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THE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION OF FLYING SPIDERS

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SICK PLANET The link between biodiversity loss and deadly virus outbreaks

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CONTENTS

Volume 67 No 4 August/September 2020

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For details contact tom.ireland@rsb.org.uk ROYAL SOCIETY OF BIOLOGY 1 Naoroji Street, London WC1X 0GB Tel: 020 3925 3440 info@rsb.org.uk; www.rsb.org.uk

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EDITORIAL STAFF Editor Tom Ireland MRSB, @Tom_J_Ireland tom.ireland@rsb.org.uk Editorial assistant Emma Wrake AMRSB

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Chair of the Editorial Board Professor Alison Woollard FRSB

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Editorial Board Dr Anthony Flemming MRSB, Syngenta Professor Adam Hart FRSB, University of Gloucestershire Dr Sarah Maddocks CBiol MRSB, Cardiff Metropolitan University Professor Shaun D Pattinson FRSB, Durham University Dr James Poulter MRSB, University of Leeds Dr Cristiana P Velloso MRSB, King’s College London

ON THE COVER 12 Interview: Kate Jones Why ecologists and public health organisations must work together to prevent diseases like COVID-19

UP FRONT

04 Society News The latest news and updates from the RSB 06 Policy Science policy news and hopes of a ‘green recovery’

Membership enquiries Tel: 01233 504804 membership@rsb.org.uk

The Biologist is produced on behalf of the Royal Society of Biology by Think Publishing Ltd, Capital House, 25 Chapel Street, London NW1 5DH www.thinkpublishing.co.uk; 020 3771 7200

FEATURES

08 Up, up and away How and why spiders take to the skies and ‘fly’

16 Going greener Could artificial photosynthesis help make solar energy more efficient?

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20 Rising from the ashes Resistance to ash dieback is emerging, but at what cost?

Group art director Matthew Ball Senior designer Felipe Perez Production editor Sian Campbell Sub editor Kirsty Fortune Group account director John Innes john.innes@thinkpublishing.co.uk

24 NC3Rs news The innovative science helping reduce the use of animals in research

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Advertising in The Biologist represents an unparalleled opportunity to reach a large community of professional biologists. For advertising information contact tom.ireland@rsb.org.uk; 020 3925 3464

28 Interview: Sunetra Gupta The Oxford epidemiologist on alternative COVID-19 models

Views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board or the Royal Society of Biology.

32 Back to the bench Tudor Dawkins on returning to postgrad research at the age of 64

© 2020 Royal Society of Biology (Registered charity no. 277981) The Society permits single copying of individual articles for private study or research, irrespective of where the copying is done. Multiple copying of individual articles for teaching purposes is also permitted without specific permission. For copying or reproduction for any other purpose, written permission must be sought from the Society. Exceptions to the above are those institutions and non-publishing organisations that have an agreement or licence with the UK Copyright Licensing Agency or the US Copyright Clearance Center. Access to the magazine is available online; please see the Society’s website for further details. This magazine is sent in biodegradable wrap that can be composted or placed with food waste.

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08 TWITTER @RoyalSocBio

FACEBOOK www.facebook.com/ RoyalSocBio

INSTAGRAM @royalsocbio

REGULARS 34 Members 38 Book reviews 44 Branches 46 Obituaries 47 Crossword

48 Museum piece A virtual cetacean centrepiece at the Natural History Museum WEBSITE thebiologist.rsb.org.uk

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WELCOME What’s in this issue

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Pause and reset

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ne of the few positives to come from the COVID-19 pandemic has been the idea that 2020 might effectively become ‘the great pause’ – a much-needed window where carbon emissions fall and society can reflect on how to do things differently when the pandemic is over. How dispiriting it was, then, to hear the prime minister, Boris Johnson, denigrating environmental concerns as “newt-counting” as he announced his new recovery slogan, ‘build, build, build’, at the end of June. Protecting the natural world is still seen as something that hinders our progress, when in fact degrading the environments we live in is a far greater threat. Have we learned nothing? In this issue the brilliant Kate Jones reminds us that ecology and public health are not separate issues. When we develop land in a way that destroys biodiversity we create environments that are conducive to disease outbreaks and pandemics. In our interview on page 12 Jones’s message is loud and clear: biologists from all fields need to stop working in silos and communicate the interconnectedness of nature, health and prosperity to policymakers. On page 6 Jonathan Carruthers from the RSB’s policy team explores how resetting a paused economy offers the chance to create jobs, infrastructure and services that enhance the UK’s environment rather than damage it. Elsewhere in the issue we look at how good bioscience is helping to tackle other pressing issues – from improving solar cells with photosynthetic complexes (page 16) to the latest innovations to reduce the use of animals in research (page 24). On page 28 theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta talks us through some alternative scenarios of how COVID-19 may have spread through the UK population and her view on the case for lockdowns. There’s good news, too: on page 20 Emily Beardon explains how there are signs of resistance to ash dieback spreading in UK woodland and on page 32 Tudor Dawkins describes how he’s enjoying postgraduate research at the age of 64. Finally, Sara Goodacre’s article on flying spiders (page 8) reminds us why we love the natural world, regardless of its economic or health benefits. Check out the diagram of spiders ‘throwing shapes’ in order to get airborne or sail across water. I had no idea that even large spiders can shoot out some ballooning silk, catch the wind and, in the right conditions, travel for thousands of miles. Which, given I’ve barely left the house since March, sounds pretty good to me. 2 / The Biologist / Vol 67 No 4

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When we develop land in a way that destroys biodiversity we create environments that are conducive to disease outbreaks

Tom Ireland Editor of The Biologist

Welcome and BioPic, 1

BioPic PREGNANT PLANKTON By Marek Mis This image by Polish photographer Marek Mis shows embryos within a female cladoceran or water flea (Daphnia magna). These small planktonic crustaceans grow up to 5mm long and are widely used in ecology and ecotoxicology research. The image, which was created using a combination of dark-field and polarised light and image stacking, was shortlisted in the latest Nikon Small World photomicrography competition. Vol 67 No 4 / The Biologist / 3

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Society news • Policy updates • Analysis

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RSB to hold virtual AGM in September 2020

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The Society’s AGM, which was postponed earlier in the year due to COVID-19, has been rescheduled and will now be held on Thursday 24th September, 11:00–12:30. The meeting will include a charter lecture by Dr Jacqui Piner CBiol FRSB and presentation of the Trustees’ reports and accounts. Members of all grades can attend, but only full members are entitled to vote.

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See www.rsb.org.uk/agm for details and how to cast a proxy vote if you cannot attend EDUCATION

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Discount available for Society biology primers All RSB members are now entitled to 25% off any titles in the Society’s Oxford Biology Primers series, normally priced at £19.99.

The series has two strands, one aimed at students aged 16 to 19 hoping to further their studies ahead of university and in their first year, and a second tackling topics for graduate students and postgraduate scientists. Titles include Biochemistry, Genomics, Hormones, Human Infectious Disease and Public Health, Genetics in Medicine, Mammalian Synthetic Biology, Plant Diseases and Biosecurity, and Microbial Biotechnology. To save 25%, please visit bit.ly/OxfordRSBPrimers and enter code RSB20 in the shopping cart ONLINE

All RSB meetings and events to go virtual in 2020 The Society has decided to cancel all in-person events due to take place this year as part of its efforts to prevent any further spread of COVID-19 or risks to its members and staff.

All events will be rescheduled or held virtually where possible, and the decision will be reviewed as and when advice from Public Health England changes. The RSB has held a range of virtual events, including a Policy Lates event in June, several well-attended virtual branch events and the first ever virtual Parliamentary Links Day in July. With other festivals and science fairs cancelled across the UK, the Society is developing a series of online guides to its hands-on science activities for families to do at home. BROADCAST

RSB and ITN to air new bioscience documentary The latest news-style programme produced by ITN for the Society, Biology for the Future, will showcase the technological innovations and game-changing initiatives that are advancing the understanding of bioscience. It will feature independent films from organisations and businesses,

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Links Day is normally held in the Houses of Parliament

Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance

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COVID-19 will boost role of science in government, Sir Patrick tells Links Day The COVID-19 crisis has led to a renewed understanding that science is important across all areas of government and will boost science’s role in policymaking, the UK’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told the RSB’s Parliamentary Links Day in July. Speaking at the event, which brings together politicians and representatives from a range of STEM disciplines, Sir Patrick also said the events of the last six months had improved trust in science and the way science

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is understood by politicians and the public. Links Day is one of the biggest and longest-running science events in the parliamentary calendar, with discussions this year dominated by the high-profile research and scientific advice that has been central to the UK’s pandemic response. Regrettably, technical difficulties with the broadcast meant registrants could not watch the discussions live, but questions were relayed to the speakers and videos from the

event are available on the RSB’s YouTube channel. Greg Clark, chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee, said there had been “a rehabilitation of the role of experts” thanks to the prominence of scientists on television and huge interest from the public in their work. Clark said a large number of people had watched the Government’s scientific advisers being questioned by his select committee live on the BBC and Sky, and commended

public health experts for taking part. The Links Day also hosted panel discussions involving Professor Dame Anne Glover (Royal Society of Edinburgh), Sir Venki Ramakrishnan (Royal Society), Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell (Council for Science & Technology) and Sir David Spiegelhalter (University of Cambridge). To view videos from this year’s Links Day visit www.youtube. com/royalsocbio

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UPFRONT

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In case you missed it... The editor’s pick of biology stories being shared online SNAKE-LIKE VENOM GLANDS FOUND IN AMPHIBIAN

To watch a trailer for the new documentary and find links to the previous editions visit www.youtube.com/royalsocbio AWARDS

HUBS announces Higher Education Bioscience Teacher of the Year

Sacha Dench on her paramotor

Dr Sue Jones

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‘HUMAN SWAN’ TAKES TO THE SKIES TO TRACK OSPREYS

The Society’s Heads of University Biosciences (HUBS) has named Dr Sue Jones, associate head of the school of biosciences at York St John University, as the recipient of this year’s Higher Education Bioscience Teacher of the Year Award. Dr Jones received the Ed Wood Memorial Prize of £1,000, £250 worth of Oxford University Press books and one year’s free membership of the Society in recognition of her efforts to remove barriers and increase access to higher education, as well as improve graduate outcomes and employability. HUBS executive committee member Dr Sandra Kirk, one of the award’s judges, said of this year’s competition: “All three finalists provided engaging and thought-provoking presentations, clearly illustrating commitment to the student experience. “In a closely fought contest, Dr Jones came out on top. The panel was impressed by her dedication, enthusiasm and continued engagement with approaches to removal of attainment gaps based on best pedagogic practice.”

Conservationist Sacha Dench is planning a record-breaking 7,000km paramotor flight to follow migrating ospreys across Europe and Africa. Dench, who became known as ‘the human swan’ after a similar feat following Bewick’s swans in 2016, is the UN’s ambassador for migrating species and will be speaking to British ambassadors in every country along the route. She will fly with her motor off as much as possible and her support team on the ground will test for pollutants and microplastics and assess the status of seagrass, an essential habitat for the fish ospreys eat and a key carbon store. THE GUARDIAN bit.ly/humanswan

SCIENTISTS WORK ON SEWAGE TEST FOR COVID-19 FLARE-UPS A test for detecting COVID-19 in sewage would be an “easy win” that could pick up local spikes up to 10 days earlier than existing tests on individuals. Led by the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, scientists are developing a test that could measure the relative levels of coronavirus RNA in wastewater to indicate how many people locally are infected. Scientists from universities including Newcastle, Bangor and Edinburgh are teaming up with local water companies to collect samples of untreated sewage, which they say can help quantify levels of infection regularly and reliably.

Researchers from Utah State University and the Butantan Institute in Brazil have reported finding snake-like dental glands in amphibians for the first time. The team found tiny fluid-filled glands in the upper and lower jaw in a family of caecilians, serpent-like creatures related to frogs and salamanders. If further research confirms that the glands contain venom, caecilians would be the oldest known land-dwelling vertebrate animal to have oral venom glands. The study’s authors, writing in the journal iScience, say the glands could indicate an early evolutionary design of oral venom organs.

dpa picture alliance/Alamy Stock Photo

highlighting the work they are doing to harness the potential of the biosciences to improve our future. This year’s programme follows the 2019 production Biology Impacting Lives in conjunction with seven other bioscience partners, and the 2018 production Addressing Global Challenges, which featured 17 institutions, organisations and businesses working across the biosciences.

THE NEW YORK TIMES bit.ly/venomgland

SPARROW TWEET GOES VIRAL ACROSS CANADA A variation of a common song sung by white-throated sparrows in British Columbia has suddenly spread over 3,000km from west to east Canada, replacing the original variation that has been around since the 1950s. Biologist Ken Otter from the University of Northern British Columbia said the rapid spread of the new song was “unprecedented”, as changes in tunes normally remain as regional dialects. Researchers were able to analyse the songs of 1,785 white-throated sparrows thanks to the efforts of citizen scientists. Instead of the species’ usual “three-note finish”, sparrow populations were recorded ending their tune on two notes instead. THE GUARDIAN bit.ly/canadasparrow A white-throated sparrow

BBC bit.ly/wastewaterCOVID

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POLICYANALYSIS Dr Jonathan Carruthers is senior science policy officer at the RSB

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Can we flatten the curve for climate change? The first phase of recovery measures has focused on saving businesses and jobs, but the next phase must help save our environment

his was supposed to be the Year of Climate Action. Delegates from around the world were expected in Glasgow this November to negotiate the global response to the climate emergency at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), until the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated its postponement by a year. Despite the understandable focus on the public health emergency and its economic effects, the climate emergency remains high on the policy agenda. As fires rage through Siberia, governments are considering stimulus packages to rebuild economies upended by the virus. These economic measures provide a rare opportunity to make changes that will put us on track to a greener future. Such an outcome is far from assured, however. Key elements of a green recovery include investment in projects

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that reduce or lock up greenhouse gas emissions and attaching environmental conditions to bailouts of polluting industries. The Committee on Climate Change has set out priority areas for investment, including improving the energy efficiency of buildings, nature restoration, and making changes that facilitate walking, cycling and remote working1. Buildings accounted for 18% of UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. Investments in tree planting, peatland restoration and green infrastructure would benefit biodiversity and flood prevention, and provide green spaces for people. Furthermore, creating infrastructure to make it easy for people to walk and cycle safely would enhance public health. These are clear wins, providing jobs, reducing the burden on the climate and improving air quality as a co-benefit. However, with the UK off

References 1) Committee on Climate Change, 2020. Reducing UK emissions: 2020 Progress Report to Parliament. bit.ly/CCCemissions 2) Greenpeace 2020. ECB injects over €7bn into fossil fuels since start of COVID-19 crisis. bit.ly/fundingfossilfuels 3) Bloomberg 2020. How to grow green. www.bloomberg.com/ features/2020-greenstimulus-clean-energyfuture 4) EU 2020. European Climate Law. ec.europa. eu/clima/policies/ eu-climate-action/law_en 5) Bloomberg Quint 2020. Lessons from the pandemic add urgency to ECB’s focus on climate. bit.ly/ Bloomberg-covid

track for its 2050 net-zero target1, much more is needed. The signs that we will have a green recovery are not promising so far. In June Boris Johnson’s ‘build, build, build’ recovery speech focused on deregulation and construction. In July the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced measures to make homes and public sector buildings more energy efficient, but the £3bn provided is enough to address fewer than 3% of homes. Bailouts have been given indiscriminately to the UK’s airlines and the steel industry without any environmental requirements. Greenpeace reports that the European Central Bank purchased more than €7bn (£6.27bn) of assets from fossil fuel companies between mid-March and mid-May2, and Bloomberg estimated that of around $12 trillion (£9.51 trillion) of government stimulus funds announced by early June worldwide, only 0.2 % addressed climate policies3.

RECOVERY

Coalition group calls for ‘national nature service’ A coalition of nature groups is asking for a ‘national nature service’ to ensure the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic creates jobs and projects that will help the wildlife and climate crisis not worsen it. The coalition, including National Parks England, the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, the Woodland Trust, WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, has drawn up a list of 330 projects that would create or enhance up to 500,000 acres of habitat in the UK. It called for the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to use the national recovery plan to “restore our land, coastlines, oceans and economy for a greener, more prosperous future”. R&D

Society hails ambitious Government R&D Roadmap

However, these initial moves are aimed at preventing bankruptcies and job losses. The next phase of stimulus measures, aimed at economic recovery, may focus more heavily on sustainability and climate goals. There are some signs of hope. In France airline bailouts were accompanied by climate conditions; and Spain’s automotive industry bailout came with a range of measures to boost electric and zeroemission car ownership. The EU Commission has announced plans to enshrine into law its target to become climate neutral by 20504 and the European Central Bank has indicated it will review its rules to take climate change into account in bond-buying programmes5. Next year it is imperative that the delayed COP26 makes progress, with countries raising the ambition of their targets to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The UK must use the extra time to develop policies that will deliver a green recovery and set an ambitious example to the world of the scale of our commitment to climate action. On the coronavirus, earlier and more decisive action would have been to everybody’s benefit. The same applies to climate action, for which there will be no vaccine. We have a chance to reshape our climate trajectory and we must not squander it.

The RSB has welcomed the ambition in the Government’s new Research and Development Roadmap, released in July. The roadmap pledges £300m of investment in the UK’s scientific infrastructure through the World Class Labs funding scheme. The announcement includes the establishment of a new Office for Talent, which aims to ensure the UK remains an appealing place for students and early career researchers, and will conduct a review of the immigration system for those coming to work in the UK. A new Innovation Expert Group will review and improve how the Government supports the research sector, alongside plans to secure a “fair and balanced” deal for participation in EU R&D schemes. RSB chief executive Mark Downs welcomed the roadmap and said the RSB would play an active role in developing it. “The commitment to developing and growing talent is especially welcome. Technicians, research scientists, teachers, communicators and many others are at the heart of our success. Ensuring movement of talented individuals between sectors, UK regions and globally remains key. The proposals outlined are an encouraging start,” he said. ANALYSIS

New statistics reveal COVID-19 at-risk groups The Office for National Statistics has released an updated analysis of which groups appear to be at greatest risk of dying from COVID-19. The latest analysis of deaths up to the middle of May shows that black males are at 3.3 times greater risk of death involving COVID-19 than white males of the same age, while black females are at 2.4 times greater risk than their white counterparts of the same age. Even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors the

research shows there is twice the risk for black males and around 1.5 times the risk for black females. Significant differences also remain for Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian men. The ONS is planning further research to help understand this difference. ONLINE

Global audience for first virtual Policy Lates More than 150 people from around the world joined a panel of experts online to discuss the challenges and potential solutions to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as part of the RSB’s Policy Lates series. The panel discussed what AMR is, how One Health approaches can bring communities together to tackle the issue and how AMR challenges and solutions are relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. The next virtual Policy Lates will explore discovery research on 12th August. See www.youtube.com/royalsocbio RESEARCH

New model to encourage new classes of antibiotics The NHS has launched a ‘world-first’ subscription-style payment model to incentivise pharmaceutical companies to produce new classes of antibacterial drugs. The new model will pay pharmaceutical companies up front for access to their antibiotic product based on a product’s value to the NHS, rather than how much is used. Two drugs that have proved to be both safe and effective will be selected to undergo health technology assessment by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence throughout 2021, before deciding the level of the subscription payment. EDUCATION

RSB responds to education consultations and UK ‘ARPA’ The RSB has submitted written evidence to the Education Select Committee on how the outbreak of COVID-19 is affecting the education sector. At the time of writing the Society was also drafting its response to the proposals for a new Natural History GCSE; to proposed changes to the assessment of GCSEs, AS and A levels in 2021; to an inquiry on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on children and young people in Wales; and to a consultation on a new Government funding agency modelled on the US’s ‘ARPA’, which focuses on high-risk, high-pay-off ideas. See more on live consultations and our latest responses at www.rsb.org.uk/policy Vol 67 No 4 / The Biologist / 7

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Gone with the wind

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Dr Sara Goodacre explains how and why spiders ‘fly’ and ‘sail’ to pastures new

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Money spider (Tenuiphantes sp.) ‘tiptoeing’ on a dandelion seed head to help it take off

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potentially devastating implications for entire ecosystems that fall within the newly altered, dispersing species range1. In contrast, increased dispersal can sometimes be useful to us if it involves the spread of so-called ‘beneficial’ species. This includes spiders or ladybirds, whose presence is helpful if they predate upon unwanted pests, such as aphids within farmed environments. The dispersal mechanism that underpins the most widespread of distribution capabilities is flight. Flight can be active or passive, or a mixture of the two, and typically involves the use of physiological structures that are intrinsic to one or more life stages of the organism. The large surface area of a bird’s wing and the ‘pappus’ (feathery bristles that act as a sail or parachute) of a dandelion seed are two examples of very different types of structure that harness the power of the wind. An animal that is perhaps less naturally associated with flight is the spider. Their eight-legged bodies

Michael Hutchinson/naturepl.com

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Passive flight is an essential part of the life cycle of the vast majority of spider species

ispersal shapes the world around us. At local scales it determines the chance that two individuals will meet. Over larger scales it determines species distributions, and the pace and scale of colonisation of new areas. Most animals, be they terrestrial or aquatic, have different modes of dispersing that have evolved to carry them over a range of distances – think migrations of wildebeest across the plains versus day-to-day movement to find food and water. Many species also have systematic variation within them, where some individuals move further than others. This might be driven, for example, by varying needs of the two sexes or by different strategies that prove advantageous under different circumstances. The locust swarms that have plagued the African continent within the last few months show how different strategies can appear in a temporally variable manner, with profound and

Spiders ballooning, 1

control how long they fly for or their flight direction and so they have no control over where and when they land. Ballooning is a strategy used by spiders to reach new areas – and in many instances to be the first arrivals. Over evolutionary time frames this behaviour has enabled them to be among the first pioneer species to colonise oceanic islands as they arise from the ocean floor. The randomness of which particular spider flies past first may help explain the diversity and uniqueness of spiders to such isolated areas2. Over shorter ecological time frames ballooning enables spiders to recolonise a farmer’s field after human activity has emptied it of its previous residents.

Ballooning spiders avoid the problem of inbreeding nicely because their genes are carried vast distances

RISKY BUSINESS

Spiders climb to a high point and release ‘ballooning silk’ to help them take off

can be a wide variety of shapes, from the round, spiny ‘jewel’ spiders of Australia (genus Gasteracantha) to the long, thin, pencil-shaped Pholcus spiders occupying corners of many UK houses. Neither Gasteracantha nor Pholcus have wings or structures that could act as an aerofoil, but their wingless appearance is misleading. Passive flight using only external forces, such as the power of the wind, remains an essential part of the life cycle of these and the vast majority of spider species across the globe. Spiderlings (or small adult spiders) have no wings but they ‘fly’ by creating a temporary silken ‘sail’ in a process known as ‘ballooning’. Individuals climb to a high point and stick their abdomens skywards in a position known as ‘tiptoeing’, releasing a long line of silk as they do so. This silken line, once caught by the wind, creates sufficient uplift to take the spider up into the air. Spiders actively decide to balloon, but once airborne it is not currently believed they can

ZUMA Press, Inc/Alamy Stock Photo

Michael Hutchinson/naturepl.com

Ballooning is a risky strategy, however, because the assumed lack of control over flight direction and duration means there is little chance to avoid predators such as birds on the way or to prevent landing in unsuitable habitat. Nevertheless, the strategy persists widely in nature, even in species where the chances of finding suitable habitat may be low – for example, where species are restricted to a narrow ecological niche. A good example of this is the cave-dwelling Meta menardi spider here in the UK. Adult Meta are sensitive to light and specially adapted to remain in the depths of their cave, but they hang their tear-shaped egg sacs nearer the cave entrance, and from there the juvenile spiderlings make their way to the outside and balloon away while they are still small3. The persistence of risky ballooning behaviour in spiders means suitable patches of empty habitat do not stay empty for long. New habitat may contain less competition from kin, other species, or from conspecifics. It may also have a lower disease load if this is something that increases with population density. Another less immediately obvious advantage is that dispersal enables individuals to find a mate with whom they are not closely related. Small populations

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After rotating their body to face the wind, spiders adopt a ‘tiptoe’ pose and release ballooning silk to help catch the wind and leave the ground

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Spiders can use their legs as sails when moving on the surface of water

So what actually makes a spider decide to take the risk and ‘fly’? As well as motivation from factors such as hunger or conflict, environmental conditions are known to influence the decision-making process. There must be sufficient wind (but not too much) and there are seasonal patterns to the behaviour in some species5. Recent work also points to the potential importance of electric fields, which are always present in the natural environment, but vary in strength according to weather patterns and topological features6. Other studies have found that hidden, internal microbial ‘passengers’ within the spider also moderate the tendency to balloon: infected individuals are more likely to stay where they are7. The microbes are themselves sometimes infected with small virus-like elements known as phage, illustrating beautifully the intricate and often unnoticed interactions between hosts and their various internal microbes that have the potential to alter host biology. HOIST THE MAINSAIL

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Spiders can also use their abdomen to sail, known as upside-down sailing

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Spiders have even been observed using their silk as anchors to stop themselves moving through water

Some linyphiid and tetragnathid spiders are capable of using their legs and silken strands to sail across the surface of water

Right: Money spider on a daisy preparing to ‘fly’

that rarely exchange their genes with other populations suffer from what geneticists call ‘inbreeding depression’. This is the increased likelihood that an individual inherits the same faulty genetic variant from both its parents because the parents are closely related and so share much of each other’s DNA. Inbreeding depression leads to congenital disorders in domesticated species such as dogs and racehorses, but the phenomenon is not confined to domestic animals and is in fact one that much of the natural world has evolved to avoid. Ballooning spiders get round the problem of inbreeding nicely because their genes are carried vast distances by their silken sails, so the chances of two closely related individuals meeting as adults is small. The exception to this rule are social spiders, which do not appear to exhibit ballooning – their toleration of inbreeding is still a mystery, albeit one that may be resolved in this new era of genomic discovery4.

Ballooning explains spiders’ successful colonisation and persistence in the face of changing habitat availability. As described, however, the strategy can be risky because there is little control over where landing occurs. Much of our planet’s surface is covered in water and one of the biggest perceived hazards for ballooners has been the high chance of landing in an aquatic area because of the predicted inability to escape from such an environment. Here, however, perhaps spiders’ true capabilities have also been somewhat overlooked. A study of linyphiid and tetragnathid spiders showed that some individuals are in fact capable of using their legs and silken strands to sail across the surface of fresh or salt water using a suite of behavioural strategies described as ‘sailing’8. The really significant observation in this study was that not all individuals within a species seemed able to sail and that the best ‘sailors’ were those that were most likely to balloon. Ballooning and sailing thus appear to be traits that are linked, potentially because all ballooners eventually end up in an aquatic environment and only those that can sail will survive.

Michael Hutchinson/naturepl.com

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The best clue to what drives spider flight, with its potential for reaching far-flung places, may be what is underfoot (or under their eight feet) rather than what lies in the skies above – a case of aerial exploits being less dependent on in-flight expertise and more on the aquatic skills required when the flight does not go according to plan. Together these two strategies – aerial and aquatic – likely contribute significantly to the potential for spiders to disperse long distances, maintaining connectivity between populations, and with consequences for the dynamics of many ecosystems across the globe.

Dr Sara L Goodacre is an evolutionary biologist and geneticist at the University of Nottingham. She is head of the Nottingham SpiderLab, which works on a range of evolutionary, population and conservation genetic studies using spiders as model systems. Her research focuses on spiders and spider silk genes to understand how they have evolved and enabled spiders to occupy such diverse niches across the globe.

Long-haul flights

Many sailors report spiders being caught in sails thousands of kilometres from land, and spiders have been detected by atmospheric data balloons at heights of nearly 5km. It is unclear if individuals that are taken on vast high-altitude journeys survive, although some spiderlings can survive without food for weeks in air streams or jets.

REFERENCES 1) Gilliland, H. C. (2020) Gigantic new locust swarms hit East Africa. National Geographic 14th May. 2) Hormiga, G. Orsonwelles, a new genus of giant linyphiid spiders (Araneae) from the Hawaiian Islands Invertebr. Syst. 16 (3), 369–448 (2002). 3) Mammola, S. & Isaia, M. Niche differentiation in Meta bourneti and M. menardi (Araneae, Tetragnathidae) with notes on the life history. Int. J. Speleology 43 (3), 343–353 (2014). 4) Avilés, L. & Bukowski , T. C. Group living and inbreeding depression in a subsocial spider. Proc. Royal Soc. B. 273, 157–163 (2006). 5) Weyman, G. et al. A review of the evolution and mechanisms of ballooning by spiders inhabiting arable farmland. Ethol. Ecol. Evol. 14, 307–326 (2002). 6) Morley, E. & Robert, D. Electric fields elicit ballooning in spiders. Curr. Bio. 28 (14), 2324–2330 (2018). 7) Goodacre, S. et al. Microbial modification of host long-distance dispersal capacity. BMC Bio. 7, 32 (2009). 8) Hayashi, M. et al. Sail or sink: novel behavioural adaptations on water in aerially dispersing species. BMC Evo. Bio. 15, 118 (2015).

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Spiders ballooning, 2

Cho M, Neubauer P, Fahrenson C, Rechenberg I

Left: An observational study by Cho et al (2018) showed special ballooning fibres generate lift even for large spiders, and suggested spiders evaluate wind speed by raising a leg in the air first

INTERVIEW VERSION SUBS ART PRODUCTION

Professor Kate Jones says a woeful lack of communication between public health bodies and ecologists is failing to prevent spillover of animal diseases into human populations

CLIENT

rofessor Kate Jones is one of a small number of researchers in the world working at the interface between ecology and public health. Her work explores the relationship between biodiversity loss, climate change and human health, particularly outbreaks of infectious diseases. Before the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, Jones and her colleagues had repeatedly warned that environmental degradation around the world was increasing the likelihood of ‘spillover’ events and pandemics. Her work on diseases such as Ebola has shown it is possible to predict spillover events and outbreaks with a high degree of accuracy. However, she says to prevent devastating disease outbreaks becoming more common, public health organisations, ecologists and conservationists must work together in a way they are failing to do at the moment. How has your lockdown been so far?

Well, the first part was pretty insane as I was doing a lot of press work – I really felt nobody was making the link between the destruction of the environment, the homogenisation of biodiversity and the pandemic. There are not that many people who are central to that question, so my workload just tripled. It’s calmed down a bit, but now I have to record all my lectures for next year myself in my kitchen! As you say, you are really central to this question about how our impact on the natural world increases the risk of zoonotic diseases and pandemics. COVID-19 seems to have taken most nations by surprise, even though you’ve been warning about this for many years. How has it 12 / The Biologist / Vol 67 No 4

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Dan Bennett

REPRO OP

‘There were at least three papers in 2019 that said coronaviruses might be a real problem in south China’

Kate Jones interview, 1

felt for you watching the nightmare scenario you warned about actually happen?

That’s a really good question. It was never certain, it wasn’t inevitable, because for an event like this to occur so many things have to line up exactly. But we have been saying that this is a risk. Pandemic flu, which was more likely than this, is something people have allegedly planned for. But even though the risk is low, as we’ve seen, the effect of a new pathogen can be massive. I feel sort of guilty that I didn’t say more or make myself heard. There’s no “I told you so”. It’s a feeling of “could I have shouted louder?” Although we have been predicting it for a long time, I don’t think anyone really, really thought that this would happen. Having said that, we all have short memories. Aids killed millions of people; that was another zoonotic pathogen. And there was SARS, H1N1. I don’t know what happens in our brains. Why are we surprised when this happens?

Dan Bennett

Before we talk about SARS-CoV-2 more specifically, can you tell us how our impact on the natural world is increasing the risk of zoonotic diseases spilling over into the human population?

I’m cautious about the idea of there now being more zoonotic pathogens, because the more you look, the more you find. However, the evidence suggests at the moment that we are having more outbreaks of infectious diseases generally, and more from new or emerging diseases. It’s not just about our encroachment into wild spaces. If you’re going into an area that’s biodiverse such as a jungle, you have got loads of species there and the likelihood of you finding the one that’s got a transmittable virus is probably quite low unless

you hunt them or you’re targeting them specifically. But in degraded landscapes you get a filtering of things that can survive these weird landscapes. The ones left have adaptations that make them able to survive there, such as species that can disperse or those with fast life histories. And these organisms host a load of pathogens that are dangerous to us. So actually we are creating landscapes that are more suitable for the species that can transmit pathogens to us. Urban areas are very weird degraded environments for species to live in, with many species of rodents in cities carrying leptospirosis for example. So the risk is there – it’s just that we have hidden that risk a bit with better public health practices. But that breaks down in areas that don’t have those practices. And the chances of disease spilling over and then causing a problem are infinitely increased the more people you have. This all falls quite uneasily between fields: it’s not quite an ecological problem and it’s not quite a public health problem. It fits into this very uneasy place in biology that doesn’t really have a home.

The live wildlife trade and ‘wet markets’ have been seen as central to the emergence of COVID-19, but Jones says human health is threatened more by degraded environments

Yes, your profile on the UCL website is a really interesting mix of words that you don’t see very often. To most people, ecology and medicine are on separate ends of the life sciences spectrum.

I think that’s the problem and I’d like to say that it’s not just the public health people’s fault – it’s the ecologists’ fault too! They haven’t made the links clear to the public health people about the importance of the environment and ecological systems to human health. They have, in a way, siloed themselves within IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and

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Kate Jones’s work has shown the links between increased environmental degradation and pandemics

PRODUCTION CLIENT

Ecosystem Services) where there are few explicit links to human health. The silo-isation of our work is a massive problem. The public health people don’t see the relevance of ecology. Some don’t even know what it is! They’ve understood, rather recently, the link between human health and climate change – there’s a Lancet Commission and reports every year on that. But the impression is still that public health people treat proximate causes of disease not ultimate ones, and that’s the same in the development community. Many still don’t get this nuanced link between ecosystems and human health – it’s got this cultural baggage of ‘hugging a tree’ and Gaia theory. Is it possible to predict the emergence of new diseases with any accuracy? And with more resources and attention directed at this interface of ecology and health, could we have prevented the emergence of COVID-19?

“It’s not one solution for wildlife and one solution for humans, it is the same solution”

A good example is predicting Lassa fever, an acute viral haemorrhagic illness caused by Lassa virus. It’s a seasonal illness, but in trying to understand disease outbreaks, the role of the actual host, the rat, has often been ignored. They are an agricultural pest that respond to changes in rainfall. Only recently have people started to think about this in terms of climatic variation, plotting it out with seasonal patterns and climate change. You have to think about the actual animal, and how the animal is responding to land use change and climate change, to understand the ecological hazard. Then you can ask how many people there are and what they are doing, to understand potential exposure to

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the disease. Then you can add the susceptibility – for example, how much healthcare there is should there be an outbreak and where it’s likely to spread to. If you put ecological hazard, human exposure and susceptibility together, you’ve got a really good chance of understanding risk and predicting epidemics. In our paper in Nature Communications last year we did a first-principle stochastic model to say: we know roughly what species Ebola is found in, we know what the reservoirs and secondary reservoirs are, so let’s do a model to show the probability of those in habitats across Africa. Then let’s think about where the humans are, where previous outbreaks were and what we know about how Ebola spreads in humans, the basic epidemiology. Then you run it for the whole of Africa, let people move along these grid squares, along transport networks. You then have the probabilities not just for predicting where spillover might happen, but where secondary cases might occur. We finished that around 2017–2018 and have predicted the areas where all the Democratic Republic of Congo outbreaks have occurred since then. So I don’t think it’s difficult. I just think we’ve been doing it the wrong way. With coronavirus, there were at least three papers in 2019 that said this is a real problem in south China. This is where I think there is a failure of public health and ecology, a failure of communication rather than of science. How do you go about finding where a new disease has actually come from and what do we know about the origins of COVID-19? I’ve read a lot but none of it seems to be conclusive.

Tracing back origins is notoriously tricky. Every

species has pathogens and shares pathogens with other things. You have to survey quite a few different species before you find one that is close enough to be able to say for sure that it’s a source. The lack of resources and surveys that have gone on in wild populations, or in domestic populations, means you’re reliant on people having done some sampling and putting it on GenBank, or things like the PREDICT project [an initiative that seeks to identify emerging infectious diseases that could become a threat to human health]. Ultimately, not enough money is put into surveillance. We don’t know enough about what pathogens different species have. With COVID-19, I think it’s a bit early to say, but my bet would be that it has come from a bat at some point. Bats have a greater diversity of coronaviruses than any other group of animals. There are about six or so coronaviruses that have leapt over to humans from bats, including what is now the common cold, and three of those – MERS, SARS and SARS-CoV-2 – are causing serious problems.

Bats have a greater diversity of coronaviruses than any other animals

Do you think this crisis is the moment we start to take this link between ecological damage and disease outbreaks seriously?

Where does the pangolin come in?

Well, the pangolin comes in because one of the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins has a very similar structure to that of a similar virus found in pangolins. So scientists couldn’t figure out how the virus got that from the original SARS-like bat coronaviruses. I think as we sample more things we will piece that puzzle together. What options are there to reduce the likelihood of future pandemics?

I think focusing on wet markets and the wildlife trade is, in some ways, part of an agenda to get wildlife trading stopped, and I am for that, but whether it’s got a really big impact on zoonotic emergence, I don’t know. If you stopped wet markets or wildlife trade right now, would you stop zoonotic emergence? They are just one very specific link in the chain. The exposure is probably happening in agricultural areas or in people just going about their daily life in degraded landscapes. And are we saying we only care about the ones that emerge in that way, or affect the UK? To go back to Lassa fever, it kills up to 300,000 people per year. That’s 300,000 people per year! It’s got

nothing to do with the wildlife trade. And nobody cares! Perhaps because it’s in the global south it doesn’t ever seem to be high on the global agenda. It’s a very complicated question and very political. Navigating that is really difficult at the moment.

Degraded landscapes are conducive to the species that can transmit pathogens to us

I hope so. I’m just finishing off an article for the British Medical Journal. That’s massive progress. Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, said in 2017 that the lexicon of public health and climate change was becoming much more established, but that the next future agenda is how biodiversity and human health are interacting. That was the first time I’d ever seen a public statement like that by a public health professional. Whatever you think about Richard, and he’s become quite a controversial person, that was a really extraordinary statement for someone like him to make. He is not a ‘hug a tree’ person – he’s involved in public health and international decision-making. That’s a really good sign. I think this crisis might be the big shock to make the public health people look at the ultimate causes of disease rather than just the proximate ones, and get the conservation people to look up and talk to the public health and development people. The WHO and United Nations Environment Programme are making all the right noises about this problem, so maybe there will be some changes. The wildlife charities mustn’t just use it as a way to campaign to get more money from people – they need to actually contact the public health bodies, do something together. It’s not one solution for wildlife and one solution for humans, it is the same solution. When you’re developing child poverty alleviation programmes across the world, the child doesn’t live in a box: the child lives in an environment that also needs to be considered. Public health and global development people need to have an ecological view, irrespective of where that child is. That’s been missing from the majority of public health interventions and global development interventions. And that needs to change; it has to change or else we don’t have a planet that we can live on.

Professor Kate Jones is chair of ecology and biodiversity at UCL. Her research investigates the interface of ecological and human health, with a particular focus on emerging infectious diseases from animals. She also develops applied artificial intelligence tools for monitoring ecological health and has led the development of novel global citizen science programmes with the Bat Conservation Trust.

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Kate Jones interview, 2

INTERVIEW

GREEN ENERGY VERSION REPRO OP

The sky’s the limit

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ART PRODUCTION CLIENT

Natural photosynthetic complexes are extraordinarily efficient at charge separation, with a quantum yield close to 100%

mid the current crisis it’s easy to forget that in 2018 the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we have just 12 years to limit the effects of climate change to avert a global catastrophe. No surprise then that the world of research is flush with projects aimed at lowering our collective carbon footprint, be it by improving compostable materials, finding greener fuel sources or reducing the heat requirements of chemical processes. One area that has gained interest from scientists and politicians alike is solar energy generation. The idea of harnessing the sun’s power for energy is not new and applications ranging from solar-powered calculators to large-scale solar farms have been around for many years. However, the widely hailed ‘fuel of the future’ still faces pitfalls due to its high cost and low efficiency. A traditional silicon-based solar cell works on a principle similar to photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes: sunlight triggers electron transfer between carriers in a membrane, with electrons eventually reaching a connected anode and passing around an electrical circuit. Current can either be stored and used as electricity, or can drive other attached components such as sensors or fuel cells. One of the key factors determining the energy efficiency of a solar cell is its quantum yield, here defined as the proportion of photons absorbed by the system that go on to generate current in the attached

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circuit. Natural photosynthetic complexes are extraordinarily efficient at charge separation, with a quantum yield close to 100%. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for silicon solar cells – separated charges often recombine within the membrane,

Science Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo

compete with that: our best hope in improving solar cell efficiency is to try to incorporate photosynthesis into our technology. This realisation has led to an explosion of research over the last decade into how we can use biological structures in solar cells and devices to harness the power of photosynthesis directly. PHOTOSYNTHETIC COMPLEXES

with electrons never being transferred to the anode. The high quantum yield of photosynthetic complexes has been achieved through a careful energetic balancing act, optimised over billions of years of evolution. Artificial systems cannot

The main way of doing this is by using photosynthetic complexes (several proteins and pigments that together execute the primary energy conversion reactions of photosynthesis) to capture light in solar cells. Some research groups do this by mass producing and isolating light-harvesting complexes or photosystems, while other approaches incorporate the entire thylakoid membrane where these complexes are located1. Both methods have their benefits and drawbacks. “It can be easier to control the way that the system interacts with manmade materials using isolated proteins rather than using membranes,” says Dr Mike Jones, a researcher whose laboratory at the University of Bristol studies these complex photoreaction centres. However, to maintain protein stability outside of membranes, lab groups such as Jones’s must use expensive detergents such as dodecyl maltoside. Conserving complexes within plant or bacterial membranes enhances protein stability and removes this extra cost, but can lead to interference from other membrane protein complexes.

The high quantum yield of photosynthetic complexes has been achieved through a careful energetic balancing act, optimised over billions of years of evolution

Could incorporating photosynthetic substances into solar cells boost the industry?

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Artificial photosynthesis, 1

Annabel Calvert explores efforts to use photosynthetic complexes to increase the efficiency of solar cells and panels

GREEN ENERGY VERSION

A biohybrid solar cell REPRO OP

CATHODE

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ELECTRON DONOR

ELECTRON ACCEPTOR

ANODE

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REACTION CENTRE/ LIGHT HARVESTING COMPLEX PRODUCTION CLIENT

A simple biohybrid solar cell. Absorption of photons by the photosynthetic light-harvesting complex initiates the transfer of electrons, creating a current

Stability is the major challenge associated with using photosynthetic complexes in artificial systems

The setup of these biological molecules within solar cells can also vary. In some cases photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes (LHCs) are used as dyes in dye-sensitised solar cells, with the complexes attached to anodes via a semiconductor such as titanium dioxide. Photon absorption by the complex initiates the transfer of electrons to the anode via the semiconductor and these electrons move around the circuit to the connected cathode, generating current. At the cathode, electrons are collected to re-reduce photosynthetic complexes for further photon absorption2,3. Other research groups use biohybrid approaches, with LHCs and photosystems attached to electrodes directly or via an intermediate. Here, the entire charge separation process of the solar cell takes place within biological complexes, before final electron transfer to the anode. Biohybrid approaches often rely heavily on natural components, with biological molecules such as quinones linking photosynthetic complexes to the anode. CHOOSING A PHOTOSYSTEM

Right: Photosystem II â&#x20AC;&#x201C; unstable and difficult to work with

There has been much debate within the field as to which photosystems are best suited to this work. The frontrunners so far are plant or cyanobacterial Photosystem I, and purple photosynthetic reaction centres from bacteria such as Rhodobacter sphaeroides. Some research groups are also using

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plant Photosystem II, but this complex is generally less popular because its instability makes it difficult to work with. Indeed, stability is the major challenge associated with using photosynthetic complexes in artificial systems2. Cross-linking complexes to electrode surfaces often requires them to be chemically modified, which must be done with caution to preserve their conformations. Furthermore, once incorporated into solar cells, the constant exposure to high levels of radiation and free radicals, and the absence of the protein repair machinery present in living systems1, results in photosynthetic apparatus decaying quickly â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sometimes only generating current for a matter of days. Ongoing research is solving the problem of stability, and thereby increasing the longevity of photosynthetic solar cells, in a number of creative ways. Some groups are turning to synthetic biology: promising approaches here include incorporating complexes into hydrogels at the electrode surface. This conveys the advantages of increasing crowding of photosynthetic complexes, leading to better electron transfer and enhanced stability2. Other groups are synthesising artificial chlorophyll analogues, which still carry out effective electron transfer, but are more stable than their natural counterparts1,4. The disadvantage of this approach is that synthesis can be complex, energyconsuming and expensive.

OTHER APPLICATIONS

While photosynthetic solar cells to provide energy for the grid may be a way off, a more immediate application of this technology would be in powering disposable or remote devices such as biosensors. One such application is the use of these devices to detect herbicides such as atrazine in water supplies. Atrazine has been banned in the EU since 2003, but is still used in dozens of other countries including the US, despite having been linked to a range of health problems in humans and other animals5. It kills plants by inhibiting Photosystem II, and similarly inhibits purple photosynthetic reaction centres5, sparking interest in using these complexes in atrazine-detecting biosensors. The inhibition of photosynthetic machinery by atrazine in the water supply decreases current flowing round the cell, which can be detected by an attached sensor5. Photosynthesis-based technologies could have applications in many other areas, says Jones.

Disposable biosensors: useful in the field

RECYCLABLE CELLS At present, the instability of photosynthetic complexes in the long term means that environmental cells or biosensors should preferably be compostable. In many cases solar cell electrodes are made from gold, silicon or chemically enhanced glass, which as well as not being biodegradable incur high manufacturing costs. For more environmentally friendly biodevices, researchers are looking into carbonbased electrode or semiconductor materials such as graphene. As well as being cheaper to produce than other electrode materials, graphene is a better conductor of electrical charge and enhances one-way electron flow around the circuit3. Graphene itself has a low affinity for proteins, and in an interesting twist on natural photosynthesis researchers are experimenting with organic compounds including cytochromes for the attachment of photosystems to it6. Other prospects for cheap, recyclable electrode materials are cellulose and even paper7, although these are still in the early stages of development.

“One of the best parts of working in the field is that every paper we write has a different application in mind,” he says. Other possibilities so far have included integrating photosynthetic apparatus into UV detectors and into glucose biosensors for diabetic monitoring of blood sugar levels. Although there is still much work to be done to ensure the stability and longevity of photosynthetic solar cells and biodevices, the rapid rate at which progress is being made – and the intensity of research in many different areas – hint at a bright future for applied photosynthesis. The release of such machinery would mark a huge step forward for renewable energy, paving the way to cleaner, greener technology and energy production. The use of biological molecules such as cellulose to improve compostability also provides tantalising possibilities in other areas by proving what we can accomplish using the resources that evolution has perfected for us. Annabel Calvert is a biochemistry graduate from the University of Bristol and an aspiring science communicator. Very occasionally, she tweets @CalvertAnnabel

An enticing prospect would be to engineer solar cells containing both plant and bacterial photosynthetic apparatus, allowing a greater proportion of photons to be absorbed

References 1) Voloshin, R. A. et al. Photoelectrochemical cells based on photosynthetic systems: a review. Biofuel Res. J. 2 (2), 227–235 (2015). 2) Yehezkeli, O. et al. Photosynthetic reaction center-functionalized electrodes for photobioelectrochemical cells. Photosynth. Res. 120 (1), 71–85 (2014). 3) Teodor, A. H. & Bruce, B. D. Putting Photosystem I to work: truly green energy. Trends Biotechnol. (2020). 4) Kalyanasundaram, K. & Graetzel, M. Artificial photosynthesis: biomimetic approaches to solar energy conversion and storage. Curr. Opin. Biotech. 21 (3), 298–310 (2010). 5) Swainsbury, D. J. et al. Evaluation of a biohybrid photoelectrochemical cell employing the purple bacterial reaction centre as a biosensor for herbicides. Biosens. Bioelectron. 58 (100), 172–178 (2014). 6) Kiliszek, M. et al. Orientation of photosystem I on graphene through cytochrome c553 leads to improvement in photocurrent generation. J. Mater. Chem. A 6 (38), 18615–18626 (2018). 7) Zhou, Y. et al. Recyclable organic solar cells on cellulose nanocrystal substrates. Sci. Rep. 3 (1), 1536 (2013).

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Artificial photosynthesis, 2

Another key priority for researchers in the field is to increase the current that can be generated by this machinery. In recent years there have been huge increases in the power output of photosynthetic solar cells. Current generation per cm2 of cell has increased from being on the nanoamp or even picoamp scale when the field started out to around 700 milliamps in the last two or three years – meaning it is now comparable to that of silicon solar cells. Nonetheless, a steadier power output must be attained to allow photosynthesis-based systems to become a real competitor to silicon solar cells. One way to achieve this would be to use a wider range of photosynthetic complexes in the machinery. Plant photosynthetic apparatus can only absorb photons with wavelengths of between 380nm and 710nm, which accounts for just 40% of photons reaching the Earth’s surface1. On the other hand, purple photosynthetic bacteria absorb photons with wavelengths between about 710nm and 810nm, while cyanobacterial phycocyanin absorbs at wavelengths up to 900nm1. An enticing prospect would be to engineer solar cells containing both plant and bacterial photosynthetic apparatus, allowing a greater proportion of photons to be absorbed and a steadier power output to be achieved.

PLANT HEALTH VERSION REPRO OP SUBS

Out of the woods?

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While the world concentrates on an altogether different disease, young trees in the UK are showing signs of resistance to ash dieback, writes Dr Emily Beardon

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s COVID-19 continues to dominate our headlines, it is easy to lose sight of the many diseases to have spread through the country in recent times. One of these is slowly killing millions of individual ash trees right now, in the ongoing ash dieback epidemic. All plants face the challenge of surviving in environments that may at times be unfavourable. Being rooted in the ground, they cannot escape from prevailing climatic conditions, disease or herbivory. This is no different for ash trees, which are facing severe disease pressure from ash dieback. Unlike humans, trees cannot socially distance and vaccinations are not an option. Treatment and eradication of this disease is impossible, and in most cases mortality will be unavoidable. The year 2020 has been declared the International Year of Plant Health by the United Nations General Assembly, providing a good opportunity to look back over what we have learned about ash dieback in the last few years, how ash is faring and what the future holds for this iconic tree.

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ALIEN INVASION

Scientists estimated that ash dieback will cost the UK economy nearly £15bn over 100 years

Trees provide us with resources many of us take for granted – oxygen, clean air and water, fuel, timber and a stable environment. They cool our cities, reduce flood risk and improve our mental wellbeing, but the services they provide are often overlooked and undervalued. Nevertheless, the identification of ash dieback in the UK in 2012 attracted much media attention and public interest. We now know that it was present here much earlier. Cankers on dead trees and ring counts suggest the fungus could have been present in the UK as early as 20041. It is believed to have arrived in the UK via two routes: the importation of infected nursery stock and by windborne spores that were blown across the channel from mainland Europe, affecting East Anglia and Kent most severely. If you know what to look for, you’ll see signs of ash dieback everywhere. Go for a walk in the park, head out to the woods or simply stop to look at an ash tree in a hedge, and chances are you will see the tell-tale symptoms of this disease: orange-brown lesions on

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the stems (which are particularly noticeable on the bark of young saplings) and the death of shoots and branches. In summer, black spots, curling and wilting of leaves are also visible. Over the last 20 years this disease has spread across the UK and is now found virtually everywhere that ash is present. Ash trees are Britain’s third most abundant tree in forest areas and the most common hedgerow trees.

Ash dieback, 1

Native European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) is an important keystone species in the UK and across Europe, providing many functions, including a faster rate of litter decomposition and more rapid nutrient cycling than many other tree species. More than 950 other species also rely on ash for all or part of their life cycle, including 12 birds, 28 mammals, 58 bryophytes, 68 fungi, 239 invertebrates and 548 lichens. Forty-four of these species have only ever been found on ash2. Therefore the species that depend on ash for their survival are also threatened by ash dieback. FUNGAL FOE

Ash dieback disease is caused by the fungal pathogen Hymenoscyphus fraxineus. It is native to East Asia: Japan, Korea, China and the Russian Far East. In these countries it lives seemingly harmlessly on the native ash species Fraxinus mandshurica, which is thought to have co-evolved with the fungus. This is in complete contrast to its behaviour in Europe. On European ash, infection starts when

spores of the fungus land on an ash leaf. The fungus penetrates the leaf, causing orange-brown spots before spreading into the stems and branches causing characteristic diamond-shaped lesions on the bark. The lesions start to girdle the branch, eventually leading to dieback of the branches and death of the tree. Symptoms of ash dieback were first identified in Poland and Lithuania in the early 1990s, but frost and drought were initially blamed, and the real cause wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t identified until nearly 10 years later. Since then it has spread steadily across Europe. The consequences of this disease come at a high economic and environmental cost. Last year scientists estimated a total cost to the UK economy of nearly ÂŁ15bn over 100 years3. Much of this is due to the loss of ecosystem services, with safety felling, replanting and loss of profits for foresters also contributing factors. For the last few years the future has looked bleak for ash trees, but recent research paints a slightly more promising picture.

Ensuring resistant trees are maintained in the environment to produce seed is essential

Above: The European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) supports more than 950 other species Left: An ash sapling with lesions on the bark in field trials

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The impacts of ash dieback are known to vary between populations and sites. This may occur for three reasons. First, simply the chance avoidance of infection; second, some environments are unfavourable to the fungus or especially favourable to the tree; and, finally, some trees possess some level of resistance. Although the mortality rate of ash trees in Europe is high (up to 70â&#x20AC;&#x201C;85% depending on the environment4,5) it is promising to note that even after more than 20 years of exposure to the disease in some areas, none of the investigated sites have seen 100% mortality5. This suggests a minority of trees do show some level of genetic resistance to ash dieback, which has been backed up by genetic studies6,7.

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RESISTANCE MOVEMENT ART

Right: Ash tree killed by the emerald ash borer beetle (far right) Below: Ash sapling succumbing to ash dieback in field trials PRODUCTION

Below right: This forest in Norfolk is showing signs of natural selection with some healthy ash saplings springing up among diseased ones

Genetic resistance to ash dieback will be essential if ash populations are to survive and recover in Europe. The effectiveness of resistance in the recovery depends on how common resistant trees are in the environment and how heritable the resistance is. We now know that a minority of trees do possess heritable genetic resistance and that this resistance is determined by many different genes. This suggests that ash populations could recover through natural selection over a long period of time8. Ensuring resistant trees are maintained in the environment to produce seed is essential, as these

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will cross-pollinate with other resistant trees in the area. Recovery could also be facilitated through conventional breeding programmes, which are already being set up across Europe with the aim of producing genetically resistant seed. In some areas it appears that natural selection could already be visibly taking place. In one of my local woods in Norfolk the forest floor is covered in young ash saplings. Some do show signs of dieback, but many do not. Research suggests ash trees in other regions of the UK may be faring even better9. This means that the high ash mortality we have seen thus far in the south-east may not be representative of the rest of the country. Time will tell how many of these ash saplings will reach an age when they can produce seed of their own. The hope is that they will cross-pollinate and their genes will recombine, producing the next generation of even healthier ash trees. It might take decades, but if ash responds in a similar way in other parts of the country, a healthy ash tree may once again become a common sight. RETAINING THE ASHES

My own research focuses on understanding how different trees respond to infection of ash dieback and the defence mechanisms underlying the resistance. We are also interested in how ash dieback will affect ash treesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ability to defend themselves against other biotic attacks in the future. It is important to know how the next generation of trees would respond to future pests or diseases if only the survivors remain to produce seed. We are investigating whether there might be a trade-off between resistance to ash dieback and resistance to insect pests. Of particular concern is the emerald ash borer 22 / The Biologist / Vol 67 No 4

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Ash dieback, 2

It is important to know how the next generation of trees would respond to future pests or diseases if only the survivors remain to produce seed

(Agrilus planipennis), a wood-boring beetle native to Asia that has wiped out billions of ash trees in North America since it was accidentally imported there in the late 1990s. This beetle has been established in Russia for several years and has now been reported in parts of Ukraine10. Its spread westward is occurring at around 12km per year and is predicted to reach central Europe within 15 to 20 years11. It is feared that those ash trees that survive the ash dieback epidemic may be wiped out entirely by the arrival of the emerald ash borer in Britain.

However, researchers in the UK and US recently showed that saplings of European ash were much less susceptible than the American ash species Fraxinus nigra. In controlled inoculation experiments, European ash did suffer from initial attack by the beetle, but the beetles’ development was restricted and a much smaller proportion of eggs developed into later instar larvae12. European ash showed a similar level of resistance to emerald ash borer as the native Asian ash species Fraxinus mandshurica, which coexists with emerald ash borer in East Asia. Candidate genes for resistance to emerald ash borer have now been identified in the genomes of diverse ash species13. While European ash trees might suffer some harm from the beetle, a healthy ash tree is not expected to be severely damaged. What is more concerning is the impact this beetle may have on trees already suffering from an ‘underlying health condition’. The prevalence of ash dieback means that if the emerald ash borer arrives in the UK it will encounter a population already weakened and less able to defend itself. This could have devastating and long-lasting effects. It is therefore essential that the emerald ash borer is kept out of the country to give our ash populations a chance to regenerate through natural selection and breeding approaches. If a new population of resistant trees is able to regenerate, hope will return that Britain can retain its ashes for decades and centuries to come.

Dr Emily Beardon MRSB is a postdoctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. Her research aims to better understand how ash trees respond to infection by ash dieback and whether there are trade-offs between resistance to the pathogen and resistance to herbivorous insect pests.

REFERENCES 1) Wylder, B. et al. Evidence from mortality dating of Fraxinus excelsior indicates ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) was active in England in 2004–2005. Forestry 91, 434–443 (2018). 2) Mitchell, R. et al. Ash dieback in the UK: A review of the ecological and conservation implications and potential management options. Biol. Conserv. 175, 95–109 (2014). 3) Hill, L. et al. The £15 billion cost of ash dieback in Britain. Curr. Biol. 29, R301–R316 (2019). 4) Grosdidier, M. et al. Landscape epidemiology of ash dieback. J. Ecol. 00, 1–11 (2020). 5) Coker, T. et al. Estimating mortality rates of European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) under the ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) epidemic. Plants, People, Planet 1, 48–58 (2019). 6) Harper, A. et al. Molecular markers for tolerance of European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) to dieback disease identified using Associative Transcriptomics. Sci. Rep. 6 (19335) 1–7 (2016). 7) Stocks, J. et al. Genomic basis of European ash tree resistance to ash dieback fungus. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 3 (12) 1686–1696 (2019). 8) Plumb, W. et al. The viability of a breeding programme for ash in the British Isles in the face of ash dieback. Plants, People, Planet 2, 1–12 (2019). 9) Stocks, J. et al. A first assessment of Fraxinus excelsior (common ash) susceptibility to Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (ash dieback) throughout the British Isles. Sci. Rep. 7, 16546 (2017). 10) Orlova-Bienkowskaja, M. et al 2020. Current range of Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, an alien pest of ash trees, in European Russia and Ukraine. Ann. For. Sci. 77, 29 (2020). 11) Semizer-Cuming, D. et al. Saving the world’s ash forests calls for international cooperation now. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 3, 141–144 (2019). 12) Showalter, D. et al. Resistance of European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) saplings to larval feeding by the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis). Plants, People, Planet 2(1), 1–6 (2019). 13) Kelly, L. et al. Convergent molecular evolution among ash species resistant to the emerald ash borer. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 447, 148 (2020).

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Replace, refine and reduce

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Dr Alice Carstairs and Courtney Williams explore the best of this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts to help reduce the use of animals in biomedical research

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NC3Rs, 1

ach year the NC3Rs recognises research that advances or has the potential to advance the replacement, reduction or refinement of animals in research. For only the second time in 15 years, this year’s International 3Rs Prize has two winners. What does award-winning 3Rs research look like? As well as providing a tangible benefit to animals in research, it must be highly original and innovative, improving on the gold standard in any field of medical, biological and veterinary research. Many such advances can be applied far beyond their original remit to other models, disciplines or fields of research. For example, in 2012 Professor Donald Ingber from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute was awarded the 3Rs Prize for a paper describing an in vitro lung-on-a-chip model that could ‘breathe’, recreating how lung tissue physically expands and contracts during respiration without the need for animals. He is now working with academic and industrial partners to create organ-on-chips for other major organs, including the liver, bone marrow and intestine. In 2013 Dr Meri Huch from the University of Cambridge won the prize for developing a method of growing mouse liver cells in culture for the first time. These ‘mini-livers’ could survive and grow for up to a year, reducing the use of animals. Huch has since shown that human liver cells, including tumours, can be cultured in the same way, replacing the use of animals entirely for some research studies. Finally, 2016 3Rs Prize winner Dr Joanna Makowska from the University of British Columbia showed how burrowing and rearing, important natural behaviours for rats, are often restricted in standard laboratory cages and how this affects rat welfare. Makowska continues to work on improving housing for laboratory rodents so they can perform natural behaviours while still being practical for animal facilities to implement. This year the NC3Rs has awarded the International 3Rs Prize jointly to Dr Francesca Nunn from the Moredun Research Institute and

ABOUT THE NC3Rs The UK’s National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) is a scientific organisation dedicated to replacing, refining and reducing the use of animals in research and testing (the 3Rs). Primarily funded by the Government, the NC3Rs is also supported by the charitable and private sectors. It works with scientists in universities and industry in the UK and internationally. The 3Rs competition, sponsored by GSK, is open to any research team in the world. For further information visit www.nc3rs.org.uk.

Using the device to test a potential new treatment requires approximately four hens per treatment group compared with field trials, which require 400 hens per treatment group

Dr Marta Shahbazi from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Nunn and Shahbazi join a prestigious group of researchers whose focus on implementing the 3Rs in their research has led to significant advances in both science and animal welfare. PREVENTING PARASITES IN POULTRY

Poultry red mites are blood-feeding parasites that infest hen accommodation around the world, from back-garden henhouses to commercial farms. Infestations have a big impact on both hen welfare and the egg industry. Moderate infestations (up to 50,000 mites per hen) can cause restlessness, feather pecking and cannibalism, while severe infestations (up to 500,000 mites per hen) can lead to anaemia and death. Red mite infestation also affects the hens’ ability to lay eggs, leading to around €230m of lost revenue in the European Union each year. Chemical sprays are traditionally used to control mite numbers, but mites are developing resistance to these chemicals due to repeated use. Researchers are using two main strategies to try to find a new treatment – either developing new mite-killing chemicals or working on vaccines. Whatever the type of treatment, they’re usually tested first in vitro before progressing to field trials, where they are tested on an infested hen population. However, these trials can have a big

Main image: Poultry red mite (Dermanyssus gallinae), a blood-feeding parasite that infests hens and their accommodation Below: Dr Francesca Nunn and her on-hen feeding device, with some British hens

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Dr Shahbazi and her colleagues were able to replace the use of 500 mice in their research and avoid the need to create genetically altered mice

ART PRODUCTION CLIENT

Below: Mouse embryos cultured in vitro from pre- to postimplantation in the absence of maternal tissues. Yellow: nuclei; magenta: laminin (marker of the extracellular matrix); cyan: actin Below right: Dr Marta Shahbazi

impact on hen welfare and use a large number of hens: up to 800 per study, exposed to more than 10,000 mites continuously for as long as six months. So how can researchers continue searching for new poultry red mite treatments while also reducing the number of hens needed and the impact on their welfare? Dr Francesca Nunn was jointly awarded the International 3Rs Prize for her contribution to an elegant – and deceptively simple – solution to this problem1. Through an NC3Rs grant, awarded to Dr Alasdair Nisbet, Nunn optimised an ‘on-hen mite feeding device’ that can be used to test new mite control treatments on a small number of hens before moving to larger studies. The device consists of sealed mesh containing approximately 100 pre-starved mites that is applied to the skin of a hen’s thigh. This prevents the mites from escaping but lets their mouthparts access the hen’s skin, allowing a more controlled feeding. The device only needs to be attached to the hen for three hours, minimising their exposure to the parasites. The mites are then removed from the mesh and maintained in the laboratory to assess mortality rates to determine the effectiveness of the treatment. This concept could also be applied to studying treatments for other parasites such as fleas, lice and ticks. Using the device to test a potential new treatment requires approximately four hens per treatment group compared with field trials, which require 400 hens per treatment group. Since this work was published in Veterinary Parasitology in early 2019, four vaccine candidates and three delivery methods have been pre-screened using the device. None

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tested had a high enough efficacy to warrant progressing to field trials, meaning the use of more than 5,000 hens was avoided. Nunn will use her prize grant to optimise the feeding system used in in vitro screening before tests using hens. By improving the reliability of these in vitro tests she aims to minimise the number of in vivo studies being carried out, reducing the use of animals still further. Few think of chickens as laboratory animals, but it shows there are opportunities to apply the concept of 3Rs to all animals used for research.

NC3Rs, 2

Moreover, it demonstrates that a relatively simple idea can lead to a more robust scientific process, as well as enormous animal welfare benefits. EMBRYOS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

Between 10% and 40% of pregnancies end by the time the embryo implants in the uterus2. That’s a large range, but it’s about as precise as we can get right now because of how difficult it is to study embryos in this early stage, often referred to as the ‘black box’ of human development. Illuminating the black box is tough to do with animal studies because they can’t reveal the complex changes happening on a cellular level in utero. This is to say nothing of the 3Rs challenges: these studies rely heavily on the use of genetically modified mice, which require large numbers of animals for breeding. They can also involve performing surgery on the mice under anaesthesia. Not only does this represent a significant animal welfare burden, it also requires a huge amount of time, money and resources. In vitro studies of embryonic development have traditionally been limited by the difficulty of maintaining embryos beyond the point of implantation. We know that embryonic stem cells are naïvely pluripotent, meaning they have the potential to develop into many different types of cells. After the embryo implants these cells become primed to differentiate. They reorganise themselves to form the amniotic cavity, in which the developing embryo grows. If this reorganisation fails, the embryo won’t develop, but exactly how this process happens isn’t fully understood. Dr Marta Shahbazi and her colleagues previously developed methods to maintain mouse and human embryos in vitro past implantation, and to culture mouse and human embryonic stem cells in 3D. Using these four models Shahbazi was able to mimic the development of the amniotic cavity and explore the molecular mechanisms that link its formation with embryonic development in greater detail than ever before3. Through this work she and her colleagues were able to replace the use

of 500 mice in their research and avoid the need to create genetically altered mice through extensive breeding, while creating a much more useful model based on embryos obtained with consent from IVF clinics. The paper describing this work, which was funded by organisations including the Wellcome Trust and European Research Council, was published in Nature in 2017. Multiple groups around the world have used the system to improve their research while reducing reliance on animal models. Now Shahbazi and the team are adding the International 3Rs Prize to their list of achievements. Shahbazi recently established her own group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology with the goal of investigating how embryos develop in the second week after fertilisation. She plans to use her 3Rs Prize grant to develop a method for studying gene functions in human embryos in greater detail while avoiding the use of animals altogether. Ultimately this prize-winning work won’t just help us learn more about how embryos develop, it will also help to understand why they sometimes don’t, which will have enormous implications for anyone trying to conceive. Our prize panel members routinely face difficult decisions, but deciding on just one winner for this year’s International 3Rs Prize proved to be one of their most difficult choices. We were delighted to make this decision easier and celebrate the wide scope of 3Rs research by declaring both Nunn and Shahbazi the outstanding winners. You can hear both recipients discussing their research on the recording of our prize-giving ceremony at bit.ly/VideoNC3Rs

Courtney Williams is the online communications officer at the NC3Rs, responsible for the centre’s website, online resources and social media presence. Dr Alice Carstairs is a science manager for the research funding team at the NC3Rs. She provides support for the centre’s funding schemes and collates impacts arising from awards.

Mouse embryonic stem cells cultured in a 3D matrix replicate the embryonic processes of polarisation and cavity formation. Yellow: nuclei; magenta: Golgi (used as a marker of polarisation); cyan: actin (used to visualise the formation of a central cavity)

REFERENCES 1) Nunn, F. et al. A novel, high-welfare methodology for evaluating poultry red mite interventions in vivo. Vet. Parasitol. 267, 42–46 (2019). 2) Jarvis, G. E. Estimating limits for natural human embryo mortality [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]. F1000Research, 5:2083 (2016). 3) Shahbazi, M. N. et al. Pluripotent state transitions coordinate morphogenesis in mouse and human embryos. Nature 552, 239–243 (2017).

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INTERVIEW VERSION REPRO OP SUBS ART

‘All I’m presenting is a range of possibilities’

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Theoretical epidemiologist Professor Sunetra Gupta talks to Tom Ireland about alternative models of how and when COVID-19 could have spread through the UK

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Sunetra Gupta interview, 1

unetra Gupta is professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University’s department of zoology. Born in Calcutta, she spent her early childhood moving between Ethiopia, Zambia and England. She is also an acclaimed writer, with her fourth novel, A Sin of Color, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000. After originally studying physics, Gupta became interested in the use of maths in biology and the evolution of human pathogens – particularly the question of why some, like flu, become extremely diverse. She was mentored by the great mathematician, theoretical ecologist and scientific adviser Lord Robert May, who sadly died this year aged 84, and she later moved into the world of theoretical epidemiology. In March, when epidemiologists from Imperial College London presented projections that up to 250,000 people in the UK could die, it prompted the Government to take urgent and drastic action. Meanwhile a study by Gupta’s group at Oxford suggested a range of different scenarios were possible – including the possibility that the virus had arrived in the UK far earlier than reported and over half of the UK population had already had it.

Gupta argues that without reliable prevalence data, the true picture of how prevalent COVID-19 has been across the UK is still unclear. She has also warned that lockdowns are having an unacceptable toll on poor people, and favours instead strict shielding for the sections of the population most susceptible to severe illness. Looking back to March, the headlines about the study by your group were that over 50% of the population may already have had COVID-19. Do you still think that scenario is possible or were those headlines missing the point of the study?

As you say, what was the point of that study? It was to say there are a number of different scenarios that could fit the available data. The Imperial study, on which the Government’s actions appear to be predicated, was the worst case. But in fact the same data could also be explained by a different scenario, where the disease had come much earlier to the UK than anticipated, and the number of infections was actually higher and the likelihood of death was lower. The purpose of the exercise was to say there are these different scenarios, and we need to try to discriminate between them by doing the appropriate tests that tell us how many people have already had

“The same data could also be explained by a different scenario, where the disease had come much earlier to the UK than anticipated, and the number of infections was higher and the likelihood of death was lower”

Above: London’s iconic Trafalgar Square during lockdown

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“I recommend for now that we use the tools that we’ve got to make a kind of risk map in the UK”

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Many urban workers in India faced long and arduous journeys to their home towns when lockdown was announced

it. Our study was just laying out the various possibilities, including the Imperial scenario – saying these are all the scenarios that fit the data, and we don’t know yet which one is right. It’s now June, is it not yet clear which scenario is more likely?

After publishing our study, we got a neutralising antibody assay working to try to find out. However, it’s been very difficult to get the right representative sample to answer the question of how many people have already been exposed. We’ve been looking at some blood donors up in Scotland, and that’s quite a nice study, but it’s not representative of even the Scottish population really. Other groups have been publishing studies as well, but they are actually widely divergent, so yesterday there was a report of 60% of the population in Bergamo having antibodies, and we’ve also heard of just 5% in the Spanish population. In some cases, the low numbers come from homogenising data from areas where it’s quite high with areas where it’s quite low. And another set of papers now suggests that not everybody makes antibodies – I’ve just read a paper that suggests only 20% of individuals make antibodies when they are infected. So the jury is still out on which of those very basic scenarios we presented actually reflects what’s going on.

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You’ve also said that Government strategy should have concentrated on shielding the sections of the population vulnerable to COVID-19 rather than complete lockdown. The impact of lockdown on the poor in places such as India has been catastrophic, for sure. But the Government had to assume the worst case scenario, didn’t it? How do you compare a very worrying and immediate risk of severe illness and death with the indirect and less tangible negative consequences of lockdown?

My motivation for getting into this debate is precisely what you mention, that it seemed to me a terrifying prospect that lockdown might be implemented in places like India or Sub-Saharan Africa, where asking someone to stay at home for months is not feasible. The cost is just too high. Of course, I come from India and I’ve also spent a lot of time in Africa, but one doesn’t need to look that far – think of children locked in apartments in potentially abusive situations or with no access to green space. It immediately highlights the inequalities in people’s circumstances and, of course, the long-term consequences are likely to be profound. What the data suggests so far, even using the blunt tools that we have at our disposal, is that there is enormous heterogeneity in exposure. So there are hotspots where it’s most likely affected a lot of

As scientists we understand that theories and models are constantly refined and rethought, but how do you think the public perception of science is affected by contrasting views from scientists – the uncertainty, the updates and course corrections?

I think the public are not given sufficient credit. Generally speaking, this issue is not that complex – we’re not talking about string theory. I feel I’m able to explain the terms of this problem to people who are not experts in the field. I’m also sure the public are up to recognising how we can have a diversity of opinion and how one must balance risks. One of the things that I found rather painful when we published the original model in March is that some academics called it ‘dangerous’ – they said this is a dangerous thing. And I thought that was very odd. First, given the enormous costs of lockdowns. Second, because I don’t think the general public are quite so stupid that if the worst case scenario is one of several scenarios that the Government is choosing to act on, they wouldn’t follow the advice. The public have actually been incredibly co-operative on that front. The issue now is that we’re starting to know a bit more. What do we do now? If policy is updated in a way that again makes some sense to rational individuals, then public confidence will not be eroded. But if you say we’re going to go from 1.5 metres to 1.35 metres, without any kind of justification other than “this is following the science”, then we do stand to lose credibility. As well as being a very busy professor, you are also an accomplished writer and novelist. What do you think about the way science is communicated in scientific papers and the way scientists speak and write?

Well, generally there’s a tendency towards formulaic formats of paper, of the language. Having said that, the reason I like physics is because it’s a very precise language. In some ways adhering to a formula can actually, paradoxically, make people less precise than if they allowed themselves more latitude. I mean, if you read a paper from before the 1980s, even in the 1980s, there’s flavour and colour in it. I think it is part of the creative process of science. One of the worst problems with science now at every level is that it’s consensus driven. So there’s some consensus about how papers must be written,

consensus about what counts as proof or what counts as a decent hypothesis. Everything is by consensus, so it’s lost a lot of its diversity. On a practical level, how do you manage to do research and write fiction to a high level? Where do you find the time?

Ever since I had children it’s been quite tricky to juggle three things. So the answer to how I manage it is ‘badly’. I think there’s a huge amount of arbitrariness in what actually gets published and what doesn’t. I’m not saying that what I write is rubbish that happens to have been randomly published. But I think I was very fortunate and very determined. And as a young scientist you never felt the need to choose between these two great passions of yours?

No, and that was the culture I grew up in. My father taught history at Calcutta University, but he had so many diverse interests. He was also a film and theatre critic, and he sang very well. He wrote poems and novels, but he did it in a way that was rather wonderful: he’d suddenly say: “Oh, I wrote this poem yesterday”, or “Oh, by the way, I’m going to be in this play”. There was this sense that you can just do what you want to do. You mentioned scientific consensus earlier. What has it been like for you as a scientist who has presented views that differ from the consensus during this crisis?

Personally it has been very difficult. I feel I’ve been treated like a heretic by some quarters of the community and I simply don’t understand why. All I’m presenting is an alternative viewpoint or a range of possibilities that accommodates for what other people have done. My basic message is that we need to figure out which one of these is the truth, or close to the truth, before entering into a contract such as lockdown, which has such drastic consequences for those who are vulnerable or economically vulnerable and the underprivileged. This is not an issue we can address on that single axis of whether the epidemic is going to flare up or go away – we have to look at it in a broader context.

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Sunetra Gupta interview, 2

The economically vulnerable are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus crisis, with UK food banks facing record demand

people already, or the numbers of people who are already unavailable for infection will keep the risk down. So what I recommend for now is to use the tools that we’ve got to make a kind of risk map in the UK. You could say: “Look, it’s really ripped through this region of Glasgow, but it’s not got as far as the Clyde.” Once we have that we can better plan for the winter, when I suspect it will come back. At that point I really hope we don’t have to go into lockdown again, but that we can put resources where they are needed to shield vulnerable people. And, of course, I think the reason we’re in such a mess in the first place is because we haven’t invested enough in the NHS.

EXPERIENCE VERSION REPRO OP SUBS

Back to my roots

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This year has been a strange time for many scientists. So too for Dr Tudor Dawkins FRSB, who has returned to postgraduate research at 64, conducting experiments in his greenhouse at home

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etirement beckons? For some it’s a time to sit back and relax, and do those things you always wanted to do but never seemed to have time for. My retirement came a little prematurely following a stroke, but I was extremely lucky to make a full recovery. I had enjoyed a long career in the agricultural industry, from lecturing at the University of Nottingham to doing commercial research for DuPont and being technical director for a UK agronomy company. I did not want to sever all ties just yet with my former profession and agricultural technology. Although I had been involved in research at several points in my career, it was mainly from a project management perspective, and I still had questions in my mind about some of the things I had observed and been involved in, but hadn’t had the time or resources to explore further. I had always enjoyed learning about crops and ways they were being managed so decided to look into doing a further degree in agronomy. I applied to the University of Warwick to pursue a taught master’s degree in agronomy. I felt it would rekindle my interest in the subject and perhaps update my skills and knowledge of the topic. My inquiry was met with a surprising response that I hadn’t considered. The university suggested, having Googled me, that I might be better suited to doing a master’s degree by research. I soon thought of a topic and approached a potential sponsor. Syngenta agreed to support my research proposal, so I applied to the University of Warwick to do a master’s degree by research over two years (part time). At 64 I was going back to the ‘bench’ for some hands-on science. I began my work in October 2019. I needed to prepare a synopsis of how I was going to do my research and review the literature on what was already known about my chosen topic: the benefits of using fungicides in wheat beyond the aspects of disease control. Careful evaluation of my proposal by my project supervisors guided me in the direction of my first tentative experiments. I spent the first

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Tudor Dawkins, 1

few months sowing wheat plants in pots and raising them so that I could analyse how they responded to the application of fungicides in the absence of plant diseases (which sometimes happens in the real world because weather patterns are still unpredictable in the field). The experiments were conducted in a controlled environment under the watchful eye of the statistician so that results could be reported unequivocally and robustly. I conducted a survey of agronomists to ascertain what the knowledge base was on my topic to help guide my endeavours and see what might be of interest to them from this study. All was proceeding according to plan when the COVID-19 crisis hit. The university suspended all teaching and asked people to work from home. Undaunted, I collected my plants in pots and installed them in the greenhouse at home (no different from the greenhouse they were in at Warwick) and continued with my studies as best as I could. I reappraised my plans to make sure I wasn’t overreaching my ambitions without the facilities of a university department. The university helped by allowing me to use portable equipment at home and I bought a small balance and the glassware I needed online. This was an aspect of my studies I had not planned for, but with great support from the university I thought around some of the methods I needed to use and read some of the earlier papers on methods, using these to amend my studies.

“I reappraised my plans to make sure I wasn’t overreaching my ambitions without the facilities of a university department”

GREENHOUSE CLASS

Six months into my project I have evaluated the chlorophyll content of treated plants, examined the leaf layers for extent and persistence of greening, measured the roots of treated plants and measured how much water the treated plants transpire when compared with untreated controls. If nothing else, I have conducted ‘method development’ that can be rerun at the university labs when they reopen. I have started to analyse these results and am beginning to compile a useful picture. The plan going forward is to focus on a field trial: a series of small plots treated with the fungicides of interest to crossreference studies from the glasshouse to the field. It’s a small project and may not change the way we think about how wheat is grown. However, if it demonstrates that farmers can still get a return on their investments in fungicides, even if the damaging diseases don’t develop, it will be a small step forward. For me, as an aging ‘NUS card carrying’ postgraduate student, the journey so far has been fascinating. The opportunity to work with the staff at Warwick and Syngenta, and among the next generation of plant scientists, is a privilege. I’d recommend it to anyone who, like me, is motivated to learn something new, even at 64 years of age. Dr Tudor Dawkins FRSB is a postgraduate student at the University of Warwick’s School of Life Sciences.

Dr Tudor Dawkins (left) is growing wheat in his greenhouse at home (above) as part of his studies into the use of fungicides on wheat

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VERSION

MEMBERS A snapshot of our members at work and leisure

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A day in the life Dr Kimberly Rockley MRSB on helping understand how likely new drugs are to cause seizures

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View of the Cheshire countryside from Alderley Edge

Dr Kimberly Rockley is developing a cell-based ion channel panel for earlier detection of seizure liability within drug development. She works in a team of non-clinical drug safety specialists at ApconiX, which is based at Alderley Park in Cheshire. MY WORK INVOLVES…

Generating recombinant cell lines that will form the seizure panel. There is clear evidence for the involvement of a number of ion channels in seizure – transfection of these ion channels into routinely used cells provides a route to create an ion channel panel for in vitro detection of seizure. This is an important piece of work as toxicity to the central nervous system, including seizures, is the most frequent cause of safety failure in the clinical phase of drug development. ON A TYPICAL DAY…

I arrive at work at around 9am. I have a cup of tea and a chat with colleagues before starting my tasks for the day. All my work is carried out in the ion channel laboratory at ApconiX. There are many steps to generating stable recombinant cell lines – it is a long process that takes many months. Initially I use E. coli bacterial cultures to expand the DNA 34 / The Biologist / Vol 67 No 4

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of the ion channel, which is then isolated and inserted into mammalian cells by a process called electroporation. After this comes the long, tricky part: waiting for the cells to grow and identifying clones that express a functional ion channel.

MY ROLE ALSO INVOLVES…

Writing drug target safety assessments (TSAs) with the team of project toxicologists here at ApconiX. These reports provide an analysis of the potential safety risks associated with a specific drug target or pathway, and propose mitigation plans for the next steps. I have found researching and preparing TSAs to be an excellent learning experience to help understand more about toxicology in drug development, and the techniques and models that are used to assess the potential for targetrelated toxicity in different organs. MORE RECENTLY...

During the COVID-19 lockdown I have transitioned to working from home. My work on the seizure panel is paused for now and I have been writing TSAs from my newly established workspace in my conservatory. It is a lot quieter at home, and help is only ever an email or phone call away, and I have my cat, Belle, to keep me company. AFTER WORK…

After work I like to relax by doing yoga and going for walks. There is beautiful scenery in Alderley Edge and surrounding Cheshire, plenty of nice restaurants for an evening meal and a lovely independent cinema for the occasional movie night.

Members and members listing, 1

The career ladder Professor Claire Domoney FRSB on how childhood rambles eventually led to plant research After setting her sights on teaching biology, Professor Claire Domoney FRSB was lured away by the rewards of laboratory research and plant genetics.

reference and he suggested I visit Norwich to discuss the positions available there. I accepted one of the offers and have been in Norwich ever since.

I FIRST DISCOVERED BIOLOGY…

THE BEST THING ABOUT MY JOB IS…

Through walks as a young child in the countryside in Ireland with my grandmother, who was a keen botanist. She was fascinated by diversity in the shape and form of berries and, as a teacher, was always clear in distinguishing edible from poisonous berries. When biology lessons introduced the fundamentals of genetics in plants I was hooked.

The varied nature of the work. I never have two days the same. Although I am no longer a bench scientist, I still enjoy the excitement of overseeing research that is producing interesting and valuable outcomes. THIS IS AN INTERESTING AREA TO WORK IN BECAUSE…

CURRENTLY…

I am a group leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. My group investigates legume biology and genetics. I am also a head of the department of metabolic biology and biological chemistry, and I lead the UK Pulse Crop Genetic Improvement Network. I STUDIED…

Plant science at University College Dublin with a view to a career in teaching. I dreaded the practical research project at the end of my degree, though, as I had bad experiences in chemistry lab classes and was worried about equipment failure, explosions and the like. However, I learned that, with expert supervision, working in a laboratory could be a confidence-building, relaxed and exhilarating experience.

A PIVOTAL POINT IN MY CAREER WAS…

The decision to turn down a teaching post. After a higher diploma in education course I was offered my ‘dream job’ as a biology teacher, but I really missed the research lab environment. I was invited by my former professor to apply for a master’s by research in botany, and I am eternally grateful to my mother for acknowledging this was a wonderful opportunity. I rediscovered that laboratory research could be so much fun. A second serendipitous event led to my PhD studies. During my degree the university’s external examiner at the time was a head of department at the John Innes Institute (now the John Innes Centre). I later asked him if he could supply me with a

Legume research is of significant importance to the future of agriculture. Legumes have a critical role to play in sustainable agriculture with low greenhouse gas emissions. The demand for plant protein has escalated hugely in recent years and pea meets many of the criteria required by industry. To broaden its uses and functional properties, genetics can play a very large part. A KEY PIECE OF ADVICE WOULD BE…

To develop a good, productive and noncompetitive relationship with a valuable mentor early on in your scientific career. NOT MANY OF MY COLLEAGUES WILL KNOW…

That I do use my teaching skills on occasion by teaching international folk dance.

My Society and me Professor Stephen Price FRSB on gaining a wider view of the biosciences Apparently, successful people change jobs often, as staying in one organisation narrows one’s view and one loses touch with the outside world. I’ve been working at University College London for more than 16 years now and have been at some form of higher education establishment for the past 30 years! I am currently professor of developmental neurobiology and associate director (education) in the Division of Biosciences. What has saved me (I hope) from tunnel vision is my association with the RSB. I have been a Fellow of the Society since 2016 and am a member of the

Biology Education Research Group, a member of the executive committee of the Heads of University Biosciences group and also a member of the Education and Science Policy committee. Having an organisation such as the RSB to provide expert opinion on the biosciences is vital – we are living through a golden age of biology, with an amazing rate of new discoveries having a huge impact on society. It is a joy and an education for me to take part in some of the Society’s activities and to meet and interact with biologists from across disciplines and organisations in the UK.

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MEMBERS VERSION

Opportunities, awards and events A round-up of upcoming RSB activities for members

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EVENTS

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The next event in the Policy Lates series will take place on Wednesday 12th August. An expert panel will look at drug discovery, from the use of artificial intelligence to the funding of discovery research. Visit www. rsb.org.uk/events to book your place at this free event. Members at all grades are welcome to attend the RSB’s AGM, which will now be held virtually on Thursday 24th September, 11:00–12:30. See www.rsb.org. uk/agm for details and how to cast a proxy vote if you cannot attend. SKILLS

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The RSB has developed an Industry Skills Certificate to enhance the experience, skill set and knowledge of scientists specific to industry. The Technical Skills Certificate follows on from the successful launch of the Industry Skills Certificate in 2019. It is designed to support the career development of technical staff working in higher education, industry or in a private laboratory. For further details on both

certificates or to register your interest please contact training@rsb.org.uk or telephone 020 3925 3453. Achieve recognition for your skills and experience and continuing professional development by applying to join one of our professional registers. Applications are open to members of the RSB and can be made via mySociety. Applications submitted by Thursday 20th August will be considered for the October election. All RSB members are entitled to 25% off all Oxford University Press titles, including the Oxford Biology Primers series, normally priced at £19.99. Visit bit.ly/OxfordRSBPrimers and enter code RSB20 in the shopping cart. TEACHING

Schools have until October to take up a free institutional subscription to The Biologist that allows all teachers

and pupils access to digital issues and 10 other educational magazines. Sign up at institutions.exacteditions.com/schoolsoffer The Society has also put together a guide to help schools make the most out of The Biologist’s digital archive. Discover curriculum-linked articles tackling biological molecules, ecology and more at bit.ly/38MvW3V AWARDS AND COMPETITIONS

Nominations for the 2021 Higher Education Bioscience Teacher of the Year Award are now open. All bioscience teachers in the UK higher education sector are eligible for nomination. The winner receives a £1,000 cash prize, £250 in Oxford University Press books and one year’s free membership of the RSB. The deadline for submission is 29th November 2020. Visit www.rsb.org.uk/ awards for further information.

Education and training The Society’s programme of online courses All RSB in-person training courses are currently suspended, but the Society is instead offering a range of courses delivered online, with discounts for members PROGRAMMING FOR BIOLOGISTS 7–18 September Video conference via Zoom A hands-on introduction to programming for biologists using Python, through the popular Jupyter system. Designed for those with no existing coding experience, this course is ideal for PhD students and researchers in biology and other related areas of science and medicine. The course tutors are Dr Chas Nelson, a research Fellow in data science at the University of Glasgow working in quantitative microscopy; and Mikolaj Kundegorski, a software engineer at Fjelltopp working

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towards his PhD in modelling of collective animal behaviour at the University of Glasgow. This course has been split into smaller sessions and will take place via Zoom, 10:00– 11:30, between 7th and 18th September on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of both weeks. 21 CPD points From £85 + VAT

identify some key learning that will help the novice presenter build self-confidence in presenting and answering questions. Course tutor professor Sue Smith is a professor of medical education and director of the medical education research unit at Imperial College London. 6 CPD points From £25 + VAT

PRESENTATION SKILLS 17 September Video conference via Zoom This short, highly interactive course will explore key presentation skills, and what makes a good presentation and a good presenter. It will also

UNCONSCIOUS BIAS Available anytime online This half-day awarenessbuilding course aims to educate staff and managers so that they can lead by example in the quest to change mindsets and create a more

diverse and inclusive workplace. See learn.rsb.org.uk for more details From £30.40 + VAT (20% off) PERSONAL SKILLS FOR LEADERSHIP Available anytime online The aim of this course is to provide participants with an understanding of some of the skills and behaviours a good leader needs to be effective in today’s work environment. You will learn some processes and techniques that you can use in your workplace. See learn.rsb.org.uk for more details From £280 + VAT (20% off)

ASSOCIATE (AMRSB) Daniele Acquisito, Keith Sigfred Ancheta, Francesca Andrews, Hannah Betts, Devashish Bharaj, Laura Bowyer, Emily Burd, Atta-ul Chaudhry, Annie Collins, Emma Couves, Felix Davidson, Annabelle de Vries, Nathaniel Evans, Roberta Fonseca Toussaint, Jenny Forsyth, Charlotte Gardiner, Charlotte Gilbert, Rebecca Hand, Sally Harley, Ellis Hartnett, Edward Hawes, Joshuah Hayes, Sophie Hunt, Andrea Inversi, Alexia Irakleous, Zuzanna Jablonska, Esther Jones, Paul Juan, Bindu Kami, Vanshika Kapoor, Priyanka Khatri, Sarah Kirby, Matthew Lamaudiere, Max Lawson, Irfan Liaqat, Michael Lockhart, Luka Loh, Auyez Mashkeyev, Daniel McGrath, Emma McNamara, Lauren Moon, Willow Newton, Noeleen Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Kane, Charles Okayo SNR, Samantha Plummer, Jessica Pryke, Priya Purohit, Deborah Reid, John Safi, Hareram Sahoo, Shivani Saini, Megan Sambrook, Sara Seriah, Hannah Sims, Jamie Smith, James Strong, Vanessa Tang, Tiana Thomas, Flora Tickell, Jordan Vaughan, Joshua Watkins, Bronwyn Westmore, Ceire Wincott, Sarah Woodyear, Rayyan Zafar. AFFILIATE Bokan Abdul, Beverley Adeboye, Ammara Afzal, Aaina Ahluwalia, Hamda Ahmed, Tanha Ahmed, Sophie Allen, Asmau Aremu, Ayman Asiri, Deniz Aslan, Victoria Atkins, Emma Atkinson, Jemima Balingue, Shayna Barkhuysen-Davies, Lauren Batt, Emre Berk, Amelia Bilson, Isabelle Binnie-Dawson, Sandra Bondaruk, Livia Borghese, Isaac Bristow, Douglas Burns, Caela Burrell, Brogan Cairns, Lucia Capodieci, Courtney Catherwood, Tanya Chamberlain, Kar Kit Alex Chan, Lok Hin Chan, Renee Chang, Anna Chapple, Max Charles Vallarino, Marcela Chavez Perez, Wanxue Chen, Shu-Yi Chen, Young Seok Choi, Lik Wai Chong, Hannah Coburn, Isobel Cole, Daniel Cooke, Rachel Costello, Helen Coston, Sally Cowler, Hening Cui, William Cummins, Martyna Cyganek, Arijit Das, Cai Davies, Guillaume De Bo, Bevin De Silva, Jeremy Delvarr, Shuyi Joy Deng, Scott Dinnes, Sophie Douglas, Thomas Doyle, Jordan Dubock, Jain Eastland, Ashley Edwards, Beatrice Edwards, Erin Evans, Elizabeth Famosa, Thomas Farrell, Adam Ferris, Abby

Flower, James Foley, Karen Fotheringham, India FrancisCrossley, Aimee Frost, Daniel Game, Maisy Gee, Jenna Gilmour, Erica Goldsmith, Ishana Gole, Tudora Goncearuc, Charlotte Goodman, Laura Gough, Kevin Patrick Graham Ballesteros, Nicola Green, Hannah Grice, Charles Griffith, Chloe Griffiths, Jack Hales, Samantha Hall, Ray Hancock, Joanne Handford, Eleanor Harold-Barry, Rory Harrison, Yasmin Harrison, Joshua Hatton, Jun Wei Heng, Rebecca Hill, Stephen Hill, Connor Hoar, Alex Hunt, Ceyhun Ipekcioglu, Javaid Iqbal, Huzaila Jauffur, Seren Kane, Rashidatu Koroma, Keisha Kossouoh, Shu Leung Lam, Holli Langshaw, Eanna Larkin, Ka Yiu Law, Rebecca Lawrence, Magdalena Lazarczyk, Chaewon Lee, Eleanor Lewis, Billy Lim Chun Ginn, Andrew Lock, Miles Lockwood, Tanja Lowe, Raheela Luhar, Kwong Yi Kevin Lui, Thomas Marlow, Rebecca Marsden, Kyle Marshall, Jameela Martinez, Freya Masters, Chloe McAliskey, Maria McCann, Paul McGaw, Max McGinn, Aimee Mckenna, Calum McLennan, Leah Meghen, Vojtech Melichar, Alexander Mellor, James Metcalf, Michael Milivojevic, Prableen Minhas, George Montgomery, Luis Alejandro Morales Florez, Jameela Nagri, Laura Nather, Jacob Nethercott, Stephanie Nicks, Caitlin Nightingale, Anthonia Ononogbo, Edward Pacey, Daniel Pearce, Stefan Peters, Ser Xian Phua, Alexander Pickering, Kacper Pilarski, Amy May Pointer, Bethany Porter, Shannon Rees, Abigail Rhodes, Grace Rigler, Imogen Rimell, Nicholas Root, Connull Rumbles, Jack Rutter, Jordan Ryan, Omar Saeed, Ursula Scuderi, Alexandra Seow, Mardaan Shah, Talhah Shaikh, Ryan Shipman, Ryan Shippam, Dammy Shittu, Lauren Sinden, Thilieep Singarajah, Man Kit Siu, Amy Sizer, Joseph Small, Hayley Smith, Sophie Snowdon, James Sokolnicki, Shannon Solomon, Jamie Sterland, Rachael Stevens, Abbie Storan, Harsha Suresh Babu, Joshua Taduran, Simran Tak, Cheryl Tan, Kai Chuan Tey, Paige Thacker, Grace Thomas, Cheyenne Thompson, Paula Tomaszewska, Lauren Townsend, Yin Suen Tse, Adam Turner, Silvano Ulivi, Sian Vincent, Karolin von der Recke, Benjamin Walker, Helen Wallis, Ross Wells, Sarah Whitfield, Harry Wilson, Jay Wilson, Ramesh Wilson, Makoto

Yagi, Hannah Yates, Anthea Yuen, Sarra Zambou, Xinchen Zou, Eleni Zouganeli. MEMBER (MRSB) Duyilemi Ajonijebu, Jennifer Alderson, Sadfer Ali, David Arrowsmith, Michael Arthur, Anastasia Arvaniti, Deepa Avisetti, Farah Aziz, Saeedeh Bagherbeigi, Guochen Bao, Volker Behrends, Federica Bertocchini, Charlotte Blackburn, Sharon Boast, Shaun Boreham, Daniel Brayson, Ross Bunyan, James Butler, Yaomin Cai, Alison Carlisle, Elizabeth Chapman, Christopher Charles, Chien-Hao Chen, Nicola Chisholm, Claire Chivers, S. Rosemary Crichton, Alessandro Dei, Davina Derous, Manjit Dhami, Nathalie Dotor Cespedes, Jennifer Drew, Angela Dunford, Andrea Elser, Gaspar Epro, Nishat Fatima, Nuno Ferreira, Donna Finan, Graham Fisher, Alpha Forna, Fiona Frame, Sanket Gadhia, Amy Gallimore, Hazel Gash, Robert Gavan, Upasana Ghosh, Paul Gorwood, Benjamin Grimshaw, Penelope Harris, Janis Hatchell, Michelle Hay, Julia Henney, Terence Henry, Laura Hibberts, Kayleigh Hillman, Robert Holland, Aaron Horsey, Hidetoshi Hoshiya, Vasiliki Ifandi, Nicol Janecko, Emma Jennings, Shafeer Kalathil, Kyriakos Karmiotis, Muhammad Usama Kashif, Sarah Kerr, Mohammad Khan, Omar Khan, Alice Kirkpatrick, Peter Kutapan, Oi Ting Kwok, Sarah Lamsiyah, David Lawson, Zofia Leahy, Thibault Legal, Amy Lewis, Thomas Logan, Estrella Luna-Diez, Hansong Ma, Noel MacKenzie, Debraj Manna, Gemma Mansell, Sidney Martin, Amanda McDonald, Clare McKinnel, Melissa Mclaughlin, Ghulam Md Ashraf, Charalambos Michaeloudes, Prasenjit Mitra, Hannah Moir, Sukhes Mukherjee, David Mulgrew, Christopher Myerscough, S.Jemimah Naine, Aoife Nicholson, Elaine Padden, Elizabeth Palmer, Esther Parry, Visweswara Sharma Pokkuluri, Claire Pollard, K M G Prasanna Premadasa, Katherine Price, Claire Priestley, Yuh Fen Pung, Emma Quinn, Abdul Raheem Ul, Gillian Reynolds, Paul Richards, Laura Roden, Sanhita Roy, Philip Sanderson, Taiwo Shittu, Chen Situ, Mary Sloan, Paula Smith, Richard Snelson, Selene Sodini, Matthias Soller, Pakorn Sukhum, Zsombor Szoke-Kovacs, Ross Templeton, Hannah Thomas, Maria

Tossounian, David Townsend, Miranda Sin-Man Tsang, Virginie Uhlmann, Bijoy Varghese, Joana Vicente, Jessica Walker, Alastair Wanklyn, Ivan Whelan, Nicola Whitehill, Robert Will. FELLOW (FRSB) Julie Ahringer, Tauhid Ali, Robert Baxter, Clive Beggs, Kumar Changani, Edward Coulstock, Andrew Dawson, Shashank Deep, Adam Fernandez, Jon Godwin, David Grainger, Mike Hawthorne, Katrina Hayter, YrjĂś Helariutta, Ian Henderson, Stephen Hughes, Alexander Hunt, Daniel Jamieson, Khosrow Kashfi, Peter Kearns, Prakash Kulkarni, Ranjith Kumavath, Manu Lopus, Stuart Maudling, Miriam Moffatt, Claire Morgan, Amritpal Mudher, Helen Muirhead, Maria Orr, Peter Parham, Chandra Sekhar Pedamallu, Clare Ray, Michael Roberts, S.S.S. Sarma, Arjune Sen, Sreenath Subrahmanyam, Leonie Taams, Kostas Tokatlidis, Hannah Vasanthi, Michael Webb, Tony Wood, Cheryl Woolhead, Wing Kei Wu, Zainul Amiruddin Zakaria, Shunsheng Zheng. PROFESSIONAL REGISTERS Registered Science Technician (RSciTech) RSciTech Affiliate James Metcalf, Dammy Islamiat Shittu, Helen Wallis. RSciTech AMRSB Samuel Kimsey, Alex Liu. Registered Scientist (RSci) RSci AMRSB Aysegul Demirkiran, Mariana Felippe, Harriet Miller. RSci Affiliate Joanne Handford, Javaid Iqbal. RSci MRSB Patricia Kingston, Conor Paul McCarthy, Rose-Marie Minaisah, Daniel Trajkovski. Chartered Biologist (CBiol) CBiol MRSB Loris De Cecco, Marta Gwiazda-Orzol, Sumeet Kaur, Eleni Kraniotaki, Tik Ka Leung, Carl (Chas) John Nelson, Jed Nicholson, Alex Robertson. Chartered Scientist (CSci) CSci MRSB Benjamin Crouch, Minka Dimitrova, David Montgomery Holland, Anna Katarzyna Ryan. Plant Health Professionals (PHP) PHP MRSB Mark Downham, James Greer, Jennifer Newton. Vol 67 No 4 / The Biologist / 37

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Members and members listing, 2

NEW MEMBERS

Books for biologists, nature lovers and their families

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THE MOSQUITO: A HUMAN HISTORY OF OUR DEADLIEST PREDATOR Timothy C Winegard Dutton/Random House, £12.99

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This enjoyable but sprawling book is quick to inform the reader that of the 108 billion humans estimated to have ever lived, 52 billion succumbed to a mosquito bite. Strictly speaking, most of those deaths are due not to the mosquito per se, but to the malaria parasite carried by just one of many genera. Still, scientific detail and academic pedantry should not get in the way of a compelling narrative. If you can set these principles aside, the text is full of mindblowing morsels, substantiated or not, to amaze your friends at a post-pandemic pub trivia night. For instance, the mosquito can lay claim to being a staunch ally of papal supremacy in medieval Europe, George Washington’s lethal weapon in the American War of Independence and, in this century, a driver in the success of the world’s largest coffee shop corporation. Some may find the writing style irritating – much like a mosquito bite – since it is steeped in hyperbole (the perpetrator is variously called “our apex predator”, “the destroyer of worlds” and “the ultimate agent of historical change”). It is this last label that resonates loudest throughout the text, reflecting the author’s background as a history and political science lecturer. The Mosquito: A Human History of our Deadliest Predator is the latest in a succession of recent titles that attempt to explain human history through the influence of a single factor. There is no doubt that the mosquito is a major player in shaping society through the ages, to which this is a worthy, if flawed, testament. Prof Andrew Taylor-Robinson CBiol FRSB THE ECOLOGY OF MALARIA VECTORS Jacques Derek Charlwood CRC Press 2020, £63.00 I feel somewhat pipped to the post in writing this review: the foreword to The Ecology of Malaria Vectors already lays out the important position statement that this book represents not only a future standard text for students, but that it is crafted from a life of personal experience from the most talented medical entomologist I know. The dedication and insights that Derek Charlwood has contributed over the years have been truly unique. 38 / The Biologist / Vol 67 No 4

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Jim Gathany

VERSION

REVIEWS

Two new books look at the mosquito and its role as a vector of malaria

This depth of understanding comes shining through, drawing strongly on the author’s impressive publication portfolio. Recently parts of this field have moved on considerably – insecticide resistance, for example, is increasingly well understood at the molecular level and the mapping approaches are far more advanced than suggested in a very short chapter 6. Indeed, there is a noticeable absence of molecular approaches covered in this book. That said, the gold here is that it lays the most solid of foundations upon which students of Anopheles biology in the field can build their future research investigations. The book takes the reader through more than the title suggests. There are two chapters covering vector control and a section on laboratory studies supporting the fieldwork. I especially enjoyed the chapter dedicated to case histories – here Charlwood has pulled together the many and varied strands of research from his work across the world to describe with a more holistic view the ecology of malaria vectors in very diverse malaria epidemiological settings. The Ecology of Malaria Vectors is not an exhaustive tome in field techniques like Mike Service’s Mosquito Ecology: Field Sampling Methods, rather it should be considered important reading for newcomers,

giving them the insights of a medical entomologist who thinks like a mosquito. If you are a student coming into the world of Anopheles ecology and control, or even laboratory-based studies such as mating or transmission, this book will give you the important springboard into a better understanding of your subject. Well written with clarity and occasional humour, and recognising the major contributions in the history of the field, this personal training manual and research perspective will serve the field well for years to come. Peter Billingsley THE COVID-19 CATASTROPHE: WHAT’S GONE WRONG AND HOW TO STOP IT HAPPENING AGAIN? Richard Horton Polity, £10.99 The Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton was busy in the first half of 2020 penning numerous editorials and making comments to the press in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is an extension of that work and was produced in the timely manner characteristic of research and science writing about the coronavirus crisis. It provides useful

Reviews, 1

summaries of the ideas in infection control, epidemiology and public health measures with which non-specialists are becoming increasingly familiar as they enter everyday conversations about travel, social interaction and workplace safety. The book begins with an introduction to what is currently known about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the early responses to the emerging case numbers in China. Horton pulls no punches in his assessment that the scale of suffering was by no means inevitable or natural, but rather the result of “the greatest science policy failure in a generation”. There is a summary of the international responses and attention is drawn to both relative successes and comparative failures. Horton argues that the contrasting outcomes in death rates in terms of economic and race disparities reflect the unequal society we live in, stating: “COVID-19 has only amplified long-standing inequalities.” The book also discusses the tragedy of the disproportionate deaths of healthcare workers and people in care homes, and attributes these to political decisions and government failure to protect those they were supposed to protect. Horton believes that when solidarity and collective action as bedrock principles of effective public

Podcast review: Why Aren’t You a Doctor Yet? Hosted by Alex Lathbridge, Hana Ayoob, Oz Ismail and Suhail Patel Why Aren’t You a Doctor Yet? describes itself as a podcast “where science and tech journalism meets millennial pop culture”. Each episode sees the cast of co-presenters cast a scientific eye over the news and ask expert guests for their take on topics ranging from health, science, technology and social issues. Informed but informal, the presenters are just as comfortable chatting about life in modern Britain and online memes as they are about scientific research. Former biochemist and science communicator Dr Alex Lathbridge, who co-presents and produces Why Aren’t You a Doctor Yet?, says he started the podcast because “I just wanted some science media that reflects me. That sounds super niche, but it’s really important”. Lathbridge feels that the majority of science programming is overwhelmingly white and often fails to look at research from the perspective of those from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds (“I say minority; you could say global majority,” he points out).

“When representation is not good in academia, it is also not good in academia-adjacent activities such as science communication, journalism or broadcasting. So you have low representation and low visibility there too, and in people’s view of who does science.” The podcast’s diverse presenting team ensures discussions at the interface of science and social issues are well-informed and less Europe-centric than more mainstream programming. Episodes have

explored how certain pop stars have helped spread misinformation about vaccines in the black community and how perspectives on mental health can differ between cultures. Now, after almost 50 episodes and a series of sold-out live shows, the podcast has received funding from the British Podcast Awards and the Wellcome Trust. Lathbridge, who with co-presenter Hana Ayoob also co-founded the Minorities in STEM network, is happy with this latest success, but still feels the burden on boosting diversity in STEM too often falls on unpaid BAME volunteers. “I just got an email from a university asking me to do a workshop on ‘career progression for underrepresented groups in STEM’. They’re talking about improving career progression for underrepresented groups. What exactly am I? And they want me to do this all day for free. The irony there is hilarious but not uncommon.” TI Why Aren’t You a Doctor Yet? is available through Spotify and Apple Podcasts

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REVIEWS VERSION REPRO OP SUBS ART PRODUCTION CLIENT

healthcare are no longer taken as foundational, the loss of life and long-term health impacts are immense, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. While “national security means health security”, as Horton contends, “SARS-CoV-2 transcends states, borders and sovereignty”. Horton argues that “no person, no country, can survive in splendid isolation”, building on his earlier lamentation that “national failings became sublimated into international attacks”. In the final chapter Horton appropriately cites Albert Camus: “You must not, must never get used to seeing people die like flies in our streets,” and he feels that we should retain our capacity to be horrified and to act on those feelings. As the pandemic continues to unfold and as countries ‘reopen’ amid fears of a second wave, and with over half a million deaths at the time of writing, it strikes me that both Horton and Camus have a point. While a short book, I feel it would have benefited from an index and a bibliography in addition to the notes accompanying the text. This is a useful summary for a general reader, and while specialists will already be familiar with the science, they may still find the discussion of the political dimensions of science fruitful, even if they don’t share Horton’s conclusions. Conor McCrory MRSB HOW TO BE A BETTER SCIENTIST Andrew C Johnson and John P Sumpter Routledge, £20.00 How to be a Better Scientist offers advice for those starting a research project, including topics such as forming a hypothesis and choosing a supervisor, as well as those coming to the end of a project. One way in which it really stands out is the way it is written. Science is often complex and convoluted, but this book discusses it in plain, simple English. It fulfils its aim well, as it would be fully accessible to anyone wanting to begin a scientific project, including school pupils. Reading this book as a final-year PhD student, I found it helped reinforce my skills as a scientist. In particular, it is a useful confidence booster, encouraging you to reflect on the skills you have gained during your career to date and realise they really do improve your employability. I especially liked a section in the “when things are not going well” chapter on one of the authors’ own “failures” during his PhD. It really brings you close to the authors and makes you feel like you are not the only scientist with experimental problems. Overall, this book strongly achieves its aim and makes for a very easy read. It 40 / The Biologist / Vol 67 No 4

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would be beneficial for anyone undergoing a scientific project, from school pupils to PhD students, and really does make you want to strive to be the best scientist you can be. Natalie Lamb MRSB RSci SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED Neil Shubin Oneworld Publications, £18.99 In Your Inner Fish Neil Shubin described how much of the human body reflects its deep evolutionary past. Now, in Some Assembly Required, Shubin expands on this using both recent research and older examples to illustrate the central theme of his book: “Nothing ever begins when you think it does.” As examples, while you might assume that legs and lungs first appeared during the transition from water to land, or that feathers developed to aid flight, their origins are found much earlier. One of the early popular criticisms of On the Origin of Species was that Darwin didn’t

explain the gradual development of features that wouldn’t provide any benefit until substantially formed – what Stephen Jay Gould described as the “2% of a wing problem”. Darwin addressed the criticism in the sixth edition of On the Origin of Species with the observation that new features often developed “by a change of function”. This powerful insight underpins much of Shubin’s book as he uses “Darwin’s five words” to explain how new adaptations or genes are usually repurposed modifications of pre-existing forms. His range of examples is astonishing: proteins that bind cells together in multicellular organisms were also present in our single-celled ancestors; a protein necessary for the formation of mammalian placenta was co-opted from an ancient viral invader. Shubin uses evidence from fossils, embryology and DNA sequencing to explain many of the major transitions in evolution. As a practising researcher in palaeontology and developmental biology, and a gifted writer, he does this with great clarity and enthusiasm. Along the way he also reveals the stories of the scientists behind the

Reviews, 2

The book in general often focuses on this approach, giving a variety of prompts and encouraging you to test these initial ideas over a coffee with a friend. This resonates with me, as often putting pen to paper – especially at the beginning of writing a full PhD thesis – can be the most difficult and daunting part. Aspects of the book that I thought were of particular interest to myself, as a final year PhD student, were: scoring sections of past theses to help you form your own, theses from the examiner’s point of view, and example viva questions and how to begin answering them. Overall, Writing a Watertight Thesis is a helpful book that gives insight into what a PhD thesis should contain, how it should be structured and what examiners are looking for, as well as delving into what a PhD is in the wider sense. Natalie Lamb MRSB RSci LIFE UNDER GLASS (SECOND EDITION): CRUCIAL LESSONS IN PLANETARY STEWARDSHIP FROM TWO YEARS IN BIOSPHERE 2 Abigail Alling, Mark Nelson and Sally Silverstone Synergentic Press, £15.00

discoveries. Whether they are scientists that Shubin has encountered personally or not, there are human tales of them all – some a little sad, but all ultimately inspiring. Mike Smith FRSB WRITING A WATERTIGHT THESIS: A GUIDE TO SUCCESSFUL STRUCTURE AND DEFENCE Mike Bottery and Nigel Wright Routledge, £25.00 Writing a Watertight Thesis gives a very thorough overview of the whole PhD process, rather than commenting solely on the thesis and defence, as I expected from the title. As such, it would be best suited for PhD students just beginning their journey or even those starting the application process. For instance, a section dedicated to structuring research proposals will be very helpful for those who have not had to write something similar before, giving you ideas on how to begin and then how to build on these first thoughts.

Life Under Glass is the story of eight scientists known as the Mission One crew who on 26th September 1991 entered Biosphere 2, a sealed, manmade environment resembling Earth. There, they began one of the most exciting, innovative and important projects conceived in recent times, giving in-depth data on the biological and physical interactions of endemic species populating manmade ecosystems, often built from scratch, ranging from rainforests to oceans. I admire the courage, tenacity and resilience of the eight ‘crew’ in locking

themselves away in a closed ‘planet’ in order to explore self-sufficiency, sustainability and re-utilisation of limited resources over a two-year period. The account describes the minutiae of the dayto-day schedule of physically demanding work that was needed to till the soil, cultivate crops and run scientific experiments in parallel. And all the time there was the overhanging threat that the crops may fail; and that changing atmospheric conditions, essential for life, may result in the accumulation of toxic gases threatening both the lives of the organisms inhabiting the individual ecosystems and the crew themselves, and ultimately jeopardising the project. Perhaps unsurprisingly upon leaving Biosphere 2 the crew had to readjust to the daily demands of the real world. During their internment, a lack of space meant natural cycles were accelerated relative to the outside world and therefore time appeared to dilate. After leaving Biosphere 2 the crew noticed physiological changes, resulting from the consumption of non-polluted foods and water, and busy daily schedules combining hard physical exertion with mentally demanding monitoring and measuring activities. Psychologically and philosophically they experienced a deepening spiritual connection at both the molecular and holistic levels while simultaneously contemplating their role in their brave new world. The lessons and insights gained by the participants as reported in this book are too important to be ignored as future climatic changes will lead to unprecedented environmental pressures requiring novel innovative technologies to solve them if life on Earth is to survive. Dr Stephen Hoskins CBiol FRSB FLS Jesuiseduardo

How to be a Better Scientist is a great source of inspiration for anyone embarking on a research project

Biosphere 2, based in Arizona, US, was constructed to explore Earth system science

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The original version of this book, published in 1998, was greeted enthusiastically as a welcome and definitive review of the science of molecular biology. It described groundbreaking developments in genetics and genetic engineering, which subsequently altered approaches to biology and uncovered many secrets of the history of Homo sapiens and their potential future. This new edition reviews and updates the science and its implications, and introduces recent developments such as genomics and epigenetics. Following a detailed introduction there are four parts. The first two focus on the historical context. Part one reviews the importance of biology combined with physics and the development of techniques for gene exploration. Part two highlights major developments, including the landmark discovery of the double helix in the 1950s, the subsequent deciphering of the genetic code and the significance of messenger RNA. Parts three and four document how these early discoveries have underpinned numerous recent advances, including genetic engineering, genes and gene splicing, plus DNA amplification and applications such as gene therapy. Other advances include the significance of RNA, epigenetics – that is, the complex role of environment in stimulating an organism response without genetic alteration – and the sequencing of the human genome. Notable advances have certainly been made in the science and its applications in the last 20 years. Like many scientific achievements there is much potential for improving the ‘human lot’, but also much potential for damage. There are parallels with nuclear power. Potentially, science, history and politics interweave to create a brave new world – a ‘black box’ indeed. Dr A M Mannion THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION: PRINCIPLES, CONCEPTS AND ASSUMPTIONS Samuel M Scheiner and David P Mindell (Eds) The University of Chicago Press, £35.00 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace recognised natural evolution as the powerful driver of biodiversity. This was the most transformative discovery 42 / The Biologist / Vol 67 No 4

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THE BLACK BOX OF BIOLOGY: A HISTORY OF THE MOLECULAR REVOLUTION (SECOND EDITION) Michel Morange Harvard University Press, £36.95 (also available in e-book format)

An orchid bee (Euglossa viridissima), a species of solitary bee

in biology, now reaching into all aspects of behavioural sciences. Mendel, Crick and Watson’s subsequent discoveries explained how the wondrous multiplicities of natural flora and fauna that fascinated the two 19th century travellers are achieved. Nearly two centuries after Darwin and Wallace’s voyages, Scheiner and Mindell provide an excellent synthesis, identifying intellectual achievements and signposting directions for future studies. Compressing the endeavours of thinkers and researchers delving into the ramifications of evolutionary theory and practice over this period of time into 368 pages is no mean achievement. Divided into two sections – Overarching Issues and Constitutive Theories – each chapter of this book lucidly delivers current knowledge and opportunities for future speculative reasoning and research, written by authoritative authors. The depth and extent of knowledge contained in this book is exemplified by the 80 pages of references. Readers are taken on their own voyages through the nature of evolution, speciation and trees of life towards extensions into disciplines beyond biology and much more. The editors provide an introductory chapter, which usefully establishes parameters for the rest of the

book. Each subsequent chapter ends with a concluding paragraph neatly summarising its information and arguments. Readers interested in evolution and the development of biodiversity will find much of interest in this book. It will be especially useful for second-year undergraduates reading biological subjects and wishing for a current appraisal. Criticism is an easy sport for any reviewer – my only suggestion is that adding a chapter that considers specifically the interaction of climate change and evolution would be immensely valuable. Professor Geoffrey R Dixon FRSB PHYLOGENETIC ECOLOGY: A HISTORY, CRITIQUE & REMODELING Nathan G Swenson University of Chicago Press, £31.99 Over the past century there has been a reductionist imperative encouraging followers of the life sciences to search for more specific categorisations in our attempt to gain a greater understanding and knowledge. Author Nathan Swenson encourages the reader to once again embrace natural history and suggests the

THE SOLITARY BEES: BIOLOGY, EVOLUTION, CONSERVATION Bryan N Danforth, Robert L Minckley and John L Neff Princeton University Press, £38.00

“integration of evolutionary history into ecology and vice versa”. He promotes that measuring phylogenetic diversity and the use of phylogenetic trees is better than using indices of species diversity in measuring the health of communities and ecosystems. Swenson is indeed the leading authority in the field, and has demonstrated with confidence the significance of amalgamating evolutionary connections to both ecology and biodiversity. The introduction sets out clearly and succinctly the aims and objectives for each of the following eight chapters. It includes a section describing the meaning of the terminology encountered, although at times I would have appreciated a glossary for more rapid confirmation. The chapters address non-independence, comparative ecology, phylogenetic conservation, management of phylogenetic diversity, community assembly, global patterns of biodiversity, functional phylogenomics for ecology and scale, and biodiversity informatics, while the final chapter recaps some of the key conclusions and presents ideas for remodelling. Phylogenetic Ecology is of great value to a wide range of natural historians, providing the theory and practice by which evolutionary relationships and processes

can be identified, with the possibility of forecasting the design and role of communities and ecosystems. We should, therefore, recognise that phylogenies are not used to their fullest extent in ecology and more consideration should be awarded to evolutionary biogeographic history. Jean Wilson MBE CBiol FRSB

Contrary to popular belief most bees are lonely creatures. While industrial honeybees or charismatic bumblebees often take centre stage in our minds, the majority of the estimated 20,000 bee species around the world are solitary. The Solitary Bees is a celebration of the remarkable biodiversity, behaviour and life histories of these often-forgotten insects. The book starts by describing the phylogeny and life cycle of different solitary bees. The weird world of solitary bee courtship is discussed: who knew that some male bees collect floral perfumes to attract a mate? The nesting habitats of different solitary bees are described and we learn about the life histories of parasitic cuckoo bees that will attempt to usurp hardworking solitary bees. The book finishes by discussing the importance of solitary bees for agricultural and wild ecosystems, and highlights some of the main threats to solitary bees such as loss of habitat and agrochemical exposure. This book is a celebration of the lives of solitary bees and, as the authors state themselves, provides a roadmap for future research on bee biology. As biologists we are becoming increasingly aware of global insect declines and urgent action is required to reverse these trends around the world. We cannot protect a species from extinction if we know nothing about it. The importance of this book for the field of bee biology cannot be overstated. Dr Harry Siviter

Phylogenetic Ecology explores the power of phylogenetics to illuminate ecological processes

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BRANCHES Virtual events and regional news

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SOUTH WALES WALLACE AND THE CATERPILLARS: A COLOURFUL HISTORY OF DISCOVERY 22 June 2020

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Here we report on the virtual events that have been organised in lieu of conventional branch outings, and the success of an ongoing branch project that has developed over the past five years and hopefully will be back in 2021. Check www.rsb.org.uk/events for the latest updates NORTH WESTERN

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BIOBLITZES 2015–2021 The North Western branch includes the areas of Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire. It engages with its members on many different levels, with lectures by eminent scientists including Professor Richard Fortey, and talks and visits to places of interest such as Chester Zoo, Sea Life Blackpool and Manchester University Museum. The branch also helps and supports young biologists with an annual schools’ quiz, and committee members attend national careers events and presentations. Over the past few years the branch has been committed to bringing biology to people and communities. Our first effort in 2015 was by today’s standards a relatively modest affair with a BioBlitz based at the Wyre Estuary Country Park and Fleetwood Haven Marina. In 2016 the obvious interest in marine species inspired us to celebrate World Oceans Day at Freeport Fleetwood Shopping Centre (now called Affinity Lancashire), which is adjacent to the nearby marina. Requests from visitors at the 2015 BioBlitz who wanted to know more about the habitats and biodiversity of the area gave us the idea in 2017 of having ecology days to suit all levels of ability. As a result we explored salt marshes, sand dunes, muddy shores and freshwater habitats, collecting relevant data for future reference. In 2018 we 44 / The Biologist / Vol 67 No 4

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set our sights high and, in conjunction with fellow sponsors Wyre Council and Wyre Rivers Trust, we planned and effectuated our second BioBlitz, this time recording 705 species located in or around the Wyre Estuary, including industrial sites, salt marshes, sand dunes, muddy and sandy shores, and Morecambe Bay. We recruited both professional and amateur wildlife experts with the aim of locating, identifying and confirming species, which meant we could add valuable statistics to our everexpanding database. The information was submitted to Bristol Natural History Museum BioBlitz, the Wyre Rivers Trust, Lancashire Environment Record Network at Lancashire County Council and Wyre Council. The first day of the BioBlitz focused on local school activities, with talks on sharks and barn owls, nature walks, bird watching, insect capture, bird box and bug hotel construction, painting and modelling. On the second day our marquee positively throbbed with the passion of local and national organisations engaging the general public in the promotion of natural history, health, art, photography, microscopy, beekeeping and flood prevention. Outdoor activities included bird watching, bat detection, moth trapping and pond dipping. The Society is vital at both local and national levels for the success of events such as a BioBlitz. It offers access to a network of biological specialists who are essential for credence of the recordings and whose knowledge and passion are infectious. The financial support from the RSB is key to enabling the organisers to be confident and creative in their plans for the event without having to wonder where the funding can be found. There is no doubt that strong bonds have developed between councils, trusts, schools, universities, clubs, associations and individuals, ensuring that our 2021 BioBlitz should be a resounding success – coronavirus permitting. Jean Wilson MBE CBiol FRSB (vice-chair)

The annual Wallace talk, a collaborative event between the RSB’s South Wales branch and the Linnean Society, was delivered online for the first time ever this year due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Taking place on a Monday evening at the start of the Royal Entomological Society’s National Insect Week 2020, this was the branch’s first-ever online event and was a great success, attracting an audience of 75 guests. This year’s Wallace talk was given by Ms Eleanor Drinkwater, a PhD student at the University of York. Eleanor delivered a stimulating and exciting lecture focusing on how Alfred Russel Wallace embraced the debate surrounding animal colouration and how it helped him develop his theories, many of which are valid today. The talk explored Wallace’s insights on the idea of ‘warning colouration’ and camouflage, both of which are key to animal defences. Eleanor also provided a collection of pictures and videos showing caterpillars, butterflies and orchid mantids as examples of Wallace’s ideas, and gave us a real feel for how his theories on animal colouration sparked controversy and debate among academics for centuries, yet have stood the test of time. This fascinating and insightful talk was followed by a Q&A session, with numerous questions from a captivated audience. Afterwards participants made it clear how much they had enjoyed this exploration of colour with Wallace. Dr Jill Johnson MRSB The event was recorded and can be viewed on the RSB’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/royalsocbio WEST MIDLANDS VIRTUAL QUIZZES 8 May 2020 and 10 June 2020 In May the West Midlands branch held its first ever virtual quiz using the video conferencing platform Zoom and the online games platform Kahoot! The event was advertised on social media and after a successful first run with 20 participants another 30 joined us for a second quiz in June. The quiz master, Dr Jill Johnson, led both events

Branches, 1 Caterpillar showing warning colouration, which is key to its defence strategy

and provided colourful commentary as participants used all their wits to answer three rounds of questions on ‘People, Places and Plants’ in May and ‘Small, Big and Tiny’ in June. Kudos to our pen and paper winners Lesley (May) and Hagoo (June) and Amy, who was our digital winner in both quizzes. At the time of writing the branch was preparing for our third virtual quiz on the theme ‘Furry, Scaly and Slimy’. Follow us on social media for more information on the West Midlands branch virtual quizzes – Twitter: @RSBWestMids Instagram: rsb_west-midlands

The West Midlands branch is hosting a ‘Furry, Scaly and Slimy’ quiz

Contacts BEDS, ESSEX AND HERTS Dr Jacqui Piner • bedsessexherts@rsb.org.uk

SOUTH WALES Dr Rowena Jenkins • southwales@rsb.org.uk

DEVON AND CORNWALL Christine Fry • devoncornwall@rsb.org.uk

THAMES VALLEY Dr Ray Gibson • thamesvalley@rsb.org.uk

EAST ANGLIA Natalie Lamb • eastanglia@rsb.org.uk

WESSEX Dr Hilary Otter • wessex@rsb.org.uk

EAST MIDLANDS Rosemary Hall • eastmidlands@rsb.org.uk

WEST MIDLANDS Lesley Payne • westmidlands@rsb.org.uk

KENT, SURREY AND SUSSEX TBC • kentsurreysussex@rsb.org.uk

WESTERN Alexander Nunns • western@rsb.org.uk

LONDON Professor Patrizia Ferretti • london@rsb.org.uk

YORKSHIRE Dr Lynda Partridge • yorkshire@rsb.org.uk

NORTH WALES Peter Thompson • northwales@rsb.org.uk

HONG KONG Dr Gert Grobler • hongkong@rsb.org.uk

NORTH WESTERN Dr David Wareing • northwest@rsb.org.uk

AUSTRALASIA Prof Lloyd Reeve-Johnson • australasia@rsb.org.uk

NORTHERN Dr Cathleen Thomas • northern@rsb.org.uk NORTHERN IRELAND Jonathan Shields • ni@rsb.org.uk SCOTLAND Dr Andrew Spiers • scotland@rsb.org.uk

OUR BRANCHES NEED YOU! Whether you are a university student, researcher, amateur enthusiast or professional biologist, joining a committee is your opportunity to organise and support the sort of events and activities you would like to see in your region. Contact regions@rsb.org.uk for more information.

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OBITUARIES

The Society is sad to announce the death of two distinguished Fellows

PROFESSOR JOHN F PEBERDY FRSB MBE (1937–2020) Mycologist and former branch chair REPRO OP SUBS ART PRODUCTION CLIENT

John was a pioneer in the field of fungal biochemistry and genetics, and was known especially for his research into the formation and exploitation of fungal protoplasts. He ran one of the first laboratories to achieve fungal transformation. He had a keen interest in the practical applications of mycology, and also investigated fungal secondary metabolite production, the cultivation of edible mushrooms and the use of fungi to convert waste resources. John mentored more than 50 PhD and master’s students, as well as many European exchange students and had numerous international collaborators during his career. He studied botany at the University of Newcastle where he became fascinated with microbiology and with fungi in particular. John studied for his PhD at the University of Nottingham before a brief time in industry at a water pollution research laboratory. He then accepted a lectureship in microbiology at the University of Nottingham where he spent the rest of his career, being awarded a chair in botany in 1984. John proposed and launched the first European Conference on Fungal Genetics held at Nottingham in 1992, and this biennial conference continues to this day. He developed great interest and expertise in the commercialisation of biotechnology, establishing a small company and developing a national competition, the Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme. In 2000 he was awarded an MBE for services to student entrepreneurship. John was twice a member of Council of the former Institute of Biology, and a keen supporter and former chair of the East Midlands branch. He was also a past president of the British Mycological Society.

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John passed away peacefully at home in May after battling cancer for some time. His passions for microbiology and for training young entrepreneurs to apply their scientific and technical knowledge continue to be inspirational and he will be greatly missed. Paul S Dyer FRSB, University of Nottingham, UK Rosie E Bradshaw, Massey University, New Zealand BRIAN M JONES FRSB (1925–2020) Science educator Brian Merton Jones was elected as a Fellow of the RSB’s predecessor organisation, the Institute of Biology, for services to science education. He helped develop monographs produced by the Institute, which were popular in the 1970s and 1980s among A-level students, undergraduates and “anxious older teachers exhausted by the surge in knowledge”, according to a former colleague. He was secretary of the London branch of the Association of Science Education and spent more than 40 years at Dulwich College. He worked during the period known as ‘the Dulwich Experiment’, where the fees of any local boys who passed the exam would be paid by London County Council, vastly increasing the number of working-class students at the school. The school still awards the Brian M Jones award to students at the college, supported by a former pupil who wanted to acknowledge the debt he owed to his former teacher, who he says contributed so much to the development and education of pupils. Jones went on to become chief examiner at Cambridge in health and social biology, a new course aimed at disease control and improved health outcomes in the developing world. He died peacefully at home after a short illness aged 94.

Obits and crossword, 1

CROSSWORD The biology brainteaser

This issue As usual all across entries are from the world of biology and their clues just contain a subsidiary indication. Down clues are normal, combining a definition with the subsidiary indication.

Science and sensibility… pit your wits against this issue’s brainteaser for a chance to win a £25 book token Across 1 I must travel around having left America (8)

How to enter To be in with a chance of winning, send us your completed puzzles by Friday 28th August 2020. Please include your name, address and membership number with your entry – an email address would be handy too. Post your entries to: Crossword, The Biologist, Royal Society of Biology, 1 Naoroji Street, London WC1X 0GB

5 I would put on headgear (6) 9 Idiot, one tore around (8) 10 Father’s caught in falsehood (6) 12 Eye or Private Eye? (5) 13 Different form of procedure (9) 14 Time to find one in flower (6) 16 Sounds like new version of clues (7) 18 Genes must somehow make us this (7) 20 Sea neighbouring America (6)

Last issue’s winners Well done to last issue’s winners: Dr Sue Howarth CBiol FRSB and Robin Smith CBiol MRSB. £25 book tokens are on their way to you.

23 Poor suffer in terrible hard time (9) 25 Charlie taking exam (5) 26 Power up at start of emergency (6) 27 Is our DNA modified? (8) 28 Copper not found outside (6) 29 One trusted to perform (8) Down 1 Elderly Romeo is involved with one (6)

Volume 67 No 4 Compiled by Doug Stanford

14 Draw it up with end of rope (3) 15 Thinks too much of how fast bowlers are performing (9) 17 Every other Russian portrayed as its enemy (3)

2 Number get back in first before queen (7)

18 Allspice concoction with iodine extraction found in doctor’s bag (7)

3 Starting up new industry one needs workforce organisation (5)

19 Measuring device to record finish of foot race (4)

4 Frighten and even run off (7)

20 If around 40? (3-4)

6 His Val possibly replacing a Dominica (5,4)

21 One is employed to look after tavern’s brew ... (7)

7 Confused situation upset centre court fans (5)

22 ... warns beer starting to run through slowly (6)

8 Engines possibly conk out with running less (7)

24 Cancer for example not right subject for discussion (5)

11 Dashes back – that’s kind of doctor? (4)

25 Harmonic creation of man joining this (5)

Last issue’s solution Vol 67 No 3

Could you recommend a member? The Royal Society of Biology represents, supports and engages with anyone who has an interest in the life sciences, and offers membership grades to suit all levels of expertise Existing members are uniquely placed to help grow our membership – and to increase the influence we are able to exert. A significant number of new members join as a direct result of a recommendation from someone they know and trust. If you have a colleague, friend or family member who would benefit from Society membership, please email their details to us – and let us know if you’d like us to mention your nomination. email: membership@rsb.org.uk

www.rsb.org.uk

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Museum Piece whale, 1

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MUSEUMPIECE Biological exhibits from around the world

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Hope dives through Hintze Hall and, inset, explore the whale’s story online

#44 Hope’s History

The life of the blue whale virtual exhibit, Natural History Museum, London

any visitors to the Natural History Museum in London will be familiar with the sight of Hope, the 25-metre-long blue whale and star of Hintze Hall. However, you can now explore the rich history of Hope without the crowds in one of the museum’s latest virtual exhibitions. Using a mix of digital media, the exhibition guides visitors through Hope’s story from past to present. When the museum’s first director, Sir Richard Owen, campaigned for a new museum in South Kensington, whales were at the centre of his proposal. Journeying back in time the exhibition offers detailed information, including old maps, photographs and press clippings, to document how Hope was found beached in 1891 in Wexford, Ireland, by villagers – who initially thought she was

a sea monster – and then began her journey to the museum in London. Blue whales are heavier than even the largest dinosaurs, so moving and protecting Hope’s skeleton from her previous display within the museum to Hintze Hall was one of the museum’s largest ever undertakings. Visitors can view the gargantuan job museum conservationists had in engineering her display – from creating Hope’s pose to reflect a diving blue whale swimming through the air, to the unenviable task of removing 81 years’ worth of dust from Hope’s skeleton prior to her new display. There is a lot we still do not know about blue whales – surprisingly, humans saw Earth from space before a free-swimming blue whale had been filmed underwater. However, the exhibition is packed with facts on what we do know about these

animals, such as how they feed, what their diet comprises and why beaching may occur. The exhibition also covers the impact of whaling on populations of these great creatures. The museum’s whale died just before the world’s commercial whaling boom, which nearly drove blue whales to extinction. Hope is intended to act as a symbol and public reminder that Earth’s rich biodiversity may be at risk, but it is within our power to protect it. The virtual exhibition is just one of many projects offered by the Natural History Museum for those unable to visit, including Nature Live interactive online talks, virtual painting classes and virtual tours. Words by Emma Wrake See www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/virtualmuseum for more information. At the time of going to press the Natural History Museum was due to reopen in early August.

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Our work with young people – many of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds and underrepresented groups – is giving them the knowledge and passion for ecology at a time when it has never been more important.

ART

Help us develop the next generation of ecologists.

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The future of our planet is in their hands – and yours.

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“I have just completed my ﬁrst ever will through the BES, and it couldn’t have been easier. I now have peace of mind that I have a professionally drafted and legal will without ever setting foot in a solicitor’s ofﬁce. It is also a perfect opportunity to leave a gift to support ecology”. Hannah Grist Knowledge Exchange Manager Scottish Association for Marine Science, Oban

To ﬁnd out how to claim your free online will* visit britishecologicalsociety.org/wills or give Paul Bower a call on 020 3994 8246 or email paul@britishecologicalsociety.org To ﬁnd out more about our work and make a donation visit britishecologicalsociety.org *This free wills offer only applies to England, Scotland and Wales. In Scotland you will also need to complete a short telephone interview with a legal representative.

Registered Charity no. 281213

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LEAVE A LEGACY THAT MEANS THE WORLD

Leave us a gift in your free online will and inspire a new generation with the greatest responsibility of all: the future of our planet.

Oxford Primers advert, 1

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Published in partnership with the Royal Society of Biology, Oxford Biology Primers encourage students to explore biology for themselves.

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They are the only resource to introduce prospective and current students of undergraduate-level bioscience to a range of topics from this dynamic experimental science, enticing them to study further.

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PUBLISHING IN 2020 Biochemistry: The molecules of life Richard Bowater, Laura Bowater and Tom Husband 9780198848394 | 192 pages | March 2020 Cancer Biology and Treatment Aysha Divan and Janice A Royds 9780198813477 | 192 pages | March 2020 Genomics Julian Parkhill, Sarah J Lindsay, Phil Jones, Lia Chappell, Jonathon Roberts, Nancy Holroyd and Michal Szpak 9780198848387 | 216 pages | April 2020 Genetics in Medicine Barbara Jennings, Gavin Willis and Nandu Thalange 9780198841555 | 144 pages | May 2020

“The future of biological research rests in the minds of the current generation of students. The Oxford Biology Primers will play an important role in inspiring those students to want to understand more about the world around them, in so doing setting them on the path of exploration and enquiry.” - Sir Paul Nurse Hon FRSB, Director of the Crick Institute and former president of the Royal Society “The Royal Society of Biology is delighted to have helped develop this invaluable series of biology textbooks. The only resource of its kind, the series brings together foundational biological theory with research from the frontiers of modern bioscience, on topics spanning the full breadth of life on Earth.” - Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow CBE CBiol FRSB, RSB President

Microbial Biotechnology Kay Yeoman, Beatrix Fahnert, David Lea-Smith and Tom Clarke 9780198822813 | 224 pages | July 2020

Find out more: www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/obp BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN

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