807: Conducting Cool Science on Conservation in Arctic and Subarctic Ecosystems - Dr. Luise Hermanutz
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Hi, everyone. This is Episode 807 of People Behind the Science. I'm your host, Dr. Marie McNeely, and today we are rebroadcasting our interview with our guest, Dr. Louise Hermanetz.

Listeners, Louise is a plant ecologist, conservation biologist, and field biologist. Her research examines how organisms survive and adapt in their environments, and she's interested in how plants and animals interact and how that shapes the world around us. Most of her work focuses on northern boreal forests as well as the Arctic tundra. And in our interview, Louise tells us more about her exciting research, as well as her career path and her life outside of science.

So listeners, I hope you enjoy this episode of 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 another episode of People Behind the Science. Today, I am excited to introduce you all to Dr. Louise Hermanetz. So thank you so much for joining us, Louise. How are you? Oh,

Oh, I'm great. I'm really excited to have this conversation. Well, we are thrilled to get to know you today, Louise. Now, listeners, she is a professor in the Department of Biology at Memorial University in Canada. Louise received her PhD in plant ecology from Western University in London, Ontario. And afterward, she taught as a per course instructor in the geography department there.

and then later did a postdoc at the University of Wollongong in Sydney, Australia before she joined the faculty there at Memorial University. Now, Louise is here with us today to tell us about her journey through life and science. So today we want to get to know you, Louise, both as a scientist, but also as a person. So let's start off with chatting about what you like to do when you're not doing science.

Geez, I don't know. You know, the job of a professor is pretty all-encompassing and you do tend to live and breathe it pretty heavily, but I'm a field biologist, so I spend a lot of my time outdoor and

Strangely enough, even when I'm off, I like to be outdoor because we live in Newfoundland. We have kind of coastal weather and it's on and off and snow. So, but I love snowshoeing. It's probably my favorite thing. Just a snowshoe through the woods behind our house and just, you know, observe all the birds and just mellow out with all the lovely green around me.

So I love to cook. I also love to eat it, unfortunately. I really like to cook a lot. So I cook for people and have dinner parties and things like that. So I guess, you know, being a social person, it's a nice interface to have that cooking and chatting. So yes, I read a lot.

Fantastic introduction to your personal side. And I love to hear about these different things that professors like to do when they're not at work. I think there's so much going on in your life, you know, between the science, between all these activities and hobbies that you like to balance. It can be hard to get everything done in a day. So can you tell us a little bit more about the work that you do? You know, how do you describe what you do to someone who's not in science?

Okay, so I always call it the great puzzle. So one of the really exciting things about science and biology, obviously, because I'm a biologist is kind of the solving the puzzle about how organisms actually survive. So I'm interested in how plants and animals interact. And

and how that shapes the world we see around us. We go out there and look and you see a forest and you go, oh, well, I see some birds and I see some flowers and aren't those big trees? But really, there's so much going on that we really don't understand. It's kind of shocking because you think it's pretty elemental. But the big question about how plants and animals survive and adapt to their environments, and because I work mostly in northern environments,

except for my stint in Australia, which I absolutely loved and I'll talk about later. But, you know, I do most of my work in boreal forest and in the Arctic tundra. It's really interesting to see what's going on beneath our feet. Humans are pretty self-absorbed. And I think it's just so fascinating to try and figure out and disentangle what are the strategies that plants and animals use, just trying to figure out what's going on around us. And like I said, many times we really don't have a clue.

Absolutely. So do you find being a biologist and also enjoying going outdoors, is this something where you have trouble turning it off? Are you constantly kind of going over these questions, observing the natural world and thinking about it maybe when you're out snowshoeing in your backyard? And it's funny because I have two sons and because one of the things we do is observe, right? And I think, you know, my sons would always go, Mom.

Quit looking at that person or quit doing that. And I'm going, all I'm doing is looking at them, you know, because you are always kind of evaluating what things are happening around you. And I think observational skills are something we really don't teach our kids and our students enough just to sit and look around and kind of really try to understand context. I think that's really interesting. Well, I know I myself have been guilty of being a starer on more than one occasion, so I can definitely relate to this. Yeah.

Well, Louise, great to hear a little bit more about your work. And like I said, there's a lot of work to do in science and it's kind of hard to turn your brain off sometimes. But one of the things that I love to hear about and understand is what motivates scientists. So can you share with myself and our listeners today, one of these motivational factors, maybe a saying or a mantra that you love to keep in your mind?

Well, I think, you know, people always ask me, well, you know, you dissect all these little things or how a plant can survive in whatever, you know, environment. And they go, doesn't it become boring once you know everything? And I'm always surprised that people think we know everything because really, in most cases, no matter what kind of science research,

physical, biological, we really have just scratched the surfaces on so many things. So one of my favorite saying is the more we know, the more we don't know about the way the world works. I like that. The second one I live by is never say never.

Those are both fantastic quotes. I think you're absolutely right. I think we're never really going to get to the point where we know everything in any field in science. I think there's always more to discover. And you're absolutely right. The more you learn, sort of the more questions that come up, the more you want to know. And I do like this never say never, because I think there's always an exception to every rule in science. So there's always that one outlier, that one thing that you don't quite understand what might be going on that's causing it to not be behaving as you might expect. Yeah.

Exactly. And don't think that, you know, you may have reached one end point, but there's always more. That's right. Well, Louise, let's chat next about your journey in science. And can you start by telling us a little bit about some of the people who you've looked up to along the way, some of these role models that you've had?

Okay, I guess I've had several. My PhD supervisor, Dr. Susan Weaver, was really an inspiration to me, and I'll talk about why. And the other one is the late Deborah Rabinowitz. She was a plant ecologist that died of breast cancer way too early. Both of the women, when I look back and started to think about it, both of them were very similar in their kind of approach. They were very unassuming, they were very hardworking, and they were brilliant.

You know, for example, my PhD supervisor, her first degree was actually in philosophy, which was kind of interesting, right? And they were very accepting of diversity. And they weren't really stuck. And I don't want this to sound bad. They weren't stuck on getting to the top. And what I mean by that is that they were always willing to sit down, chat to you. They were very much team players. And that's very much important in my work. I'm not interested in...

you know, kind of everybody on their own little track trying to get ahead. I really value teamwork, working with my colleagues, but also my students. But, you

They were very inclusive others. They were willing to listen to all views. The other person is Sylvia Earle. Sylvia Earle, she's a marine biologist, but why I kind of looked up to her is that she went to places many women didn't go, and she chose a very public profile to do that. And I look up to people, not just women. I look up to people that are able to make that decision because most scientists don't

not all, you know, would rather just kind of do their work. Most of them are not out there spouting their own thing, the ones I know anyway. And it's sometimes hard to say, well, you know what, I am going to go out and I'm going to try and have a public face so that I can really kind of seduce people to look at how interesting all of this is. And I think to me, I look up to people like that.

Well, Louise, you brought up some phenomenal points in this description of some of these mentors and role models that you've had. And I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's almost easier to just hold yourself away in the lab and not deal with trying to communicate your science, trying to get things out there, trying to get people excited about it or as excited about it as you are. But I think it's so important. So I love this description of you almost trying to seduce the public into being interested in what you're working on and excited about your science.

So that is phenomenal. I was going to say one of the things that really turned me off about academics at the very beginning was that many times the ivory tower and that is sometimes well-deserved.

And that, to me, one of the most important contributions I can make is to actually, let's face it, I'm at a university, taxpayers pay my salary. I think it is actually part of my job to let the public know what I've learned. How have I invested their money to further having society benefit from what I've done? So these are really important things to me. Definitely.

Definitely. Well, great to hear that you are invested in communicating your science to the public and sharing what you're learning in the lab to get people excited about it. So, you know, you can feel your passion just emanating from you as you're talking about your science and your research. Can you tell us where that passion, that excitement started? Take us all the way back to the beginning, Louise, and tell us what sparked your curiosity for science? Well,

Because I'm on the older side, sometimes it's interesting to look back and see your own journey. Like I said, it is kind of fun to actually sit down and have to think about that because it is kind of interesting. My mother always told me that from the time I was a baby, basically, when I started to walk, that I was always interested in walking.

planted animals. She said she always knew I was going to be a biologist. I grew up, you know, in the 50s and 60s. And, you know, there's all this expansion going on and subdivisions everywhere. That's where I grew up. And I was lucky enough to have a wild area behind that that just didn't get developed.

And so I spent all my time there. And, you know, I would bring home snakes. I would do this much to my mother's chagrin. And then, you know, that was also at the time Jacques Cousteau was really kind of opening up the area of marine biologists. So, you know, everybody wanted to be a marine biologist. So I went to the University of Guelph because I have a marine biology program. I wanted to be a marine biologist.

And then it was big classes and I got tired of that anonymity. And so I switched to botany, which is kind of an odd thing, but because at that time zoology and botany were not biology. So I went to botany and they were, you know, and I hate to say this is one of my torches now is how much people underappreciate how

how amazing plants are. And that's where I got hooked into it. It was very small because, you know, people are always way more interested in animals than plants. So I got the benefit of very small classes. I got to know my profs. I got to work with my profs. I

I really saw how dedicated they were. That, to me, was so important to be able to be in the small group and really get to know my fellow students, my graduating class. I think there were like five of us. Oh, wow. So, you know, it was just one of those things, you know, that really sparked my interest in research. And so I went on to do a master's and that's where I really started my field biology career.

I got to go to Iowa, believe it or not. And I worked in one of the last tall grass prairie preserves that had never been plowed, which is pretty amazing. And, you know, that's where I learned to get ticks and all kinds of wonderful things that come with doing field biology. But it was a field station and it just really opened my eyes. I got to, you know, meet people from all over the world.

graduate students doing all kinds of cool things. They had a speaker series where lots of high profile scientists came and kind of hung out for a week. And so it was really a great experience for me. And that's where I really deepened my fascination with

How do organisms adapt to their surrounding? I got to work in the desert. It's a long story, but one of my former partners is doing a PhD in the desert looking at seed hoarding rodents. So I got to do all kinds of cool work in the deserts.

So I've been really lucky to be able to go all these really neat spots. And I think that's one of the big hooks for me anyway, is that I love to travel and love to experience new things. So I'm lucky that I get to do both, you know, the biology, but I also get to indulge this travel thing. But at that time, I kind of decided academics wasn't for me. I'll be nice to say that at that time, most of the profs I interacted with were, you

You know, you have to be nice here. Of course, of course, they might be listening. You know, it wasn't a road I wanted to take. The way they interacted in their world, I just thought it wasn't for me. I didn't think they were very welcoming. So I thought, well, let's go and see what else we can do. So I took five years off, which is why I say it's a long and winding road. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I worked at an independent bookstore, which I actually loved.

I waited at a bar and restaurants. I did all kinds of things like that. And then the prof I did my master's with, he was moving into doing work in the Arctic. And I went, oh, I've always wanted to go to the Arctic. So for the next few years, I coordinated his research project up in the Arctic, which was really nice. Baffin Island, Agulik Island. I got to go to some really awesome spots.

and make some really interesting connections in the North. And that's what really started my love affair with the North. And so I still work in Northern Canada.

So, you know, reality prevailed and I went, geez, I'm going to go back and do my PhD. But then it was difficult at the time to actually get a PhD in the north. So I ended up doing my PhD on invasive plants of crops, which is kind of interesting, a whole different thing. Yeah. It was really fun, though. I got to work at an agricultural station, which is where I met Sue Weaver. She was a weed ecologist there.

at Ag Canada. And so I had a great time there. I got to interact at this, it was quite a large agricultural station. The people treated me so well and I got very spoiled. I had my own greenhouses. I had, you know, people to help me do all my work and I got to work with the farmers. And that's the second part of what I think is very important for me is that I actually got to work with

what I'll call the people on the ground. So in this case, I worked a lot with farmers about weeds in their fields. I worked in tomato and soybean fields on these southern weeds and, you know, worked kind of at the interface of

ecology and what does this mean to people who actually work the landscape and things like that. So that's maybe where my passion for working with people started. You know, they were very welcoming. They always were helpful, even though sometimes I didn't deliver the best news to them and things like that. But, you know, that really started to for me to integrate outreach into how I do science. Then, as I say, after I graduated from my PhD, I taught a plant biogeography course and

Then I had twins. And then life, you know, went a little crazy there. Of course. My husband's a professor also. And I went to his first sabbatical, which was in Australia. And that's my second love. Australia is totally different than the North. But for anyone who is interested in biodiversity, it's a must-see. It's like jaw-dropping, right?

It took me six months to even learn the basics of plants. It's like a different world. Every step you take, there's something different.

the birds, the amphibians, the reptiles. It's just like it boggles the mind. So it's a pretty awesome spot to do a postdoc. So then back in Canada, I ended up landing a job at Memorial University as a plant ecology. So, you know, I've had a really awesome trip, not always knowing where my next steps might be. And that's what I want to stress. I really want to stress to everybody, there's not a single path along this journey. There's

Always people that do it straight on. My husband, for example, did the typical undergrad, master's, PhD, postdoc academic position. You know, he went straight through, whereas some of us choose a different path, but end up where we want to do. So I always want to say, you know, you have to look at the diversity of people and backgrounds to really think that there's no one way to where you want to get to.

Well, I think that is such an important point. And I'm really glad you brought it up, Louise. I think you've had just a fascinating journey. And I think there are a lot of young people out there right now who are contemplating careers in science, but they're hearing a lot of negative things, maybe about career prospects, about the path of a scientist and what it's going to be like. And it's turning a lot of people off. So I love chatting with scientists about that.

maybe some of these non-conventional journeys that have taken them to a scientific position or just some of the things that they love about the career that keeps them going or brought them back maybe after a brief hiatus. So can you tell us what was the one thing that really brought you back?

It was that when I was working for my former master's supervisor, I got to plan the research. I got to go and do the research. So slowly but surely, I got seduced back into going, well, you know what? I really do love this. There's so much there. And then I started to see other people that were maybe more like myself in terms of

of wanting to do outreach. I felt there was a place in academics for me. You know, maybe it was loosening up a bit at the time because it is highly competitive. And so a lot of people think that, oh, all I have to do is be an academic. All I have to do is get lots of papers out there and do all that. But when I got my job, part of the way I sold myself was that my experience would be really valuable for

First off in my teaching, because of course, you know, being a professor, you have many different roles. It's not just research, it's teaching, but the research also benefits by experience, right? So, you know, that was a really important way that I sold myself. It wasn't like I was wet behind the ears coming out of a PhD, which is not necessarily bad. We've just hired a couple of people here, which are excellent.

But, you know, not everybody goes that route. And I think it's important. I always say if you're not ready, one of my own sons is at this juncture of his career. You know, if you're not ready to go back to graduate school, do not do it. Do not do it. Go out and work because we've seen so many times where people kind of go in because they don't really know what to do. And it's really not good. People get discouraged. They get depressed.

They don't know where they're going. So what I always say is if you don't know that's what you want to do, take some time off. One or two years is not going to make a difference. You know, you need to know that's what you want to do. So to me, it wasn't like somebody hit me on the head with a hammer and go, oh, this is what I want to do. It took me a little while to go, yeah, you know what? I really do love doing this. So that's what it was.

Well, Louise, I think this is a fantastic story to share with our listeners. And I think you have some really great advice here that if you're not sure this is what you want to do, take some time off, explore some options, try some different things before you go to graduate school. Because if you're not committed at that point when you start graduate school, you are going to have a frustrating and difficult experience going through it. It's very frustrating. And a lot of people then just go, oh, go do a PhD. A PhD is not like...

It's not something you just go do. Yeah. And it's not like just a longer master's. It's not. It's a whole different ballgame. Right. And you committing yourself to different types of jobs that maybe having a master's is where you want to be and that's what you're going to do. So, you know, I've had graduate students that have done both and there's lots of possibilities doing both.

Absolutely. Well, Louise, it has been fantastic to chat about your journey and hear about how you got to where you are today. But can you tell us a little bit more now about one of these projects that you're working on that you are so thrilled to be a part of? Yeah. And that's why I was going, darn, I've got kind of three big research areas and I'm going, what am I going to pick? But I decided to talk about the work I'm doing looking at climate change on tundra ecosystems and

I work with a really great network of northern researchers, and what we're looking at is basically how is climate change and environmental change, because there's lots of

changes other than climate happening in the north, development and things like that. So how is environmental change going to affect tundra ecosystems? We consult a lot with aboriginal communities. So in my case, I work in northern Labrador, which has its own aboriginal government. It's an Inuit government, the Nunatsia government.

And it's really fun. It's, you know, a very different way of interacting because you are expected to more or less, I wouldn't say necessarily vet what you're going to do, but you know, you have to have the communities and the government's blessing about what you're going to do on their territory and

So it's kind of interesting because, you know, in many cases, it's a great partnership. Yes, we want this done. But sometimes you do have to say why it is what you're doing is important, how you're going to engage community and what is it that they're going to get at the end. And that's really all encompassing. I think it's really fun. So we use experimental methods in the field. So we have experimental warming chambers where we're able to look at short term warming on some species. We're especially interested in berry species.

because berry species are kind of like the backbone of tundra. The flowers are important for pollinators. The berries are important for wildlife. And berries are really important for northern people. They're an important part of their diet. And everybody knows now, you know, berries are... All the antioxidants. And it's also very important culturally because going out on the land and picking berries is a really family-oriented activity.

cultural activity. So to me, it's the whole enchilada. You get to work at all levels of

So, for example, one of the other things we're interested in, how do northern people use plants? So kind of the ethnobotany. I work with a really interesting ethnobotanist named Dr. Alain Currier, who is an ethnobotanist at the Montreal Botanical Garden. He's an amazing guy. And so, you know, we've worked with Inuit. How have they used plants in the past? Biologically, that's interesting, but also culturally, the elders are afraid plants

that all of this knowledge is being lost and not being transmitted to the next generation. So, you know, you're on these really interesting interfaces. So you're doing biology, but you're also doing some really interesting other things.

One of the other big things about how climate change is going to affect tundra is how it's going to affect shrub encroachment. And people go, so what? But then when you think about it, tundra is, you know, by definition, a treeless area. It's usually pretty low growing vegetation, you know, around rivers, you may get some tall shrubs and stuff. But what we've been finding, and you can actually pick it up, believe it or not, within two years, once you start to warm a small plot of land,

And we do this by putting up almost like I hesitate to call them, but they're called open top chambers. And what they are is kind of plexiglass greenhouses, but the tops are open. So it kind of warms about two degrees, which in some of our areas is what the warming is supposed to be in the next 20 years or so. So we're trying to kind of reflect that. Like a mild heat lamp kind of thing. Yeah. So what happens is these shrubs come in and they start to grow denser.

And it has several repercussions. One is caribou is a very important herbivore in the landscape up there. It's the major herbivore, unless you go more west and then there are muskox and things like that. But in our area, it's mostly caribou. Caribou have been doing a nosedive globally. One of the reasons we think this is happening is that in many cases that the tundra, one of their more important plants, of course, are lichens. They're very important in the winter.

for winter forage and for summer forage. Of course, in the summer, they eat other things like grasses and sedges and things like that, and even some woody species. But one of the first things that happens, and like I said, you can record it in two years, which blew us away, is that there's already a shift in the tundra vegetation from something that is low growing with lots of lichens. Once those shrubs come in, lichens are very, very sensitive to shade. So as soon as you shade a lichen, they die.

And what happens is moss come in and moss is not something that caribou eat. So you can see right away with even what you think of as a fairly minor change, like, you know, some of us wouldn't even notice it, that all of a sudden it changes everything. It changes the distribution of the caribou, has impacts on their calving grounds, the availability of forage for them during the winter, especially, which is their hardest time, right, to get over.

Interestingly, also, it changes berry. Most berries don't like to be shaded either. So if you think blueberries, if you're blueberry pickers, you know the best places to go to pick blueberries are where it's either been burned or cut or something because they just don't like shade. They don't like to be shaded out. They like to be out in the open and out in the sun. So we're looking at how shrub encroachment is going to affect. So I have a PhD specifically looking at shrub and berry interactions. And then I'm

The other part is trying to get a handle on how shrub encroachment is going to change kind of the lay of the land. So we hear a lot from hunters that use snowmobiles, of course, in the winter to go out to hunt, that shrubs will completely change, and we know this, the lay of the snow.

completely screws up their runners on their snow machines. You know, it completely changes what their travel routes on the land have been. So it changes everything on the landscape. One small thing. So those are the sorts of things we look at.

We work with Parks Canada because the area I work on, if you look at the very tip, you go up the eastern coast of North America all the way to the very tip. That very tip is called the Labrador Peninsula, and that is a beautiful national park called the Torn Gap Mountains National Park. So I work with Parks Canada, who administers that.

As a land manager, we work towards looking at long-term monitoring schemes within the park because obviously they want to know how their park is changing. So I do a lot of work with Parks Canada with the Nunatsia government because obviously they're interested in monitoring too.

And the other thing that's really exciting is that I have another PhD student working on this plant called rose root or rhodiola, which is a really, really important nutraceutical plant. You can actually go to your food store or your health food store and you can actually get rhodiola capsules.

Oh, wow. Have you tried them?

The interesting thing about rhodiola is that you've got to kill the plant to get the root because that's where the goodies are. That's where the actual active ingredients are in this rhizome. And it's called rose root because when you cut that open, it smells like a rose. It's really beautiful smelling. Then it's dried and put into capsules or as an elixir. You can take it as drops and things like that. You can get them as different formulations.

But one of the things we're interested in is this other PhD student. She is actually a herbalist and an ethnobotanist. And what she's interested in is working with communities to bring the biology we know about this plant and enable them to grow it as what we call a small scale enterprise. So taking that biological knowledge. So we've done tests, which are the best cultivars because.

We don't want people to go out and wild harvest them because almost like, I can't remember, it's like 85% of all plants that are on the IUCN red list. It's not called a red list or nothing. It's the like, oh, we better watch it. We're going to lose this species is because of over harvesting for medicinal plants. Okay, so many plants say in China, in Europe are overharvested.

on the endangered species is because they've been overharvested. And we didn't want this to happen with rose root, which is a very common plant coastally. So don't get me wrong, it's not rare, but so were the other plants were not rare before they were overharvested. So what we wanted to do is give some back to the community, have this what we call a social enterprise. It would be small scale. They would grow it so that, you know, you can say that it's

fair trade. These are all very important concepts. So we're using the biology to inform that. So I'm more the conservation part of it. And the ethnobotanist is, you know, working with, we're co-supervisors of this PhD student. And now she's moving into working with communities. We've now put links up with the business school here. We have some young business schools working on how we make this a sustainable business and,

So, you know, to me, that's really good where you see something where you say, OK, now I can be sure that the community is going to get something out of it. They're going to have the best possible biology and they're not going to be over harvested. So those are the sorts of things, you know, where I think biologists can really have some big impacts on how things are done on the ground. Sure. So it's sustainability. Yeah.

Well, Louise, I think you have some really exciting projects going on in the lab that you've just shared with us. And I think in your description of them, you've really done a great job of covering these so what questions. I mean, a lot of times you talk to scientists and they tell you about their work, but they don't really convey the importance to the broader community or the importance to

how this applies to people in their daily lives. And I think you've done a really good job of that here. So, so far, we've talked about a lot of the great things about your career as a scientist and about your journey to get to where you are. But we haven't touched on some of the stumbling blocks. And I think every scientist goes through periods where they struggle with something or maybe they have a major failure. So can you take us back and tell us about one of your own experiences where you struggled?

This is where I was laughing when I read this question as I was going over the questions before the interview. I was going, okay, where do you start, right? It's been one long struggle. I always go, you know, it's like one step forward, two back, but eventually you keep on, you know, making progress. And this happened when I was doing a PhD. It was in my very last year of my PhD. As I said, I worked on weeds. One of the things I was interested in is what's called phenotypic plasticity. So what that means is

Everybody knows there are genetic basis for certain things, your hair color, your eye color, you know, whatever. Once that genotype gets out into the environment, it very much can be manipulated by the environment. And so that interaction between the genetics and the environment is called phenotypic plasticity. So really, it's just how variable things can be under different circumstances, under different environments.

So I was really interested in looking at weeds and kind of, you know, the big question is why the heck are weeds so successful everywhere? So, you know, the weed I worked on, it grew in a national park and on a beach. It grew in soybeans. It grew on the side of the road. It grew in people's gardens. I'm going like, you know, what is it about the plant that allows them to do this? So I spent a lot of time breeding certain lines of plants so that I could get certain types of plasticity characters, um,

So it took me like a year and a half or two years to breed these lines. I did that in the greenhouse, then to take those lines and put them out into the field. Because, of course, you really don't understand plasticity until you get, you know, the whole system. Yeah. What environment is going to deliver to that plant and what that plant has to live through. So I had this elaborate different density of different plants.

crops and different fertilizer regimes, all this stuff that a plant would encounter. Right. And so I had all these planted in very specific locations in this big thing that people had made up for me. And so it took months and like years and everything like that. I planted and I was going, oh, my God, this is going to be so great.

The very next day, we had a torrential downpour. Oh, no. And this is very sandy soil. So it completely washed the experiment out. Oh, my goodness. So I thought, oh, my God, what am I going to do? I can't do this all over again. So I went to my supervisor after licking my wounds for a while and, you know, having a few good cries. And I went to my supervisor and I go, what am I going to do? You know, this is my last experiment.

What am I going to have to do? And it's so funny. After some consoling sounds and blah, blah, blah, she looked at me. She goes, you've got more than enough for a PhD. This was going to be a great experiment, but let's move on. Let's just write up what you got. And I kind of went, oh, right. Okay. Yeah.

And so, you know, the thing is, it was very liberating because sometimes, especially as a PhD, you go, oh my God, I got so many peepers out of my PhD. You sort of get tunnel vision. Yeah. You got to get into these high impact journals and you got to do this. And then she just kind of went, listen, you got more than enough. Just go write up what you got. And so, yeah, that was...

Well, I think that is a fantastic story. And I think a lot of scientists out there, maybe particularly people who do work in the field, can relate to this experiments where nature just didn't cooperate and things went wrong. And it just can tank an entire experiment, which took months, maybe years to even get to that point where you're able to set it up and actually do the experiment.

So wonderful to hear how you were able to turn this around then and have it not be a catastrophic event in your career. You had enough data, you had enough to present, you got your PhD and you moved on. And I think that's so important in science to not get hung up with these failures, these challenges that you encounter.

You always got to look forward, as they say. That's right. So next, Louise, can you share a success story? We don't just want to talk about the tough times in your career. Tell us about a time where you've had a successful experience, either in your lab or at some point in your career, one that's meant a lot to you.

Okay. And this is where I have to talk a little bit more about some of the other stuff I do. I work on endangered species. The endangered species I work on are small little endemic plants, which is unusual. The arboreal begin with their limestone barrens plants, which we have in Newfoundland. They're in rural communities. And to me, the best thing is being recognized by the communities in which you work. And so what happened is, you know, this tiny little plant, honest to God, it's like...

A big one is five centimeters tall. Oh, my gosh. There are two species. And as I said, the limestone barrens, it's a very open area. It kind of looks like a parking lot sometime because it's got limestone gravels and all different kinds of limestones. I've been working there for about 15 years. I have quite a number of students working through that area of my research.

But one of the big things was you are right in the middle of the communities because it is very coastal. Newfoundland is fishing communities. Of course, rural communities are around fishing. So this area has been well-developed. It's got like the major highway going through it, the whole thing.

So we've been working with the communities to try and get them on board because these are listed species too. So they actually carry some heavy duty penalties, you know, if you're caught disrupting them and things like that, because they're on our species at risk and endangered species lists. So the whole thing was to try and orient communities towards, first of all, understanding why, you know, people look at the

plant go, really? What's that going to do for me? It doesn't look very significant. Yeah. It's not like if you get rid of this, you know, the landscape is going to fall apart. It probably would go on fine without these plants. Right. But, you know, from a biodiversity, they're really interesting.

And so working with these communities for many years, first of all, it's a big group. I don't want to say it's just me. There's a big group of local people, graduate students, people from other agencies working together as a team. It's part of actually a recovery team for these plants.

And so working with these communities and doing some pretty heavy duty science, you know, we didn't understand anything about these plants. Now we have a very good handle on them. We started to restore quarries because of course limestone is heavily quarried. And that's one of the reasons why these species are under threat. And so we've started to work on recovering and restoring quarries. And so we know a lot about the plants now. And so it's been really a joy to see how well the school kids are

have kind of glommed onto these, how the local communities

Because it's found nowhere else in the world, it's like this one particular species only found in a stretch of limestone barrens about 500 meters long, and I think it's 10 kilometers wide. That is the entire world distribution of this thing. Oh my goodness, that's impressive. It's really interesting because instead of people going, well, who cares? Like really, it's not that meaningful. They've really taken it almost as their mascot. So

I always call it the true Newfoundlander. Like there's one community where we were successful in getting them to back an ecological reserve, which is a type of protected area that we have here in Newfoundland.

You know, they back that. This small community is very cute. When you come into town, the plant is called a brea. It's like a rock crest. So it's got little white flowers. It's in the crucifery like the Brassicaceae family. Same family as like broccoli and stuff, although you never know it. And they actually have a picture of the plant as you come into town on their billboard.

They have adopted it. They have a Brea flag. They have something here called come home years where, because so many Newfoundlanders have left to work, you know, in the rural communities, they have these come home where everybody comes home and, you know, their flag was a Brea flag. That is adorable. I love it. You know,

to me that is the most satisfying thing because as a scientist, obviously as a conservation biologist, you strive to try to make inroads to make sure that they don't go extinct these plants. Right. And that's not always the easiest thing because it's,

You know, you're interfering with people's right to use their land. You really do have to have, how shall we say, their blessing to really to be able to do what in the end you want to do. You know, it's no good to me as a scientist to go and spend 15 years working on understanding these plants and the landscape and all this. And then just to have somebody with a pickup truck and a digger come and

destroy everything, right? So, you know, you're that close on the edge. So it's really, to me, other than the fact that I get to work with really great people, they're the sweetest people. Like we were doing our restoration and we had all these people helping us doing transplant. They brought us coffee in the field. Aw, that's awesome. Yeah.

We get little calls, you know, go, somebody's taken some gravel illegally, right? You know, so to me, that enables me to see my goal, which is to make sure this plant doesn't go extinct. But also, you know, just to see that people really do appreciate things and it doesn't have to be anything that they necessarily will get something good out of, you know, it does happen. Yeah.

Well, this is a wonderful story of success, really raising awareness for this small sort of almost you're portraying it as like a helpless little Abrea plant that, you know, but I think this is such a success for engaging the community, getting people excited about it and getting people invested in science and biodiversity. And I think that is so important and a really important step to take. So phenomenal story, Louise.

And I know the science takes up a large part of the life of a lot of scientists, but you did mention in the beginning that there's a lot of things that you like to do outside of work. And one of them that you mentioned was reading. And I love to get book recommendations from the people we have on our show. So Louise, I'm going to trouble you for a book recommendation today. Can you tell us about one of your favorite books? It can be science or non-science.

Well, this is a funny one because usually I hate to admit that, but I read a lot of murder mysteries and I can blame my sister. It's contagious. A friend of mine said, oh, you might like this book. And it's called On the Remarkable Achievement of Earthworms. And it's by a woman named Amy Stewart.

So it's kind of a popular science book. And it's a New York bestseller. She's got a great way of talking about something most of us go about. It is actually pretty funny the way she does things. But one of the things that's really neat is

You know, and we study Charles Darwin a lot because, of course, anything you come up with in especially ecology and, you know, Charles Darwin seems to have thought of everything. Right. And I was really shocked that Charles Darwin actually did some really interesting and brilliant experiments on earthworms and how they actually forage.

I think the most amazing thing is that they actually hunt for their food, especially the big lumber, because you know the big earthworms. We all think of the earthworms, the ones that go way down and the ones everybody wants in their garden because they aerate and all this stuff. He did this through a series of really ingenious experiments.

He found that they could orient leaves in a way to get them down their burrow. So like they actually had strategies to deal with different types of leaves and how they would actually get them down into the burrows, which is where they consume them, of course. So, you know, I always went, geez, you know, we really don't know something.

We have really underestimated the abilities of these earthworms. Exactly. And I'm just like, wow, that's just so interesting in terms of, again, one of these things where we take for granted that we know all this, but, you know, who thought that, you know, yes, earthworms have some ganglia and stuff like that, but who actually thought that they, you know, have these

abilities. He did this by giving them different shapes of different things, like he would cut the leaf in triangles or things that where they would actually have to reorient them to actually get them down their burrows and stuff. It's very cool anyway. And there's lots of other really kind of neat things about it.

Well, awesome book recommendation, Louise. I will put that out on our website for our listeners to check out to gain a better appreciation for earthworms. I'm going to have to add this one to my list as well. I like it. And the other interesting thing is that actually earthworms are not native to anywhere northern U.S. to Canada, right? Because they basically got ground out with glaciers. And now they're very, very...

very slowly moving northwards, right? But there's lots of invasions of earthworms and that's a whole other interesting story. But on the island of Newfoundland, of course, because we're an island hanging out in the North Atlantic, we don't have any native earthworms. So we started actually, all my students went out and we devised a sampling scheme and now we're actually looking at earthworms and where they are

Because earthworms are known now to change boreal systems to temperate, like because they turn over the soil. It's really interesting. Anyway, so it led to some work that we're doing in our lab. So that's kind of cool. Very cool. That's one of the things I guess I took for granted. I just assumed earthworms were everywhere, but I think you have a good point there. Yeah.

Very cool. Well, Louise, great to hear about this book recommendation, how it inspired some of the work in your lab. And we've talked about how over the years you've been able to do quite a bit of traveling in science. And this is one of the things that you appreciate about the career. Can you tell us what was your favorite place that you've traveled for science and why? I really love Australia. There are some just amazing things. And I don't necessarily mean Vista amazing, just like

What's going on there really boggles the mind in terms of biodiversity, you know, because they're one of the 15 hotspots of biodiversity around the world, southwest Australia. The most amazing place, I think, is...

It's called the Palmer Valley in the Torngat Mountains. It's just breathtaking to look at. And it just makes you think that you really are such a small insignificant thing in the world, even though humans have a big impact. But Kakadu National Park in northern territories in Australia is also amazing.

Absolutely amazing. I don't know. Yeah. So I would say the Palmer Valley and Torregat Mountains National Park, very few people have had the privilege of going up there. Well, that sounds wonderful. And I think a lot of the places that scientists do point to are just these naturally gorgeous places where you do sort of feel like put in perspective, you know, you see the world is huge and you're such a tiny part of it.

So very cool to hear about your experiences. And I know it is tough for a lot of scientists to pick that travel opportunity that they thought was their absolute favorite. And I love the Everglades. I don't know. There's just so many neat spots to go. So anyway. Absolutely. Well, listeners, you'll have to check out these spots that Louise has mentioned to us today. And we've talked a little bit about some of the people that you've been able to work with. And I think the people sometimes just

make the experience worth it in science. I think you get to collaborate with so many great people. We've talked about your opportunities to engage with the community as well as other scientists. And I think when you look back over the course of your career, there's a lot of different people you've had a chance to work with. And oftentimes in these little groups, you get some quirky traditions that spring up or just some hilarious memories that you've shared together. So can you tell us today about one of them?

Geez, I don't know. It's kind of one of these, I'm not sure we would class it under the hilarious, but first of all, like one of the big things that we really strive for that we do in our lab is we have a lot of potlucks. So we really all love to cook and we love to eat. So we try to make it kind of a get together where we have lab meetings every two weeks and people have to bring snacks to those. And then every once in a while we have a

potluck to kind of just chat and remember that we're people and not just scientists. So that's kind of a fun thing that we do. But one of the, I think most, how should we say memorable? I won't say it was funny or quirky. It was memorable is that I had a base camp in the Mealy Mountains, which is in central Labrador. Again, very isolated place where we were studying tree line change and climate change.

I had quite a big field camp out there for 10 years. And one year we were there in late September to do a final thing. This is like, you know, it takes an hour by chopper to get to the closest place. It's a pretty isolated spot. And unbeknownst to us, we had a beautiful day. There were, I can't remember, I think there were five graduate students there.

six graduate students, a postdoc, and myself. And we were just finishing up some research from that summer. And we had flown in for a week at the end of September, which can start to get pretty dodgy in Labrador. We had a gorgeous day. I had actually smuggled in a chocolate cake because one of the grad students was having her birthday today.

And it was the most amazing thing. Just as we brought in the birthday, you know, it was like 7 o'clock at night. All of a sudden, a huge windstorm. It was hurricane hit on the North Coast because the radio was out. And we basically lost all our personal camps because we have something called a weather haven, which is a strap down. It's a big place.

structure that's drilled into the ground. And it's a double wall tent that's insulated in the whole bit. That's where we cook and hang out. We have our own personal tents. So it came down like, well, it was like a freight train came down the valley. It was snow and ice with it. You know, the temperature dropped. We lost all our tents and we have some pretty heavy duty tents that just snapped the poles. It picked up one entire, and these are big tents. They're

four people tent because you got to have some room for yourself. And it just picked it up and just took it off. It took four or five people. People were trying to rescue their own stuff from these. We got into the weather haven and then the wind started picking up the end of the weather haven and it's got an aluminum frame. So we had to spend the whole night, four or five of us at a time hanging from it because if we lost that, I think we would have died of exposure, right? So it was kind of...

It was critical.

It dawned as the most beautiful day. And the three of us went and found the guy's tent who had been lost. And it was in a river. And Mrs. Wallace would say, students, never keep your data books in your tent. All his data books were in his tent. We managed to get them. Very good. I'm sure he was appreciative. I also found his underwear.

but then we won't get into that. Anyway, so, you know, we were able to rescue that. And then the chopper came in and helped us secure the whole area, put our tents down and get that all kind of secured for the winter because there are a lot of bears around there and things like that. So, you know, all of us, we all remember this one woman's birthday now. And it's kind of interesting because, you know, we all kind of pause every year and we go, wow, you know, that was really teamwork. And although I wouldn't say

It was fun or quirky. You know, I think everybody was proud of themselves and that they were able to come together as a team and really kind of rely on each other. Definitely. Well, Louise, this is just a fantastic story. I mean, I think the whole team mentality, bringing everyone together to make it through this tough situation. I think there are a lot of moments like this, maybe not so extreme in science, where just the team is so important to success. And I love this story. So I must ask, what became of the birthday cake? Was it lost to the storm?

I think over the next days, we kind of picked at it. Just because we couldn't cook or anything. So yes, it did get eaten for sure. Very good. Very good. The key I found about keeping Harmony and remote field campuses, chocolate and a lot of it. Yeah.

Well, I love it, Louise. A fantastic story to share with myself and our listeners today. And definitely one of those bonding moments that I'm sure no one in your lab is going to forget. Pretty close, I have to say. Definitely. And I know when you're working with your lab, you talk about science a lot. You talk about life, but you also talk about these big questions that are just burning in your mind that you would love to answer. And I think every scientist has one or two of these.

Can you tell us, Louise, if we took away all the restrictions, if things like funding and staff, technology, feasibility, not a problem, what is the question that you would want to answer? Wow. It's almost too much to contemplate, isn't it? I thought about this one. And to me, you know, we're now moving into what people are calling the Anthropocene, right? So the idea behind that is that basically every square inch,

centimeter of this planet has been impacted by human activity in some way, some less than more, obviously. So what I would really strive to do and what I would really like biologists, especially ecologists to do is, you know, how do we best restore some of those impacts that we've had on the earth, right? So

We need to really step up and think about how we're going to restore ecosystems and species. So obviously, you know, there's a big kind of a knockdown, drag them out fight right now in the restoration, ecological restoration literature about can we ever go back? Obviously, in many cases, we can never bring back what we've changed.

In other cases, you know, where I work, maybe, but, you know, we need to have those scientific protocols and we need to do much more work to really understand. This goes back to, you know, we're good at using things and changing things. We're not so good at knowing how to kind of go back and put the pieces back together again. So it's the humpty dumpty moment, right? So

Humpty Dumpty is broken in some places and we really need the science. And this can be everything from, you know, we need the DNA fingerprinting. We need all of that really interesting work that's going on in looking at microbiomes and how they interact.

act. So you need all of those really heavy duty lab kind of approaches. You know, you need the ecology on the ground kind of stuff. So to me, developing those ecological principles to really restore ecosystems and kind of biodiversity, that is where I think we should put a lot more of our work because many of these places are becoming non-functional. And then you put on top of that, you know, all the droughts, if you think of droughts in California,

I just heard today that the Midwest and California, they're predicting 50 year droughts now, you know, so we need to really get ahead of the curve and think about how we can bring back ecosystem functioning, not only just for I mean, obviously, I'd like it, because I'd like to restore nature, but also for our own long term sustainability. And I think we really have to think hard about how we make things work.

Certainly. Well, Louise, great question. I think a really important question worldwide with wide ranging implications across a variety of different scientific fields and a variety of different cultures and people. So I think really important to keep moving in that direction towards solving the problem. But I think so many barriers in the way, definitely. Yeah.

Yeah, that's going to take big time teamwork. Absolutely. Well, Louise, great to hear about one of these challenges or questions that you would like to answer in science. And I think we've had some great conversations today, but we always like to end our interviews with a little piece of advice or one last piece of inspiration. So can you share something to inspire or advise myself and our listeners today? Easy. Three words. Don't give up.

I like it. Don't give up. Sometimes it seems like there's only a wall there, but there's a door there. Sometimes it takes us longer to actually find the door to get through. I have a master's student who's really brilliant. She's just graduated and she's very down because she can't find a job right away and

So I always say, you know what, you got to have patience, maybe you have to do something else in between. But you know, think about what your goal is, and how you're going to get there. It sounds terrible, but you really do have to hang in there. If it's something you're really passionate about, and you want, it's worth developing yourself and setting yourself up so that you can attain that goal.

Absolutely. Well, Louise, short and sweet. I like it. Listeners, don't give up on anything that you're passionate about. And Louise, can you tell our listeners now how they can learn more about you and the things that you're passionate about? Well, one of the things I think about is that, you know, we all need to give value to our own contributions, right? You don't want to let any setbacks derail your goals. We have goals. We want to contribute to society. And

You know, for me, it's looking at environmental problems. Other people, it's curing diseases, right? It's never a straight road to your solutions. So, you know, don't let it get you down. Think about those long-term goals. We have lots of chats with students. I'm always interested in hearing from people if they have, you know, ideas or thoughts. Sometimes it's hard to raise a family when you're in academics because it is a pretty demanding job, especially a field biologist.

I just want to have one anecdote. When my sons were young, I spent most of the summer away. I remember one of them said to me, I was back and they looked at me and said, shouldn't you be somewhere else? Yeah.

Maybe I need to spend more time at home. Anyway, I'm happy to have people contact me via email. You know, I do have a webpage and I'm on Facebook and all that, but my email is l-h-e-r-m-a-n-u at m-u-n dot c-a. Fantastic. Feel free to...

free to email me. Absolutely. Well, we appreciate that. And listeners definitely ask Louise if you have any particular questions or want to chat. And Louise, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your wonderful story. Oh, wow. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you. Oh, this has been delightful. Listeners out there, thank you for joining us as well. And we'll see you next time on another episode of People Behind the Science.

Your voyage to the lives of today's exceptional scientists has just begun. You can find everything we talked about today, including our guests' favorite books, biographies, photos, and more, when you visit us at www.peoplebehindthescience.com. I look forward to seeing you next time on People Behind the Science. Music