Symbioses

Daniel and Kelly talk about the symbioses! We talk about the symbiotic interaction that made us who we are, a symbiosis that produces soil, and symbioses that are many layers deep. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Daniel Whiteson?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Running a small business takes everything you've got. But with Chase for Business, you're not alone. They bring together local support and a broad range of resources to more than 7 million customers. With a deep understanding of your day-to-day needs, they provide products and guidance built to help you thrive. Right now, earn $500 when you open a new Chase Business Complete Checking account for new business checking customers with qualifying activities. Offer expires January 21, 2027. Chase Business Complete Checking has the flexible tools you need to accept payments, make deposits, and manage your finances with confidence. Learn more at chase.com/podcastbizoffer. Chase, make more of what's yours.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Fees may apply to Chase Business Complete Checking accounts. The $500 offer is available for new business checking accounts with qualifying activities through January 21, 2027. Eligibility and qualification requirements must be met. Additional restrictions may apply. Please speak with a business banker for more information. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC.

• 1:52Kelly Weinersmith?

  Today, we're talking about symbioses, which are when organisms coexist. Yeah, it's a broad term, and it does encompass parasitism. But today, I'm going to do my best to keep the parasite examples to a minimum. We're going to be talking about the symbioses that made us who we are, the symbioses that turn rock into soil, and the symbioses that have a surprising number of layers. We're going to be talking about how symbioses aren't always what they seem, and sometimes good interactions can turn bad. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Symbiotic Universe.

• 2:38Daniel Whiteson?

  Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who likes to think about aliens, and I have a proposed new alternative title for the podcast, which is It's Complicated with Daniel and Kelly.

• 2:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  Hi, I'm Kelly Weinersmith. I study parasites and space, and that sounds, yeah, that's great. Let's go ahead and change it right now. I think either it's complicated, or it depends, or the gray areas are sometimes the most interesting, although that's a little wordy.

• 3:02Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  The acronym doesn't flow off the tongue quite as nicely, you know, as D K U. So this episode was inspired by a question from Discord user Quantum Cat.

• 3:16Daniel Whiteson?

  Love Quantum Cat, yep.

• 3:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep, yep. And just like always, I forgot to ask their first IRL name before we started recording. But here is Quantum Cat's question.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Hi, Daniel and Kelly. This is Brandon, also known as Quantum Cat. I have a question about nested symbionts. I was reading about gillie bugs, which suck sap from plants. And I read that they contain a bacteria to help them digest the sap. But the unusual thing is that that bacteria is not enough, and that bacteria contains even smaller bacteria to help it digest the sap. So that's pretty unusual. Can you tell me more about the gillie bug and its two bacterial helpers? Are there any other creatures like that? Thank you.

• 4:04Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, so we are going to dig into the example that Quantum Cat refers to later in the show. Hang on for the second segment, but it's coming.

• 4:13Daniel Whiteson?

  So Kelly, we all learned about symbiosis in elementary school. It's pretty straightforward. It's pretty simple. People helping each other, organisms helping each other out. Aren't you basically on a symbiosis on your farm with all your goats and sheeps? Or are they parasites on your time?

• 4:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, I was gonna say, sometimes they feel like parasites. But, uh, but, okay, so this is an interesting point. Let's jump right in here. What, how would you define symbiosis?

• 4:39Daniel Whiteson?

  A relationship where organisms help each other.

• 4:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh.

• 4:42Daniel Whiteson?

  That's my Daniel fourth grade understanding of biology.

• 4:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, so I'm a little bit embarrassed to say that that was my grad school understanding when I went in. And so I was talking about a symbiosis as two organisms coexisting and interacting in a positive way.

• 4:58Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  And I was...

• 5:01Daniel Whiteson?

  Were you schooled?

• 5:01Kelly Weinersmith?

  I was schooled, man. Uh, I got, I definitely got a bit of a, like, look from the professor I was with, and they're like, symbiosis is a word that sort of covers a variety of interactions. It just means organisms, like, coexisting and interacting together. And then you split it further into different interactions, depending on whether or not those interactions are beneficial, negative, or not really doing anything. And so what you and I thought was symbiosis is actually a mutualism.

• 5:32Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, I see.

• 5:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  And a mutualism is when both players benefit. And I don't know if you were just being nice and playing along with me to set me up there, but I really didn't in grad school. And this isn't entirely our fault, because symbiosis has come to have a positive connotation. A lot of people think of it as a positive interaction, but it really encompasses a lot more.

• 5:52Daniel Whiteson?

  So you're telling me symbiosis is not just the positive version? It's the name of the whole category? And the positive version is called mutualism? Wow. I'm gonna go look up my fourth grade teacher and let them know.

• 6:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, you know, I think it's possible that your fourth grade teacher got it right, and you, and over time...

• 6:11Daniel Whiteson?

  Impossible, no. That, no, that hypothesis will be ruled out, thank you very much. I was a very attentive fourth grade student, I'll have you know.

• 6:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  I can, I can imagine you sitting on the edge of your seat, waiting for the information to come to you. But let's talk about mutualisms.

• 6:25Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, all right.

• 6:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  Do you have an example of a mutualism in your head when you think about mutualisms? Because to me, there's a classic example, but I don't know if it's classic to everyone else.

• 6:33Daniel Whiteson?

  Example of a mutualism. What about, like, horses eat an apple, and they get yummy apple, and then they poo out the seeds in their poo, which is good for the seeds, so everybody benefits?

• 6:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, yeah, so pollinators and seed dispersers, those are good mutualisms. Amazing. And you know what? That's definitely way more common than the mutualism that I'm thinking of, but, uh...

• 6:58Daniel Whiteson?

  And it involves poo, so...

• 7:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Amazing, right? No, I'm totally on board right from the beginning. But the one that I think of as, like, the classic example, I guess I specifically like to think of, uh, animals interacting, is cleaner fish in the Great Barrier Reef. Have you heard of these?

• 7:14Daniel Whiteson?

  No, tell me.

• 7:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  So these are fish where they will set up cleaning stations, and bigger fish, like sharks and groupers and stuff like that, they will come in, they'll open their mouth really big, and the cleaner fish will go inside and, like, pick out parasites and sort of clean their teeth, and then they'll, like, go along the exterior of the animal and, like, pick off all of the ectoparasites that are on there. And so they get a meal, and whoever visited their cleaning station gets parasites removed and stuff like that. And so this is, uh, in my world, one of the, like, classic examples of mutualisms.

• 7:49Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow. Yeah, well, very cool. Everybody definitely benefits. It's amazing, though, that fish basically set up, like, dental hygiene stations. That's cool.

• 7:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  I mean, that's super cute, right? I think that's awesome.

• 8:00Daniel Whiteson?

  It's basically civilization.

• 8:01Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right, that's right. And, you know, I have, I have seen people have some pretty negative interactions with their dentists. They might be more civilized than we are in the, in the fish world.

• 8:11Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, I brought my son to one of those places where you dunk your feet in his vat, and then the fish, like, nibble on it?

• 8:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  No.

• 8:19Daniel Whiteson?

  I wasn't gonna do a brigitte. Ooh, this is ticklish.

• 8:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, I have, uh, heard examples of people getting real bad infections from, uh, those fish tubs. And so I don't know that I would, I will not be recommending that on the show. But I can say that I used to work at this lake in Wisconsin. And when I would go in barefoot, the minnows would come by and pick the dead skin off my feet, which I'm sure is really going to gross a bunch of people out. But I remember feeling, oh.

• 8:45Daniel Whiteson?

  That's amazingly grosser than poo. Yeah.

• 8:47Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, we're always working on one upping our prior accomplishments.

• 8:51Daniel Whiteson?

  So let's get into it. Let's make sure we have the definitions here. So symbiosis is two species coexisting. Mutualism is they both benefit. Is parasitism still when one of them is hurt and one of them is benefiting? Or is that more complicated?

• 9:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  I mean, yeah, so there's, there's lots of complicated examples. But yes, that, that is, you are correct. And so this is like tapeworms and tree mottos and stuff like that. And so I won't go into too much detail because anyone who listens to D K E U is familiar with the idea of parasitism. And then there's commensalism, which is when one benefits and the other, it's just kind of like meh, they're not helped, they're not harmed. And so examples here are cattle egrets. They will hang out in fields with cows. And as a cow walks through, it kicks a bunch of bugs up into the air that try to get away as the cow is moving through the grass. And then the cattle egrets pick those bugs out of the air and eat them for themselves.

• 9:45Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow, very cool.

• 9:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  The cow doesn't care, but the cattle egret benefits.

• 9:49Daniel Whiteson?

  What about situations where one is hurt and the other one isn't helped or harmed?

• 9:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  One is hurt and the other isn't helped. So, oh, spite. Is that, I think that's what you're talking about, right?

• 10:02Daniel Whiteson?

  Thinking about the cows and the bugs, the cows are kicking up the bugs, the egrets are benefiting, the cows don't care, but the bugs are definitely not happy about it. So what's the relationship between the cows and the bugs? The cows are casually destroying the lives of the bugs without caring about it at all.

• 10:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Interesting. Yeah, I mean, that's just an accident. But I guess we could just call that a symbiosis. There, there's an interaction. Although, so that's a more of a like, short term interaction. So the egrets and the cows are like, coexisting together for a while. The egrets are like hanging out with the cows, whereas the cow just has like a short term interaction where it accidentally kicks off that bug. But I hadn't thought of that. I don't, I don't know. We got to get you into ecology.

• 10:45Daniel Whiteson?

  There's a new category we're creating here. And the other question I have is like, how do we define these categories? Like, according to whom is this a benefit or a detriment? Is that fuzzy? Is that a judgment call? Or do we have like, really crisp, clean definitions like we always do in biology?

• 11:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, we don't, we don't usually have crisp, clean definitions in biology, unfortunately. But, you know, you look at the two players in the symbiotic relationship, and you do your best to calculate what's happening to them. So, you know, it's pretty intuitive that if you had a bunch of like, blood sucking ectoparasites stuck to the outside of you, and someone came along and picked those off, that's good for you. You've got, yeah, you've got fewer blood sucking ectoparasites. Right. And the cleaner fish ate them. And that's their food. And so they got a meal. You brought the dinner to them. And so like, I feel like in that case, you can pretty clearly say, well, that probably benefits everybody. But,

• 11:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  you know, this is ecology, right? And so this stuff gets complicated. And

• 11:48Daniel Whiteson?

  That's the name of the podcast.

• 11:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right. It's complicated with Daniel and Kelly. And so, these interactions can change either over time, or depending on the environmental context, or depending on the individual. So for example, sometimes those cleaner fish, if they're hungry and there's not a lot of parasites on the fish they're cleaning, sometimes they'll grab a little bit of fin tissue, or they'll grab a little bit of like, the mucus, that's a protective layer on the fish, but also could be a snack for the cleaner fish. And sometimes other cleaner fish will step in to punish the cleaner fish that's misbehaving. And I think sometimes also the fish that's visiting the dental station will punish a cleaner fish if they get out of line. But every once in a while, these relationships will turn negative.

• 12:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  And there needs to be like punishments to get everybody back in line, because interests are not always aligned.

• 12:38Daniel Whiteson?

  Counselors, we call them counselors.

• 12:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  Counselors. That's right. Fishy counselors.

• 12:42Daniel Whiteson?

  You guys need to go to therapy and figure this out.

• 12:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right. That's right.

• 12:46Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. So let's dig into an example of symbiosis. And tell us about how it's more complicated than Daniel's fourth grade understanding.

• 12:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, I was thinking that today we could dig into some of the more epic symbiotic interactions. And one of the most epic.

• 13:03Daniel Whiteson?

  Most epic.

• 13:04Kelly Weinersmith?

  Most epic, like, you know, without this symbiotic interaction, we would not be here.

• 13:08Daniel Whiteson?

  Okay.

• 13:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Is the acquisition of mitochondria. So

• 13:12Daniel Whiteson?

  Whoa.

• 13:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  In the 1960s, Lynn Margulis pushed this idea of the endosymbiotic theory. Do you know of Lynn Margulis?

• 13:20Daniel Whiteson?

  Lynn Margulis, is she connected to Carl Sagan somehow?

• 13:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. And we're, and as a woman who's tired of having people say, oh, are you married to Zach Wiener Smith? I hesitated, like, do we bring this up or not? But on the other hand, Carl Sagan is one of my favorite science communicators. And so I do bring it up. Yes. Lynn Margulis was, I think Sagan had two wives, and Lynn was the first. And she was, I think Lynn Sagan, at the time this idea came out.

• 13:46Daniel Whiteson?

  But did it end badly?

• 13:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  It ended. You know, some endings are good. I don't know the details.

• 13:53Daniel Whiteson?

  Because I don't think anybody wants to be associated with like, their ex that they're grumpy about. So context matters.

• 14:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, no, fair, fair enough. So Lynn Margulis's reputation is mixed, let's say. So this, this idea that we're about to talk about is this amazing thing that she pushed forward. She got a bunch of people to accept that this might be what's really happening. But she also believes some conspiracy theories, like she was pushing the idea that HIV isn't what caused AIDS. So she kind of ended up with a bit of a mixed reputation. But, all right, let's stick with the cool thing that she pushed forward. So Lynn Margulis was pushing this idea that the mitochondria that you find in eukaryotes, and the chloroplast that you find in things like plants, were actually free living bacteria that were essentially co-opted. And now they live with us forever.

• 14:42Daniel Whiteson?

  I see. So they were out there in the wild, and we basically made them tenants.

• 14:47Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes.

• 14:47Daniel Whiteson?

  Or like, move in.

• 14:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  Right. And so before this idea really got forwarded, people were thinking that, like, oh, well, mitochondria and chloroplast, they might just be like, part of the cell membrane, sort of like invaginate. So it like, kind of folds in and makes a little pocket, and then it pinches off. And now you've got a mitochondria. And so this idea had been like, floated a couple of times before. But Lynn Margulis really looked at the data, and she found a couple of different observations that seemed to her to really say, these mitochondria started as bacteria. And here are the observations.

• 15:18Daniel Whiteson?

  And let's remind everybody, a mitochondria is the little piece of the cell that like, produces energy. It's like the little factory or the oven or something?

• 15:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  The powerhouse of the cell. That's what we, yes, that's right. This, this helps produce ATP. These are the little energy sources for our bodies. And chloroplasts help plants convert sunlight into energy as well.

• 15:39Daniel Whiteson?

  Right. Okay, chloroplast for chlorophyll. All right, got it.

• 15:42Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes.

• 15:43Daniel Whiteson?

  And so the idea is that we used to not be able to make ATP ourselves. We used to like, work with an outside supplier, and then we brought them in-house, basically.

• 15:51Kelly Weinersmith?

  So the idea is that four billion years ago, there were prokaryotes. And reminder, prokaryotes are cells that don't have any like, nucleus, and they don't have membrane bound organelles. These are like bacteria. And then, two billion years ago, an archaea, which they look a lot like bacteria, they differ in a couple ways. For example, I think they have a different sort of membrane. An archaea acquired a bacteria. And we don't know how it acquired that bacteria. Like, so we, when I was younger, the story I heard was that it was like an amoeba, sort of, yes, right, engulfing it.

• 16:28Daniel Whiteson?

  Biologically.

• 16:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Exactly. Yes, right. And engulfing it as though it was going to take a meal. But then that bacteria just like, survived and didn't die. But now we're not actually sure if it was parasitism or a predation. We don't actually know how it got there. Because amoeba are actually pretty advanced. And the kinds of organisms that we think acquired the bacteria, they don't do phagocytosis. They don't do this like, thing that you were saying.

• 16:54Daniel Whiteson?

  That's the biological word for slurping? Phagocytosis?

• 16:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  Phagocytosis. Yes. So anyway, we don't know how one got inside of the other. But about two billion years ago, that happened.

• 17:06Daniel Whiteson?

  So I guess I can get behind the idea that we used to collaborate with this thing, and then we did up into the cell, and we can more closely collaborate with it. All cool. But then, how do you get new cells to get ones? Like, they all have to find themselves? Or do you now have the machinery inside you to make them? Or like, when the cell divides, does this thing also divide? How does that get coordinated if it's like, a foreign body? I'm used to the idea that this is like, a single set of instructions in the nucleus for making the whole cell. But if you slurp the thing from the outside, you don't have instructions for making it. So how do you pass it on?

• 17:42Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, great question. So first, I want to start with, you said something about how the two organisms were like collaborating outside, and then one, the other.

• 17:52Daniel Whiteson?

  You're gonna correct Daniel's fourth grade knowledge again?

• 17:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  Would you prefer if I didn't?

• 17:57Daniel Whiteson?

  Please do. That's what I'm paying for.

• 17:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, so I, we don't think, necessarily think that they were collaborating as outside partners initially. It could be that the bacteria was a pathogen and tried to invade the archaea, and it just didn't take. And then over time, the nature of their relationship changed.

• 18:17Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, that's a much cooler story with a twist in it.

• 18:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. Sometimes your enemy becomes your friend. You should always have an open mind. But your question actually leads to part of how we figured out that this might have been a bacteria that was acquired, because it was noted that mitochondria and chloroplast divide in ways that look very similar to how bacteria divide. All right. So you've got host bacteria and it sort of splits and divides. And if you want to get the little inside bacteria also, that thing also needs to have split and divide and then separated the right way so that both of the new cells also have the new symbiotic inside cell. Does that make sense?

• 18:56Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. How do you get that to coordinate?

• 18:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, that's a tough question. Yeah. I don't know how you get that to coordinate. And I don't know how that worked over evolutionary time.

• 19:03Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Kelly Weinersmith?

  But it was noted by like Lynn Margulis in her paper. She was like, look, these things are not being produced the way you would expect them to be produced if they were initially made by the organisms. The instructions are not in the DNA that's inside the nucleus. They seem to be doing their own replication. And like, I think in our liver cells, we have something like thousands of these mitochondria in our cells, right? And so they're replicating all the time. They're doing their own thing.

• 19:28Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh.

• 19:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  And it was noted that you inherit from your mom mitochondria sort of separate from the instructions that's in the nucleus. It's not like when you're born, the nucleus says, okay, start making mitochondria and then they pop up. The mitochondria come along with everything else.

• 19:46Daniel Whiteson?

  I see. So this actually was a powerful piece of evidence that they were once a separate organism because they're not included in the core DNA. They just sort of like replicate on their own. And we don't really understand that. But when the cell splits, you get some on one side and some on the other side and have their own DNA. I've heard of that mitochondria DNA passed down through the mom. Right?

• 20:07Kelly Weinersmith?

  Right.

• 20:07Daniel Whiteson?

  Okay.

• 20:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes. And when you look at the sequences in mitochondria, you look at like the, you know, the genetic code inside of a mitochondria, that genetic code looks similar to genetic code that you find in bacteria. And it looks a lot more bacterial than it does like animal, for example. So that was more evidence that actually this used to be a bacteria. Does that make sense?

• 20:27Daniel Whiteson?

  That does. And it's fascinating because it tells me that like moms are more closely related genetically to their kids than the dads are. It's not a 50 50 split because the mom passes along the mitochondria because she's like creates the actual baby and fills it with her own mitochondria. She's not like taking the dude's mitochondria and like mashing them together.

• 20:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  You do always get mom's mitochondria. That's right. Yeah. Not dad's.

• 20:53Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow. Fascinating.

• 20:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  Other pieces of information that Lynn Margulis used to make this argument is she noted that the membranes that surround things like mitochondria look kind of like the membranes you usually find in bacteria. So she really pushed this idea. She pushed it a little bit. She kind of overdid it. She was arguing that like lots and lots of organelles are probably from bacteria that were acquired. And she was seeing endosymbioses everywhere. But we do have really good evidence that mitochondria, for example, and chloroplasts used to be bacteria that lived on their own and then they got absorbed by another organism. And that opened up a bunch of pathways because now they had all this extra energy. They had these little dedicated energy sources. And that appears to have opened up a lot of options

• 21:38Kelly Weinersmith?

  for like diversity of size and function. And Nick Lane's book, The Vital Question, talks a lot about this. But yeah, we would not be here without this symbiotic relationship.

• 21:49Daniel Whiteson?

  Now, clearly we live in symbiosis with a lot of bacteria. They're all over our guts. Katrina told us about our microbiome. So there's lots of bacteria living in us, on us that participate in our lives in crucial ways. And your description of them earlier made it sound like, well, these are just more bacteria that live in us, but inside the cell. And they participate in crucial cell activities. They replicate on their own. They do all this stuff. They have their own DNA, which makes me wonder like, are they actually part of the human body or are they part of the microbiome that's living in and on us? And I think you're saying that they can't live on their own anymore and they've like become so specialized, they basically can only operate inside the human cell.

• 22:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes.

• 22:30Daniel Whiteson?

  Is that right?

• 22:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep, absolutely. And let's take a break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about examples in nature that appear to be somewhere along that process.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  I'm like a kid when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions. You know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know, this every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album. So and you, you obviously are an expert here.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 23:45Speaker 06

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Lunchbox from the Bobby Bones Show. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or an adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at trade-in. Get a deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 25:04Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, we're back and we're talking about symbiosis. And I'm just now learning that there are bacteria living not only on me, but also inside me and inside my cells. But Kelly says they're kind of part of me now because they really, really made a home. But I feel like if they split on their own, they have their own mitochondria, and they're just passed down from the mom, I'm not sure they count as human bits.

• 25:27Kelly Weinersmith?

  Ah, okay. So I think that they do because they are clearly dependents.

• 25:31Daniel Whiteson?

  I don't think that's sufficient, though.

• 25:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. What would you need to be sufficient?

• 25:36Daniel Whiteson?

  I don't know. I mean, there are definitely lots of organisms that need us to survive, but that doesn't mean that they're human, right? That we're in symbiosis with them. For them to be part of us, I feel like they have to be part of the genetic code. Otherwise, who is it that's getting passed down, right? It's just part of the environment.

• 25:53Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, so one, there is evidence that some of the genes that the bacteria used to have are now in us. So

• 26:00Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, cool.

• 26:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. So the bacteria have been like in us getting like, I don't know, a free home and a free meal. But while they're inside of us, that means that they no longer have the opportunity to like meet and mingle with other bacteria. So, so there's no longer, you know, the bacterial equivalent of sex.

• 26:18Daniel Whiteson?

  They're just monogamous.

• 26:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, there's no horizontal gene transfer or anything like that. And so over time, actually, their genomes tend to get smaller and smaller. And some of their genes end up getting incorporated into the host genome.

• 26:30Daniel Whiteson?

  Interesting.

• 26:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  Until they're a pretty small subset of genes that do the specific things that we need mitochondria to do in our body. And so they've definitely come to depend on us. We absolutely could not survive without mitochondria. We would be goners without them. Whereas I think for the rest of your microbiome, like if you took antibiotics and you actually knocked out your microbiome, you'd be a mess. But like, I don't know. Do you think you could survive without most of the gut microbiome, for example?

• 27:00Daniel Whiteson?

  I don't think so. I think they're pretty essential. But give me the alternative story. Say this hadn't happened. Where would life be on earth without this?

• 27:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  I think that you could make the argument that we would still be at the prokaryotic stage of things, like bacteria and archaea. It looks like this extra energy that we were able to get by this symbiotic relationship sort of freed up a lot of the ability to like explore evolutionary spaces, they would say. Like, we've got this energy to try new things. We can get bigger. We can

• 27:30Daniel Whiteson?

  You don't think we would have figured it out ourselves? Like, we would have developed the same machinery? It's just biochemistry, right? It's not magic.

• 27:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, I mean, it looks like, you know, four billion years ago, you start to get bacteria and archaea. And then two billion years after that, you get this endosymbiosis where one ends up inside of the other. And that's when eukaryotic organisms, so organisms with like a nucleus and membrane-bound organelles, that's when we really started getting going. And so that does seem to be what kickstarted this like massive increase in diversity. Whether or not we could have figured out some other way to do it.

• 28:03Daniel Whiteson?

  Impossible question, I know.

• 28:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Impossible question. Yeah. I, hard to say. But again, Nick Lane's book, The Vital Question, I think would argue that that was like, that is what you need.

• 28:12Daniel Whiteson?

  Fascinating. Well, I would love to see how this happened on alien planets so we could try to answer this question. Did something similar happen? Did they develop their own internal machinery? Is it just completely different biochemistry anyway? Can't wait to find out.

• 28:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, no, I would, I would love to know that as well. But let's talk about sort of like an intermediate stage in this process. And so there have been examples where people have found like bacteria inside of bacteria, and they seem to be helping each other out in some way and living together for like long periods of time. But because I like to add complication, there's an additional layer to this example. So Quantum Cat referred to a paper where scientists had studied a mealybug and the endosymbionts in the mealybug. So mealybugs are insects that have these like mouthparts that they can stick into plants and they suck out the sap. There's a lot of in this episode.

• 29:10Kelly Weinersmith?

  And they have bacteria that provide them with amino acids and some vitamins. And these bacteria are beneficial for the mealybugs, but you know how we were talking about how our mitochondria, over time, they sort of degraded, they lost some genes that now are in our nucleus and they just became simpler sort of overall.

• 29:30Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  One of the problems with these long-term interactions where one is trapped in the body of another is that they do tend to sort of degrade over time because they don't have like sex and reproduction to sort of refresh their genetic information. So they noticed that the mealybugs, they have this amino acid providing bacteria. And if you look at different mealybug species, these different amino acid providing bacteria have different species of additional bacteria living inside of them. And so it looks like what's happening is that the main bacteria that was living inside the mealybug over time is sort of degrading and losing some of its awesome ability to provide amino acids and nutrients to the host.

• 30:13Kelly Weinersmith?

  And so it keeps picking up new bacteria that sort of replenish it and give it new abilities to be beneficial to the host. And so this is a symbiosis with three levels. It's a bug that has a bacteria that inside of it has a bacteria. And together that unit helps the mealybug survive, which I thought was pretty awesome.

• 30:34Daniel Whiteson?

  And which part keeps picking up new partners? The bug inside the bug or the bug?

• 30:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  You can't call bacteria bugs in this example, Daniel. That's too confusing. The, alright, so there's, there's a bug with a bacteria and inside that bacteria is another bacteria.

• 30:52Daniel Whiteson?

  Right.

• 30:53Kelly Weinersmith?

  And that bacteria inside the bacteria.

• 30:56Daniel Whiteson?

  The mini bacteria.

• 30:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  The mini bacteria is the one that keeps getting replaced.

• 31:01Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow. So that's like, the bacteria keeps using up his relationship and then finding like a second spouse and then a third spouse. And it's just like a, it's like a serial monogamist.

• 31:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, except that couple is living in service of some, I feel like this is kind of falling apart, but you need three players.

• 31:20Daniel Whiteson?

  It's a cult, basically, yeah.

• 31:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, there are relationships with more than two partners that aren't cults. We don't need to go too far down this. Anyway, I think the point is these three players together are needed to keep the bug going.

• 31:32Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow. And is that the only example of like these three level stories? Or is that a common thing to find in biology?

• 31:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, man. Okay. So this three level story, like I learned about when I was in grad school and it absolutely blew my mind when I learned about it. And I still think it's super cool today. So we're going to talk about it. Okay. So.

• 31:49Daniel Whiteson?

  Tell me.

• 31:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  P. aphids are these little bugs that like they eat plants. You often find them on like fava beans and stuff like that. And they can be infected by parasitoid wasps. This is not the symbiote. Well, this is a parasitic relationship we're talking about here. But in a second, we're going to be talking about bacteria living in the aphids, but.

• 32:10Daniel Whiteson?

  And are the aphids good or bad? I gotta know who to root for here. Aphids are bad, right? Cause they eat your crops. We like set ladybugs out in your backyard to eat the aphids, right?

• 32:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 32:19Daniel Whiteson?

  So we're anti aphid. Alright.

• 32:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  Aphids are bad if you're a farmer.

• 32:23Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 32:24Kelly Weinersmith?

  If you're an aphid, you probably think aphids aren't so bad.

• 32:31Daniel Whiteson?

  Are you being paid by big aphid, Kelly?

• 32:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  Always.

• 32:33Daniel Whiteson?

  You're weirdly pro aphid today. But anyway, alright, I'm anti aphid. So go ahead. Now I'm on the side of these wasps.

• 32:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. Alright, that I'm, I'm never opposed to someone being on the side of the wasps. So you're on the side of the wasps. These parasitoid wasps, they lay eggs inside of the aphid. Their babies hatch from these eggs, they burst out of the aphids and they kill them.

• 32:54Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow.

• 32:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. So as you can imagine, that's very bad for the aphids.

• 32:59Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, I'm starting to feel bad for the aphids, actually.

• 33:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, well, see, you know, nature is complicated. It's complicated with Daniel and Kelly.

• 33:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, so P. aphids have a bacterial symbiont that defends them. And in fact, the name is called Hammatynella defensa. But I won't say it. I use the scientific name just because defensa is in there. It's kind of cute.

• 33:24Daniel Whiteson?

  I'll give it to you.

• 33:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  Alright, thank you. So it has this bacteria and scientists noticed that when a parasitoid lays eggs in an aphid that has this bacteria.

• 33:38Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  The egg laid by the parasitoid wasp was less likely to survive and the aphid was more likely to be totally fine.

• 33:45Daniel Whiteson?

  So the wasp is attacking the aphid by sticking its eggs in there. But the aphid has little microbes inside of it which attack the eggs somehow.

• 33:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes, which seemed to be killing the egg in some way.

• 33:57Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow.

• 33:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. And so then they looked a little bit closer and they were like, hold on. It depends on the strain of the bacteria. So it's not like every aphid that has this bacteria in it is totally protected from parasitoid wasps. It looks like if you grow the bacteria in the lab for different amounts of time, you end up with these different strains. Some strains seem to do a better job of protecting than others. And they were like, well, what's different? And the thing that was different was bacteriophages. So Katrina came on the show to talk about phages, bacteriophages being viruses that infect bacteria. So some bacteria were infected by a virus and this virus codes for toxins.

• 34:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  And so the bacteria that have this virus in it are able to produce a toxin that appears to be the thing that is killing the parasitoid wasps.

• 34:51Daniel Whiteson?

  Alright, hold on. I need a diagram.

• 34:53Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 34:53Daniel Whiteson?

  So we got a virus.

• 34:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep.

• 34:55Daniel Whiteson?

  Inside a bacteria.

• 34:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  Uh huh.

• 34:56Daniel Whiteson?

  Inside an aphid.

• 34:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right.

• 34:58Daniel Whiteson?

  That's producing a toxin that the aphid can use to attack the eggs that the wasp has also injected inside this aphid. This aphid is a mess. Oh my gosh.

• 35:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  I know. Well, I mean, you could think of it as a mess or you could think of it as having like an army on its side trying to help out, you know?

• 35:16Daniel Whiteson?

  No, it's a battlefield. Like the battle is going on inside the aphid.

• 35:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes. Yeah. It's amazing.

• 35:21Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow.

• 35:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  But what's interesting is that these bacterial symbionts seem to get lost over time if there aren't parasitoid wasps around. So if you just grow aphids in a lab with no wasps around, over time, you discover that fewer and fewer of the aphids still have this bacteria. But if you grow them in the lab with parasitoid wasps around and you watch them over many, many generations, more and more of them have this bacteria. And so that makes sense. The bacteria protects them from the parasitoid wasps. So you would expect the ones that have this bacteria to be more likely to survive and have babies. But why would you lose it when the wasps are not around?

• 36:02Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, you need to maintain them somehow and they're expensive or what?

• 36:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. So they weren't able to figure out like, what is the cost? But it does suggest that in environments where there aren't parasitoid wasps, there is some cost to this bacteria and the bacteriophage. And so that would suggest that in some environments, this is clearly a mutualism. This is clearly beneficial, but in other environments, you know, maybe the bacteria doesn't have a huge cost and it's a commensalism and it just gets lost through random processes. Or maybe that bacteria actually does carry a cost and it's more like a parasite when there aren't parasitoid wasps around. Does that make sense?

• 36:38Daniel Whiteson?

  Interesting. Yeah. So it's worth paying the cost when you need it. But if you don't, then it's just a drag on your internal finances.

• 36:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes, exactly. And this is what I love about symbiotic relationships is that they are complicated. Complications in nature, I don't know, are interesting to me. But like which category you put this in, in terms of like, what kind of symbiotic relationship is it? Depends a lot on what's in the environment, which I think is kind of fascinating.

• 37:05Daniel Whiteson?

  It seems like the right way to think about this is from a sort of ecological perspective, like the whole network of critters working together and talking to each other and communicating. Katrina's always talking about how the right way to think about microbes is also ecological. That's like sort of her big thing. Instead of thinking about individual pathogens or whatever, just you gotta think about the whole system.

• 37:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep, absolutely. Which is really hard to do.

• 37:29Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  But.

• 37:29Daniel Whiteson?

  It's complicated.

• 37:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  It's complicated. Well, but and that's why it's so important to, you know, do experiments that sort of build in their complications. So you can look at all these different levels and then one day scale up to out in the field to see if you really understand what's going on there.

• 37:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, if you've been liking this conversation, you're gonna love what comes next.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel. My small experience with the discrepancy in the business of music made me angry in the best way. And I wanted to, I wanted to finish. So I started really like leaning into my therapy. Trying to get down to like, what matters now? Somewhere Miguelito felt like he didn't have a place to say how he felt. And music was the place that I went to, to say how I felt. Experience before the moment.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 38:48Daniel Whiteson?

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  This is Colin Coward from the Colin Coward Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. All starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or a half ton Tundra. Two of Toyota's most capable and longest lasting trucks. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. For a great deal today to a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com. Toyota, let's go places.

• 39:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right, and we're back. And the last symbiotic relationship we're going to be talking about today are lichens. Daniel, let's continue today's tradition of putting you in the hot seat. What do you remember about lichens from, I don't know, kindergarten?

• 40:10Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, fourth grade Daniel understands that lichens are some weird combination. They're like a fungus or a moss plus an algae or something like that. And they're working together and they like break down rocks.

• 40:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, we're done. No, that was good.

• 40:29Daniel Whiteson?

  What, that's it?

• 40:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, no, no, let's take it a little more, but that's good. Yeah, so the fungus is usually the like bigger partner in this interaction and it provides like structure and protection. And inside of it, you usually have algae and the algae are photosynthesizing, they're providing energy and these tend to be very slow growing organisms that can survive in super harsh environments.

• 40:52Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, so fungus is the major player.

• 40:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, yeah, fungus is the major player. And so, you know, as, as somebody who thinks about taxonomy pretty often, I know you're not a huge taxonomy fan, but what do you do? How do you characterize these organisms that like so clearly depend on one another? But like, you've got two different players. Where does that fit in the tree of life? Very complicating.

• 41:17Daniel Whiteson?

  Maybe it doesn't make sense to draw arbitrary dotted lines around things.

• 41:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  One of my favorite things in ecology and in evolution is when the tree of life has branches that sort of like come back together and touch each other, or when it doesn't do what you would expect tree branches to do, that I always think is really fascinating. We have to think outside the box there. But so we tend to try to classify lichens based on the big fungal partner that provides most of the structure. And I'm, I feel like this probably is because humans are very visual and probably initially it was just easier for us to be like, this is the part that I see. This one is green. This one is yellow.

• 41:54Daniel Whiteson?

  Right.

• 41:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  But anyway, so we, we tend to classify based on what, what the fungal partner is doing. And there's something like 15,000 to 20,000 species of lichens. And it looks like this symbiotic relationship is about 400 million years old.

• 42:08Daniel Whiteson?

  Okay.

• 42:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  And this relationship popped up, we think, something like nine to 11 times. So it's not like once a fungus and an alga partner were like, let's work together. This has happened multiple times.

• 42:18Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 42:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  There's some species that we think used to be in a lichen relationship and then they got a divorce and now they both live separately.

• 42:26Daniel Whiteson?

  You're saying they stopped liking each other?

• 42:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, why didn't I come up with that? Oh my gosh, the hours that I spent researching this and I missed that. Anyway, very disappointed, but what I'm excited about is, you know, it's complicated. And it looks like the more people have spent time with lichens and the more we've been able to like, you know, this isn't very nice, but like grind up lichens and send them all through like genome sequencers to be like, okay, who is everybody that's in here?

• 42:58Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 42:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  We've usually thought about lichens as fungus plus algae, but it turns out there's often like bacteria that are very consistent residents in lichens. And sometimes they do things like produce nitrogen, they're nitrogen fixing bacteria. And so I think a lot of these lichens are not just two players. Like if you look at them more closely, there's probably bacteria or other kind, like multiple species of algae that are consistently showing up in the same species of lichen. And so lichen might actually be like, not just two players, but some species might be like three players consistently found together or four players consistently found together, so that they can provide everything that's needed for the lichen to persist.

• 43:41Daniel Whiteson?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 43:43Kelly Weinersmith?

  What do you mean, hmm, interesting? That's fascinating, man. Imagine, imagine living in a like triad where everybody had to play nice all the time. That like, it's hard enough being in a dyad.

• 43:55Daniel Whiteson?

  I'm surprised this isn't falling apart more often. Yeah.

• 43:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, all right. Anyway, I think that's pretty cool. But one of my favorite things about lichens is that they help break rocks down into soil.

• 44:05Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  And so they, you know, they often stick to the side of things like rocks. And one of the things that they do is just very slowly grow into the like little nooks and crannies in the rock. And over time, they're able to just like create extra stress in the rock to start like cracking it and breaking it apart.

• 44:23Daniel Whiteson?

  Amazing.

• 44:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  I know, right? When I watch tree roots that have lifted up sidewalks, for example, just like the fact that slow persistent growth can do something like that, like that needs to be a bumper sticker. That's inspirational.

• 44:37Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, it's one of those great insights into deep time, right? To show you the things that you thought were static or were uninfluential over time can change everything. It's really incredible.

• 44:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, it is totally inspirational. And additionally, some of these lichens are able to produce things like acids or other like mineral dissolving compounds that further break down through chemical means, not just like physical means. And that helps the lichen grow. And then one day the lichen will die and it will decay and become part of the soil. And through this process, you go from giant rocks to soil. And I just think that's absolutely amazing.

• 45:15Daniel Whiteson?

  And did we not have soil before lichen or was it just slower?

• 45:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  There are multiple ways that you can get soil and this is one of them. It's not like all of the soil on the planet, we can like tip our hats and say, thank you, lichen. But it's possible that there are some minerals in your body that were liberated from rocks by lichens. And I'd say probably even probable. And so, you know, thank you, lichens.

• 45:39Daniel Whiteson?

  We've all been soiled by lichens?

• 45:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's.

• 45:43Daniel Whiteson?

  Or spoiled.

• 45:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  Spoiled, yeah. Man, you're on a roll today. I'm loving it, Daniel. I'm loving it.

• 45:48Daniel Whiteson?

  I'm just bringing my fourth grade sense of humor, you know, because I'm bringing my fourth grade level of expertise.

• 45:53Kelly Weinersmith?

  Highly appropriate, highly appropriate. And, you know, I may or may not have sat for a second and thought, do I know who the two partners are in a lichen? And I had to think about it for a second because I hadn't accessed that information for a while. And I, so, you know, did, did some deep reading before this. But one of the cool things about lichens is that when they are dried out and desiccated, it's really hard to kill them. Like when the fungus is all sort of like dried out, it does a really good job of protecting the algae inside. And so lichen have been like brought to space and it turns out that they're super resistant to radiation when they're in this desiccated state. But when they are moist and active and like metabolically doing the stuff that they usually

• 46:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  do, they're actually pretty darn sensitive to things like air pollution. And so they can be used as bio indicators. Like if you go to an area and there's like a lot of diverse lichen, you can be like, oh, the air quality here is probably pretty good. But if you notice that you're losing lichen in an area, that could be an indicator that the air quality in your area is going down. And so some ecologists are pushing lichen as a way of like monitoring how good the air quality is in an area.

• 47:02Daniel Whiteson?

  Whoa, yeah. Are you liking the air or not?

• 47:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  I'm not sure I'd be liking living in Beijing, but I hear that it's getting better there. And I like caribou and lichen tend to be a major food source for caribou. So what's not to like? In.

• 47:18Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, so Kelly, tell us, is symbiosis underappreciated in the general community out there? Do people not realize the power and the awesome impact of symbiosis in general?

• 47:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Gosh, I mean, I don't know. I think most of us appreciate symbioses, but we like appreciate them in a more fine grained way. Like, you know, I have dedicated my life to appreciating the category of symbioses, which is parasitism. You know, and so I think a lot of people are like, oh, I study mutualism, I study parasitism, I study commensalism or something. But like symbiosis is just such a, such a broad term that to be honest, I was kind of like, what am I going to do with this episode? This could be like, you could pick any species and there's like thousands of symbiotic interactions you could talk about.

• 48:02Daniel Whiteson?

  Because nobody lives in isolation, which means that everybody's in symbiosis all the time.

• 48:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, except symbiosis is meant to focus a little bit more in on like long-term interactions. And so like, if you pass a stranger on the street, you wouldn't say you had a symbiotic relationship with them, but you do have a symbiotic relationship with your wife, for example.

• 48:22Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes, definitely not parasitic.

• 48:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right, that's right. Here's hoping. And so, so anyway, none of us would be here if it wasn't for a symbiotic interaction that happened something like two billion years ago. Thank you symbioses for making us what we are.

• 48:40Speaker 04

  Hi, Daniel and Kelly. This is Brandon, otherwise known as Quantum Cat. That was another excellent episode. I found two things especially interesting. One is that for the mealie bugs, the bacteria that it contains that have a bacteria inside of it, that bacteria inside of it can vary over time and it's not just one species. And the other thing that I thought was fascinating was the aphid that for a defense against the wasp that predates upon it, it contains a bacteria that makes a toxin that goes after the wasp's eggs. And that if it's not predated by that wasp, the level of bacteria drops. That just is fascinating how nature works that way.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  So thank you again for an excellent episode.

• 49:32Daniel Whiteson?

  Thanks, everybody, for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us.

• 49:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman.

• 49:45Daniel Whiteson?

  He really is a wizard. You can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and X, D and K Universe. Come engage with us.

• 49:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  You can email us at [email protected]. We really do want to hear from you.

• 50:00Daniel Whiteson?

  And you can find our website, www.danielandkelly.org, where you'll also find an invitation to join our Discord, where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

• 50:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is an iHeart Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Wait, I came in for two things. How is this $47? All right, we're gonna need a plan here.

• 50:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  Just start simple with Bank of America Advantage Safe Balance Banking. No overdraft item fees, no monthly maintenance fee if you're under 25.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Oh, that's actually really simple.

• 50:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  Safe Balance Banking, one less thing to figure out. Learn more at bva.com/simplebanking. Terms and conditions apply. Bank of America and a member FDIC.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  This is Jason Timp from Hoops Tonight with Jason Timp. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which can mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 51:22Speaker 06

  Cash Flow Crunch, OnDeck's small business line of credit, gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. Whether you're leading a big project, planning an elaborate trip, or trying to balance work and life, ChatGPT can help. Give it a goal, plus things like files, notes, or project plans, develop a trip itinerary with daily updates, or create a prioritized schedule, so you can spend less energy sorting out the details and more on bringing your biggest ideas to life. Get started at chatgpt.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.