Symbiontti 2/2022

Evolution through the eyes of a leaf beetle

Teksti: Savi Wartiovaara – Kuvat: Nathan Rank & Savi Wartiovaara

Professor Nathan Rank and Ruby Kaiser are researchers from Sonoma State University, California. I had the pleasure of interviewing them about their work studying the leaf beetle populations of California.

What is it you do?

Rank: “We’ve been studying leaf beetle populations in California for quite a few years. We are trying to understand how they respond to stress which is increasing now because of the changing climate. [Our topics include] are they able to adapt to stress and how do they adapt. We do a lot of field studies, looking at where they’re found and how abundant they are and how they’ve changed from one year to the next. We do laboratory studies with living beetles in the summer and then we do genetic work on the samples that we’ve run through experiments in the wintertime. My day job is to teach in the biology department at Sonoma State University.”

Kaiser: “So I am a student of Nathan Rank and I work on a subset of the work that he does, focusing more on the microbial communities in these beetles and seeing how they might affect their life history traits and stress responses. So I also get to take part in the fieldwork in the mountains and then doing the laboratory work and then data analysis on the genomic work.”

What got you interested in that specific subject?

Rank: “Well I was one of those boys who was into dinosaurs. So I was into evolution even before I was ten. When I got a little older, my grandparents took me on trips in the American West [and as a result] I wanted to go out West and study nature. That was step one and then step two was I was trying to get to the tropics and couldn’t get into a course, so I started working in the mountains. And there we go.”

Kaiser: “So I kind of have a similar ‘as a child’ -innate interest but I was always interested in the very small things. I wanted to look at as microscopic of a scale as I could so that naturally led me into looking at microbes and that kind of stuff. And then a similar story actually – I was initially supposed to work on something entirely different and then I kind of fell into the work with Nathan, due to the coronavirus. He had work that could be done online and I needed to do some research to get my degree, so it ended up working out that way.”

Cute little leaf beetle.

What are you doing here in Finland?

Kaiser: “I’ve been here from the start of February, on a three month stay. The short answer is I’m doing data analysis, we have heaps of data that need to be analyzed. I applied for a grant to work with supercomputers to learn the best ways to analyze this massive amount of data and then to actually get it done.”

Rank: “I have an old attachment with Finland, I did research here in the 1990s and I have collaborators in Eastern Finland, so I’ve always enjoyed working here and being with people here. About 15 years ago we discovered that the metapopulation group here was doing a parallel study to what we do in the mountains, on a butterfly in the Åland Islands. We sort of borrowed some of their approaches and realized there were so many parallels that we started figuring out how to work with people here. My collaborator spent a year here working on the butterfly, and she got to know Anne Duploy who works on endosymbiotic bacteria. I have been interested in studying those for many years, so the main reason we’re here is that the right people for us to work with are here, doing related questions.”

What’s the most surprising aspect of your work?

Rank: “For me the most surprising thing is that I had given up on looking at endosymbionts because I had not seen the telltale signs in our populations. The main thing would be that the bacteria we study kill males. I used to count beetles here in Finland to see if there were too many females and I never got anything so then I forgot about it. A friend of mine in California, who is a senior colleague, said: “Nathan, you must study those bacteria”, and so I started working on them. Instead of just finding a few of these bacteria in a few beetles, the surprising thing is there’s three to four different strains of the same bacteria in every beetle. So the bacteria are probably critical for the whole adaptation process that we’re studying. And the surprise is that there were so many.”

Kaiser: “I think the surprising thing piggybacks off that a little bit, I think just the fact that you’ve been studying this system for decades at this point and there’s still so much to learn about it. I feel like we’re barely scratching the surface of new avenues. There’s always more questions to be answered.”

Ruby Kaiser

Do you have any advice for biology students thinking about a career in research?

Kaiser: “My best advice is to figure out what you’re really, truly curious about. It’s good to sample a lot of different things. And also just say yes to opportunities, even if you don’t know how it’s going to work out. Just go for it ‘cause you’ll never know what you’ll really love.” Rank: “I think that was pretty well said!”

Is there something you’ve found in your research that you’re still excited about?

Rank: “I didn’t realize that one could be studying evolution in action. When I first started studying evolution, people thought that there were very small differences that would lead to slow evolutionary change. And instead we’re seeing big differences that are changing rapidly. Everything about it excites me, I get excited to go to the mountains and hike, I get excited to be here and talk to colleagues. We’re finding stuff that seems to be applicable to all kinds of organisms, like human health. When studying these insects, we’re touching on genes and interactions that might be medically important.” Kaiser: “I’m pretty early in my research career so most of what I’m finding is very exciting to me. Every time I find an answer to a question I have, I feel like it opens up a dozen more questions. So everything is exciting and the problem is narrowing it down to one thing that’s exciting, which I feel like is hard to do.”

Nathan Rank

What is the weirdest thing you’ve come across?

Kaiser: “I think the weirdest thing I’ve come across is one of the ways we measure a fitness trait. We stick these little beetles and their larvae on a pole and then have them run up towards the light. And then we time it. It’s a really useful and simple way of measuring something, but it’s just that you read all these advanced papers and this crazy cool data but when it comes down to it you’re just watching tiny little larvae inch up the pole towards the light.”

What is your favorite thing about Sonoma State University?

Kaiser: “My favorite thing is probably its location. It’s an hour away from a big city, from the ocean, the mountains, a river, a forest. I’m a pretty big outdoors person so the fact that I can sample almost any kind of scenery I want at a short distance is pretty amazing.”

Rank: “For me the people who work in the bio department take advantage of that. There’s one colleague who studies elephant seals and other colleagues study the trees in the forest around. So we have a strong department with lots of opportunities for people who are interested in meshing more higher technology stuff with field work.”

If you could be any species, which would you be and why?

Rank: “I would be a diving beetle, because I love the idea of being able to – just imagine flying around in the air, seeing a pond and “woosh” diving in and just swimming around in the water.”

Kaiser: “I would be a lizard because laying in the sun sounds so nice. And then just running away from people whenever they walk by – that’s the ideal situation for me. Just loungin in the sun by myself.”

P.S. Professor Rank might be visiting us again next academic year. Stay tuned for possible seminars etc.!