Centuries
ago, scientists relied on paintings and
illustrations of animals to learn more about their anatomy. Today, that biology-art
bond is as strong as ever. This is Carly Tribull, a PhD student studying the evolution of parasitic wasps,
who uses her scientific knowledge and artistic talent to create fun comics
that invite children and adults into the fascinating world of insects.
https://gizmodo.com/12-real-parasites-that-control-the-lives-of-their-hosts-461313366
https://gizmodo.com/weekend-nightmare-fuel-the-biggest-crawling-animals-on-611417008
Learning to Love Bugs
Growing up in Florida near the Everglades National Park,
Tribull learned early on how full of insects the world really is. And she
absolutely hated it.
“I was really anti-insect,” Tribull told io9. “I
used to think, ‘Oh god, they exist just to fly in my hair.'”
But she loved other animals, especially dinosaurs. Tribull’s
parents indulged her interest in dinosaurs, buying her books and toys to feed
her imagination. Her father, an oral surgeon, especially helped her build her
passion for animals — the pair would frequently watch nature shows on
television together. “I think he secretly wanted to be a biologist,”
she said.
Throughout her childhood, Tribull was also very fond of
drawing, and would often sketch animals, reinforcing her love of them. So, by
the time she reached high school, she knew she wanted a career that involved
animals. The only thing she had to figure out was what fashion that career
would take. Did she want to help animals by becoming a veterinarian or a
wildlife rehabilitator? Or would it be better to study them as a biologist, or
even a paleontologist?
Whatever the future held, Tribull was certain about one
thing: Insects were off the table. Or so she thought.
During her junior year of high school, Tribull took an
advanced placement art class. One of the requirements of the course was to have
a concentration — a topic, or theme, that would tie together all of the
art she produced that year. “For me, since I was big biology nerd, I
wanted my theme to be evolution,” she said. “But I was open to
interpretations.”
Metamorphosis was the theme she eventually settled on.
Throughout the year, she researched metamorphosis, and learned that it was a
common phenomenon that numerous types of insects — including butterflies,
beetles and wasps — go through. She became enthralled by the metamorphosis of
cicadas, she explained. These insects go through an “incomplete”
metamorphosis, which is marked by only three life stages (egg, nymph and adult)
instead of the four stages (egg, larva, pupa and adult) of complete
metamorphosis. Astoundingly, cicadas can spend up to 17 years underground
developing as an immature nymph, before emerging from the ground as a winged
adult. The more she learned about cicadas, the more she liked them.
https://gizmodo.com/3-d-imaging-shows-a-caterpillar-becoming-a-butterfly-506946568
“I stopped thinking about cicadas as these scary
things,” Tribull said. “And not just them, but other insects, too.”
Biology or Art?
After high school, Tribull attended the University of
California, Berkeley, which is a great school for vertebrate paleontology, she
said. “By then, I was really gung-ho about that childhood dream of
studying dinosaurs.” But she was unwilling to give up drawing, so she
double-majored in integrative biology and studio art. “I really fought to
give equal space to both things.”
Early on in her college career, Tribull figured out how to
combine her two passions: She interned in a paleontology lab run by evolutionary
biologist Kevin
Padian, where she worked as a biological illustrator. When that position
ended, she interned in biologist Marvalee Wake‘s lab,
where she studied and illustrated the growth patterns of amphibians.
Then, a series of events brought insects — parasitic
insects, in particular — back into her life. While taking a course on
evolution, Tribull wrote a paper on parasitism — a topic that, she found, she loved researching. “So I started to think about how I could make the
study of parasitism part of my post-college plans,” she explained.
https://gizmodo.com/this-experiment-changed-our-understanding-of-parasite-r-1458488464
Around the same time, she was accepted into a summer
research program at Sam Houston State University in Texas. During her time
there, she use her illustrative abilities to help her advisor, entomologist Jerry
Cook, describe a
new genus and species of Strepsiptera — an order of parasitic
insects. These insects, which are also called twisted-wing parasites, spend most of
their lives parasitizing other insects, including cockroaches, bees and wasps.
“So I did that, and it kind of opened the door for
insects,” Tribull said. “That really won me over from paleontology.”
Though her summer work was on twisted-wing parasites, parasitoid wasps also fascinated
her. These insects, she said, have the potential to become biological control
agents, or insects that help control the populations of agricultural pests and
invasive insects.
Unraveling the
Evolutionary History of Wasps
Upon graduating from UC Berkeley, Tribull went straight into
graduate school — she is now studying at the Richard Gilder Graduate
School at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, and
working toward her PhD in entomology. “People often think it’s this old
museum filled with a lot of dead stuff, but we also have state-of-the-art
labs,” Tribull said.
Tribull’s thesis is broadly focused on the evolutionary
history of parasitoid wasps. She is currently studying two families of wasps: Bethylidae
and Dryinidae. On the Bethylidae side of things, she is looking at the genus Epyris, which, like other bethylid genus, are parasites of caterpillars and beetle
larvae. What’s especially interesting about Epyris, Tribull said, is
that its “taxonomy is all over the place.” Scientists don’t completely
understand how Epyris fits in with, and is related to, other bethylid
wasps. “I am using molecular sequences to sort out what the actual
phylogeny is, and what the family is like.”
Dryinid wasps, on the other hand, are captivating because of
their really strange morphology, or physical features. Female dryinids are
often wingless and resemble ants, but have odd pincer-like front claws (above), which
allow them to grasp the leafhoppers and planthoppers they parasitize. After a dryinid
wasp lays its eggs inside of a host, the eggs hatch and start developing inside
its surrogate. But once the larvae get too big to continue growing inside their
host’s body, large sacks called thylaciums develop in the exoskeleton to house
the parasites (below). Eventually, the larvae burst out.
https://gizmodo.com/these-videos-of-fly-larvae-cannibalism-may-squick-you-485212112
To learn about the phylogeny (evolutionary development and
history) of these parasitic wasps, Tribull
and her colleagues aren’t looking at molecular sequences; instead,
they’re concentrating on the insects’ morphology. But they’re not simply
looking at the wasps’ morphological characters and comparing them to other
wasps, as you’d expect. They are using an advanced technique called
landmark-based geometric morphometrics, which involves analyzing shapes using
“landmarks” that are coded with Cartesian coordinates.
These projects will help scientists better understand the
evolutionary tree of parasitoid wasps. “It’s my hope that once we produce
a good enough tree, we can look at that tree and maybe do some applied
entomology,” Tribull said. Specifically,
researchers could use the information to selectively control agricultural pests
and invasive insects by targeting them with specific parasitoid wasps. “In general, we are on the hunt for non-pesticide
controls.”
Educating Through
Comics
Given Tribull’s
background, you’d expect that robust laboratories and cool insect research
weren’t the only things that drew her to AMNH. This is exactly the case
— she also loves the museum’s graduate school because of its lack of
undergraduates. That is, rather than being a teaching assistant for
undergraduate classes, Tribull’s TAship is outreach oriented. Her approach to
outreach: Comics.
As part of her TA requirements, Tribull illustrated and
helped design “You
Are the Queen,” an educational, digital game about hornets. She is
also producing an educational comic series called “Carly’s
Adventures in Wasp Land,” in which her comic-self teaches her audience
about wasps. “It came about because my advisor got involved with a grant
to study different wasps,” she said. “But part of the grant required
some sort of public, educational aspect to the work.”
So far, Tribull has produced three issues of “Carly’s
Adventures.” The first issue detailed how she became an entomologist. In
the second issue, comic Tribull conducts an interview with a solitary wasp. In
her most recent issue, she gets a tour of a social wasp hive. Tribull’s next
and final issue, which she is currently working on, will be about parasitic
wasps.
To keep the comics engaging, Tribull uses humor and
anthropomorphizes her wasps. “It works really well,” she said. “Making
the comics is something I enjoy doing and something I want to continue doing.”
The comics have been well received, so much so that they led
her to getting involved with another comic project called Myrmex. Tribull worked
with a team of scientists, educators, and illustrators from AMNH, Columbia
University and elsewhere to produce a hefty comic about ants for libraries and
schools in NYC. The group is also working to produce lesson plans tied to the
comic, which will help teachers use the comic in their classrooms.
A Tough Choice
At this point, Tribull doesn’t know what path awaits her
after she graduates. “I love doing systematics, studying genetics and
morphologies and thinking about bigger biological ideas,” she said. At the
same time, she enjoys making comics and interacting with educators and other
scientists and illustrators. “It’s the big issue for me: I don’t want to
bend in art, but I don’t want to bend in science.”
Science and post-doctoral research holds its own allure.
Tribull’s adoration of parasitic insects is as strong as ever, and she would
love to continue studying parasitic wasps or other insects. Where she would
continue on as a post-doc and what research projects she would be involved with
depends on grants, which she hasn’t begun seriously thinking about just yet.
Another possibility would be to continue her illustrative
work with AMNH, and create comics for other departments. “I’ve talked to
them about finding versions of me in the other departments,” Tribull said.
Art and illustration has had a long history of involvement with the sciences,
particularly biology. In fact, one of Tribull’s heroes is Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th century
naturalist and science illustrator, who was one of the first people to document
metamorphosis — the very topic that got Tribull interested in insects in
the first place.
Tribull’s
educational comics could help rear the next generation of scientists. “I
think comics are a fabulous way to
teach kids and engage them,” she said. “If you are a 12-year-old
girl like I was, and see that someone hated insects and got past it, it shows that
you can be a biologist, too.”
Images via Carly Tribull. Comic strips courtesy of Carly Tribull/AMNH.
Check out our previous profile on Charissa de Bekker, who studies zombie ants.
https://gizmodo.com/meet-the-scientist-who-is-solving-the-mystery-of-zombie-1493617822
