Are the beetle people the best people?
Well, you know, I'm kind of biased, but yes, they are.
So welcome back to another episode of Explain Yourself.
We're still at the Entomological Society meeting, and this is Vinicius, and he's agreed to talk
to us about his research and grad school experiences.
I'm really excited about this interview, so thank you so much for talking to us about
all of the things you do.
You're welcome.
I always like to start everybody off, can you give us the elevator pitch, the real short
speech for your current research?
So, I'm a PhD research, and I am studying a group of beetles called Lycidae.
They are, as my advisor likes to say, the modest relatives of Lampyridae, which is the
family of beetles that have lights on their on the apex of their abdomen, fireflies.
Yeah, fireflies, or some people call them lightning bugs.
Yeah, lightning bugs and fireflies.
And so I'm currently working on describing new species and trying to understand the evolutionary
relationship of beetles of this specific family.
And even more specific, the group of beetles that I work right now, the adult males, they
are just like any other regular beetle.
Say, they will have wings, long antennae, and they will be flying around.
And the adult females, they will just be, like, a larva.
Okay, so they look like larvae, but they're adults in other ways.
So the adult females, they their morphology are just like from the larvae.
Okay, so if I picked one up, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference?
You wouldn't be able to tell difference between the larva and the adult female from this group,
and that's one of the main things that I'm trying to find out.
How do you tell apart the adult females from the larvae?
And that's sounds familiar because, if anybody's heard of a glow-worm before, that's, like,
the female of a lightning bug, and they're similar, right?
Like, they don't have wings and move around, so that's another way that those two groups
are related?
Correct, correct.
Alrighty, and when you say that yours are the more modest version, they don't have light-up
butts?
Yeah, I wasn't sure if I could say "butt," that's why I took so.
Yeah, sure, we can say "butt!"
I talk about poop all the time!
That's fine.
So, no it's just a joke.
It's just that they're very similar, if a non-expert look at them, they're very similar,
their anatomy and morphology.
Fireflies and the Lycidae, their common name is net-winged beetle, so some people might
know this common name.
Common names are not that common other places as they are in the United States, so.
I'm still learning the common names of beetles.
That's all right, yeah.
And I noticed when I saw your talk yesterday, that some of the males had very very fancy
antennae.
Yes, but it's specifically on this group that I'm studying right now, some of the males,
they have these very fancy elaborate antennae.
And we think that this is a way for the males to find the females, because you have to think,
the adult males, they are just like other beetles, so they're flying around, and the
females, because they are like larvae, they will be on the ground.
So they're hard to find.
They're hard to find, and they're probably releasing some sort of pheromone or other
chemicals, and the males are literally using their antennae to tune that.
Okay, so they're sniffing out the females?
Exactly.
Okay, cool.
Alrighty, so again, from your talk, I learned that, so these females, they look like the
babies and the species that have been described so far have really been described by what
males there are and not by the females, and you're working on trying to match the females
with the males?
Yeah, okay, so first thing, it's not just one species, so it's a complex of species.
So we have about, so far, 31 species described on that group.
So we have 31 named species in that group.
And now the descriptions, or which people like to call "We discovered new species,"
so all those species they are based on the males.
And people don't know how the females are.
So I'm trying to, first I'm expanding the number of species described, and I'm trying
to associate the females with the males.
So how do you match them up?
So what we're gonna do about association males and females, we're using the gene called CO1,
which is a mitochondrial gene, and they are fairly, they are highly conservative if you
compare to other genes.
So conservative means that it doesn't change, yeah.
It doesn't change as much when you compare to other genes.
So we're choosing this gene, CO1, and as we're talking about, as we want to associate males
and females from the same species, that gene will be the same on both species, males and
females, even though they have a very different morphology and anatomy, their genes are very
similar.
95% or more similar.
So rather than being a gene that affects what the insect looks like, it's probably a gene
for, like, something internal, right, like something about their internal body chemistry,
or?
Well, I don't know about the importance or relevance for CO1 for the physiology or any
other thing for beetles, because this is not a thing that I am really into.
Okay, so it's just something that you're using as a marker.
Yeah, we know that this is a good marker, and it's a good thing to associate different
stages, so immature stages of butterflies, for example.
You'd have a caterpillar and you don't know what is the adult, you will have and you have
this gene and you can associate them using this.
Okay, yeah.
So this is the first step.
Later on, once we have the match using the CO1, we want to do the same, but with the
morphology, and then anyone will be able to do this without expending hundreds of dollars.
So the idea is to use the CO1 for the first match, and after this we will be able to say,
"Oh, okay, so this is the female.
Now let's see if there's enough anatomical and morphological variation that we can use
to associate it."
Okay, so is that, um, I know a lot of people when they're trying to do species description
in insects, they use the genitalia.
Is that a direction that you would be going, is like matching up female and male genitalia
and how they fit together?
So, the taxonomy world is kind of sexist, and depending on the group, you make the entire
classification and distinguish one species from another based on the male genitalia.
So, for the Lycidae it's very true.
Okay.
So for the Lycidae, you can tell apart very similar species just looking at their genitalia.
Hm, okay.
But I'm not sure if I answered your question.
I mean, I guess I was wondering like if, are they sort of like puzzle pieces, that like
the male genitalia fit into the female genitalia in a way that you can, like, match them up
species-wise that way as well?
It's possible, theoretically it's possible, but it's not, I don't think it's doable.
Okay, so it's not like a perfect fit or whatever.
Yeah.
Because they're, we're talking about really small structures, and I don't know if people
would fund it.
That's fair.
And I mean, the CO1 is really cheap, the CO1 is really cheap and really fast and pretty
straightforward, and people have been doing this for a few years, so we're pretty sure
this works for this purpose.
Okay, that's fair.
Nice.
So you are doing all of this work in which country?
You're looking at the beetles in the rainforests in...
I don't remember, was it Costa Rica?
Puerto Rico?
Okay, so, I am, so my base town, how you say this, "base town?"
Yeah, sure.
So I'm currently living in Bozeman, Montana, and the Lycidae, the group that I'm working
with, they are called Leptolycinae, just give a name to it, instead of keep saying "the
group that I work with."
So the Leptolycinae, they are a tribe of insects, so you have the Family, and then Families
are subdivided in Subfamilies, and then Subfamilies are again subdivided in Tribes.
Welcome to the world of taxonomy.
Yeah, and eventually it will be subdivided in Sub-tribes.
So in this case we're talking about Tribe Leptolycinae.
So the Leptolycinae have a neotropical distribution, so that means we're talking about part of
Mexico, the Central America, the Caribbean islands, and South America.
And they occur in all those places.
Alrighty.
So, part, we receive material from several collections in the world, over 25 collections
in the world.
And I was recently, as you saw in my talk, in Puerto Rico for my field work.
So that's their distribution.
Nice, okay, and you said you received samples from other collections.
So you have people collaborating with you, so you don't always have to go out and collect
all of the insects you're studying, sometimes other people find them and send them to you?
Yeah, actually so, I don't know if you mentioned that, but there's scientific collections,
they work as libraries.
Scientific collections are like libraries, and when you need a book, you go to that library
and they will borrow that to you.
It's pretty much the same thing for insects, so when we need a specific insect, we go there
and ask, "Hey, I am studying these beetles, or these flies, or whatever it is, can you
please send me those specimens as a loan?"
And then they will send those specimens to you, and we will study them, do whatever we
have to do, and when we're done, we send it back to that collection.
Nice, okay, yeah.
And of course there's so many new species out there, you have to limit what you're asking
for.
So you usually say, "I'm working with beetles from the family Scarabaeidae, from a specific
sub-group, for example, the dung beetles."
I would not want all the scarabs ever, because that's way too many!
Correct, so you say, "Can you please send me all your dung beetles that have these characteristics?"
And then the curators, which are the people who take care of the collections, will send
the specimens to you.
Fantastic.
So they have an amazing job, and we should all be very grateful to them.
Yes, thank you, museum collections.
They are super important.
You are.
Support your local museums.
Yes.
Um, alright, so like you said, your home base, so where you're doing your doctoral research,
is Bozeman, Montana.
But you have an interesting story of your journey to get to that place, so can you tell
us more about how you decided to become a scientist, and how you decided to go to grad
school, and how you wound up in Montana.
Yeah, sure sure.
So since I was a kid, I always liked insects and arthropods, and I was really afraid of
them because I didn't understand them.
Okay.
And I remember, I used to go to my grandma's house in when we were in the summer or for
summer here in the United States, it was winter in Brazil.
And her house was always full of beetles flying around, and I was so scared of them.
I was, like, super afraid, because I didn't understand them.
And since then, I've become obsessed with beetles, and I said, "I want to study beetles,
I want to study why are there so many beetles.
They are so pretty, they are so interesting."
And then I decided to go to and be a biologist, I later on became an entomologist.
So I did my bachelor's degree in a small college in Brazil, it's called Universidad de Coreo
del Sur, and then later on I started my master's in systematics, animal biodiversity, and taxonomy.
And there I started to be trained as an entomologist/taxonomist, which is a person who describes new species
and is interested in the evolutionary relationships of insects.
And then you wanted me to talk again about the?
Yeah, so like, how did you, because that was all in Brazil, right?
Yeah, so tell us the story of how you jumped from Brazil up to Montana.
Okay, so I was developing my career in Brazil, I had several good contacts there, I was I
met several curators.
And then my advisor, Cleide Costa, a female scientist, really good scientist, she is also
she's an expert in click beetles, beetles from the family Elateridae, so they have lights
on their pronotum, their back.
Yeah, those are awesome.
And she she's an expert in Elateridae and she was also an expert she is an expert in
immature insects, so she was interested in the larvae, pupae, and how the insect will
metamorphose do their metamorphosis.
And then she said, "Vinicius, we will have this meeting in Czech Republic, it's called
The Immature Beetles meeting, where there will be lots of people talking about immature
beetles, they'll be talking about larvae and pupae and how cool they are, and I really
want you to go there."
And at that time we were describing a for the first time the larva of a species of Lycidae
from Brazil, the species is Metapteran chantomela, I'll send you the name later.
And, um, she was insisting to me to go to that meeting.
And I said, "Cleide, this is so expensive, I don't have a lot of money."
And she says and she keep insisting and said, "Go, go there, there will be good for your
career, you will meet different people, you will be exposed to the international community
working with beetles."
And I said, "Yeah, okay, let's do this.
You've been in this business for a long time, you probably know what you're talking about."
And then that was amazing.
That was the first time I was traveling abroad, first time I was in a different country, speaking
English to non-native English speakers, to and being exposed to the international communities.
So I was all shaky.
Because talking at a conference isn't scary enough to start with.
Exactly.
And people were very nice, they were very interested in what I was doing.
And that was the place where I met my now-advisor here in Montana, Michael Ivy.
And that's how I ended up here in United States.
So after this, he I wrote to him and asked if he was interested in receive me to be a
PhD student in his laboratory, and here I am.
That's quite a story, yeah.
It's very interesting.
But it sounds like, um, it sounds like you've had a lot of good advisors that have sort
of, like, helped you grow as a scientist.
Yes, I think having a good advisor person who supports your career and help you make
some choices, it's a critical part of being a scientist.
Well, first, you must have the support of your family, because without it, it's nearly
impossible.
Second, your advisors, because, and I learned this, is sometimes you, we don't see very
well because of our inexperience, so the advisors are there exactly to to help you with those
problems.
To guide us.
Thank you, advisors.
Yes, yes.
And even though sometimes it's very hard to admit it, several times they are right and
we are wrong.
Yeah, just like parents
Just like parents.
It's sort of a parenting, yeah.
So, with that in mind, because you're still kind of early in your career, you're working
on your PhD, what do you think is the thing that you still need to work on the most as
you are developing into a scientist?
Wow, that's a hard one.
It is.
What people have been saying about it?
Uhm, other people...
No no, don't say anything.
Okay, yeah, it is a hard question.
I think it's a hard question because I have so many things that I think I need to work
on!
Well, the first thing is, okay so there are a few things that I think are important.
So the first one, I think we must learn to cooperate with different people, especially
in this field, being a systematist and a taxonomist, you have to rely on your networking with different
people.
So always be friendly to everyone, always offer your help and whenever someone needs
help, I think we should be there to help them.
So the first thing would be work on your networking, because this is really important.
And that's the reason why we go to conferences and meetings, it's not just because we want
to get drunk and hang out.
You're building your network in there, and this is really important, because you have
connections and people will know where you can go to get some information or get a specimen
or whatever.
So, work on my networking and always try to find new technologies and ways of extracting
data and information from our specimens, as a systematist, because taxonomy systematics
is a very classical thing, and most scientists in this field of area, they are heavily reliant
on morphology, which is a very good tool, but there are other things that can supplement
our use of morphology.
So I'd say that, for me, first thing: networking; and second: you must always try to find new
technologies and new ways of extracting data from your specimens.
Yeah, because technology is always improving.
Correct.
I mean, what we're doing now in 5 minutes would take probably several hours 20 years
ago, and event these videos here, it would require several people working with you.
Yeah, that's true.
Um, so those were good things.
What do you think is the thing that you are the best at already as a scientist?
Or, like, your best scientist quality?
My best scientist quality?
Wow, that's a hard one.
I never thought about it.
Have you ever thought about it?
Um, yeah, I mean, sometimes.
I like to focus on what I need to work on, because that's a longer list.
So make again the question.
What do you think is the thing about yourself that is, like, it's something that makes you
a good scientist?
Well, I don't know if I have anything that specifically makes me a better or a good scientist,
but I have a, and I don't know if I'm that good at doing this, but I try to do this,
which is being an organized person.
So I try to be very organized, not always, but it...
It's hard to be organized.
So, when you are at this point of our careers, like as grad students you have several appointments,
so you have to teach, you have papers to review, you have papers to write, you have to study
for your exams, so and you have your personal life, which is very important, we cannot forget
it.
So I think: be organized.
Have a schedule for activities and reserve a free time for your sanity.
And this is a good lesson.
So this is a thing that I would like to say to talk about.
So when I was in undergrad, I was I wanted so much to learn about insects and evolution,
and I said, "I cannot have time to have fun, I just I just have to study and do my best."
And of course it didn't last forever because we're humans and we need to rest.
So I would say that being an organized person, and reserve some time to do the things that
you're doing.
I appreciate that.
I think that's a really good point.
A work-life balance is something that a lot of people are starting to talk about more,
and yeah, it's really important, because if we don't take breaks, we burn out, and that
makes us not good scientists.
And there's a thing that is always a very good exercise, is when you try to explain
your research your grandmother, or to your uncle or to your aunties.
So, it's so is a very nice chance of you exercising, like, how am I going to translate all those
scientific and very complicated terminology to common language?
So those are very interesting things to think about.
It is, yeah.
Um, so you talked about your family and where you grew up, and you have a little bit different
backstory, you're the first person that I've interviewed who hasn't grown up in the United
States.
So, how has your how has that sort of affected your experiences in the scientific community,
and what would you like other people with a background like yours to know about being
in science?
Well, so the first thing is that it sounds like a cliché, but you need to put a lot
of hard work on whatever you're doing and be focused and put some time on that.
So this is the first thing.
And the second thing is that you're just out there and you have your chances by lucky.
But, um...
I think you have to look for the luck, though.
Well, looking for luck is like the consequences of the hard work, so.
So I'd say, I came from a really small college, then I jumped to my master's in one of the
best places in the country, and now I'm here in the United States doing research with good
resources.
So my message here is just a lot of hard work and do your best.
Yeah, be the best you, right?
Yeah, I mean the best of, you know your limits and always try to learn more.
It's it's pretty cliché.
But it's important for people to hear.
You can hear that so many times, but it doesn't necessarily sink in just because you're hearing
it all the time.
Yeah, I really think it's just about it's all about hard work and a little bit of lucky.
Yeah.
Um, so I loved that you said that you were both fascinated by and a little afraid of
insects and that's what made you want to study them.
But, and I know this is going to break your heart, what if somebody came up to you right
now and said, "Vinicius, stop!
You can never study insects or arthropods ever again."
What would you study instead?
Jellyfish.
Oooh!
I love jellyfish.
That's a great answer!
I love jellyfish.
What do you love about them?
Oh, I just like them.
They're pretty, they're awesome.
And I just to study jellyfish because I think you don't have a lot of morphology to do,
and I really like morphology and touching the specimen and looking into the details.
So it's not very healthy to touch jellyfish.
No.
Did you know that, the more you work with a particular species, the more allergic you
become to them?
Seriously?
To different jellyfish?
Yeah, because the sting is a protein.
I didn't know.
Yeah, isn't that crazy?
Wow.
So jellyfish.
Yeah, I like that.
So you want to stick with things that don't have spines.
Yes, I love inver - I like invertebrates in general.
I always liked beetles and insects, but I love invertebrates, so I really like it.
Me, too.
Invertebrates are awesome.
Yeah, they're very interesting.
Alrighty, so what is your favorite thing about the research you do?
So, the most rewarding thing about my research is that when I look to a beetle, especially
from to a Lycidae, and I look to that, and I can name it.
So I can address to that.
So what really gives me lots of pleasure is looking to a beetle and knowing the name of
that.
Okay, so you like to know.
I like to know to a beetle and say, "Hey, I know that this is Calopteron terminale."
That's the thing that gives me the most pleasure in this research.
Okay, cool.
It's even more rewarding knowing the name of a species than describing a species, in
my opinion.
Wow!
Interesting, okay.
Because there's so many species out there waiting to be discovered to be described,
that it's so rare when you can get a beetle, or whatever you're studying, and give a name
to that.
I think that's that's important, because a lot of people don't realize just how many
insects there are that haven't been discovered and described.
So yeah, like, there are probably more that don't have names than those that do.
Yeah, so, I will make up the numbers and you can add it later, but there, you know, there's
about 1 million species of animals described out there, more or less.
And then about 400 or 500 thousand are beetles, so beetles are the largest group of animals
in number of species in the world.
And even, I am studying beetles of the Family Lycidae, which is considered to be a small
Family, and we have about 5,000 named species.
And this is a small Family.
Do you know how many species of birds there are out there?
Yeah, no, it's not nearly that many.
Yeah, I mean, I bet it's under 10,000.
I think so, yeah.
Or a little bit over, a little bit.
So I'm studying a group with, a small group of beetles, only 5,000 species.
So there are a lot of beetles out there.
Yeah.
Um, so, since you are describing new species, this is one of the cool things about being
a systematist and taxonomist, how do you decide what to name the new species?
Well, in my case, and I like to name species after people.
Okay.
Like who?
So, so for example, I described a species after my grandmother, my sweet grandmother.
So her name is Veracruz, and I described a species called Falsocaenia veracruzi.
Aw, that's so sweet!
I love that.
So, another species I described after my former advisor, so Acroleptus costae, her name is
Cleide Costa, so you'll make up the Latin the last name, so costae is a "Latin" form
of Costa.
Um, so I like to name after people.
That's so sweet.
Eventually, if you have a very distinct characteristic, for example if I described a species where
the species had yellow hair, so I named the species after that characteristic.
So it was called Colydodes flavisetis.
Okay, and then the "flavisetis" means something about the...
Means "yellow hair" in Latin.
Cool, okay.
But you, so you pretty much can name it after your mom, your cat, whatever you want.
But I personally like to describe and name it after people.
Okay.
I think it's a way of making that person living forever in the literature.
That's fair.
Is that, like, when you write the paper where you describe the new species, is that, like,
how you decided on the name, is that part of the story, or do you just kind of say,
"Well, this is the name, and... yeah."
Well it depends on the case, so what's very common is, um, let's say you were in the Amazonian
rainforest and you found a unique new species, and you collected it, and you handled that
to me and said, "Hey Vinicius, here's a new species," oh, you don't know it's a new species,
"Here's a new species, and do you know what it is?"
And I will go there and say, "Oh my god, it's a new species!"
And you collected that, so I'll go, as a courtesy and describe it after you.
Oh, okay, sure.
So what several people will ask me is that, "So, when you describe new species, can you
name it after you, after yourself?"
No, no, you can't do that.
That's not very modest.
It's not very modest.
And after all, your name will be there, doesn't matter, because when you describe a species
for animals, so you have the Genus and the Species, and then you have the Author, the
person who described it, and the year when that was described.
So your name will be there, doesn't matter what.
Yeah, that's fair.
Recently, people have been describing species after show characters TV shows characters.
Or celebrities.
Or celebrities.
I think all forms are valid, as long as they are describing new species, they are making
that call people's attention, it's a way of people getting interested in that.
And there are so many species yet to be described that we should get creative so we don't run
out of names, right?
Correct.
Um, so my little wrap-up question, then, is what is sort of next in your future?
Where do you think you're going past this point?
As a scientist?
Yeah.
Not physically, location-wise.
No, I see, I see.
I need to go to the bathroom, brush my teeth.
Well, I mean, at this point it's, I think find a job.
Okay, do you want to work in academia?
Do you want to work for, you know, in industry?
So find a job, and I would like to be to work in the academia, I would like to work with
systematics or taxonomy and teaching.
I am really really interested in natural history museums problems and new strategies and new
ways of extracting information from old specimens deposited in the museums.
Besides my taxonomical career, so I'm interested in those questions, so I'm going to look forward
to keep working on those subjects.
Awesome, well we wish you the best of luck with that.
So, thank you again so much, Vinicius, for talking to us about your research, and sharing
some fun stories, it was a lot of fun to talk to you.
Thank you.
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