The Lion's Roundtable (Guest: Chris Beachy)
Download MP3Good day. This is Amber Narro on KSLUs ninety point nine FM, The Lion. We are at the Lion's Roundtable today with my friend, doctor Chris Beachy. But today, we're gonna be Chris and Amber. Is that cool with you?
Chris Beachy:Yeah. It's cool.
Amber Narro:Fantastic. So glad to have you today. So, Chris, you are a salamander expert.
Chris Beachy:Okay.
Amber Narro:Yes?
Chris Beachy:Yeah. I think so.
Amber Narro:We're I I think you are.
Chris Beachy:I think
Amber Narro:I've talked to you in this space before, and you talked to me about these little creatures and that it that I called the lizard one time, and you were like, no. No. No lizard for me. Thank you. Tell me the difference between a lizard and a salamander.
Chris Beachy:You know what's great? I'll start off by telling you, you used to know the difference between a lizard and a salamander. Grown ups always forget. You ask little kids, they know. They say lizards have scales.
Amber Narro:Okay.
Chris Beachy:Lizards have claws. Okay. And Amber, where do you think lizards put their eggs? In the water or on land? Land.
Chris Beachy:Absolutely, you're right. So generally salamators which are you could call them the flip side of the coin because they're amphibians, no scales, no claws pretty much, and they put their eggs generally in water and if they don't dump them in deep water or actual water, they put them in a really moist spot.
Amber Narro:I feel like that's like snake snakes with legs.
Chris Beachy:You mean lizards are snakes with legs?
Amber Narro:I don't know.
Chris Beachy:I'm sorry. Let's turn that around. Sorry. Yeah. Lizards are snakes with legs.
Chris Beachy:They're the same thing versus salamanders are not. Okay. So so snakes are just like lizards. They have scales, they lay their eggs on land or they give live birth and and so they there's very few snakes that actually put their eggs in the water. So snakes are reptiles just like lizards.
Chris Beachy:To be honest and clear, a snake is actually just a highly modified lizard.
Amber Narro:Oh. I
Chris Beachy:know it's strange to sound. All snakes are lizards, not all lizards are snakes, you know. And there's also
Amber Narro:this Why
Chris Beachy:are they highly modified lizard then? Because everything about their life, they share common evolutionary ancestry. They belong to a a group name called the Squamates. The Squamates are the scaled reptiles.
Amber Narro:Okay.
Chris Beachy:So that includes all lizards and snakes. If you look at relationships amongst families of lizards and snakes, snakes are just one gigantic group that's contained within all the lizards. They're all related. Just snakes made these cool things. Now let's not get too much on the snakes.
Chris Beachy:We're here to talk about salamanders.
Amber Narro:Of course.
Chris Beachy:Now the flip side is that salamanders are, you know, they're amphibians. So they have moist skin. So they generally have to live in areas that are either very wet or at least kinda moist. There's very few salamanders that tolerate really desert conditions because their skin has to stay moist.
Amber Narro:Right.
Chris Beachy:You wanna know why their skin has to stay moist?
Amber Narro:Yes.
Chris Beachy:Because they breathe across their skin. Stop it. Yeah. We don't breathe across our skin. We breathe
Amber Narro:do mean breathe across your skin? What does that mean across?
Chris Beachy:What do you use to breathe? My mouth and my nose. Keep going. Deeper in.
Amber Narro:And my lungs.
Chris Beachy:Your lungs. For sure. Do you think your lungs are wet or dry?
Amber Narro:I feel like they're probably
Chris Beachy:dry. Oh, try this. I I I no one's gonna see this on the radio.
Amber Narro:But if
Chris Beachy:you were to put your finger in your mouth and feel around, is it wet or dry? It's wet. And guess what? The further you go in, the wetter it is. Fantastic.
Chris Beachy:So oxygen
Amber Narro:Yeah. Remember I remember some of this from biology now.
Chris Beachy:Oxygen can only get across there if that surface is wet. That's why we have to put air into our body because that's the only place that we're wet is inside our body. That's how we get the oxygen. Now a salamander doesn't have to do that. It keeps its skin wet.
Chris Beachy:It has a lot of blood vessels in its skin. Therefore, it can take oxygen across its skin. Many salamanders, most species of salamanders actually do have lungs. Indeed, they use lungs and their skin and when they're underwater if they have gills they use those as well. So that's the thing they do differently.
Chris Beachy:So all salamators have wet skin, they keep it wet so that they can do, they can breathe across their skin. Now if you put them in a desert, you'll think they're drying out. While they're drying out, they mostly die because they suffocate because their skin gets dry and they can't breathe that way. Oh, okay. Now there are a lot of salamanders that start to look kinda sneaky.
Chris Beachy:If you take a salamander, gets longer and longer. There are species that are very long and their legs get tinier and tinier. There are no salamanders that that are missing arms. There are a couple salamanders that don't have any legs. You've probably never heard of a of a salamander called a siren.
Chris Beachy:But there's a siren is like a mythological creature. But there are salamanders that live in Louisiana that are called sirens. They have gills, they never come out of the water, they have arms, but they don't have legs at all. They just have arms. Notice I keep saying arms and legs?
Chris Beachy:Yeah. People you know, your dog has arms and legs.
Amber Narro:Yes. We we say that they have arms and legs and feet, not paws, you know, because they're like humans to us. We love them.
Chris Beachy:Well, really, it's it's basically the the r the front legs of a dog are are what we say homologous or they have the same structures as our arms. Right. And so if you're an anatomist, you actually call the dog's front legs arms,
Amber Narro:not the front legs. Good. Then I was right the entire time.
Chris Beachy:A 100% you were right. Amber, you're right about everything. Know? You have a pretty sound understanding of these things. Yeah.
Chris Beachy:So but there are salamanders that have got the ones that get really long and, they usually their legs get tinier and tinier. Now the reason why they get tinier and tinier is because those kinds of salamanders that are really long and start to look almost snaky, they're living in burrows underground. And when you're in a tight little burrow in a tunnel, boy those arms and legs they kind of get in the way and so the legs get smaller and smaller. So there there are some salamanders that look sort of snaky but remember they're not snakes at all. They have moist skin, they breathe across their skin, their toes don't have and fingers don't have any claws on them and they're laying their eggs in water, not on land.
Amber Narro:Fantastic. Alright. We, my little grandsons love a salamander. Oh. Okay.
Amber Narro:Oh, they just think they're fantastic.
Chris Beachy:Your grandsons and everyone's grandsons love salamanders. Once upon a time, everybody loves salamanders.
Amber Narro:Okay. Yeah. So, to me, they're a little creepy, right?
Chris Beachy:That's so fun.
Amber Narro:I know. But so talk me into that because look, your sweet, wonderful friends in biology Yeah. Have saved many a snake from the Narro house. I can tell
Chris Beachy:you. Yeah.
Amber Narro:We live in Panchatula. We see snakes all the time. Now, we leave them alone because they have talked me into loving these little creatures. Yeah. Of course.
Amber Narro:And not wanting to murder them
Chris Beachy:when I see them. No, because.
Amber Narro:And you're not supposed to do that, people.
Chris Beachy:The only good snake is a live snake. Absolutely.
Amber Narro:A 100%. And I truly have I'm a convert in that area.
Chris Beachy:I'm so glad to hear that.
Amber Narro:I am. I did not want to be a convert, but Brian Cruther, Oliver, Sunny, they all brought me to the light side. No. Because I was on the dark side.
Chris Beachy:I can't believe that I'm gonna have to do that for salamanders.
Amber Narro:Well, I don't wanna kill a salamander. I'm just not they just they weird me out a little bit. You know? They feel they look a little slimy and, you know, I mean, that's I
Chris Beachy:don't wanna know what friends with a snake. Okay. Now here's what you were tell me why you're worried about a snake. Tell me that first. Tell me the one thing that you're worried about when about the snake.
Chris Beachy:Bite you. It's gonna bite you. A salamander will if it it'll never bite you. Right. If it bit you, you wouldn't even know it bit you because it just feels like a little love tab.
Chris Beachy:But most of them are so small, they can't even try and bite you. So there, you should love salamanders for that. They will never bite you. To be honest, I have to admit, I like salamanders and I don't work on snakes because I love an animal that doesn't bite me. Yes.
Chris Beachy:You know what else they don't do that snakes will do? They don't poop on me. Okay?
Amber Narro:Snakes will poop on you?
Chris Beachy:Oh, they're when they do, it's awful.
Amber Narro:I've never been close enough to let a snake try to poop on me. It's a horrible experience.
Chris Beachy:It's as bad as you imagine when anyone poops on. No one knows a fan of that. Salamanders will not do that. I love salamanders for that. So keep that in mind, Amber.
Chris Beachy:For the next time you see a salamander, be assured it's not gonna bite you or poop on you. That's awesome news. Boy, are we converting you yet?
Amber Narro:I can't wait to tell my grandson this. Loves the word poop. So, I can't wait to tell Noah that the salamander is not gonna poop on you. Yeah. Will a salamander not poop on me but a snake will?
Chris Beachy:Oh, I've got two reasons for that. Two explanations for it.
Amber Narro:Okay.
Chris Beachy:First, they're pretty calm animals.
Amber Narro:Okay.
Chris Beachy:Generally speaking, most salamanders have toxins in their skin so that you're not really supposed to pick them up and lick them and eat them because those toxins are bad. They're safe with me. Yeah. So that's good. You don't want to bite them?
Chris Beachy:They don't want to bite you. It sounds like we're building a friendship now.
Amber Narro:Okay.
Chris Beachy:Okay. So but other animals that want to eat them, sometimes the the only animals that can eat salamanders are ones who become accustomed to those toxins and will try and eat them. Now not all salamanders have toxins but most of them do. So that means the salamander when he gets exposed, usually they're like, I'm not that worried because hopefully I don't get eaten. Especially if you ever see a colorful salamander, it's for sure going to have toxins in its skin and therefore no one's interested in eating it.
Chris Beachy:Animals try that once or twice. It's like eating a toad. Whenever your dog eats a toad, your dog gets terribly sick because toads have lots of those toxins. Right?
Amber Narro:I wonder if that's what happened to my cat.
Chris Beachy:Oh, could be if a cat if you have a dog or a cat who
Amber Narro:comes You got in very, very sick last week, just for a day.
Chris Beachy:Especially this time of year when the toads are starting to when the tadpoles are starting to undergo metamorphosis, climb out of the ditch, they're becoming little toads. And if a dog or a cat picks one of those and that'll be fun and they bite down, those toxins get released and it'll make them feel terrible. Yeah.
Amber Narro:Sure. That's very interesting. That totally makes sense because it was only a day. Yeah. You know?
Amber Narro:And then he was kinda back into it and he was fine. Was like, got sick.
Chris Beachy:Wonder if you're jumping. Part one for why they're chilling out and they're not afraid of you and why they don't do much. The other part is, and I don't mean to be mean, but in my work, sometimes we do work on salamanders. I've worked on all sorts of things on salamanders. Some of it has been work on brains.
Chris Beachy:Mhmm. That means sometimes I've had to dissect the brain out of a salamator's head or its cranium. Mhmm. Now, here's the thing, if you cut open a human head, a human cranium for for brain surgery, once you get that skull cap off, it's a brain as far as you can see.
Amber Narro:Mhmm.
Chris Beachy:If you open up the brain the the head of a salamander, you know, you gotta kinda look around to find the brain. There's a lot of empty space in there. So I love salamanders, but let me suggest to you, they're not the brightest critters on the block.
Amber Narro:Gotcha.
Chris Beachy:So when you see them and they don't run away from you, partly, they have no fear. Second, I don't think they're thinking about too much. I think there's a lot of basic instincts going on.
Amber Narro:Know enough to be scared.
Chris Beachy:100%. I say it.
Amber Narro:I think that's my
Chris Beachy:second reason for him.
Amber Narro:Okay.
Chris Beachy:I love him though. I do love him, but they're I don't think they're the brightest critter on the block.
Amber Narro:That's okay. You know, some things that aren't bright are very lovable.
Chris Beachy:They absolutely are. Look at me.
Amber Narro:Oh, I was gonna say I'm very
Chris Beachy:loveable. Okay.
Amber Narro:So, I was gonna talk about my brother here. I mean, this is where I always insert brother jokes, right? But absolutely. Tell me why you love this salamander then. Like, really.
Amber Narro:I mean, it's not just because he's a he's a innocent little, you know, simple creature.
Chris Beachy:Okay. So
Amber Narro:because he's not
Chris Beachy:Am I allowed to tell stories and backgrounds and things like that? Indeed. So I didn't really I grew up in a family where where early in our life we'd go camping, but then we went for a gap of, you know, twenty years where there's no camping and no outside family activity aside from sports. I went off to college. Get busy, Yeah.
Chris Beachy:I guess. I don't know. Well, but anyway, I wasn't spending much time outdoors discovering things. I didn't spend enough time as a child digging through rocks, digging through creeks on my own. I didn't do enough of that as a kid.
Chris Beachy:When I got to college, I had to do an undergraduate research project except we were told you have to find your own project. Okay. So I was taking a course where we were told to go dig in the woods for salamanders. I was like, what does that mean? And I turned over a rock and there was a thing called the red backed salamander.
Chris Beachy:Plethodont cenarius is the scientific name.
Amber Narro:Thank you.
Chris Beachy:And I flipped it over and it was kind of brownish with this beautiful, not red stripe, but you could see where the red name comes from because it's a very orange stripe going down its back and it just sat there looking at me and it was spectacular. I could pick it up and it didn't run. It looked at me. And so I just felt sort of a a it just got attached to me and I really enjoyed that experience. And so I can't really explain it besides You're that's what it is.
Chris Beachy:I don't even know if it's the friend thing, but I've been stuck on salamanders ever since. That was in 1985. So I'm an old man now and I'm still into salamanders and the joy I find by catching a salamander either in a net or in a trap or looking under locks and rocks and logs in the forest, I still get that real joy. So it's not something that I can like really explain. I've said this.
Chris Beachy:I you know, you could ask me to explain why I'm in love with my wife and I could list the reasons, but really I can't explain it. I just am deeply in love with my wife.
Amber Narro:Right. It could just cry.
Chris Beachy:She's Yeah. Me and I don't get why she's with me but I feel so blessed by that and it's not like that. There's no real reason. It's just.
Amber Narro:After twenty six years, I always ask that about Jake. Why are you still with me? I don't even like me anymore. I can hardly tolerate myself. Why do you wanna be here?
Chris Beachy:We gotta get over that. We need to get you some help. Know. I'm lucky that way because, you know, people will confirm this. I think a lot of myself.
Amber Narro:That's awesome.
Chris Beachy:So I try and get over that. I'm working at
Amber Narro:Indeed. But, yeah, I mean, what you say about, like, your wife or what I would say about Jake could describe a whole lot of people. Absolutely. But you just don't know where that love came from.
Chris Beachy:Right? Right. Now now this is important to me when it comes to conservation value.
Amber Narro:Thank you.
Chris Beachy:Yeah. Many times when we talk about, okay, what value does this organism, this critter have? I get asked that question a lot. And I can always give an answer that that will appeal to someone who needs there to be a value assigned to that salamander. But for me, what I really try and get people to understand is, oh, it's a beautiful entity that merits being here because it is here.
Chris Beachy:It's a bit bit like, you know, asking someone who plays cello, what's the value in that piece of wood that you got between your legs there? What is what's the point? Their answer is it's a beautiful existence Mhmm. And that matters. And so no one will ever tell a cello player, you know, you should burn that thing and be better as firewood.
Chris Beachy:They're like, I value that you think it's beautiful because I find it beautiful too. Salamanders and their life is exactly that. There's value in them because of what who they are and they have their own existence. Now what's neat is if you can extend that to every living thing. We should be conserving things.
Chris Beachy:It it it it's interesting and useful when they have applications, but I try and tell people you shouldn't expect that to be your reason for conserving something. The reason you conserve something is because it has existed for millions of years. Mhmm. And no matter what your ideas are about how it came to be, whether or not it was specially created or whether or not it's a product of evolution, no matter what your answer is to that question, you don't wanna let this thing go. You need to protect it and conserve it.
Amber Narro:There's a reason somewhere. Right? Yeah. And maybe we just haven't found it yet.
Chris Beachy:They all have value and there's a reason. Everything has a place, but, you know, we have to appreciate that things are beautiful and that works. And that's just okay. Yeah. That
Amber Narro:is But Yeah. But
Chris Beachy:Oh, there are app applications. Yeah. Yeah.
Amber Narro:So the salamander though does not go in that category, however. So the salamander is being used right now in medical research if I am if I am remembering my last conversation with you well. We actually spoke probably eighteen months ago, two two years Not ago maybe sure. At North Shore Broadcasting before I came back to KSLU
Chris Beachy:Yeah.
Amber Narro:About some of that. Remind our listeners Okay. Or or educate our listeners if it's on if they are KSOU Mhmm. Loyal. Sure.
Amber Narro:Tell tell us about what are salamanders being used in medical research for? I do remember this answer, by
Chris Beachy:the I actually do. Yeah. No problem. It's it's real it it's really interesting. You can use salamators for a lot of applications in medical research.
Chris Beachy:The most prominent example concerns a species of salamator that's called the axolotl. And the axolotl now has become famous. I went through decades of my life wishing salamanders were famous at all. Finally, the axolotl over the past ten or fifteen or twenty years has achieved a level of fame now. It's hard to find people who don't know what an axolotl is.
Chris Beachy:Now an axolotl is a type of salamander. It's an interesting salamander because it never undergoes metamorphosis. So you always keep it in an aquarium. What's metamorphosis? Reminded Metamorphosis from my is when you switch from being an amphibian that has has a young stage, it has gills and a tail fin, and metamorphosis is when it decides, I'm doing air quotes now on the radio, those don't work on the radio, do they?
Chris Beachy:They work for me. Trust me, I'm It doing decides that under the right conditions, maybe it's time to leave the water and have a life on land. And that's what salamanders are really neat for. Before I get to the medical stuff, I I gotta tell you, salamanders are really neat because they have a whole set of genes to live that aquatic life and then they sort of close-up that toolbox and open up a whole new toolbox to live life on land. We don't do that.
Chris Beachy:We use the same toolbox our whole life. So for me that's fascinating. Now getting back to the axolotl which just stays in the water all the time, one of the things the axolotl is famous for that many people are starting to know is regeneration. Now regeneration is very different than fixing a wound. If a human cuts off an arm, we just say, Let's make sure it doesn't get infected.
Chris Beachy:Sometimes we can reattach the arm but that comes with a that's very difficult to do, okay? So most of the time when people have a farm accident, especially if they can't find the arm again, you end up with a person with just a stump And okay? Now with the axolotl, if an arm is cut off either by a predator or by an inquisitive scientist, that arm grows back perfectly and completely just like you see in the movies that feature Deadpool. They regenerate not as fast as Deadpool but they regenerate that entire arm. And what's cool about regenerating that entire arm is it's not like a lizard can regrow its tail.
Chris Beachy:When a lizard regrows its tail, it's mostly just skin. Okay? It doesn't include bone or muscle and it definitely doesn't include nerves. When you cut off a part of a salamander and grows it back, it grows back all the nerves. We went through a lot of biomedical history thinking the nerves in our body cannot regenerate.
Chris Beachy:We're starting to change that perspective. We have some limited capacity to do that in humans. But salamanders can do it completely and perfectly. Now salamanders are using the same genetic toolkit for many things that humans are. So if we can understand more and more about how that salamander regrows its entire arm, then we'll be able to apply that to humans.
Chris Beachy:With enough time and research, then sooner or later, when someone has a farm accident and they can't find their arm, they're gonna go to a hospital, they're gonna give them a topical cream, they're gonna rub it on that stump, and that human will regrow their arm. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it will happen for sure.
Amber Narro:No. To me, sounds like next twenty five years
Chris Beachy:or a hundred and twenty five years is a question.
Amber Narro:Absolutely. And it's think about the things that we could do now that we couldn't do a hundred years ago. Right? Five years ago. Yeah.
Amber Narro:Five years ago. Honestly, it's just it it takes the next person figuring it out. Mhmm. You know? There is only I'm you know, my prayer is still that during my lifetime, somebody says, yeah, cancer's done.
Amber Narro:We've had enough of that.
Chris Beachy:Sure. Well, even think about what we've done about cancer in our lifetime. Indeed. When you and I were children That worked. Millie got
Amber Narro:cancer Good.
Chris Beachy:She died. Right. Now, still there are people who die of cancer, but there's a lot of people who say, I have a cancer diagnosis, and they get it treated. Amen. And they may have to deal with it for their whole life, but in many cases sometimes we can cure cancer.
Chris Beachy:It depends on the type of cancer. So the amount of progress we've made in cancer biology has been astonishing and that's been in the past fifty years. Right. So I think when, you know, your dream about that, yeah, it will come to pass where someday that will all be gone. Right.
Amber Narro:But this and your that dream that you have of growing back a limb. Yeah. Trust me is just as important as that cancer research. Sure. Absolutely.
Amber Narro:For a lot of people who don't
Chris Beachy:have Especially when we think about growing arms back. Sure. But that also applies to spinal cord injuries.
Amber Narro:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Chris Beachy:If somebody has a spinal cord injury, we've studied that in my lab in association with some other labs where you cut off the axolotl's tail. That tail has a spinal cord in it. So you've removed the spinal cord from it, it's gone. That axolotl grows that whole tail back including the spinal cord. And so what we have studied in the past is what genes are specifically turned on and off where that cut was made.
Chris Beachy:Then we compare that to say if you cut off a mouse's tail and we compare the sets of genes that are being turned on and off. And we're quite confident that sooner or later we'll be able to tell that mouse tail, Oh, here's how we're gonna turn certain genes on and off that you haven't been turning on and off and that mouse tail will regrow. And then we'll be almost all the way there to fixing spinal cord injuries because then we'll be able to apply whatever we technique we use to build that mouse tail, we'll be able to take a severed human spine and apply it to that severed human spine, it will grow back completely. In other words, those people end up being quadriplegics or paraplegics. I'm not saying it's gonna happen in ten years, but within a hundred years this will be solved and salamanders will have been an important part of that solution.
Amber Narro:That is so amazing. I mean honestly I'm getting chills when you're talking about that because it feels like it is so Yeah. You know, the word groundbreaking and breakthrough, those are huge words, right, that are used daily to to describe something that's, you know, making a key ring. I don't know. Something easy.
Amber Narro:You know? But this truly is and could be the the true meaning of of breakthrough. Yeah. If we could that changes this world. That just doesn't change a life.
Amber Narro:That changes this world. Everybody who touches that individual, the whole everything.
Chris Beachy:Yeah.
Amber Narro:So that is just gives me chills just thinking about it. Now, Chris, the the great part of this, and one part that I don't want to fall on deaf ears here is that you are working with other labs with this. I picked that up when you were talking Sure. Just a second ago. Tell me how that works.
Chris Beachy:Lots of collaborators. Where? Actually, oh, so so I always say, if I've had success in my life, it's not due to me. It's because I know who'd go to who to go stand next to.
Amber Narro:Sure.
Chris Beachy:I do a lot of standing next to people who do great things. So the labs I've collaborated with are the medical school at the University of North Dakota. I have a colleague named Randall Voss at the University of Kentucky and his position now, he's in the spinal cord regeneration unit at the University of Kentucky. Randall, he and I went to graduate school together, we were students together. He's gone on to found a thing called the Salamander Genome Project and the early work on sequencing salamander genes, that was all my colleague Randall.
Chris Beachy:So I got to collaborate a lot with Randall in the early 2000s to do some of this work. And now, thanks to the work that Randall did, there are axolotl projects around the world. I'll bet you there are a thousand labs working on axolotl regeneration and their genetic tool kits now. So I've worked with colleagues at the University of Kentucky. I used to have colleagues at the University at Southeastern Louisiana University until I moved here and became a member of Southeastern Louisiana University and now over here in the same place so we work together.
Chris Beachy:I've got colleagues at Western Carolina University And so, no, colleagues are it's what it's all about. And that's one of the things I don't know. I've always been lucky that somehow I'm able to build communities around me. And and like I said, I find important, interesting, fun, smart people, and I gotta stand next to them. Absolutely.
Chris Beachy:And I do that a lot, and that seems to help.
Amber Narro:It does. Really does. It does. It rubs off. It truly does.
Amber Narro:Mhmm. Also, I wanna make sure that our listeners understand that not only are you doing this research Mhmm.
Chris Beachy:You have helpers among you. So so we do in in biological sciences Or around you. Probably our most excellent learning resource we provide to students is the opportunity to do research.
Amber Narro:Yes. At the undergraduate level. At the undergraduate starting at the freshman year.
Chris Beachy:Yeah, if the, yeah, if a student wants to do that, then they should go talk to a faculty member who's doing laboratory research or field research. The students just need to go inquire about those research programs. One of the easiest ways to find out about the research programs in biology is visit the biology faculty web pages and just start clicking links that you find and you'll find that about half of the biology faculty have active research programs. Some of those are out of doors, some of those are strictly in labs, they cover everything from basic cell biology to immunology to field ecology to evolutionary relationships. It's all over the place.
Chris Beachy:You know we have a substantial program that monitors the ecological health of the Lake Morapaw Basin. That's a really important thing we do. And so we engage a lot of undergraduate students in research. Truly any student who wants to get involved in that, they have to seek that out and they can have that opportunity if they want. You know not all students take it because it's not what every student wants but the students who want to and they're devoted to it.
Chris Beachy:Yeah, they get an outstanding learning opportunity and there's nothing like learning biology in a laboratory or field setting when you're trying to learn something new that no one knows yet. Learning out of a textbook is fine, but actually participating in the scientific discovery process is the best way to learn about how biology works and how science works.
Amber Narro:I love that. Thank you. I I honestly, I'm glad I asked the question rather than tried to explain it because I couldn't have said that any better. That is amazing.
Chris Beachy:Well, it's what we're here for. And
Amber Narro:the taxpayers are
Chris Beachy:paying for it, and we're here to give it to them.
Amber Narro:Indeed. And not only are your students able to just go to faculty web pages, I'm gonna talk to you students who might be listening right now as we, as you're walking through the student union here at Southeastern or on your radio, on your phone, however you're listening to KSLU. Please walk up to your professors and talk to them as well after class or find their office hours and go visit and see what you can do to be a part of those labs. These these researchers, these professors are actively involved in helping this world in some sort of way. Not only you, several of your colleagues who are in different types of labs.
Amber Narro:So salamanders aren't for you. That's fine. You can go and visit the snakes or you can go and do some some virus hunting and all sorts of chemistry. There's tons of labs. The virus, the fishes,
Chris Beachy:the fishes, whatever. Yes.
Amber Narro:It's Indeed.
Chris Beachy:You can work on it here.
Amber Narro:Indeed. Thank you so much for joining us. And then you've gotta come back because I know that we're just scratching the surface here. I wanna talk a little bit more about these awesome little creatures and some of the things that you found in your lab.
Chris Beachy:Well, we'll have those can come back and maybe bring some of my students and their student projects. They can describe what they're doing. Oh, we know, students when they do stuff, they're not just messing with salamators. They're asking questions about how they work in the world that are unknown. And the students can describe some of their projects they're doing.
Chris Beachy:It would be a nice example for other students out there listening to to say, oh, that's what we can do right here at Southeastern.
Amber Narro:Done. We're we're doing that for sure. Alright.
Chris Beachy:Let's set up a time. Absolutely.
Amber Narro:Thank you for joining me today. I appreciate you. Always so fun to talk. It's my pleasure, Amber.
Chris Beachy:Thank you so much for
Amber Narro:having Absolutely. Absolutely. And thank you for listening here on ninety point nine FM The Lion at KSLU. Join us again on Thursdays and Fridays at 09:00 at the Lion's Roundtable. This is Amber Narro.
Amber Narro:Y'all have a great day.
