865: Investigating How Frogs are Impacted by Climate Change, Fungal Disease, and Selection Pressures - Dr. Cori Richards-Zawacki

0:00Hi everyone, I appreciate you joining me today for episode 865 of People Behind the Science. I'm your host, Dr. Marie McNeely, and this week we're delighted to reshare our interview with our guest, Dr. Corey Richards-Zawacki. Listeners, Corey studies topics in ecology, evolutionary biology, behavior, and conservation in frogs. In particular, she's working to understand how frogs use different body forms, colors, and other features to survive partially on land and partially in water. And in this conversation, Corey shared highlights from her

0:34life in science. So listeners, get ready to meet another one of our wonderful people behind the science. Every day, discoveries are made that will change our understanding of the world around us. Dr. Marie McNeely is here to bring you the brilliant minds who are making these discoveries so they can share their incredible stories and take you on an amazing journey. Welcome to People Behind the Science. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the People Behind the Science podcast. Today, I am thrilled to be

1:12speaking with our guest scientist, Dr. Corey Richards-Zawacki. So Corey, welcome to our show. How are you? I'm great. Thanks. Wonderful. We are excited to chat with you and learn more about you and the work that you do. And let me first start by telling our listeners a little bit about your current position and how you got there. So listeners, Corey is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and director of the Pima Tuning Lab of Ecology at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her bachelor's degree in engineering and biology, as well as her PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology,

1:44both from the University of Michigan. Corey then conducted postdoctoral research at the Smithsonian Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. Corey next served on the faculty at Tulane University prior to joining the faculty there at the University of Pittsburgh in 2015. And Corey, today, we are excited to learn more about you as well as your science. But let's start off by talking about you. So can you tell me and our listeners how you like to spend your time when you're not doing science? Yeah, of course. So I am a mom of two little girls. So I spend a lot of my time when I'm not doing science,

2:16being a mom and having fun, hopefully usually outdoors with my kiddos and my husband. My kids are getting old enough that they play soccer now. I play soccer. I actually met my husband playing ultimate frisbee and we've since then switched over to soccer, but playing some sort of outdoor sports is a big part of our lives. We like to go hiking. We used to do a lot more than we do now, but I really enjoy mountain biking, a lot of outdoor activities, I think. Awesome. And it's fun probably, too, that you're able to do a fair amount of your work outside. So I'd love to talk about the scientific side as well. So how do you describe what you do when you're talking to

2:51someone who's not familiar with your field? That's a good question. I oftentimes start really broad by saying that I study frogs and that's usually a good enough intro to get people interested and ask me more questions about what exactly I do when I study frogs, because that's probably not normally what people think of a scientist doing. And I'm sort of a, I guess, more of a non-traditional scientist in the sense that I don't tend to focus really narrowly on just one biological problem or specialty. I consider myself to be somewhat of an organismal biologist in that I study questions that interest me, that run the gamut

3:24from ecology to evolutionary biology to behavior and conservation. But I tend to focus on the one group of organisms that I find particularly fascinating, which is frogs. So what is it that fascinates you so much about frogs? Sometimes when I answer that question, I say things like, I think they chose me because I really don't know what it was that originally attracted me to frogs. But I think one of the things that I find fascinating about them is their amazing number of ways they've adapted to life on our planet and the creative solutions they've come up with to some of the challenges of being an organism that spends

3:58part of their life on land and part of their life in the water, but is very closely tied to the aquatic habitat and needing to always have a source of moisture. So the things that really struck me as exciting and interesting about frogs when I first started learning about them were the variety of body forms that they take. I study a frog that's brightly colored, exhibits almost every color of the rainbow, and is found on an island archipelago off the coast of Panama. I find that amazing. There's frogs that call and have amazing ears that can

4:30hear sounds that even we can't hear. There's frogs that have come up with many different ways to deal with the challenges of trying to reproduce even on land when your tadpole needs to be aquatic. For example, one of the frogs that I study carries it around its tadpoles on its back and the mom feeds the tadpoles her own unfertilized eggs to keep them developing until they reach metamorphosis on their own. So just sort of the amazing diversity of ways that frogs have come up with ways to cope with challenges in the natural world. I find fascinating.

5:04Well, Corey, it sounds like you are so enthusiastic about your research subject that you're working on. And I think that can be really motivating for scientists to kind of keep going in and doing the many things that they have to do every day. But I love talking about what motivational quotes or sayings or forces of motivation people have that keep them going. So do you have a favorite one of yours that really inspires or motivates you? Actually, I have a few. So in the end of my emails, there's a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, that I really like that I think encapsulates why I like to do these research out in nature. It says, at night, I went out into the dark and saw a glimmering star and heard a frog and nature

5:39seemed to say, well, do not these suffice? I really like that quote. But then my other motivational quotes at this point in my life, being a mom of little kids, mostly come from Disney movies and Daniel the Tiger. So I was watching Daniel the Tiger the other day. And one of the inspirational moments that they had was to enjoy the wow that's happening now. And I really like that because it makes me stop and think about the amazing things I'm seeing and doing and stopping to take the time to celebrate the little things that happen along the way.

6:11I love it. And it's catchy too. Well, wonderful to hear about what motivates and inspires you. And I'd love to talk a little bit more next about some of the people you've encountered over the course of your life and your career who might have had a big impact. So, Corey, who are your mentors and your role models? There have been so many. So it's a hard thing to choose just a few. And my role models have sort of changed over the course of my career as well. So one of the earliest ones I had was a graduate student who was more senior than I was, where I was going to graduate school, a friend and now a

6:42colleague by the name of Rick Lettinen, who was doing his PhD research in Madagascar and really sort of doing all the things with his PhD that I had hoped that someday I'd get to do with my research. And he was great in that he took the time to mentor me and, you know, help me through the earliest stage of my PhD and give me some good advice on things to concentrate on and even skills like how to survive and do research in the middle of absolute nowhere in the tropics. That was an important piece of my development. Other role models, one who I've actually never met but has

7:16always been inspirational to me is a woman by the name of Marty Crump, who was one of the first sort of a pioneer in field biology, especially in herpetology, which is the study of reptiles and amphibians. She did research in Costa Rica and in Ecuador for a long time, made a lot of really cool discoveries about the life history and the ecology of frogs in those regions, and also took the time to write about her adventures in a series of books. And one of the things that I really have taken home

7:46from her is how brave she was to be out and doing these long-term projects, sometimes for long stretches of times on her own. And she, you know, had a young family and was making it work out in nature doing biology. Another role model more recently in my life is a researcher by the name of Dave Wake, who's at University of California, Berkeley. And he's been just sort of a pillar in the research community for amphibians and reptiles for a number of years. And he's just

8:17such a giving person and always willing to, you know, stop and ask you how you're doing, give a little piece of sage career advice. And I've really appreciated the interactions with him I've had over time. Well, thank you so much for telling us more about some of these mentors and these people who've really helped you along your career path. And I'm really intrigued by this point here about Rick Lettinen and how he taught you sort of how to survive in the tropics doing research in the middle of nowhere. So can you tell us more about maybe some of the tips and tricks he taught you? Well, he didn't teach me by example as much as he did by telling me the stories of what,

8:50you know, he had to go through doing his research away from a field station or many resources in Madagascar, things like hanging up a tarp to collect rainwater so that he could take a shower, things like packing in food that you can cook or eat, even if you can't manage to make a fire because it's raining so hard. Things that you don't think about as being important as a field biologist until you realize they are when you're in the middle of absolute nowhere. I love it. Well, it sounds like he've imparted some wise advice for you that may have helped you

9:21along your career path. And I'd love to talk a little bit more about how this career path started for you, Corey. So can you tell me what are some of your earliest memories of getting excited about science and biology? I guess my earliest excitement about science probably came from high school. I got involved with a program called Science Olympiad when I was in high school, which is a sort of a competitive science program that has different events you can compete in that range from science to engineering and even math. And I did a number of different events as

9:56part of that. One of them actually being learning about reptiles and amphibians and sort of being good at trivia related to reptiles and amphibians. But it was really through that program that I realized that I was really interested in lots of areas of science and math. And I found a group of people that I could, you know, interact with that share that interest with me, which I think was kind of pivotal. After high school, I knew I was really interested in science and math and I didn't have a good sense for what I wanted to do. But it seemed like most people that I talked to said, oh, if you're

10:28interested in science and math, why not go into engineering? That's what I did. I started my undergraduate in chemical engineering at the University of Michigan. And I did that for several years really enjoying the classes I was taking in engineering and math. I love the problem solving aspect of it. But I really had this other part of me that wanted to do something with the environment, something outdoorsy. And I still had this sort of passion for biology. But I really had no idea,

10:58even until I was about a junior in high school, that the fields that I do now, ecology and evolutionary biology were an option for a field of study and that a career in academia was even a thing. So it wasn't really until I was doing an internship in engineering this summer, I think it was before my junior year in college, that I started to think that maybe a career in engineering wasn't what I had intended. The engineering internship, I found to be really boring. I found I was spending a lot of time

11:28trying to look busy. And at the end of that summer, I decided to take a little bit of free time and take a trip to Costa Rica. And it was when I was in Costa Rica. And finally, you know, seeing many of the organisms that I've read about, I found out that I was on these trails, going to these places I had heard about. And I found that in some cases, I knew more about the species, just by reading and being kind of a science nerd in high school than some of the trail guides that I figured that maybe there was something else that was my passion. So after that summer, I added biology as a second major to my

12:04undergraduate degree. And then I had a big second decision to make when I graduated with two degrees, you know, what comes next, it was a really hard decision for me, because in one sense, I knew that I could quickly, you know, have a good career and make a lot of money as a, as an engineer, but the road to being a biologist was a lot more uncertain, it would take a lot more graduate school. You know, the stories I heard are that it's really hard to make it as an academic. And it was kind of a big leap of faith to go that direction. And it was a hard decision, but it's one that I've never regretted to start a

12:39graduate program. And so to take the leap hoping that I'd have what it takes to someday, you know, be a professor and be able to run a lab and do the kind of research that really excited me. Amazing. Well, I'm so happy to hear that you followed your passion. It's been wonderful to hear more about your path and kind of how you've gotten to the point you are today. And we touched on how you decided to get to the point of pursuing this academic career path. But I'd love to chat a little bit next about some of the specific positions that you had along the way. So can you tell us what then motivated you to pursue the postdoc that you got there at the

13:14Smithsonian and UC Berkeley? So my graduate school experience was perhaps a little, well, maybe not so different from a lot of people's in that what I thought I was going to study at the beginning of my graduate program ended up being nothing like what my dissertation ended up being. I was aiming to study a frog that was endangered and do some work to hopefully help understand how we could better conserve the species or deal with some of the threats that the species was taking. At the time when I started

13:47grad school, the major threat to that particular species, which is the Panamanian golden frog, was overcollection for the illegal pet trade. And so that was a topic that I was interested in understanding. You know, what kind of overcollection pressure could these populations sustain? Is there a way that we could satisfy the need for the pet trade and also promote the health of these populations? But while I was doing my PhD research, the major threat shifted in that a fungal pathogen that had been making its way through Central America arrived in my study sites

14:19and wiped out populations and really whole communities of amphibians while I was doing my research. So my study subjects all but disappeared. And in fact, we thought they disappeared for good while I was doing my PhD. So my end product for my PhD ended up being somewhat different. I did a lot more sort of conservation genetics and working with DNA samples that I had and I could still work with from those species, but a lot less of the sort of conservation modeling work that I thought I was going to do. And so when I started thinking about a postdoc, there were a lot of things weighing on my

14:54mind. One was whether I would have a study species to work with anymore after what I had been through and watched happen in the montane areas of Panama where I had done my research. And the second was just wanting a study topic that wasn't so somewhat depressing after spending so much time watching these populations struggle. And then it looked like they weren't going to make it. So I sort of switched gears and wrote some proposals to study something that I was also very

15:24passionate about, which is understanding how new species arise and understanding what roles natural and sexual selection play in that process. So I wrote proposals to study this really cool poison frog species called the strawberry poison frog that occurs on islands off the coast of Panama. And the cool thing about them is that among these different populations, they're pretty much every different color of the rainbow. And we think that those colors have evolved really recently and rapidly and probably under the influence of either natural or sexual selection or both. And so I was really

15:59interested in understanding how those processes work to create this diversity of phenotypes and whether it could be an early step on the road to those populations becoming separate species. And so I wrote proposals to work on that, moved to a different area of Panama and got to know a whole different group of researchers that were focusing on questions in speciation. Well, Corey, it sounds like you had quite the adventure then to even survive the PhD process, which I can't even imagine being in this position where suddenly your study subjects are just disappearing on you.

16:31So how did you then make it through that to go on to the postdoc? So that transition for me between the PhD and the postdoc was actually a really difficult one. The PhD itself, I felt good coming out of the end of my PhD, I ended up having several chapters that were publishable. And I think in the end are going to be helpful for conserving the species that I had focused on, which is a good place to be. And I was really successful in getting funding for my postdoc, which is not always an easy thing to do. I was excited

17:04about the project I was about to do. But I guess one of the challenges for me is that it was a really big transition for me between graduate school and my postdoc. So I was starting research in another country, moving to another country. At the time, I had recently gotten engaged. I was taking my fiance with me to another country, and everything was new. I had new colleagues, new people to interact with, a new culture, new country. And as a person who's sometimes dealt with issues with anxiety and depression, this was a really big transition for me. And there was a period of time where I wasn't sure

17:39that I was going to be able to make it through. But in the end, I think that this was really a pivotal moment for my career. And I still feel proud to this day of having sort of persevered through all the changes and getting started on a new project that actually we're still working on in my lab, what, a decade or more later. So it was a challenging transition. But now I'm glad that I went through it because I have sort of two different study systems and two different questions that I'm really interested in, one having to do with that fungal pathogen that killed off my study species during my PhD. And I still

18:14study that pathogen, how frogs are dealing with it, how climate change interacts with the host and the pathogen. But I also have this really cool other line of research that I'm really passionate about that has to do with those poison frogs and what's driving all the amazing diversity that they have in their coloration and their behaviors. Corey, thank you so much for walking us through this difficult transition that you experienced along your career path. I think those moments sort of make or break a scientist. And I think it's so important to share these challenges with our listeners who might be going through their own struggles in making these

18:47transitions between different parts of their career or just transitioning to working in a completely new environment like you did here. And I know you've got so many exciting projects and you hinted that some of the things that you were working on, even as a postdoc, are things that you are still working on in the lab today. So do you have a particular project that you are just so excited about that you want to share with me and our listeners? I actually have two projects that I'm really excited about, both of which sort of stem from those early experiences in Panama. So one of them is a project that comes from that sort of devastating pathogen that

19:21swept through Panama during my PhD. So for a long time, we thought that the aftermath of that epidemic was going to be the permanent loss of many populations and species of frogs in Panama. And it's only been within the past few years that we've started to see signs that some of these species and some of these populations are potentially recovering. So we're finding, in some cases, more and more individuals in more and more places. And it's not because, you know, the pathogen is gone, the threat of

19:53that disease is gone. These frogs are coming back despite the fact that they're still infected with the pathogen. So it's a really cool time to be able to ask questions about how they're managing to survive in the face of this pathogen that had, at one time, looked like it was winning the war. And so we're doing some research trying to understand what's facilitating the recovery of these populations despite the fact that the pathogen is still present. So that's one thing that I'm really excited about that my lab and my collaborators have been working on. And we hope to have some cool answers in the

20:27future. The other thing that I'm really excited about comes from the work with the colorful poison frogs off the coast of Panama. So we've been doing research, as I said, looking at the roles of natural and sexual selection in that species. And given that these bright colors of these frogs are advertising their toxicity to predators, you might think that natural selection would play a big role in the colors that they exhibit and how that color varies in space. But we haven't actually found much evidence for that at all. It doesn't seem to matter what color you are when it comes to the

21:03risk of predation. But it does matter what color you are when it comes to how females choose their mates and how males choose who to fight with over territories. And so we're finding out that the role of sexual selection in this species is very strong and perhaps the most important force in shaping the color variation that we see across the islands. And one of the things that we're excited about right now is it looks like learning may be an important part of how these frogs make their decisions in terms

21:35of what colors they prefer in a mate and what color frogs they will challenge for a territory. This is remarkable. And I'm curious, in talking about this project, looking at the different colors of these frogs, are you finding that there's an optimal color or maybe one that's more evolutionarily fit than the others? No. So it seems to be, and this is something that's sort of a hallmark of sexual selection, that there is no particular direction that the selection is pushing the colors to be.

22:06So one of the most important ideas in sexual selection is that sexual selection can favor traits that are extreme, and they can be extreme in sort of any direction. So if you think of like the tail of a male peacock and how crazy large and patterned it is, or if you think of the horns on an elk or something like that, these are examples of traits that have been shaped by sexual selection. And so we think that in these frogs, color is sort of shaped by the preferences of

22:39females and the male-male competition that goes on in a different way in each of these isolated populations. And so it's sort of pushing, pushing the phenotypes or pushing the traits in different directions in different populations. And that might be why we see some of the amazing variety that we do see. Wonderful. Thank you for chatting with us more about some of these projects that you're working on. And we touched on one of the challenging periods in your career, this transition from graduate school to postdoc life. And I think there are so many different challenges that you encounter throughout your

23:10career as a scientist. And I think it's so important to talk about these on the show, because so often you only hear the success stories in science. So Corey, do you have another story of failure or an example of a challenge that you face that you can share with me and our listeners today and talk about how you got through it? Yeah, I've already talked about the sort of almost fail in terms of transitioning between PhD and postdoc. And I've already talked about the pretty hard fail of the plan that I had for my dissertation based on what was going on with the frogs. But there was another moment that I can remember where I

23:44felt like everything was going wrong. It was during my PhD when I was talking to a scientist that I really respected and I still really respect. And I have a lot of respect for him for taking the time to talk with me about my research at the early stage in my career when I was explaining the things I was excited about and the work that I was doing sort of distilled his comment to me was that that doesn't sound very interesting. And it wasn't that it's not interesting science, but the message that I took from that, and I think was a very good message for me to have at that

24:14point in my development was that I needed to think about the bigger picture and focus on questions that relate to big themes in biology or can try to answer bigger questions that aren't rooted in the specific species that I study. It was a moment that was really challenging to me in that I was thinking, well, how is it not interesting? What am I doing that's not interesting? But the takeaway message that I had was that if you're studying these individual species and how they're adapted or

24:47dealing with life on Earth, you have to remember to frame it in the picture of big picture questions in science. And that's where the funding is going to come from is when you're answering these questions that are common to many species in many environments and are answering sort of basic science questions that can be applicable across study systems in taxa. And that was a hard moment for me, but a lesson well learned and I think has served me well since that time. And I've mentioned this moment to the person who I had it with and he doesn't remember it, but I definitely remember it and have taken it with

25:19me. And we're good colleagues at this point. And I appreciate the time he took to sort of reorient me and my thoughts about my career. Absolutely. And I think this is a difficult lesson for a lot of scientists to learn because of course, you feel excited about and interested in the work that you're doing because you're so deep into those details, but conveying what's so cool about a project to someone else, whether that's a funding agency, a peer in the lab or someone out in the public can be difficult. So have you found that there are things that really helped you kind of reframe how you think about your projects and how you communicate them to others?

25:51Yeah, definitely. I think the most important thing for me has just been practice, you know, practice talking to people outside my field about what I do and just paying attention to what resonates and what is hitting home with them and making sure that you don't get bogged down in the little details, but more portray how the work that you're doing is making a difference to the field that you study. And that's something that I think does take a lot of practice for

26:23scientists. Maybe not everyone, but it has taken a lot of practice for me to be able to communicate what's so exciting about my science in a way that resonates with listeners or people who are engaging with me from a variety of backgrounds and walks of life. Awesome. Well, I think you're doing a great job describing your research in a way that resonates with me and our listeners today. Glad to hear that. Yeah. Thanks so much for talking through some of these challenges, but we don't just want to focus on the difficult times, Corey. I'd love to talk about some of your successes next. So do you have

26:53a favorite success story you can share with me and our listeners today? So I think my favorite success story of recent times has been a publication that came out a little over a year ago in science that myself and a bunch of co-authors published, but in particular, my co-author Jamie Voiles and I had been working on for a long time. And that was a publication that basically documented what we hope is the start of recovery for Panamanian frog communities after this epidemic and our first sort of inquiry into what might be enabling the recovery. So we did a bunch

27:29of experiments to ask whether the pathogen itself had changed, maybe become less virulent, less pathogenic, less of a threat to the frogs, and we didn't find any evidence for that. But we did find evidence that the way that frogs defend themselves against this pathogen and particularly some of the secretions that they make and then secrete onto their skin and their mucus are showing evidence that they may have changed and become more effective in countering this fungal infection than they had been before. So that to me was a success in the fact that, you know, science is a really sort of

28:03prestigious journal. We got a lot of attention for that. And the other thing that was exciting about that is that in our field of amphibian conservation, oftentimes what we see getting a lot of attention and a lot of popular media press is the sort of gloom and doom story of declines and extinctions and disease and all these other threats that amphibians face. And it was really nice to be able to get some recognition for the work that we did that actually shows that there may be some hope. And it's been a long journey and being able to report on a little bit of hope for us. And it's been,

28:37you know, just a wonderful feeling to be able to be a part of that process. Absolutely. And I think you maybe under emphasize the excitement of being able to publish in the journal Science, because like you mentioned, this is a prestigious journal. This is sort of what scientists out there are aspiring to. So how did you celebrate the success when you got that notice that your paper was accepted? I feel like there was probably just a flurry of texts between me and my great co-author, Jamie Voiles. And our next quick order of business was figuring out how to deal with and what we wanted to present when the media came calling to talk about it.

29:10So there wasn't a lot of time for a lot of celebration, but it was an exciting moment to be able to talk about our publication, our findings and the long road that it took to get to the point where we can tell that story about the frogs. Absolutely. Well, I'm so glad to hear that this story had a happy ending and that there is hope out there, like you mentioned. Now, Corey, we've chatted about some of the science that you're doing and you've got some exciting projects, but I'd love to talk more about life outside of science for a moment. We mentioned how you like to be active, hang out with your family, spend time with your kids, but I'd also love to chat about what you're

29:42reading as well. I love getting book recommendations from everybody that we have on our show. So do you have a favorite book, whether it's related to science or not, that you can tell me and our listeners about? So this relates to one of my sort of mentors or heroes in the field. Marty Crump wrote a book called In Search of the Golden Toad that I remember reading when I was an undergrad or early graduate student. And it talks about her times and adventures being a field biologist in the tropics. And that one is one that I think would be a great read for anyone, you know, considering a career in field biology or especially for women scientists and thinking about

30:19the challenges and excitement that comes with balancing life in the field with being part of a family and raising kids. Aside from that, most of the reading that I do is not related to science at all. But one of the things that I will always associate it with my science and reading is the Harry Potter series, because that is what I read at night in my hammock in the jungle during my PhD. I read, I think, all of those books in that scene. And I can tell you that they're much scarier when

30:51you're in the dark in the jungle reading them than when you're reading them in your living room. Oh, my goodness. So you read each one of those Harry Potter books out in the jungle? Yeah. That's amazing. But you must have been out in the jungle for quite some time, too. They're not short. No, they're not.

31:06I love it. Well, great book recommendations. I will put those on our reading list here. And you mentioned that one of the books specifically kind of spoke to this idea of trying to balance life in the field and life in your family. So can you tell me and our listeners how you managed to balance the two? Using every means possible, I think. So in terms of balancing life as an academic with being a mom, being a wife, you know, having a family, I just have to set some pretty strict rules about what time

31:36is work time and what time is family time and really adhere to those rules. Something that I haven't been able to bridge yet just because my kids are so young is bringing them into the field with me in Panama. I've done it in some of our research here locally in Pennsylvania, and they're lucky to be the kids of a field station director in that they are always exposed to life at the field station at the Pima Tuning Lab of Ecology. But my goal is to someday be able to meld these two things by having my girls have an experience in the rainforest in Panama. We'll get there. They're

32:07just not quite old enough yet. Gotcha. Do they have an early interest in amphibians in the rainforest? The six-year-old definitely does. She's recently been picking up every little frog and salamander she finds. Right now, the two-year-old basically says owie and runs away whenever she sees something that's potentially slimy, but there's time. That's right. That's right. There's hope. Yeah. Well, it's been great to hear a little bit more about your family and how you're balancing this sort of life in the field and life in the lab. And you mentioned that you're traveling to

32:38the rainforest of Panama, for example, to do some of the field work that you do. And I think being able to travel is such a great opportunity as a scientist and something that many people may take for granted. So do you have a favorite place that you've been able to go for your science? Well, Panama is my hands-down favorite place because that's where I've spent most of my research career. I've had most of my best and craziest field memories happen in Panama, including close encounters with amazing wildlife, crazy situations that happen when you're doing field work in remote

33:12locations, like adventures with driving four-by-four vehicles in mud, on cliff edges, over boulders, through rivers and streams, having to sort of survive several days in a row in the middle of nowhere, but also do science at the same time. So things that are memorable to me are, for example, my colleague Jamie Voiles trying to isolate into culture this fungus that we study in the middle of absolute nowhere in definitely non-sterile conditions by kerosene lamp and using a microscope

33:43that we had been hauling around the country to these field sites with us. I remember writing a chapter of my dissertation in a little sort of cinder block building in a small community in the middle of nowhere, Panama, and my colleagues at the moment were a couple of chickens that were sitting on a wire right outside the window and sort of clucking away while I was trying to write a chapter of my dissertation and thinking deeply about my work and my analyses. Where you've come in your life, right? Yeah, exactly. We've done crazy things like hiking doors of liquid nitrogen up the sides of mountains so

34:17that if we found one of these frogs and could collect a valuable tissue or secretion sample, we'd be ready to collect that sample and get it back to civilization in good condition. So I think Panama is definitely my most memorable place and the place that I have the best stories about being a field biologist from. Oh, that is dedication, I must say. So it sounds like you've had quite a lot of fun being able to work out in the field. And I think it's good to point these things out because a lot of these

34:47stories that you shared are sort of examples that go contrary to the stereotypes that people have about what scientists are like and maybe what life as a scientist is like. And I think it's so important to break some of these stereotypes that people have to get more people excited about and interested in science and to show people this human side of science. So do you have any other stories or examples you'd like to share that really highlight this element? Yeah. So I hope my lab mates would agree that I try to keep my lab environment as a fun and sort of non-threatening environment, a place where we can all sort of interact in terms of science and the work

35:22that we do, but also to learn a lot about each other. Some of the sort of lab traditions we've done and kept on to try to keep that environment are things like when we have our weekly lab meetings, which I think is a pretty common phenomenon, at least in my field, where we sort of get together once a week and read and discuss papers of interest in our field. We've started doing a thing where we take turns, everyone bringing in one at a time, a dish or a food that they've created that sort of represents them and talking about why they chose that particular item and how it

35:53represents them. This is an idea I got from a friend, Hopi Hookstra, at Harvard, and she'd done it with her lab meeting. And it was really a big hit when we started doing it with my lab meeting. Other things that we do that have been passed down to me from labs that I've been involved with is when someone finishes a PhD, we usually celebrate with champagne. And at one point when we did this during my PhD, the cork actually lodged itself in the ceiling of the lab. At that point, we labeled that cork with the person who had finished the PhD. And now it's a tradition that when a PhD is finished, we sort of, even if the cork doesn't lodge on its own, we label it and leave it in the

36:28ceiling as a record of who's been here and what they've accomplished. Well, Cori, I love these traditions and thanks for kind of giving us a window into the life of people in your laboratory. And I think it is important to have a little bit of fun and kind of get people engaged and talking about things maybe that aren't a science. And I love this idea of bringing in a dish and telling people about how it represents themselves. So if you had to pick one dish that represented you, what would it be? Well, I did have to pick a dish that represented me. And the one I chose last year was a king cake. So a king cake is a Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans. And so it's a sort of a big donut shaped

37:02cake, usually with frosting on top that's colored for the Mardi Gras colors. So purple, yellow, and green. It can be any flavor on the inside, but the important part is that inside there has to be baked a small plastic baby. And so the idea of the king cake is that whoever gets the piece with the baby in it has to bring the next king cake. And so this is a tradition around Mardi Gras time in New Orleans. And because, you know, my time as a professor at Tulane and my experience living in New Orleans for six years is one that will always be a part of me. I chose that as my piece of food that represented

37:38me. And I think that's probably going to be an annual lab tradition from now on because it's a pretty big hit. I love it. I think you need to sort of take a break from the heavy science every now and then to stimulate creativity and start to think more about these big ideas and these big questions that you're trying to answer. So if we took away all of the barriers today, Corey, and we gave you everything you could dream of, all the funding, staff, technology, feasibility, whatever you could possibly drum up, what is the one question you'd want to answer most or the one problem you'd want to solve? So I'm going to cheat and give you two, and they both have to do with being a time traveler. And this

38:12is not having to do with funding, technology, and feasibility. It's about being in a different period of time. One thing I want to know is, you know, how are frogs in Panama managing to live with this fungus, which we call BD for short, because its real name, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidus, is a very big mouthful. Bit of a mouthful, yeah. Yeah. So how are they managing to live with this pathogen now? And if we could go forward in time, 200 or 2,000 years from now, what will be the impact of this global pathogen on this group of

38:43organisms? That's one thing I want to know. And then the other thing is, if I could time travel in the other direction to go back to these islands off the coast of Panama, what did the poison frogs look like 2,000 or 10,000 years ago? Did we see this amazing color diversity that we see now? Where were the different colors located? You know, how did this process play out to give us the diversity that we're seeing now? And if we can go forward from now, will these populations be separate species

39:13in the future? Those are the questions that I want to know the answer to, but I'm not sure that any amount of technology or funding is going to answer those questions for me. You just need that time machine, right? One simple thing. Exactly. I love it. Well, thanks for dreaming big with me today, Corey. You talked a little bit about some of the advice that you've received along the course of your career earlier in our conversation, this idea of kind of taking a step back and thinking about the bigger picture. Is there any other piece of advice you want to share with our listeners or a message of inspiration you'd like to give them?

39:44I think one of the things that's been key for me is really getting out of your comfort zone, trying new things. And I feel like that's oftentimes where we find our passion in science and where we find the cool new ideas. So I see this all the time as a field station director with students that come up to take a field course rather than a course on campus in the classroom is that they really develop or get to know what they're passionate about when they have taken a step out of their comfort zone and tried something new. And for me, I can definitely point to periods in my development where I was challenged and I was apprehensive about

40:21doing something new, but took the time to do it and made myself take that leap. And these are the times when I feel like I've gotten the best ideas and I've had the most inspiring moments. So I really think that trying new things and getting out of your comfort zone is the advice that I would give to people who are considering a career in science or just in life in general and trying to find what they're passionate about in their careers. Well, excellent advice. And I imagine in many cases in your career as a field biologist, you've had to get outside your comfort zone a little bit. So you've taken this advice to heart.

40:53Yeah, definitely. Awesome. Well, Corey, thanks again so much for sharing advice with us. Was there anything else in terms of advice or inspiration that you wanted to make sure we capture? Yeah, I think one of the things that I've learned over time about science and careers in science is that success in science is a little bit about intelligence, but probably a lot less about intelligence than most people think. And it's a lot about hard work, determination, perseverance, and developing a sense of self-assurance to deal with the sort of infrequent encouragement that you get. So science is a field that's sort of built on critique. So we're always

41:29getting feedback, usually constructive is a nice way of saying it, but negative feedback on the things that we publish, the things that we write, the grant proposals that we submit. And I think that, you know, success in this field is a lot about just persevering, developing a thick skin to deal with these sort of constructive criticisms that are always coming at you and also taking time to celebrate the little victories that come along the road and having those be what motivates you and

41:59keeps you going forward. Absolutely. I think you're right here. You sort of have to have an internal locus of motivation because if you're looking for that external feedback, that's kind of keeping you going, it's not going to be there. Right. Well, wonderful advice for our listeners. And you've shared so many great insights and stories with us today, Cori. Can you tell us if our listeners want to learn more, where should they go or how should they get in touch? Sure. Yeah. They can always email me at cori.zawacki at pit.edu. We also have a lab website. You can find us by Googling, but it also has a pretty

42:32easy URL. So it's www.rzlab.pit.edu. I'm also on Twitter and Facebook. So there's lots of different ways that people can get in contact. Excellent. Well, listeners, definitely check out that website. It's got lots of amazing information and some beautiful pictures on there as well. And get in touch with Cori if you have any questions. And Cori, thank you so much for joining us today on the show and sharing a piece of your story. That's my pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me. And listeners, wonderful to have you here with us as well. We'll see you next time on another episode of

43:06People Behind the Science.

43:11People Behind the Science.