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Transcript

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0:02Who are the characters behind science? This is Science Behind the Glass, Illuminating the Human Side. In this podcast, we unveil the humanities of laboratories and science. Scientists share personal experiences, and we discuss their meanings from different perspectives and fields of research. Welcome to Science Behind the Glass, Illuminating the Human Side. We are here to explore the captivating stories behind groundbreaking scientific research.

0:35In today’s episode, we are thrilled to welcome Darren Crane, the director of the Australian Herbarium, to share his experience in the field of plant systematics and evolution. Darren’s research focuses on revealing the mysteries of tropical Australia -rich biodiversity, from discovering new plant species to mapping their evolutionary relationships and ancient migration pathways. With a combination of traditional and cutting -edge technologies, His work not only sheds light on the intricate web of life, but also highlights the importance of understanding our natural world in a rapidly changing environment. Thank you, Darren, for accepting this invitation. It’s a pleasure to having you here. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here, Linda. Thanks for inviting me. Darren, what leads you to study plants? That’s a good question to start off with. Well, I have to say, I’m not one of those people who is in a career I imagined myself in when I was a child.

1:39You know, I don’t remember having an interest in plants when I was a kid, but what I did have was a really strong interest in nature. Now, I remember always being outside whenever I could be and just looking at things, looking at bugs, looking at trees, looking at grasses, mostly looking for the animals, and watching birds and all of those sorts of things. I never thought I would be a botanist. It’s never a career I was even aware of because I grew up in a small country town in regional Australia. And because I had an interest in science, I guess, I was advised by my school careers advisor to go and study engineering, which is what I actually did.

2:21Oh, so you studied first engineering. I did, but not for very long. So I realized quite soon after studying an engineering degree that that really wasn’t what I wanted to do. Fair enough. That’s important. But it all started with an interest in nature broadly. And then through some happy accidents, I guess, I’ve ended up being a botanist. Oh, okay. That’s nice. Do you have a mentor that maybe guide you to this part of studying plants? I ended up getting a job when I was an undergraduate student in my third year. I ended up getting a part -time job in a laboratory at university, in a botany lab, where they were doing plant genetics. And up until that point, I thought I wanted to be, well, firstly, an engineer in my first year of university.

3:15But then after I realized I didn’t want to be an engineer, I thought I wanted to be a zoologist. So I enrolled in a zoology. and botany degree, but most of the work, most of the subjects I took were zoology subjects. It was only really until I got that experience working in that botany lab and was around botanists all of the time that I started to think, well, plants are pretty cool too. Lucky for us. Yeah, well, and there’s a lot fewer botanists than there are zoologists, so there’s not so much competition. Oh, great.

3:47Maybe I’m going to jump to working with plants. What is plant evolution in simple words and why do you decide to work on that particular topic? So plant evolution really, when we study plant evolution, we’re asking the question, we’re making an observation first. And the observation is when you look outside, you see lots of different kinds of plants. And then you go somewhere else to another country or another continent and you see lots of different kinds of plants, but they’re different ones. And so the observation is there are lots of species out there and species are different between different places. And that leads to the question, why? How has this happened?

4:26How has this diversity come about? And why is it different parts of the world have different groups of species? And so that is the study of evolution. It’s the study of the processes that have led to the diversity we see today. That’s a fantastic way to explain. How do you think understanding plant evolution can benefit everyday people behind just the scientific community?

4:52Well, it’s no secret that nature is our life support system. Virtually everything we need as humans, we derive from nature, either directly or indirectly. Our oxygen is produced by plants. Our water cycle is influenced by biodiversity. Our food. of course, is all biological. And the great majority of it comes directly from plants.

5:18And what doesn’t come directly from plants comes through animals, which feed on plants. So even our climate systems are very strongly influenced by plants and animals. So if we want to live sustainably, if we want to leave for our children a world where they may enjoy the luxuries that we’ve had and the systems that we’ve had to support us, then it… then we need to make decisions that are good decisions that ensure that life support systems can continue to function. And that biodiversity is important, right? Absolutely.

5:53And so in order to make good decisions about how we maintain life support systems, we’ve got to understand how those life support systems work. So it’s just like a car. If you don’t understand what the impact of putting the wrong kind of oil in your car is going to be, then you’re going to make a bad decision. And it’s the same with biodiversity. It’s the same with Earth’s life support systems. If we don’t understand what the long -term impacts will be of decisions we make today, then we’re going to make bad decisions and that’s going to be catastrophic for future generations. So, you know, simplistically, it’s important to our survival as organisms that we understand our place in nature and how nature works to support us. But even beyond that, you know, even philosophically, it sustains us mentally and psychologically to interact with nature.

6:46We all get a mood lift when we interact with nature, when people go on bushwalks, when people go to parks, when they see birds singing, when they smell flowers blooming. It’s known psychologists and mental health experts have shown this many times over. It really lifts people’s moods, that interaction with nature. We are biophilic organisms. Because we are organisms ourselves, we know we depend on other organisms for our survival. And when we have that interaction, we’re better off as people. So there’s two angles to it. We need healthy ecosystems to sustain us in terms of our food, our water, our air. But we also need to interact with healthy ecosystems to sustain our mental health. And I guess that adding to that, it’s like we know how the plants, for example, are evolving or changing. According to our climate or environmental variables, we are going to be able to tackle different problems, right? Absolutely.

7:46Mapping the distribution of ecosystems and genetic variation within a species sounds like putting together a gigantic puzzle. How do you even begin to tackle such a complex task? Sometimes I wonder. I think the best way is to start small, start with a specific question. That’s what we all do in science, don’t we? We ask a question. Everything starts with a question. The question leads to a hypothesis, and that’s something that we can test with data and analysis. So in trying to piece together an understanding of Earth’s biodiversity, which is exceedingly complex, as you know. then I think the best approach is to start with a specific question. And that question may be curiosity driven. It may be something as simple as, what tree species can I find within one kilometre of where I’m sitting now? That’s a fairly simple question and it should be easy to answer. And that’s curiosity driven. We might start with a question that one of our stakeholders puts to us. So it may be the government is asking us to determine whether there are any… threatened species on a piece of land that a developer has proposed to build houses on? That’s a specific question and then that may launch a research project. We may have another question that relates to why are there two populations of a particular species but those populations occur a thousand kilometres apart? How can that be? Are those two widely separated populations? There, because

9:17there was a formerly much more widespread continuous distribution and climate change has eliminated the members of that species, almost eliminated almost all of the members of that species and just left two isolated populations. That’s one explanation. Or is it that one population has migrated or dispersed into a far -flung locality? That’s another explanation for the… For the observation, you have these two distinct, widely separated populations. And you use different tools, like in this case genetics and morphology, to identify these differences, to mapping these ones, to answer those questions. Absolutely, absolutely. We use a range of different tools to understand biodiversity. Traditionally, we’ve used morphology. We’ve measured lengths and breadths and colours and sizes. body parts, if you like, because 100 years ago, those were the only tools that were available to us, observational tools that were available to us. Now, of course, we sequence genes and we can compare the genetic code of individuals and we can understand or investigate to what extent two individuals are related to each other. And then we can sort of look more broadly, of course, and then ask questions about, well, how are species related to each other genetically? And then we can do really interesting things like determine how quickly genes are evolving and then use that as a kind

10:48of a molecular clock or molecular time scale to then back predict how long ago particular species evolved or particular lineages diverged from each other. And so we can look back in time and piece together our evolutionary history by comparing the genes of species that are living today. And it gives us another way to look back in time, whereas traditionally we’ve… we’ve been restricted to using fossils. And fossils are the best way of understanding the past because they are direct evidence. But when we use genes to look back into the past or back predict past evolutionary events, it’s indirect evidence.

11:24So not quite as good as fossils, but because the fossil record is generally so patchy. For most organisms, we have a very poor fossil record or no fossil record at all. So all we can do really is to use these indirect methods for most species. Wow, that sounds amazing. Sounds like a toolkit. It’s like a telescope into the past. Yes, exactly. How does climate change impact the work you do in studying plant systematics and evolution? in regions like Australia and other tropical regions? Yeah, good question.

12:00Some of the work that we do is, I mean, specifically about trying to understand or better understand what impact climate change might have on biodiversity. So one of the projects I’ve been deeply involved with in the last five years is working in the cloud forests of the tropical areas of northeastern Australia, where we are today, Linda. And the cloud forests are the high altitude forests of the wet tropical region. And they tend generally occur above about a thousand meters of elevation.

12:32And they’re called cloud forests because a lot of the time they’re bathed in clouds. And so they’re kept much wetter by the presence of that cloud than forests lower down and closer to the coast. So they have unique ecosystems, different species to forests lower down. And we know that one of the impacts of climate change will be that that cloud base, the altitude at which clouds typically exist, will rise. So the clouds will form higher. And so that will mean that parts of those cloud forests will lose their cloud cover. And that’s likely to seriously impact the amount of water that’s available to those species, as well as changing the temperature profile. So we’ve been doing a lot of surveys in the cloud forests in the Australian wet tropics region, which has been enormous fun. but also very, very challenging. And the point of those surveys is to try and get a better picture of what plants occur there, how abundant they are, and also to launch a kind of a rescue mission.

13:35So we’ve done some predictive modelling on where the climate niche that those particular plant species now occur in, where that climate niche will be in 50 and 100 years’ time. And the climatic conditions that are now… that now characterise the mountaintops of the Australian wet tropics, won’t exist in 50 years’ time. It’ll be quite different up there. So the area of suitable habitat for a species that exists there now will have disappeared largely in 50 years’ time. So we don’t know if the plants will survive that change or not. But we don’t want to have to wait to find out either. So what we’re also doing is taking cuttings and seed from many of those species that are found only on those mountaintops and growing them in partnerships with various botanic gardens along the east coast of Australia to build up what we call these ex situ or off -site conservation collections as an insurance policy, really, against climate change wiping out these plants in their native habitat. Wow. And you also can measure the tolerance of these plants that actually they are under that level and to see even under climate change conditions. how they are going to perform or not perform at all?

14:48Yeah, that’s an interesting… Yes, that is part of the project too. So it’s a large collaborative project that involves people like me, but also plant physiologists and seed biologists and seed scientists. And there are some interesting results coming out of the physiology. So what the physiology researchers have been doing is growing some examples of some of these plants in… in temperature and carbon dioxide controlled glass houses to see what happens if you warm them up a little bit and add a bit of carbon dioxide. And interestingly, they grow a bit better. So… Unexpected. So, well, it’s not really unexpected when you think about it because they’re quite challenging conditions for plant growth on these mount tops because it can get quite cool up there. And so they’re limited a little bit by temperature. So if you warm it up a little bit, they grow a bit better.

15:43And that’s not a surprise. And also the seed biologists are reporting that germination increases when you warm up the seeds a little bit. So we think the impacts of climate change on these plants, the negative impacts of climate change on these plants, is not really going to be about the temperature. but is going to be in terms of the plants being able to survive hotter conditions or slightly hotter conditions. But we think that what the impacts are going to be is on the relationships that the plants have with other organisms that they depend upon in those ecosystems. In particular, the insects that are pollinating them. and diseases that may not yet occur on those mountaintops because it’s too cold, but may actually become really problematic when it warms up a bit. So plants depend, most plants depend on insects for pollination and therefore for reproduction.

16:34And many insects, particularly in cold climates, have very short life cycles. So they only emerge from their eggs and their pupil stages for short periods of time and are available to pollinate for short periods of time and then they disappear again. Now, if the timing of flowering becomes out of synchrony with the timing of emergence of the pollinators, then you’re going to have reproductive breakdown. And those are the sorts of impacts we think climate change are going to have they’re going to change the synchrony between flowering and emergence of pollinators and the effects are going to be that those pollination services may no longer be available for the plants which means reproduction is going to be compromised and over the long term those plants were may well disappear from those landscapes because they can’t reproduce oh that’s quite serious could be yeah But of course, we know very little about, it’s very hard to do observational ecology in some of these landscapes because there are no roads to most of these mountaintops and it’s very difficult to access them. And then very difficult to do long -term experiments and observational experiments. So we have very little actual observational data on these sorts of questions. And I imagine that it’s difficult to just track the interactions with insects. Right. Absolutely. You’ve got to be there watching them. And this is where technology can help, of course. We set up cameras and semi -automated systems to monitor these things. But

18:06that requires funding and that requires people. And there are lots of other questions out there that some people regard as higher priority. Wow. That’s amazing. Any budding botanists and ecologists out there, there’s still plenty of work to do. Oh, as an invitation? That’s scary, but that’s amazing what you are doing and tracking all these possible or probabilities that this appearance of these plants and the relevance of the interactions with other animals too. So changing a little bit of the topic, your role as a director of the Australian Herbarium is quite prestigious.

18:45Could you share with us your journey and the path that led you to become a director? We would love to hear about the experiences and milestones that shaped your career trajectory. Yes, of course. So I did mention I thought I wanted to be an engineer. At least I was convinced by somebody else that I wanted to be an engineer. It turns out that I didn’t. So I studied zoology and ecology. And then sort of went a little bit sideways into botany because of a chance encounter, really, with a botanical academic who was looking for someone to wash glassware in his lab. And so I took a part -time job in a botany lab. And just by hanging out with botanists for a while, I became much more interested in plants than I had previously been. So that job, that part -time job led to me doing an honours year, a research project in plant systematics. And I quite enjoyed that. And my supervisors thought I did a reasonable job. So they offered me a PhD program afterwards. They’d just got a grant and needed a PhD student to work on this particular group of plants that are related to heath plants and rhododendron. So that I did. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a botanist at that point. I was still unsure about where I wanted to go with my career. And in fact, the other thing I was considering doing at that point was pursuing another one of my long -term passions, which

20:17is music, particularly guitar playing. So at that point, when I was offered a PhD program, I was seriously considering going back. to university and doing a degree in music, particularly jazz guitar. So I was a little bit torn and I had to think hard about what I really wanted to do. Did I want to go back to be an undergraduate student and be poor for another three years and not know whether I was ever going to make it as a guitarist? Or did I want to take the certainty of a PhD program and a scholarship? And I chose that. I chose to be a botanist because I thought, well, I can always continue to do music on the side. Yeah, good decision. But the idea of pursuing a career being a researcher was really appealing because I was really interested in asking questions.

21:03So anyway, I did the PhD. And after that, I saw a position advertised for a postdoctoral researcher with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the Republic of Panama. And it was to work on remeliads, the evolution of remeliads. And I thought that would be super interesting. But I looked at it and went, well, I’m not going to be competitive for that because there’s going to be hundreds of candidates from all over the world that are going to want a prestigious position like this. And so I kind of thought I wouldn’t bother applying. But I just mentioned it to my PhD supervisor who said to me, stop being an idiot. Just make the application because there’s only one way you can guarantee you’re not going to get the job. And that’s if you don’t apply.

21:50Just make the application and see how you go. You might get lucky. And you know what? I got lucky. I ended up being shortlisted for the job and then they offered it to somebody else who was a much better candidate than me because this other person had done a PhD on remeliant evolution. So they were a much better position. But that person decided not to accept the offer. So because he was offered another job that was much better, a much more secure position. So in the end, it was offered to me as the second choice candidate.

22:23And I went, absolutely. Thank you very much. I’ll take it. So I went off to Panama and spent two years in Panama. And then after that one year at the University of Oxford in the UK, where a collaborator on the Brumeliad project was based. So in all, it was three years, two years in one air tropics in one year. in the uk and it was a fantastic intellectual environment in both places you know the smithsonian tropical research institute is well famous for very good reason as is oxford university so it was a it was a it was a wonderful experience but of course it all had to end at some point and and uh once the three years was up i came back to australia and started looking for positions here and uh with my my partner at the time my now wife and uh didn’t have much luck for about a year i i was working three or four different jobs simultaneously for about a year. I was being a tutor at the university and I was doing one day a week part -time research on human genetics and one day a week part -time research on a botanical project.

23:28And so, you know, it was just… Biologist’s life. Biologist’s life. Yeah, exactly. You know, just doing lots of different things to keep the income coming in. I feel familiar with that. And I think everybody goes through that career stage, don’t they? Yes, definitely. You just do what you have to do until the opportunities land for you. And so then after doing that for about 18 months, a position came up at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney in the research herbarium in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. And the position was for a tropical botanist. And so I thought, well, I’ll give that a go. You know, I’ve got some experience in the tropics and I was fortunate enough to get that job. And so I was very happily employed as a research botanist at the… the New South Wales Herbarium for about five years.

24:11And I thought that was my job for life. You know, I thought this is it. This is fantastic. It’s a permanent job in a fantastic institution in the city I want to live in doing full -time research. I could not have asked for anything better. But then I heard on the grapevine that James Cook University, where we both are, in Cairns here, was planning on establishing a tropical research herbarium. And I thought, well, that’d actually be really fantastic because most of my research, even though I was based in Sydney, most of my research was in Northern Australia. And so I thought, well, that actually could be really, really interesting. Maybe I’d consider applying for that. And then when they finally established the herbarium and then advertised the position for director, they… They created the position at the level of a full professor. And so I rang up my contact at JCU and I said, oh, that’s really unfair. I really wanted to go for that director position, but you’ve advertised at a level which is way too high for me. I’ll never be competitive at that level. Because at that time in Sydney, I was only just a research scientist. I wasn’t even a senior research scientist. And then I thought applying for a professor’s position was way out of my league. And your director says the same, like Adobe, I need you to apply. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I thought, well, nice idea, but I’m never going to be competitive. But this person who I’ve talked to said to me, well, you know, there’s only one way you can guarantee not getting

25:41the job, and that’s not making an application. Yeah, well, you’re right. And it worked for me before. I made an application for a job in the past, the Panama job that I thought I wouldn’t be competitive for, and it worked out well. So I thought, I’ll give it a go. And I gave it a go. And you know what? I got lucky again. That’s fantastic. I ended up in a position that I think I was seriously underqualified for, but clearly the panel either had a really bad field of candidates or they saw something in me that I wasn’t aware of and I couldn’t see in myself. And so I guess my advice to other people who may be suffering the same sort of imposter syndrome that we all suffer from and continue to suffer from is if someone you respect tells you you’re good enough, believe them. Because they probably know you a lot better than you know yourself. At least they’re a much more independent and independent observer of your capabilities than you are. Because we all suffer from that imposter syndrome, right?

26:40Yeah, that’s true. We all think we’re not good enough. We all think we’re here on false pretenses and everyone thinks we’re… Yeah, sabotaging ourselves all the time. Exactly. And so both of the times I’ve applied for jobs that I thought I was underqualified for, I ended up applying because someone I respected told me I should. And both times it worked out well. Yes, lucky you. But more than lucky, I think that it’s good being pushed a little bit. And then when you have all the qualifications and you have been working hard and you have the experience, that shows, you know, not only lucky. Yeah, that’s right. And, you know, now I’m in a position where I employ people and what I always look for in a candidate for positions that I advertise is someone who believes in themselves. And, you know, so perhaps that’s what convinced the people who employed me that maybe I was worth a try was that apps I demonstrated that I was willing to give it a go, willing to push myself and step out of my comfort zone and go for things that perhaps were a bit of a stretch for me. Lucky, lucky, lucky for them. We are lucky to have you there. I still feel very lucky to be here. Discovering new planet species sounds like something out of the adventure movie. Can you share any exciting stories from your fieldwork or expeditions? You should have a lot of tons of them. Yeah, a few

28:11interesting stories. Most of them horror stories. With leeches. Oh, the leeches. I can talk about leeches. Yeah, I can talk about leeches. One of the things about the mountaintop cloud forests is they’re full of leeches. I can remember one trip I took. It was a three -day trip, and we had to walk to the top of the mountain. It was 1,000 metres high, and then spend three days up there and walk back down. And it rained pretty much the whole time. So it was horrible weather, and it was cold, and the leeches were… were epic there i remember one time walking around on one of the days we were just walking around and i i opened my rain jacket and the inside of the rain jacket was just covered in lynchings yeah and and one of the guys i was i was there with um tapped me on the back and he and he said to me i i can you just have a look at my eye it feels a bit it feels a bit scratchy and so uh and it was raining the whole time you know and and and so i looked looked at his eye and i went yeah there’s blood coming out of your eye so i reckon that might be the problem and what we think had happened was that a leech had gotten into his between his eyeball and the inside of the eye socket oh and uh and attached to the eye socket and fed and then dropped out. And what we were seeing was, you know, the blood just coming out of the wound that the leech had

29:41left there. And he had no, he didn’t even know the leech had gone in and fed. He only sort of noticed once it had let go and fallen out, presumably. I had the same problem when I was in Mount Louis. I was helping Aaron. Yep, Aaron. Yes. and so we went there and i have this in something in my eye like so itchy so scratchy with can you check it’s like because he has this strong accent says the one that has a strong essence like that is a leaf it’s like a leaf when i look it was a leech there’s a leech in my eye oh it was a horror movie it was there feeling and i managed to freak it out Oh, he did. Wow. Okay, so it’s happened to you too. I think most people who’ve spent a lot of time in Australian tropical rainforests have good leech stories. Oh, yes. Welcome to the tropics. Welcome to the tropics. But, you know, I think if the leeches are the worst thing that can happen to you in a tropical rainforest, that’s great. We don’t have tigers. We don’t have bears. We’ve got lots of snakes, but you hardly ever see the snakes. So they’re actually quite safe. Yeah, and they don’t transmit any disease. Which is good. Yeah. That was a horror story. Well, one thing that happened, sometimes you discover new species and that’s always a thrill. But mostly you don’t realise it at the time. Mostly if you’re collecting plants, you bring them back to the herbarium and then you compare your collections against what’s already

31:13in the herbarium. And it’s usually only then that you’re… You have that moment where you realize what you’ve collected is something new. But sometimes you actually realize it in the field. And it happened to me most recently about a year ago. And it wasn’t even a plant. I was just doing a little bushwalk on a weekend for fun up to a waterfall in the wet tropics. And just this little walk along this trail. And it’s quite a popular walking trail around near Cairns.

31:40And I was just looking at a few plants because that’s what I do. And I saw this odd bracket fungus. on this living plant this small shrub and in fact i wasn’t even i didn’t even go to the shrub to look at the bracket fungus it was flowering at the time and i went over it to look at the flowers and then i noticed this little bracket fungus i thought on it and i thought that’s a bit odd because normally bracket fungi grow on on dead plant matter so i thought well i’ll collect this we have a we have a fungi expert back in here at JCU. So I brought the specimen back and he went, oh, that’s definitely a new species of fungus. I went, oh, that’s nice. And he said, yeah, he said, yeah, that, you know, it’s not. uncommon for a fungus expert, a mycologist, to walk out into the tropics on a weekend and find new species. It happens all of the time because… In their backyard. In the backyard, yeah, on their food. Because fungi is so poorly known and there are so many more species of fungi on earth than there are plants that it’s almost normal to find new species if you know what you’re doing. Wow. Every time you go out. yes and just for a walk and just relax and chill and you discover any other species exactly and i feel well that’s that’s great here i am a botanist i know absolute almost nothing about fungi and here i mean now i’ve discovered a new species oh that’s fantastic oh thank you darren and that’s that’s all the questions that i have for today and we are so Happy to have you here. Pretty sure that they

33:12are going to enjoy listening to you and your adventures. And thank you for sharing all this time, all your personal stories with us. Yeah, I’d love to. Thanks very much for inviting me, Linda. It’s been great fun. Inspiring interview. Importance of understanding nature. This is not a question that many people ask themselves. Maybe for many, the answer is to take advantage of it or explode it. What do you think, Danny? Yes, I agree. it’s very difficult to find people that is genuinely interested in understanding nature.

33:50And maybe from a merely curiosity point of view, or maybe in a professional point of view, but sometimes people just study nature to try to find a use for it, not to understand their processes or mechanisms. Yes, I agree. We overpassed an important topic during the interview, is that many people may not know what is the purpose of an herbarium for a start. What is an herbarium?

34:21An herbarium is a collection of plants that includes information of the organisms or species, the location where it was found, and the function of this herbarium is to gather and guard the botanical samples and the data associated. Yes, that’s right. So, knowing this, one may wonder… What is the social value of an herbary, both for scientists and for the general public? Well, it serves as a repository of invaluable botanical knowledge, offering insights into the adaptations of plants in diverse environments. And this is also important for the general public because the communities have an intimate relationship with the plants, even if sometimes they don’t realize it. Yeah, it’s like detectives. Scientists use herbarium specimens to track the evolution of plants and understand how they respond to changing conditions. This knowledge is essential for addressing environmental challenges and conserving biodiversity. Making herbarium collections is indispensable for getting resources for both researchers and the public alike. Yes, that’s right. For example… When communicating climate change results, it is difficult if the public doesn’t know what are we talking about. It can be hard to the public to understand, for example, what a set of data represent. When he told us, our interviewee, that some results of our research show that plants grow better in global warming scenarios, that can be misinterpreted. It’s hard to show that there are limitations on that result and that to interpret them we have to consider

35:53multiple factors. This case shows the struggle of scientists communicating the urgency of global change and their potential repercussions. It is crucial to recognize that climate change can lead to misinterpretations, especially when plants thrive in certain conditions. This is linked to the fact that organisms can now exist in isolation. They are part of a larger interconnected system. When an organism or a plant is affected, it triggers a cascade of effects on our ecosystem, species and communities. Failing to grasp this interconnectedness oversimplifies the issue and neglects its true implications. Climate change affects all ecosystems, highlighting the urgent need for a deeper understanding of our planet’s intricate balance is necessary.

36:39yes that’s right and going to another struggle that commonly face scientists our interview we also mentioned for example the imposter syndrome this is the sensation of less worthy value under people work or their achievements for people that suffer this kind of sensation. It’s like the subconscious tells you that you are not competent. A common self -perception that people with impostor syndrome have is that they attribute their success to luck. They constantly compare themselves with others thinking others are better. Many scientists suffer from impostor syndrome, doubting their abilities and feeling like they don’t belong.

37:17However, it is crucial to recognize that sometimes taking the lead despite our insecurities is necessary for growth, professionally and personally. We must not underestimate the value of our efforts and contributions in every scientific field. Each individual works play a role in advancing knowledge and understanding, underscoring the importance of acknowledging and valuing our own contributions to science. Yes, that’s right. I think those are very important messages that this interview gave us. So, to finish, this episode was inspiring. by curiosity and the article press for space we leave the reference to this material in the episode description and again this podcast is supported self -published by its host you can find us on youtube channel it’s spotify and our official website follow us certain networks like expect and instagram the original music by our colleague and friend bernardo aguila