Invasion

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This is the BBC.

Hello, I'm Robin Ince and I'm Brian Cox.

This is the Infinite Monkey Cage, a show that has now been running for so long that when we first started broadcasting, people still believed the Earth was round.

It's not, it's an ellipsoid.

It's close.

It's close to a sphere, but it's not precisely spherical.

There's a thing called the GRS-80 reference geoid, actually.

I have no idea what I meant to eat.

I think it's a good idea to reference this.

There we go.

It's really a gravitational equipment.

Yes, anyway, so that is

not exactly the film I was referring to on YouTube, but nevertheless.

Continue.

Thank you.

This week's episode is about invaders, species that invade, dominate, and often suffocate indigenous life.

And at this point in the show, I reckon we've experienced a peak listenership, which will soon dwindle once we we explain that the invaders are floating pennywort and Himalayan balsam.

Kind of going to be sort of a xenophobic gardener's question time.

Himalayan balsam coming over here, originally decorous and now with its pretty pink stranglehold on our buttercups and daisies.

Oh no, here comes the Japanese knotweed.

It seems to have got hold of Melanie Phillips.

Today's show is called Invasion.

What happens when we transport species or diseases around the globe and animals, plants or microorganisms end up where they weren't meant to be?

Is the introduction of a non-native species into an ecosystem always a bad thing?

What are the costs of invasive species to the environment, the native flora and fauna, and to the economy?

But also, are all species on the planet Earth invasive species?

Are we the product of panspermia, life brought to Earth on a meteorite, or a spaceship?

Was Stonehenge the product of Venusians, and are we being manipulated by a reptilian super-race?

Been reading David Icke again, haven't you?

I have been reading some David Icke

because I was at a book festival and I actually got drunk and they said you can browse as late as you want and I bought five, five David Icke books while intoxicated.

And you mentioned a goalkeeping.

There's no goalkeeping them in at all.

It is extremely disappointing.

So joining us to discuss the delicate balance of the natural world are two scientists in perfect harmony with their environment and a Phil Jupiter.

And they are.

I am Phil Jupitus, poet and comedian, and my favourite invader is Suggs from the band The Invaders, which were the precursor to madness in 1978.

I'm Kate Jones.

I'm a professor of ecology and biodiversity at University College London.

My favourite invader is a small microbe called Ebola.

Can I just say now that at no point on even the disease-based version of The Price is Right, did a boner get an...

Did they really do it?

Did Brucie do a special, a disease special?

In my head, they did.

Now we go to the fever round.

Is it higher or lower?

Is it higher?

Or is it lower?

Oh, dengue!

That's one of his lesser-known catchphrases.

Oh, Dengy.

We haven't made it easier for you, Mark, to do your introduction, but let's pretend none of this happened.

Hi, and I am Dr.

Mark Spencer.

I'm a forensic botanist, and I also specialise in the other dark side of plant life, which is invasive plant species in this country.

And my favorite invasive species is us, because we are the ultimate invader.

And this is our panel.

Right, Mark, obviously we've called this particular show invasion, but we should define it.

What is an invading species?

It's actually quite hard.

There are various definitions, but basically, an invader is an organism which has usually been moved into a new part of the world through the actions of humanity and causes sufficient damage to the ecosystem or to the economics that it changes things.

It supplants and changes the environment and often causes great harm to people as well in the process.

Very different to the simpler idea of a non-native species.

Many of these things are just organisms that have been moved around and they sit there quietly minding their own business and don't cause any significant harm.

So you only know after you've tried, in a sense, then you had that has to be a history of damage.

Well, we can attempt to model it.

So there's a delightfully named thing called a pest risk assessment, which is a marvellous thing,

which is where we look at what are known pathways, such as shipping or horticulture or agriculture or going on holiday.

Tourists can be vectors for non-native invasive species, such as mosquitoes.

So, we assess from our known knowledge of science and the behaviours of organisms what we think the risk of a new organism moving into landscape.

It's fairly dry, tedious, and hard work, but it's actually a really important way of actually understanding what may happen.

And so, just thinking about looking around a typical garden, because there are certain things that we immediately might imagine we've mentioned before in the kind of intro things about Japanese knotweed and that kind of thing.

Strawberries.

Strawberries.

Indeed.

Strawberries.

We know a lot about strawberries on this show.

We know, for example, that they were first bred in Brittany around 1750, across of a North American and Chilean species.

So, much as a strawberry can be both alive and dead, which we've discussed at length on this show, a strawberry can be invasive or non-native and a linear combination of the two.

Well, the strawberry can be invasive, but in this particular case, it's not.

It's, as you say, derived from two non-native species.

But actually, the garden strawberry is quite a sedate plant.

It's never been known to to go out and ravage the British landscape or to actually have its wicked way with our native wild strawberry, Fregaria vesca, which is a lovely wild plant, which is actually decreasing quite significantly in the UK, sadly.

So, the garden strawberry is most definitely a non-native,

sorry, but is not an invasive.

But potentially, hybridization is a really important part in invasiveness, because when two organisms get together and hybridize, that mixture of genes can actually create novel genetic traits and bring things to the fore, which can really help a species become, or a new hybrid, become really, really damaging in the environment.

But in the case of our strawberry, nothing's going to happen.

I love that the image you created there initially of this kind of marauding strawberry plant there is like some kind of triffid invading Wimbledon during the finding of the nights.

It's a lovely Phil, you are someone who travels well around the world and is a perpetual touring comedian and poet.

Do you see yourself as an invasive species?

I see all comedians as invaders, basically culturally.

Spending a lot of time as I do now in Scotland, certainly the invasion of Edinburgh every August by thousands of them

is something that is quite apparent to the locals.

And they have what the comedians have done is they've crossbred over the years

to provide a much more resilient strain lately.

And they'll gig everywhere, everywhere.

Lofts, cellars.

It's very difficult to get rid of them.

Anyway,

my favourite invasive species, to tell the truth now, I like the grey squirrels.

Because I know that they wiped out the red ones, but I'm colour-blind, so I didn't care anyway.

But they've got different kinds of...

Would you care?

Their ears aren't the same either, though.

I mean, it's not the case of like watching snooker in black and white, the difference between squirrels.

There's structural differences, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, they're smaller.

The red squirrels is much smaller and they've got little cute tufts.

And the grey squirrels are like a grey.

The narrative, cute.

You have to say cute tufts.

Grey squirrels, madam, are gorgeous in their monochrome way.

Yeah, but they're vicious and you know, they've got carriers, pots.

If you hold a peanut, hold a peanut at the top of your thigh in Greenwich Park.

What have you been doing in?

Outside of the leg, outside of the leg.

They will.

Yeah, no, but not there.

You don't want to put them there.

For listeners at home, you don't know that accidentally the peanut mine became quite lewd.

Didn't they wipe out the red squirrels or reduce the numbers?

Was it a disease that they carried rather than?

Yeah, squirrel pox.

So

the grey squirrels have got this disease.

So they used to think that they out-competed them for food, but actually they just wiped them out with a horrible disease.

When you say squirrel pox,

is it dirty squirrels we're talking about?

Is it squirrels, squirrel syphilis?

We're talking about

it's parapox virus, actually.

I'm happy to be corrected on that.

Kate, you use it like a guilty man who thought, I know I shouldn't have slept with all those squirrels yet.

I bought a bar of horn out of one thing late to another.

I have to tell you, the outside of the thigh.

This is an interesting point actually, somewhere in here.

There's an interesting point.

Because

the idea that an invasive species cannot just out-compete, or as you said, with this idea that the squirrels are more aggressive than the red squirrels, but can introduce

disease into the population is one of the main problems, isn't it?

Yeah, so microbes can be, you know, they're just, you know,

they could be bacteria and viruses that we can't see with the naked eye.

So that's the definition of a microbe.

But most microbes are totally beneficial to humanity and the planet.

But there are very few which cause problems, and this pox virus is one of them.

But you know, the ones which hit the headlines cause

problems in humans, like the Ebola virus.

And

there's one virus which is very under underappreciated, which is the lassavirus.

So lassavirus is like Ebola and it causes more problems to people,

but it doesn't get the headlines.

It's only got one book after it.

And Ebola's got like a whole film, loads of films.

So these microbes are called zoonotic viruses, so zoonotic pathogens.

So they go from

they're in animals and they go into people.

And you can have things like rabies, which goes into a human and stops, and the human dies.

Or you can have things like

Ebola, which goes into a human from an animal, and then it goes human to human.

So you get it from the animal, and then it goes human to human.

Okay.

So it's called a stuttering chain.

So

zoonotic,

one into

humans, and the human dies like rabies, slavering in the mouth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then.

Can you get human to human transmission?

I mean, if a human bit another human, for example, would it pass on that way?

Is it.

I don't think that's ever happened, but somebody might correct me.

Anyone?

And has Kate looked out to an entire audience of rabies specialists?

I imagine most you will be because if you're about the same age as this panel, we were brought up, weren't we, on all of those public information films when, hello, children, rabies is coming.

Look,

here's an old woman with a handbag filled with rabid chihuahuas.

It's all over.

It's ever since we joined the common market.

Happy to see you.

Whenever I used to get those, the ferry into France, I always thought that Larage was a French punk band.

But why is it a particular problem

when a species, a non-native species, brings

a virus into either the human population or geographically?

Mostly it's because the pathogen or the organism isn't adapted to the new host.

And so it's not really adaptive for the pathogen, the organism, the new organism, to kill its host.

I mean, it's completely counterproductive, but it's not adapted to the system, so the new system it's in, and then causes, you know, huge problems in the host.

So as we as if we evolve to cope with

these new organisms, you get better at adapting to it.

So, some species, like bats, have got different proteins, they've got a number of different proteins which suppress really nasty viruses in their bodies so that they carry the virus but it doesn't cause them harm.

But when it spills over into somebody, into another species that doesn't have those coping mechanisms, that causes the problem.

I see.

So, we're talking about not only the human in this case adapting to the virus, but the virus should adapt so it doesn't kill its host too quickly.

Yeah, I mean, there's some theories that like the cold virus, you know, when it first jumped into humans was devastating, but you know, that was so far ago that we don't have no recollection of that.

But you know, that family of viruses is the same as SARS, so you can they're coronaviruses, so they're very similar to SARS, which caused a huge problem a couple of years ago.

So, it's just that

we're not really adapted to these new pathogens, these new organisms in our bodies, but also

in ecosystems in general.

Can I just so you've given us a little bit of the background there on Ebola, but in terms of the journey of that invasive, where does you know, the last large outbreak, so what where does that story begin, the story of that journey of that invasion?

Well, the thing I'm really fascinated about is we're absolutely terrible.

You were saying before, we're absolutely absolutely terrible at predicting where these things will emerge from.

You know, we don't know where that spillover between animals and humans is going to happen.

And that's fascinating to me because we're as we change our planet's climate changes, as we deforest areas and change land use, we're bringing people into contact with animals and we're exposing them to pathogens which they've never seen before and they're not adapted to.

And that's when you get these leaps.

So it's not so much that these animals are evil and they're giving us all these horrible viruses.

It's the fact that we go into the forest, we chop it down, and we hunt them for bushmeat and eat them raw.

You know, that's the problem, really.

And that's where Ebola came from.

It was from chimpanzees, was it?

Well,

you know, I really like bats.

I really like them.

I think they're cool and amazing.

And we probably think Ebola's from bats.

But I try and hide that fact.

But as you say, it's not a conscious decision, decision, is it?

I'm not sure, though.

So, my current understanding of much, you know, many other animals' intelligence is that it's not a kind of arch, evil bat that's gone, ha ha, no one will believe what I'm bringing here.

You know, that that it's that that's sort of part of nature, isn't it?

So, it's it, I don't think it needed really means that we should make the bats evil.

It's other things they've done that we should talk about.

Brian's trying to say something

from eating them or from being bitten by them, have you?

No, um,

it's probably from butchering them and having contact between

body fluids, so like, you know, having something a cut or something when you're cutting up a bat or slaughtering it.

So that's where they think.

When you're slaughtering a bat,

madam.

I wasn't I'm not slaughtering the bats.

I love you.

I love bats.

This is definitely the darkest episode of Call My Bluff you've done yet.

So I'm going to say Mark, compared to that, floating pennywort now seems an anti-climax?

No, because actually many of the things that are going on with zoonotic organisms, this disruption, is actually what's happening in plants, animals and invasive species.

And floating pennywort sounds a bit sedate, sounds quite cute, sounds a bit like a sort of Victorian nursery rhyme almost, doesn't it?

The floating pennywort is one of the most significant invasive species in this country out of the plants because I don't do things with legs and wings.

Floating pennywort, it's a little green thing, floats on the water, and it causes major, major damage to waterways.

And in the time it's been in the UK and also the Netherlands and other parts of Europe, it's originally from South America, it has caused major, major, major problems with our waterways.

It's actually affecting your water bills as well, because invasive species cost our economy, conservative estimate, I think,

£1.6 billion a year for the UK.

That is probably a significant under estimate.

And in the case of Floating Pennyworth, the water companies are having to pay very significant amounts of money to clean this plant from drainage systems, from sluices.

Along with actually, there's a thing called the zebra mussel and the quagga mussel, which do a similar thing.

They actually block pipe work and cause the bore of the pipe to shrink.

As the muscles get more and more and more in the pipe work, the pipe shrinks effectively because there are thousands and thousands and thousands of muscles on the inside the pipe.

So we're actually facing real significant problems with managing our water system through invasive species.

So it's not just droughts in summer that are really problematic.

And is it just the fact that there are no natural predators to these things because they're

again a bit like this?

The traits in zoonotic organisms, actually, we have this idea of something called predator release, which is, you know, human being goes from Europe, often as not, not, to a new part of the world, and we find a lovely, exciting new plant or animal that we think is really good.

And we look at the population and we go, which one is the really most robust and healthy looking?

You don't tend to collect the sickly one because it's got to get back to Europe, for example.

You select that sub-population.

You may purposefully remove any pathogens it might have on it.

Give it a brush down, give it a wash.

That organism is pert and healthy.

You bring it to Britain, you put it in a garden or in a zoo or whatever, you cultivate it, you encourage it, and it is its predators are released, they're taken away from it.

The organism then moves into a new environment where actually all the locals don't know how to deal with these things.

So, my other favorite non-native species is Budlia, of all things, and Budlia is actually from East Asia.

And Budlia doesn't really have any close relatives in Europe.

So, when we moved Budley over as a garden plant in the 19th century, we took the best plant, we took a nice cutting, we put it in our gardens, all the pests and diseases were cleaned off, all the fungus were got rid of.

And you went, mmm, I'm going to grow like the clappers.

First time Budley was found in the wild in Britain was in 1922 in Merronathshire.

Since then, it has become one of the most abundant shrubs in lowland Britain, particularly in urban areas, but it's spreading further.

And that's partly because there's absolutely nothing but one or two moths that will eat it or touch it.

It's released from its predators.

Moths were just mentioned there.

And before we came out, you were talking about bats, obviously, that's mainly what you talk about.

But you mentioned a particular moth, which I don't know if it's an invasive moth or not.

No, it's got ears to hear bat echolocation.

And when bats use sound to find their way around, it's got nothing to do with the other bit, that bit of the conversation.

No, I was just intrigued because I'm odd moths.

and you were telling me about one of your favourite moths beforehand.

Well, okay.

So, these moths have got ears that hear bats echolocating.

So, bats echolocate to find their way around.

So, they emit sounds and they get them to bounce off objects and then they can interpret what it is.

So, moths have kind of cottoned onto this fact, and

they can, some of them have got these ears that they can hear bats making these sounds.

And so, they can fold up their wings in mid-air and take evasive action to get away from the bats.

And then some moths have evolved a capacity to jam bat signals so they emit a call that the bats then

get confused about where the moth is and can't catch it, which is cool.

No, yeah, I think it is cool.

I just wanted to know about that, but don't worry, we're going to get back to killer diseases now.

So,

that was

can I just tell you about a plant though?

Yeah, yes,

you've always

there's a plant plant which has made a parabolic leaf to attract bats in, and it's like a bat beacon.

So the bats make echolocation sounds, and then this plant, to attract it into its, you know, pollen and nectar, it goes, here it is, with the bat beacon.

Amazing.

Let's say

that the plant which can attract the bat with its parabolic leaf

beacon.

The beacon leaf plant is also the home to the signal-disrupting moth.

What would happen then?

That's just craziness.

Yeah, it is.

Just as long as that's the craziness needed to establish that.

And there's another bat that's got.

Oh,

I imagine there's a number of them.

No, this one's cool.

This one has got a tongue that's so long that it's got a little special cavity in its chest.

So it rolls it all up and then it

kind of pollinates and gets the nectar from this one plant.

So so it's and it is it particularly one species of plant that it pollinates?

Yeah, it's going to be really screwed when that climate change takes it out.

Yeah.

Well then well that's what I'm sorry, Mark.

I was just going to say, you know, climate change is the is the real sort of twister in the situation because we know that invasive species, climate change and habitat loss are massive disruptors of systems and are causing huge problems.

So climate change is the one we're all going, what is going to happen next?

Because we've got a fairly good understanding of biological invasion as things stand through what we've already seen.

But climate change is just throwing things so much up in the air, we do not understand

actually what's going to happen.

In fact, actually, some people are arguing essentially that we should just accept biological invasions

and that actually we should accept large-scale movement, either purposefully or accidentally, of organisms around the planet because the biota is so disrupted that we just need to essentially let the fittest survive.

There's some fairly lively debates going on in inside.

There's also another idea called pangeification,

which is

this idea that back in the midst of time when

Europe, when the world was only one continent, pangea, you might remember exactly what time period that is.

I'm terrible on dates.

I know he looks like he has an age, but he's not that old.

Well, it's a year's difference, isn't it?

I don't remember.

Is it about 100 million?

It's not that much.

It's more than that.

It's like 320 or something.

Anyway, a long time ago, ago, the world was basically one continent, and at that time, all the world's biodiversity was fairly similar, particularly because the center was a huge desert.

So it was fairly homogeneous.

And now we've obviously got continents all over the world, and all these biodiversity hotspots have developed, and we've got different environments and etc.

There is a concern as we move things around the planet and mix things up that we're pangeifying the planet because we're letting widespread and successful organisms such as ourselves actually supplant these local, unique habitats and landscapes.

It does raise an interesting question, I suppose, which is that why do we choose a particular time frame to preserve?

We're deciding that now is the time, or the 19th century before some species were moved around.

So, why do we idealize now?

I don't think it's really a matter of idealization.

I mean, often, actually, in this debate about invasive species, people get confused about the idea of native and non-native.

So, native purely and simply means an organism that's been in a piece of landscape of its own volition.

Non-native is something that a human or the human population has moved around.

So,

kind of

non-native species management has sometimes been critiqued for an idealization.

It's really not so, or we try not to be.

It's about being pragmatic.

We know that we can't set the world in ASPIC in, say, 1920.

What we're aiming to do is essentially minimise damage.

You know, of the thousands of non-native species on the planet, you know, we don't have the resources or the knowledge to control every single one of them.

So we tend to focus on the ones that we know are significantly damaging because it's really about being fairly careful with our resources.

You know, if I rush around and see every non-native plant that I see in London and go, ah, non-native plant, kill, kill, kill, kill.

I would look quite lunatic, but it's a terrible waste of resources.

So, we're really looking to actually manage those species that we believe are going to be hazardous and problematic or already are, because some of these things are actually really going to affect your own health.

There's actually a horrible, well, it's a nice plant as well, thing called ragweed, ambrosia, lovely name.

And actually, for those of you who are asthma sufferers and hammy fever sufferers, you will not want it coming to this country because it is a major allergenic, far worse than your average bit of pollen.

And it's invading parts of southern Europe and it's really rather unpleasant.

You said you'd look quite kind of

insane if you ran around going kill, kill, kill, but you would get a column for the Daily Express, so it kind of goes both ways.

Phil, you were unnerved by our last show that you were on about simulation theory, and you were expecting this to be a fun one about plants.

I was.

How are you feeling in terms of unnerved tonight?

Well,

I'm less likely to clasp the nut to the outer edge of my thigh now,

knowing that if the squirrel might be carrying Ebola, I may not have picked up all the facts in the right order on this show.

Here's the thing about invading, and you said the show would be about invasion.

To me, invading is it's a verb where you have to intend.

I don't imagine that the squirrels had a meeting and said, we must go to Europe where the red ones await.

We will destroy them.

In the Victorian era, there was this, all around the world, there were societies called naturalization societies, which was essentially Europeans going to all sorts of places around the world that possibly they shouldn't have been in the format they were,

and deciding that they wanted to make them more English.

So, particularly in countries like New Zealand, we decided that New Zealand's plant life and animals were not interesting enough, so we went, right, let's introduce foxes, stoats, rabbits, blackbirds, sparrows.

These were all purposeful things done to beautify and improve improve these landscapes, which, in the case of New Zealand, has been absolutely disastrous.

It's costing the New Zealand economy millions to manage, and New Zealand's unique plant and wildlife is being really, really hammered by these things.

So it's a bit of a mess.

I like the fact you call colonialism a format.

As if you were

just pitching it to Channel 5.

The format we're looking at is

a lot of pip helmets and a certain amount of subtle anglicised aggression.

I've managed to save one of my favourite things.

It's the bat that walks, isn't it?

Well that, but

this is a non-bat example.

Oh my gosh.

The kakapo.

The kakapo is the best.

I love it.

The kakapo is the most awesome thing ever.

It's like a large parrot that's about this big.

That doesn't work on radio, does it?

No, but it's nice.

It gives them the freedom to imagine it whatever size they'd like it to be.

It's a true moment of natural history democracy.

Was that that big from the table or the ground?

Is this helping?

I hope it is.

They are good.

Yeah, they are fantastic.

Knee high.

But they've got little pads, heating pads, so they don't have to get cold.

They monitor them, they've got little weigh scales that they go on to see if they've gained weight and go back again.

I love that example because it is one of my favourite organisms on the planet after all the plants, of course.

But it really does show actually the risks of us letting biological invasion continue in the way it is because the Kakapo's numbers are increasing somewhat, but it is a species that is on a life support system.

It is taking a massive amount of care and

love and commitment by those amazing people to keep that incredible organism with us.

There are less of the Kakapo, individual numbers of Kakapo, than there are people in this room.

And that's awful.

What is the competition?

Is it from birds, non-native mammals?

Mainly non-native mammals.

They eat them, particularly the young.

They take the eggs, stoats, et cetera, et cetera.

So that's the main significant problem.

And people, occasionally people kill them.

So yeah, we are, as I said earlier on, we are the ultimate invader.

We have moved from our ancestral lands in Africa.

We've colonized the whole world and increasingly space.

And everywhere we go, we change and sadly often destroy habitats and environment.

Kate,

just thinking of

in terms of the creatures, the mistakes we make when we change habitat, I was thinking then, mentioning like cane toads, which are probably quite legendary.

And there was an amazing documentary made about 30 years ago all about that version.

And is there a kind of human habit where, which we probably hopefully got better at now, which is, oh, I have a problem with this, this will stop it if I introduce that, which we were mentioning before about grey squirrels as well.

So with the cane toads, it seems to be the equivalent of I have a problem with mice, so I'll introduce tigers to the habitat.

Oh, this seems to have had a lot of ramifications.

I mean, it's that I mean, the cane-toad story, yeah.

There's a lot of examples in history of us doing that and some terrible consequences.

And

you know, I'm a bit ambivalent about this next example, which is

using CRISPR and things like Cas9

to modify genomes so that we make new organisms to control diseases.

So, this is actually happening now with mosquitoes.

So, teams around the world are making either modifying mosquitoes so that there is a sex bias, so that there's only males, and that suppresses a population, or you have a

kind of introduce a new gene which makes possibly not susceptible to the plasmodium for the malaria, so that you have this gene drive, so it kind of takes on in the population.

And so, as you they've got a selective advantage, so you just get replacement of the population with these species.

But there are they are new new species that we've made, so you know, that's it's quite scary to me, actually.

I mean, malaria is a huge problem worldwide, one of the biggest burdens of disease that we have.

So, you know, we have to be realistic about that we need to deal with it.

But

I find these new technologies a little bit scary.

I was going to be positive.

Oh my god, I'm going to be positive if I may.

That concept of cane toads

falls under this idea of biocontrol.

And

certainly tinkering with genomes is challenging, but biocontrol is a really interesting idea which has been around for quite a long time.

And often people say, ah, cane toad.

And the idea of biocontrol is what you do is you've got an invasive organism that's causing a problem, you go into its home range and you select very carefully a pathogen, the thing it left behind, that will eat it.

We've actually been doing work on this with Himalayan balsam in this country.

So there are risks with these introductions of either new organisms to control or some of these other things like changing genomes.

But

I believe they are increasingly

our last options in many cases.

Trouble is we don't always know what's going to happen.

Biocontrol itself, the cane toad is a terrible example of so-called biocontrol because basically it was a group of people going, oh, let's take this organism which eats just about anything.

They already knew that it had an appetite that was just vast.

put it into the Australian landscape, whereupon it ate virtually everything bar the target organism.

So it was a dreadful example of biocontrol, whereas there is potential, certainly in the area I work in Himalayan balsam, which Phil was just saying earlier on, was actually a horrible pest in parts of the British Isles causing significant damage to waterways.

It is a very beautiful plant.

We're working on releasing a specialist fungus which is heavily co-evolved to just live on Himalayan balsam.

And Himalayan balsam is actually a type of busy lizzy, basically.

It's a relative of your garden busy lizzy.

And we've tested this fungus on other busy lizzies around the world because there are many of them.

and it only likes Himalayan balsam.

So, we do all these sort of tests and risks.

Clearly, these things can have unforeseen consequences.

So, that's why I said right at the beginning of the programme, it's very important to actually go with prevention.

These kind of cures that we're trying to explore around altering genomes, doing biocontrol organisms, should be last resorts, really.

What we should be doing is not doing it in the first place.

What is the concern with look at mosquitoes, for example, example that you gave.

Modifying the genome specifically to exclude the parasite that carries malaria seems to me to be an extremely simple and good idea.

What concerns you about that?

The population suppression

modifications,

I worry that that will disrupt ecosystems.

I don't have any data on that, and I don't think anybody is associated with the correctness.

That's reducing the number of mosquitoes, because then, for example, well, bat population.

But what are the bats going to eat?

Yeah.

Like, you know, I've got the bats in mind here.

Yeah.

But in terms of the modification to essentially target the parasites, it's just.

I feel like Jeff Goldblum here.

Life will find a way.

You know, like, you don't know what's going to happen, how they're going to get out of.

If there's one gene, you've got to be really careful.

You can't just do one gene modification.

You've probably got to do five or ten or something so that you can then evolve.

They can't just evolve out of it.

So, so

you're introducing new organism into the environment, and you know, how do we know that's safe?

I'm not trying to be negative, but we do need to think about these things.

Are we always going to end up though, as much as you know, human beings believe that they can control the you know, somehow we'll manage to do it?

That we always end up in the, as Richard Feynman said, the imagination of nature is far greater than the imagination of man.

And so, whatever we do, there will always end up being the, you know, the old woman who swallowed a fly.

Don't worry, I've got a cure for that.

Oh, that's had ramifications.

Have the bird then.

Oh, no, I can't, you know, that that is always going to be.

I think we are undeniably in the biggest biological experiment of all time, really, apart from possibly the evolution of life in the first place on this planet.

You know, what we're doing to our planetary systems is extraordinary.

You know, the anthroposy in the age of man, you know, is found now in evolving rock strata, is being played out in our world's biodiversity.

And, you know, the things we're doing in terms of pathogens evolving, human health crises, etc., etc., these are all part of this significant problem of biological invasions on our planet.

Also, we are crammed into cities, and if it's something that microbes like is

a host which is very crammed together.

You said what microbes like.

I'm I'm how do you find out what they like?

You have to specialise to find out those kind of things, Phil.

Yeah.

Anyway, we're living in these

huge cities which have got, you know, if you have a spillover like Ebola, then because it was so kind of crammed with people and the healthcare systems weren't brilliant in that region in West Africa, that's why you've got such a potent mix of factors which caused that huge epidemic.

And there is one question that we always ask when we record during the summer, especially with a panel like this.

Is it still acceptable for us to kill all the wasps?

Or will there be ramifications?

No, wasps are wonderful.

We should love them.

You know,

there is concerns over the Asian hornet, which is actually a relatively easy organism to identify.

There are ID sheets out there on the internet, but wasps are fantastic.

They're incredibly important controllers of other invertebrate populations.

But we should kill them.

Nobody should kill wasps.

But we should kill the Asian hornet.

No, you should report it.

Report it to the police.

What are they doing?

I mean, aggress.

Well, there are many systems now in the UK and across Europe for reporting invasive non-native species.

Because actually, whilst there are experts like myself around, there are not enough of us and there are not enough eyes in our expert heads to see all of these organisms.

So there are many, many of these citizen science programmes and engagements with volunteers to keep their eyes out for these organisms.

So in the case of Asian hornet, the beekeepers have been very heavily enrolled into this programme of keeping our eye out for it so that action will be taken as soon as possible.

But it's big, it's a hornet, it's a big thing, right?

It's It's a big chunky hornet and it's got a different banding pattern on it compared to our native European hornet, which is also a marvellous insect which we should not harm.

Phil, kill the wasps?

No.

Anyway, so

we asked our audience a question.

We asked the audience: if one species was going to rule the world apart from human beings, what would it be and why?

Jeremy Clarkson, he's not human, but he has a skin thick enough to survive nuclear winter.

That's from Roddy Smith.

Bees,

down with the patriarchy.

Time for the matriarchy.

I love it when he does reading that he's not seen before.

You see, this is like...

Because if it's things on the periodic table, he's fine.

But with like full verbs and nouns,

what does the human being mean?

What is this thing called love?

Bees, matriarchy?

Patriarchy?

I want you to explain to me why it says that.

What is it?

What is it?

Well,

I'm at a loss as well.

I think it's because it's the Queen Bee, so I presume what they're saying is because the Queen Bee's to it.

I'm just guessing here.

I'm just guessing, right?

So

now here's the next.

By the way, someone did an amazing drawing of a silverback gorilla.

So it really is.

That shows you how long people have to wait to get in here.

This is,

if one species were going to rule the world apart from human beings, what would it be?

And why?

Silverback Gorilla.

The eyes show deep thought and disgust in equal measure.

Who's going to argue?

Thanks, Jeff.

And that will because be joining the gallery, I'm afraid we cannot return your paintings.

Phil Go.

I've got one here.

It's the one species ducks.

Because to start, they could be tax-deductible.

French poodle, just to annoy the Brexiteers.

I'll go for this one.

Robins.

They're not big or clever, but they can make us laugh.

God bless you.

Thank you very much to our panel, Phil, Mark, and Kate.

And also, by the way, just a quick apology.

Sorry to any flat earthers who took umbrage with our introduction.

They've actually threatened to come round, but they won't find us because their sat-navs won't work working on that system.

So, goodbye.

Hi, this is Lauren Laverne.

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