What Biologists Do: Crash Course Biology #3

life can be found in some of the most extreme places on Earth at the bottom of the ocean some tube worms called toxic high pressure vents home sweet home in Hot Springs acidic enough to dissolve metal microbes can be found straight up chilling and if you're wondering how we know all of this well it's because biologists have actually gone there biology is all about the study

of life from mushrooms to Manta Rays today we're going to rotate the microscope flip those binoculars around and pull back the curtain on one of the most interesting life forms of all the biologists themselves hi I'm Dr Sammy your friendly neighborhood entomologist and this is Crash Course biology Cuda theme music [Music] [Music] despite the complexities of how we categorize and understand life the field of biology

is a club that's open to everyone people who like math bugs nature and even design the more that biology is grown as a field the more that it requires different types of thinkers to apply those findings to Everyday Life you might say that we need diversity in BIO just as bad as we need biodiversity so yeah it's true that some biologists can be found dodging geysers

or diving to the bottom of the ocean in the name of science but you don't have to journey to Earth's extremes to find your nearest biologist in fact they're probably a lot closer than you think biology touches everybody's lives on a daily basis I mean biology literally is everybody's lives on a daily basis biological processes are the secret not so secret ingredient in the lunch you

eat the medicine that relieves your headaches and the cat whose hair is all over your couch a biologist's natural habitat is wherever questions about life's processes are being asked and sure that includes remote caves and distant Islands but it also includes classrooms and Laboratories and doctors offices biologists are in state forests and at your local conservation department they're on boats and in corn fields they're even

on the edge just skyscrapers if the peregrine falcons they're studying decide that's a good nesting spot many biologists work at research institutes or universities like mine where they might do a combination of research and teaching you'll find them at museums zoos and Aquariums they're also Walking The Halls of government agencies where they're managing natural resources monitoring diseases and studying the effects of food additives and More

in fact the federal government is the largest employer of biologists in the United States not long ago they even employed me and I am super grateful by the way thanks USDA biologists also work at pharmaceutical companies researching and testing medicines they're at medical device companies developing products that make it easier to diagnose treat and prevent illness so the next time you're snorkeling near a thermal vent

or strolling through Washington DC keep your eyes peeled although biologists share a question in curiosity about life's processes their specializations Drive what they do on a daily basis even if biologists are working on the same goal say conservation of wild salmon they approach it from distinct angles to help us better understand the ways that biologists work let's head over to the thought bubble welcome to biotown

a little city with a big river running through it wild salmon migrate Up and Down the River just as they have for thousands of years connected to all the things in their ecosystem but with the construction of biotown came disturbances to the Sam's ecosystem everything from the introduction of dams to pollution runoff has contributed to the Salmon's decline but don't worry all sorts of biologists are

feeding off salmon carcasses he wants to understand how the fish supply energy to other living things following the river into town we stumble on another biologist crouching in front of a storm dream to she lose something nope she's doing field work too collecting data about the chemicals on the roads that wash into the streams where the salmon swim those samples will travel downtown to the salmon

Research Institute where dozens of other biologists are hard at work in their own Specialties there's the entomologist analyzing data about the insects her team collected there's the geneticist running computer models to understand how the Salmon's genetic diversity is changing over time the population ecologist is hard at work on their own computer writing up conclusions about how the salmon numbers are changing and what happens in the

lab doesn't stay in the labs at a conference further up the road this biologist is presenting her findings about a new virus affecting salmon in the region next door this team of biologists is meeting with local tribal leaders experts on salmon who they'll partner with on their next research project they're planning how to work together to conserve salmon for future Generations thanks thought bubble you're a

biologist's best friend so all of the biologists in biotone are just examples but there are plenty of real life scientists out there doing this kind of important work like it takes Stephanie Blair for example a doctoral candidate and member of the anupiak and Ojibwe tribal communities Blair understood firsthand the importance of regional salmon species to tribal livelihoods she knew what lowered salmon populations would cost families

and communities that relied on the fish in her research Blair uncovered a toxic chemical in the river water of urban areas that was leading to higher mortality rates now other scientists are using Blair's research to help create infrastructure to prevent the toxic chemical from entering Urban waterways we know that biologists deal with all kinds of information in their work DNA water samples numbers of organisms and

more that's why biologists need to have data literacy a strong handle on how to analyze and understand patterns and their observations that means keeping all their data decks in a row which sometimes literally is data about ducks biologists have to plan how they'll gather that information and where it's all going to go in the unpredictable Outdoors some biologists take notes by hand in waterproof notebooks but

when not at risk of losing their work in a downpour most biologists rely on computers to record their observations whether that's a data worksheet or an online database that automatically saves to the cloud and the only good observation is a consistently recorded one each slice of data has to be taken down the same way say our field biologist is out measuring the sandwich accounts if she

sometimes measures from the end of the snout to the middle of the eye and sometimes measures from the end of the snout to the edge of the eye those data can't be compared to each other she has to follow the same process every time repetition is the name of the game when collecting data valid experiments depend on thoughtful plans for data collection and well-designed experiments can

make a big difference take agricultural scientist George Washington Carver for example you may know him as the person who came up with like a million uses for the peanut or as the first black American to get a bachelor's of Science degree Carver was born in the U.S South and was enslaved as a child until the abolition of slavery in 1865. he saw firsthand the challenges of

poor farmers and was determined to help them through a scientific research so Carver designed an experiment he sought out the the worst possible acre of land to match the conditions of nutrient starved Fields all over the U.S South instead of pumping the soil with expensive fertilizers he experimented by planting different crops at different times he observed how some plants such as peanuts peas and soybeans restored

nitrogen that had been Stripped Away from the soil by other plants rotating those crops he noticed he could make the soil healthy again Carver widely publicized his crop rotation strategies and invented hundreds of uses for these alternative crops including the first soy-based non-dairy cheese and as crop rotation methods spread they helped rebuild both the soil and the people who depend on it Carver chose to study

certain plants peanuts included because of their unique soil building traits but many biologists focus on a species not for the traits that make them exceptional but because of the traits they share with other living things in an effort to better understand things like disease or evolution these are the supermodels of science also known as model organisms they are the most widely studied species on the planet

researched in order to understand the biological processes that apply to other organisms and yes they sometimes show up on magazine covers mice and rats have been studied in Laboratories for over 100 years and they're still in style but other Fresh Faces have popped up among biology's next top models the zebrafish has become a recent favorite an easy to maintain model with classic Stripes that shares over

70 percent of its genes with humans nematodes tiny transparent worms that you might find in your compost piles make ideal models easily raised in a Petri dish a fruit flies adaptable Habits Stay fresh even though its food typically isn't whether they're buzzing around rotten bananas or reproducing by the thousands in a laboratory there's so much that they can teach us and in Labs worldwide arabidopsis has

become the model plant for All Occasions with its small size and quick growing ways model organisms need to be easy to raise easy to keep and manageable in large numbers so while rhinoceroses sure are interesting it's unlikely that they'll ever grace the scientific catwalk as supermodels as ideal laboratory subjects model organisms help biologists understand other life forms including humans science tells us that all living things

share a common ancestor so you share some genetic material with every sunflower every elephant and every mushroom that ever lived and because even a nematode shares some genes with humans we're able to study them to better understand diseases in people even though model organisms can help us understand more about ourselves and other life around us they aren't well suited to all questions like there's not much

a lab mouse can show us about the behavior and physiology of an alligator and sometimes a biologist might choose to study an organism because it's really well suited to a particular question like turtles aren't as easy to keep in Labs as zebrafish are but some of their soft tissue naturally switches to bone as their shells grow so if you're interested in how one type of cell

transitions into another type of cell well it's Turtles all the way down so biologists can be found studying life in all its forms from nematodes to narwhals they were exceeded at computers waiting in streams deep in museum archives and at the helm of research ships and while biologists May tackle topics from different angles they share an abiding curiosity about life and its processes a curiosity they

put to work by collecting data planning experiments and using model organisms to better understand diseases gen genetics and the interconnectedness of all life next time we'll see how life isn't just interconnected it's also organized in layers as Tiny as a cell and as big as the totality of every living thing on Earth see you there this series was produced in collaboration with hhmi biointeractive if you're

an educator visit biointeractive.org crash course for classroom resources and professional development related to the topics covered in this course thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course biology which was made with the help of all of these if you want to help keep crash course free for everyone forever you can join our community on patreon [Music]