So it's a good idea to
lay your eggs on sunflower

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because you have the
protection of the ants.

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And so that's what
happens with these things.

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And then when they get a
bit older, they move around

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and they become more solitary.

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And here's a fully grown
caterpillar of Estigmene.

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