819: Making Great Leaps Studying the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of Tropical Frogs - Dr. Maureen Donnelly
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This is episode 819 of People Behind the Science, and I am glad to have you joining me today. I'm Dr. Marie McNeely, and in this episode, we are revisiting our interview with our guest, Dr. Maureen Donnelly. Listeners, Mo studies amphibians like frogs and toads.

These organisms are all currently at risk for extinction, and Mo's lab is dedicated to trying to understand how to prevent losses of species in the future. She talks more about her work and her life, and she shares some wonderful stories during our conversation. So 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. I am excited to be here today with Dr. Maureen Donnelly. So great to chat with you today, Mo. How's everything going? It's going great. Thank you, Maureen. Wonderful. Well, listeners, Mo is the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University.

She's also a research associate in the Department of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History. Mo received her Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami and completed postdoctoral research at the American Museum of Natural History and also at the University of Miami. She then worked as an adjunct assistant professor and project director at the University of Miami before joining the faculty there at Florida International University.

Mo is here with us today to tell us all about her journey through life and science. So today, Mo, we want to get to know you both as a scientist, but also as a person. So can you tell us what you like to do when you're not doing science?

Well, as a scientist, I pretty much think about scientific things a lot all the time. But when I don't have my science hat on, I'm mostly thinking about getting ready to ride in the Mardi Gras parade of the coming year. Mardi Gras is my favorite holiday. I rode for the first time in a Mardi Gras crew last year, meaning I rode on a float and threw beads out to the crowd.

It is sort of my reason for being, either to get ready for the upcoming Mardi Gras, think about the next one, and enjoy all of that partying that takes place together in one of America's greatest cities, New Orleans.

Fantastic. Well, great to hear about how you like to spend your time when you're not doing science. I think celebrating Mardi Gras is certainly a fun way to spend your time. Now, do you help design floats or build any of the floats? No, the social crews take care of all of the float construction and the theme and they tell us what to wear. And then it's up to us to get up there and engage with the crowd. And there's...

wonderful way to interact with complete strangers and bring smiles to everybody. It's the best party ever. Wonderful. Well, I love it. Mo, we're going to talk next about your scientific side. So you mentioned you think about science a lot from day to day. Can you tell us how you describe what you do at work to someone who's not in science? Okay, so almost everybody, whether they're in science or not, knows what a frog is.

And most everybody knows about what frogs are because as children, they were captivated by the magic of metamorphosis. When a polliwog, a thing that's swimming in the water and looks like a fish, goes through these abrupt and profound changes in morphology and behavior and comes out as a little frog...

is pretty much known by everybody, whether they're scientists or not. That group of animals, the frogs, the toads, and their relatives are all at risk of changes that are ongoing now to the planet. A good third of all living species are at risk of extinction.

And so what we're doing now in my laboratory is focusing on how to prevent losses in the future, trying to understand how these ancient animals respond to climate change and pollution and human-caused changes on our planet.

Certainly. Well, I think you're absolutely right. It is hard not to be captivated by these amazing changes that you see in frogs going from tadpole polymog into a frog. I think every child had that experience of just utter amazement at how this is happening.

So I love that description that you just gave. Now, Mo, we also like to hear about what motivates scientists. I mean, you have so much work to get done in a day. And I think it's interesting to hear about maybe some of these quotes, some of these sayings that scientists really resonate with. So can you share one with us today? Well, I think that my favorite one is a quote from an American Indian thinker who said, if you look at life as an adventure, then it's never boring.

And I think that as a scientist, being curious about the way the world works, you never really run out of questions to ask. You're never going to run out of something to do because you're constantly captivated by the adventure that are living systems. Biology is the only science where there's always a however at the end of whatever rule you lay out there. Life figures out how to get around things. So

I'm inspired by viewing life as the thing to get after and to bring your best to every day. And it's great to do that as a scientist. It's fun. I think those are some great motivational forces and sayings that you like to keep in your mind. And certainly this is

Really embodiment of biology is something that's almost a rule breaker. You're right. There's always an exception to every rule that you try and put out there. Well, Mo, it's great to hear about some of these things that motivate you. Can you tell us next about some of the people who've motivated you or inspired you over the years?

Gosh, there are many role models that have influenced me, but the person that had the strongest imprint on my career as a scientist and who still has a very strong imprint on my career as a human being is my major professor, Jay Savage, who fortunately is still a vibrant, active scientist at 84, 85 years old.

He saw something in me that I didn't even know existed and gave me a chance to pursue my Ph.D. in his laboratory. His work ethic is phenomenal. He knew how to mix work with rewarding times that were not work. And he taught us how to act.

how to be scholars and how to do that in a way that was fun and enjoyable. So he stands out as my first role model. Do

Do you want to hear about others? Sure. Did you have another one or two that were in your mind? Sure. So the other two role models that immediately come to mind have both passed away. One, Don Stone, who was a professor of botany at Duke University. And you're going, wait a minute, what does a frog biologist know about botany? But the late Don Stone ran the Organization for Tropical Studies.

a not-for-profit consortium of several universities around the U.S., and that those offices have been based at Duke University ever since I came to know about the organization in 1979. Don Stone was the executive director of OTS for many, many years, and like Jay Savage, I think, he too saw something in me that I didn't see, and he was very supportive of

career as a young tropical biologist. And Don provided great opportunities and found grant money that allowed a whole cohort of us to go live in Costa Rica for a year or two at a time and conduct what in the day was groundbreaking field research located in the tropics. So he stands as a very important role model for teaching me the

that doing tropical science is good, not just for the tropics, but for all of science.

And then the last role model is the late Margaret Stewart, who was a professor at SUNY Albany and one of the very few women who was active in herpetology when I came to the business as a doctoral student in 1979. Meg studied amphibians in Malawi, Africa before any woman was going to the field. She studied for years and years the coquifrog on Puerto Rico.

and unlocked all of the secrets of this amazing organism that stands sort of as the flagship species in Puerto Rico and is now a pest, of course, in Hawaii. But Meg was one of these pioneering field biologists who was a huge inspiration because there weren't any other women in the room, basically. Well, Mo, it is amazing to hear about these mentors, these role models, these people who really shaped your career and inspired you. I love it.

Now, do you aspire to follow in Jay Savage's footsteps pursuing science way into your 80s? I think that I will always be a natural scientist because organisms are the things that brought me to biology. My fascination with animals. These are the packets of life that go out and do things. They do ecology. They do behavior. They evolve. And so my focus has been more on organisms. And I've let those things bring questions to me.

Actually, I hope to return to school as a student. I'd like to return and get my Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and I'd like to graduate and retire from FIU in the same semester.

Interesting. Well, Mo, I think those sound like fantastic goals. Definitely bring the creativity back and get some fine arts writing. I think that sounds wonderful. So now can you take us back to the very beginning of your journey as a scientist? And can you tell us a little bit about what got you excited about the world of science to begin with? And maybe what got you started on this path to where you are today? Maybe some of these key moments along the way.

Certainly, because I have probably the most nonlinear path in science you will encounter. I was a dedicated student, but when I left high school, I wanted to study Chinese history, philosophy, and religion. And I wanted to learn Chinese so I could translate a philosophy book, basically. That was my goal as a high school senior. Okay.

and realized that it would be difficult to pay rent on such esoteric goals, and instead decided that I would become a dental hygienist, which is a pretty big jump, except that my father was a dentist. And I knew that a two-year junior college program to train up to do this skill was

was something that I could probably afford because my parents weren't convinced I was the best investment. I graduated from high school in 1971. So in that day and age, my parents did not see me as a good college investment. And I thought that a junior college degree was something that was certainly within my grasp and would provide an income that I could rely on. I never thought about what it would mean to have that trade

and what that would mean on a nine to five basis. But I was young enough and dumb enough to not focus on those details. I was not admitted into a program from high school, but was encouraged by the programs I applied to, to go to the junior college, take prerequisite courses, and then reapply because the program wasn't offered in my junior college district in Southern California. Yeah.

So I was applying to programs as an out-of-district student, and there was a cap on how many could be admitted, etc. So I started to take requisite courses at my local junior college. And during a year-long anatomy and physiology sequence, I asked a question of my anatomy and physiology professor about,

derived from a reading assignment. And after I asked my question, the professor looked at me and said, that's a great question, but we don't know.

And in my young life, I was 18 years old. I had never heard an adult in a classroom utter those words. We don't know. Right. Science is facts. There's always an answer. Then later on, this same professor asked me why I was taking his course. And I told him that I was, in fact, on my way to be a dental hygienist. And he told me that I should instead stay in school, take the biology for majors course.

and forget about being a dental hygienist. So Bob Vandergrift, actually my anatomy professor from Cypress College, turned my career. I like to liken my career as the pinball let loose in a old pinball machine, bouncing off the rubbers and going in interesting directions. And my encounter with Bob Vandergrift was my first hit on a rubber that changed the course of my life. I took the biology for majors course,

I was captivated by biochemistry and thought I wanted to study ATP. And then in the second semester of that year-long sequence, I also signed up for a field trip course to Mexico. And during that 10-day experience in the wilds of Mexico, where there were tropical species that were at the northern extent of their range, temperate species at the southern extent of their range,

You could study animals outside in the field, in their native habitat. I turned to my mentor in general biology for majors and said, I think I want to do field biology. And he turned to me quite honestly and said, well, do it because you love it, because there's no money in it. And I quickly quipped back that money was not my prime motivator.

that doing something was important. And from visiting the same site in southern Sonora, Mexico over and over, I formulated my first scientific question from watching the birds in this place. I had learned about the niche. I had learned that similar species could not coexist because one would out-compete the other and make it go away.

Yet in this little magical place in Mexico, here were eight species of little brown birds with long beaks that ate bugs that all lived together in the same place. And my first biological question was, how do these similar species coexist?

Do they divide the habitat? Do they divide food? How are they beating this rule? And again, long after that week-long immersion experience, a group of us went on a month-long experience through Mexico in the wet season. And it was during that rainy season in Mexico that I found my love of frogs again and developed it as a scientist.

You didn't have to get up early in the morning to get frogs. You didn't have to set up mist nets that you later had to extract animals out of delicately. It was searching for frogs at night seemed to fit my personality better than getting up when it's dark to get poor little birds out of mist nets.

Mm hmm. So I switched from birds to frogs and began really as an undergraduate student, my love affair with amphibians and have made a business out of it. I've made a career out of it. Here I am many, many, many years later, still doing the same kinds of things. I got lucky. Very, very lucky.

Interesting. Well, Mo, you have had a fascinating journey. I love this description of how it started, really. Your fascination with Chinese history and culture and definitely writing as well. And then sort of morphed into, all right, you know, the more practical dental hygiene, this is what we're going to do. It's going to be a job. And then how you found passion in field biology, first starting with birds and then moving into frogs. I think that is fascinating. So can you tell us a little bit more about what you're doing now? Maybe one of these projects that

that's going on that you are so excited to be a part of? Well, again, I live scientifically, vicariously, very much through my students. And I have five graduate students, two of whom have completed more than a year in the field. And the youngest three are just now getting started.

And I want to talk about one of our projects and one of my graduate students, Kelsey Reiter. I first met Kelsey, I believe, in 2007 in Costa Rica. She was a field assistant for another one of my graduate students, Stephen Whitfield. And Kelsey came and did her master's with me and then was awarded a National Science Foundation three-year grant to support her doctoral research project.

And she changed gears quite completely from working in the lowlands of Costa Rica to working in extreme elevations in the Andes of Peru. Kelsey is very much interested in how amphibians are going to respond to our warming world.

Well, some might argue about the causes of this warming of our planet, but all of the data, which 99% of all scientists accept, shows that our global temperatures are increasing and they're increasing rapidly.

And one of the features of our planet that is going to be profoundly impacted by this warming are the glaciers that are found on the mountains in our highest mountain ranges. In Alaska, in all of the polar regions, both North and South Poles.

And, of course, in our highest mountain ranges, the Himalayas, the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies, and, of course, among the youngest of the ranges, the Andes in South America. The normal cycle of glaciers in the tropical Andes, because, again, think of mountaintops in the tropics. During the day, it's like summer.

And at night, it's like winter, the coldest winter you've ever been in, where you have freezing temperatures at night and very high temperatures during the day.

So the organisms, the plants, everything that lives in these extreme environments has long adapted and discovered tricks for handling these changes. The normal cycle of glaciers, glacier hydrology, is that as glaciers warm up, they melt out. That melt water fills pools that are used by aquatic organisms. And then as the sun moves off the tropics, those glaciers refreeze.

But once the glaciers melt out and are gone, that normal pond filling event that used to be taken care of by normal glacier dynamics now is completely dependent on rainfall dynamics or snowfall dynamics.

And so Kelsey is based in Cusco, Peru. The last year she spent one half of the year living on a mountain in the Andes at 5,200 meters. Wow. This is an amazing feat if you think about it. You have to go up in stages. And then once you're up there, of course, you're experiencing the desert by day and the Arctic by night.

So these animals and the plants and the humans that study them are in these extreme environments trying to figure out, can we mediate glacial loss? Will the amphibians be able to respond to glacial loss? And unfortunately, our abilities to do experiments are complicated because of this disease, this

that is one of the large causative agents of all of this decline of amphibians around the globe. This chytrid fungus is up in these elevations, and we can't move animals to do experiments unless we can verify they're disease-free. Because the last thing we want to do is introduce disease where it doesn't exist. So Kelsey and her team, she's assembled a team of volunteers, volunteers,

She's working with Peruvian students located in Peru, and she's exploring on the ground these dynamics of glacial change up in the Andes of Peru. That's but one of the things going on in my lab right now that I'm not only excited about, but I'm so proud of. The students are the best things I've ever done in my career.

And she is but one of a tremendous group of people who I've had the pleasure to work side by side with.

Certainly. Well, I think that sounds like a wonderful project. And I could not even imagine you're describing these conditions that she's working under, being at such high elevation, working with such extreme hot and cold temperatures, being out there in the field. That sounds like an incredible adventure and certainly a wonderful opportunity for a student to be able to be conducting this research out there in the field. And I love that you're so passionate, so enthusiastic about your students'

and helping them have the best research experience possible. I think that is fantastic. All of the doctoral students all across the globe are the future of our fields. And hopefully we can make good colleagues going forward because our fields depend on that.

And I think that that's part of Jay Savage's role model approach that's been super helpful. Great to hear about these amazing research projects that you and your students are working on in the lab. And I think so far we've talked about a lot of the exciting aspects of careers in science and certainly your journey to get to where you are today. But we haven't yet chatted about a lot of the challenges that I know every scientist faces in

And I think, you know, throughout the years when you look back, you see, you know, there are different points in your career where you were maybe struggling with something or you had a major failure. So can you take us back to one of these points, Mo, and tell us about a challenge that you faced and how you overcame it? Well, sure. This is another one that students can hear and put this experience in their memory banks so they can avoid similar experiences. But as a young graduate student, actually,

I had gone to Jay Savage because I was interested in a field that's completely different from what I ended up doing for my dissertation. And I went to work with Jay on a different kind of project, and I was a little concerned that a more senior person might be interested in the same area. I was trying to avoid any sort of competition.

And one of my committee members shared basically my plan of research. And several months later, after I returned from my first tropical experience, my professor called me up to his office and showed me a proposal that was basically my original dissertation idea. Oh, no. In a grant proposal written by the person who assured us that while it was an interesting idea, they weren't interested. Right. Right.

So I was ready to quit school. I was ready to leave academia. And fortunately, I am not a quitter or not smart enough maybe to recognize when I might want, should quit or whatever. In my second trip to Costa Rica, which was actually to work on an insect herbivory project,

I decided that I went to graduate school to study with Jay Savage, and I wasn't ready to give up on that dream. I worked with the organism I ended up doing my dissertation with, the strawberry poison frog. I conducted a little pilot study during that summer to demonstrate proof of concept, and I ended up changing my career field completely from what I had originally intended to do to a brand new area.

And that change, while difficult, taught me many important lessons. First and foremost, if you have a really good idea, be careful who you share that idea with. Because not all scientists in the world are equally curious or equally able to formulate programs.

So you have to be a little bit careful out there because people are not all scrupulous. And the second thing I learned was it's important to lower your shoulder and push through what's hard. By changing my original area of focus, I got connected with the American Museum and Chuck Myers, who was my first postdoc advisor there.

That led from poison frogs to Pooey exploration during my postdoc years. And again, opened a brand new career that then opened other career doors after that. So I feel like my whole career has been about dusting off from failed fortunes and finding a new path to move along. Don't let it get you down. You can move through just about anything now.

I think that is a really difficult point in any graduate student's career to have something like this happen. I know if any listeners out there have been through a similar experience in any point during the process, when you're first developing those ideas, first developing a proposal, even all the way up to the point where you're about to publish it and then you see, oh, look what just published yesterday, my study. So I think that is certainly a challenge that scientists face. And I love how you reacted to it. You had that initial frustration that sort of vanquished

venting moment where you're like, all right, should I quit? Should I leave? Should I just give up on everything? But you stuck through it. I love that description too of kind of lowering your shoulder and pushing through. I think that's something that you have to do if you're passionate about research, if you're passionate about science is kind of take stock of what's going on, what can you learn from it and move on. So fantastic to hear about how you worked through one of these really difficult times in your own past.

Now, we don't just want to talk about the tough times. Can you tell us next about one of these success stories? It can be one of these big, more traditional successes like grants or papers for even one of these small victories along the way. Well, I think that probably the most recent and the freshest success was recently being elected as the president-elect to the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

I begin my term as president-elect in calendar 2015, and then I will be the president of my favorite scientific society in 2016 when the society turns 100. Oh, wow. To be, again, selected by your peers, to be chosen by the members of a society, I've been the secretary for them since 2000.

It's an honor that goes beyond description, really.

Well, congratulations, Mo. That is a fantastic honor, a wonderful success. And I love this milestone mark of the society turning 100 while you are the president leading them into their next century. That's wonderful. So great to hear about this success story. And I think researchers, you keep so busy with research, working with students and all the different things that you're trying to get done in a day. You don't often have a ton of free time to maybe sit back, relax and enjoy a good book.

but I have gotten some fantastic book recommendations from different scientists on the show. So can you add one to our list today, Mo? It can be either a science book or a non-science book.

I think the book that stands out for me as a most recent read, and I've mentioned this in another interview, is The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Murkinji. It was a Pulitzer Prize winning book. The subtitle, or I think it's The Emperor of All Maladies, colon, A Biography of Cancer.

And the book takes you through the history of the disease. The author was both a clinician and a researcher and talked about both sides of treating the emperor of all maladies.

And it's a very, very well-constructed book. And because cancer has touched nearly every life, it's a global issue that touches us regardless of our countries of origin. And to learn about it in such a well-presented way was a reading pleasure.

Well, that sounds like an excellent recommendation. We'll have to put that out on our website for all of our listeners to check out. And I think I'll have to pick it up myself. I myself don't know a ton about the history of cancer and haven't been following the field as closely as I'm sure I should. So great recommendation there, Mo. Now, we also have hinted at a lot of these opportunities that you've had to travel for your work, these amazing field research opportunities. I know scientists get to travel quite a bit

for field research, working with collaborators, conferences, all these different types of travel. Can you think back now, Mo, on all of these places that you've traveled to and tell us about your favorite and why it was your favorite?

Gosh, things are running through my mind right now. Like, how do I pick the best? But I think that one of the field experiences that influenced me and was my wildest experience was a 1998 visit that I made to Papua New Guinea with my husband and with Jay Savage, my mentor, my major professor.

We traveled to Papua New Guinea to visit my youngest academic brother, David Bickford, who was conducting his field research in the remote mountains of Papua New Guinea. And that trip was to the wildest part of the world I've ever been in.

Big civilizations had been in existence there and they weren't even discovered until the 30s by people of European descent. Being able to be lucky enough to visit this amazing field site, New Guinea.

stands out probably as one of the best experiences. But then there's also the tapuis of Venezuela and the Amazon basin from any one of three countries I've been lucky enough to see it from. The tea plantations of Munar, there's so many. Our planet is this marvelous, marvelous home to a million wonderful places. I want to see them all.

Certainly. Well, these sound like amazing travel opportunities. And I love that you described your visit to Papua New Guinea was to visit your youngest research brother. I think that is fantastic to really compare your lab group, your research group to a family. And I think a lot of researchers

You know, you work so closely with these people, you do end up feeling like that. Definitely. And you can ask any of my students and they will tell you that I'm their other mother. Right. Well, that is wonderful. It's great to hear about some of these amazing places you've been able to travel to. And I think you hinted at, you know, just how people make the research so meaningful as well, talking about these people that you've worked with over the years, the students that are in your lab now. And I think when you look back on all these different groups that you've worked with over the years,

It's funny to look at just the different personalities of each group and thinking about how the people who worked in them really made them so. And I think with all these brilliant, amazing, and creative people working so closely together, you get a lot of quirky traditions that spring up over the years or even just funny memories that you can look back and laugh about. So Mo, can you share with us today one of these quirky traditions or a funny science memory that you've experienced?

Well, I think that if I were to try and identify a tradition that's true of my lab, it has to do with post-meeting or pre-meeting excursions. Because I've been involved in society business for so long as a secretary, the society pays for me to travel to the meeting one way or the other. If I drive or if I fly, they don't really care.

And if it's stateside and I drive, I can take the students with me. But if we fly, sometimes we'll rent a car and do an excursion after the meeting or we'll go camping or do something like that. But I think that we took it to an extreme following a meeting that was held in Manaus, Brazil in 2003.

And several of my students attended that meeting. I attended my meeting. We clearly all flew from Miami to go to Brazil. And the meeting had organized several post-meeting excursions, which involved getting on a boat and motoring up the Amazon. And I knew my students would be unable to afford that. So instead, I planned a little post-course excursion

that I took with five companions, four of my students and a husband of one of them. And the six of us traveled around northern Brazil. We took a bus to a town near the Rio Branco. We went to Boa Vista, which sits right at the border of Brazil and Guyana. I always wanted to go to Boa Vista because of my work there.

Previously in the country of Guyana, there's a road that runs from the capital of Georgetown down to the border of Brazil. And I always wanted to see this border town. So after our meeting in Manaus, I arranged for us to go visit Babazinho's ranch. Babazinho is a tour operator located in Manaus. And he offered tours to Serra Tepequim.

which is a small elevation mountain that's part of the Tapui clusters that are found in northern South America. I knew I would never be able to afford to get my students on top of Tapui, but I might be able to drive them up to the road accessible Cerro Tepecuel. So I organized that trip in 2003 and we went to Babazinho's ranch and

And I believe that our five days spent together in this excursion in northern Brazil is one of the best road trips we've ever done as a lab group. So I think that that's probably the tradition that resonates strongly for me because it was so much fun. And we saw so many things for the first time together as a group. It was great.

Well, Mo, that sounds like an amazing road trip, very extreme road trip. I love it. And I like this tradition of kind of trying to tack on little excursions either before or after meetings to take advantage of being already in one of these amazing places that perhaps a lot of your students especially may have never been to and may not ever have the opportunity to go to afterwards. So great that you're able to squeeze those in. So was there any particular...

I guess, moment or memory from this amazing road trip that you've just described that really sticks in your mind as one of these bonding moments that you guys can look back on? Sure. So we motored in a boat to this little patch of forest that Babazinho knew about. And we clambered out of the boat and up the bank and we're walking around on terra firme forest,

And Babazinho and the guide were pointing up in the trees going, look, look at a monkey. And of course, we were all down on the ground pointing, going, look, look at the yellow and black poison frog. Dendrobates leucomalis. It's one of these brilliant poison frogs that's black with yellow markings on the back.

So here the guys were pointing up in the tree and we were all pointing down on the ground. I remember that moment quite clearly in my mind as this is what herpetologists really do. Well, I was going to ask you, are you guys always on the lookout for frogs when you're wandering around these Amazon jungles and these different environments that you're in? We're looking around for just about anything we can see. But yes, the students are all primates.

They're primarily amphibian and reptile focused. So these are the things that we tend to find when we're walking around in nature. It doesn't matter where we are. Certainly. Well, Mo, is there one frog that's still on your dream list to see in the wild that you haven't had a chance to see yet?

Yes, there is. There are these amazing frogs in South Africa that are burrowing frogs that their bodies are little tiny balls and they have ridiculously tiny legs. And when they're alarmed, they puff up. And I'm trying to look at my Facebook page now to see when I most recently posted the little video clip of

of this screaming little frog because it's the most adorable thing ever. So I want to go to South Africa and see that frog. I would love to see any gliding frog anywhere in Asia. Okay, wait, I'm almost close to this little image here because we talked about making this a mascot for the Jimmy meeting. Oh, really? Well, here's one. Here's a Malabar gliding frog that's lovely.

But then I'm trying to find this other little toad's name who is adorable. Anyway, it's a small South African frog and he's not coming up right now. But I still get excited when I see the animal I studied for my dissertation, though.

I still get excited when I see blue morpho butterflies in the tropics. It doesn't matter what kind of mood I'm in. When I see some animal that takes my breath away, it's just amazing. So here's my little toad here.

It's called the Desert Rain Frog is the common name. I'll be able to skip this advertisement soon to give you its name, but YouTube is what it is. If you go to YouTube and look for Little Frog Screaming, you will see the most adorable little thing ever. It's called the Desert Rain Frog Screaming.

And he is adorable. Oh my goodness. I'm going to have to check this out afterwards. Yes. Go to YouTube, look for Little Frog Screaming and you will find the toad of my desires. Wonderful. Well, Mo, we wish you all the luck finding this toad in the wild. That sounds incredible. So great to hear about these travel opportunities, these experiences that you've shared with your students, with the people in the lab. And I think I love, in addition to talking about all these memories, to chat about some

Some of these big questions that are in researchers' minds, things that you haven't had a chance to study yet for one reason or another. So can you tell us today, Mo, if we took away all the restrictions, if things like funding and staff and technology and feasibility were not an issue? What is one research question that you are just dying to know the answer to?

Well, one of the questions I always hoped that one of my students would pick up and share my enthusiasm for the question. It never happened. But I have been fascinated since my dissertation research about the communication systems used by the strawberry poison frog. And I have a hypothesis that

The animal forms calling neighborhoods in forests where it occurs. It's not uniformly distributed through any of the sites I've ever worked in. So there's little clusters of these animals. And I have been curious forever about how group communication dynamics function.

And if funding were no opportunities, I would be dropping acoustic sensors down in different parts of the forest with real-time recordings, trying to identify personalities if you can, identify individual voices in these calling neighborhoods, and understand how these communication networks really function.

in the field. My whole career has been, as my friends have described me, oh, she's a duct tape biologist. Give her a duct tape, a field book, and an endless supply of pencils, and she'll be fine. I love that, duct tape biologist. And my work has, by and large, been low-tech, but a high-tech dream I've had forever is to drop down

these acoustic sensors and do experiments to determine what is it about calls that is attractive to females. Are females attractive all the time or is there some kind of breeding season in the system? Do males get more attractive as they age? Are young frogs as attractive as old frogs? And now, of course,

We have the capacity to manipulate all these things with computers. So we can generate any kind of sound we want to generate and then ask those questions of living animals in real nature. So if money and funding and staffing were no effort, I would design a study to explore the communication system of the strawberry poison frog in northeastern Costa Rica.

Fantastic. Well, I love that research question. And I think you have quite the elaborate plan to pull it off. I think that is fantastic. Learning more about their communications and what it all means in terms of reproduction and what they're communicating about. I think that's a fascinating project. So I think in addition to chatting about some of these big research questions, a lot of scientists get a lot of great advice from their colleagues, their peers, their mentors, things like that over the years. Can you share with us today, Moe,

One piece of advice or maybe one piece of inspiration that you've received. Well, I'll share with everybody who is in academia or aspires to academia the best piece of advice I ever got when I finally landed my tenure track job in academia. And that piece of advice was given to me by my husband, who never followed the advice himself.

But he gave it to me the moment I got the job. And that is keep track of everything you do in a file. Every tenurable offense you commit, put that into a file. And so back in the day when I started, before this explosion of electronic communication, it started as a real paper file. But at the same time, I was building my paper file online.

I started to make a Word file. In those days, it was actually a WordPerfect file that I've since migrated to Word. But it's a word processing file because I'm from Southern California, facetiously call it my I'm so bitchin' file. I like it. I just started my I'm so bitchin' file for academic year 14-15.

And in that Word file, I put everything I do. I recently completed three promotion reviews for faculty colleagues at other institutions. And those were my first academic acts of this academic year that belong in that file. The reason that this is such a brilliant piece of advice, and it's the piece of advice I give to every young assistant professor that will hear me give it to them,

is that we all have to write annual self-evaluations. We must all go through that process. Having a Word file that contains every tenurable or promotionable act I've committed in the year in one Word file makes that order task an easy one to complete. And because our plates are so full, any trick that makes you work more efficiently will make you a happier person at the end of the day.

Certainly. Well, Mo, I think that is great advice. You don't have to go digging through emails trying to find everything when your review comes around. Well, Mo, great advice. Is there any other last piece of advice or maybe last piece of inspiration that you want to share with our listeners today now coming from you personally? Well, I think that it's very important for everybody. I don't care what walk of life you're in, but I think it's important for us as human beings to have meaningful work.

And I think that the way we create meaningful work, no matter what our jobs are, are to bring our best to it, no matter what it is, every time. That way you know that you've done the best job you could have ever possibly done. And it helps if you can have some passion around what it is you're doing because the passion will carry you through life.

Every rough patch of your career, because I don't care how cool the project is, how great your job is, how fulfilled you are and what you're doing. There is some repeat until dead element of whatever it is, project, job, data analysis, filing, cleaning, sorting, whatever it is. There's something that you will not like. But if you have that passion that sort of burns in you to do something and do it well,

The passion is what will carry you through those moments and make them become less onerous tasks. Because you got to do it. You don't have to like it, but you have to do it. So do it well. Bring it your best. And then you'll know. You can go to bed with yourself at night if you know you brought your best to whatever it is you're doing. Absolutely. That is great advice. Find work that you're passionate about and go at it with your all every day.

Great advice, Mo. Now, can you tell our listeners how they can reach out if they want to learn more about you or your research? Sure. If you want to find me, the most reliable way is through email.

And my email address, I'm going to just spell it out, is M-A-U-R-E-E-N period A period D-O-N-N-E-L-L-Y at gmail.com. Fantastic. Well, listeners, feel free to reach out to Mo if you have any questions. And Mo, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your story.

Thank you. It was a delight and fun to share what it is to be a scientist. I forget that as a dean. And so it's always nice to tap into what brought me to the university world in the first place. Thank you. I have enjoyed our conversations today. And thank you to our listeners out there as well. Join us again next time for 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