Ep 123: The long and winding road (with Rosemary Grant)
What was life like in wartime England for a young female scientist? What about living and doing research for months each year with your daughters and husband on a remote island?
On this episode, we talk with Rosemary Grant, Emeritus Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Rosemary is best-known for her foundational research on the Darwin’s Finches of the Galapagos Islands, conducted in collaboration with her husband, Peter. Our conversation focuses on Rosemary’s new autobiography “One Step Sideways, Three Steps Forward: One Woman’s Path to Becoming a Biologist.” We first discuss her upbringing in the Lake District during WWII, and how her family and the people she met there, as well as later scientific mentors like Conrad Waddington, shaped her path to science. Then, we talk about her work with Peter on the finches of Daphne Island, discussing their contributions to evolutionary biology. Rosemary also describes the joys of raising her girl in the Galapagos and gives advice to young people thinking about a career in biology.
Cover photo: Keating Shahmehri.
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Cameron Ghalambor 0:07
Hey, Marty, what do you think of when I say Hawaii?
Marty Martin 0:10
Oh, let's see white sand beaches, palm trees waving in the breeze, maybe a type of pizza that's either amazing or awful, depending on your taste.
Cameron Ghalambor 0:21
Yes, all right, but what about spiders?
Marty Martin 0:24
No, they're not top of mind.
Cameron Ghalambor 0:27
Okay well Hawaii is home to a group of spiders called the Hawaiian happy face spiders, because, as you might guess, these spiders have a particular pattern on their abdomens that looks like a smiley face.
Marty Martin 0:39
Ah, the permanent smile is probably because they live in paradise, right?
Cameron Ghalambor 0:43
Uh no probably not. These abdominal markings are thought to help the spiders camouflage from predators. And actually, there are 16 species of happy face spiders found on different islands on Hawaii, each with a different kind of happy face.
Marty Martin 0:59
So wait, let me guess, these species evolve different smiles for different predators across islands.
Cameron Ghalambor 1:05
Well, kind of. There are four distinct spider smiles, and each one is associated with a specific habitat in the forest and a different prey type. Some species have the same smile pattern, but species with the same smiles never occur together.
Marty Martin 1:20
Interesting. So spider smiles evolved independently.
Cameron Ghalambor 1:24
Yes, convergent evolution.
Marty Martin 1:26
Aha. So let me guess this is your example of an adaptive radiation?
Cameron Ghalambor 1:31
Right again. All 16 spiders descended from the same common ancestor, with different lineages taking on different smiles at different times depending on the environments that they occurred in.
Marty Martin 1:43
Okay now this is starting to sound quite familiar, an example of a species radiation, much like the one studied by our guest today, Rosemary Grant.
Cameron Ghalambor 1:51
Rosemary and her husband Peter, are both emeritus professors of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University-
Marty Martin 1:59
and past guests on the show in Episode 28
Cameron Ghalambor 2:01
-who worked for decades on the Galapagos Islands, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador on of course, the iconic Darwin's finches.
Marty Martin 2:10
Rosemary and Peter, were among the first to demonstrate, in nature, that evolution can happen rapidly and reversibly. They found that bill size in some species tracked changes in the availability of seeds of different sizes, which became more or less available as various plants suffered and thrived as the climate varied over time.
Cameron Ghalambor 2:28
Bills in some species evolved to become larger when the most common seeds were big and hard to crack, but then when small and soft seeds became more abundant, the bills evolved back.
Marty Martin 2:39
On today's show, we talk with Rosemary about a lot of this work, but especially her personal experiences working in such a remote area, with her daughters in tow most of the time.
Cameron Ghalambor 2:48
Not only were the girls integral to a lot of their projects, Rosemary says that those field experiences were extremely formative for her girls and bonding for the family in general.
Marty Martin 2:58
All these experiences and other important events in Rosemary's scientific timeline are now chronicled in her new autobiography "One step sideways, three steps forward."
Cameron Ghalambor 3:07
We'll let Rosemary explain the title of her book a little later. For now, get ready for a wonderful series of stories from Rosemary growing up in rural wartime England.
Marty Martin 3:17
Her early exchanges with Conrad Waddington and others that so strongly shaped her career
Cameron Ghalambor 3:17
And a lot of other items about her history that didn't quite make it into the book.
Marty Martin 3:26
A quick technical note before we start, we interviewed Rosemary twice because technicians decided to start repairs on her WiFi in the middle of our first chat with her. We bring this up because a few times we all refer to the last time we talked, and now you know why.
Cameron Ghalambor 3:40
Thank you, Rosemary, for talking to us twice about the book.
Marty Martin 3:43
And one more thing before we start the show, despite our best efforts and many of our generous listeners, we weren't able to raise enough funding to keep the podcast free. So this will be the last show that you can hear in its entirety outside of a paywall.
Cameron Ghalambor 3:57
Future episodes will be hosted by substack, but only the first 30 minutes will be free, so we can generate the income we need for our producer and interns. Those of you who have already contributed to the podcast can consider yourselves our first group of subscribers.
Marty Martin 3:57
And if you have any trouble accessing that subscription, please feel free to email and ask us about them. We'll do our best to connect to you if we have your information, specifically your email address, but shoot us an email at info@bigbiology.org, to check.
Cameron Ghalambor 4:28
I'm Cameron Ghalambor
Marty Martin 4:29
And I'm Marty Martin,
Cameron Ghalambor 4:30
And this is Big Biology.
Cameron Ghalambor 4:43
So Rosemary Grant, thank you so much for joining us today on Big Biology.
Rosemary Grant 4:47
Well, thank you very much for inviting me. This is exciting. Also seeing you again.
Cameron Ghalambor 4:53
Yeah, it's great to see you. We're really looking forward to talking to you today about your new autobiography. That's entitled, one step sideways, three steps forward. And I just wanted to start off by saying what a pleasure it was to read your book, you know, I expected, as I was reading it, I expected it to, you know, tell this amazing story of your life and and how you, you know, became a scientist, and it was so much more than that. It was like watching a movie, you know, where I was taken back in time to you growing up in England, with these stuffy Victorian expectations that you experienced. And then, you know, just all the amazing places you've been and, and the things you've seen and done and, and I guess, to start off, I'm just curious at what point you decided to write your autobiography?
Rosemary Grant 5:53
Oh, yes, this was actually.. Peter was writing his. And I said, "Oh, I'll never do this." And but he was having so much fun, and then I think that stimulated me to think back in time, and also to really think of my parents, who I think were amazing people. And it was an an opportunity to to bring everything together, and also the rather amazing people that I have met and influenced me, and it was almost in some ways, slightly paying homage to my parents and my upbringing and the unexpected people like the gardener who had never been to school and all these people who had actually had a big influence on my life. And also the real, I think motivation was there was so many young women or so many young people, not just women, so many young people who had had difficulty entering a career in, not just the sciences, but also in the arts and following a trajectory that they'd really love to do. And I think the fact that my trajectory was not straight...and I was really writing it for them. So it was two things. It was both to pay some sort of homage to the people I had met early in life, but also to try and inspire young people who are having difficulty entering a profession of their own, and just to say to them, you know, if I met you, you would have like full support, but to say that you can achieve things even just by stepping sideways and then going forwards. And sometimes those sideways steps are, even though you think they're sideways, you learn such a lot in doing it that you can bring it back to your main trajectory. And I think for the for the end of the preface I put it is for these people that I wrote the book, and I think that's the real reason it was for the young people who are having slight difficulties entering a career that I wrote this book.
Cameron Ghalambor 8:11
Yeah.
Marty Martin 8:12
So I mean, just to echo Cam's sentiment, I really, really enjoyed reading the book. It was so vivid. The examples were wonderful. I felt like I was there. So what was your process? Do you keep a diary? Or how did you recount these things that with such, you know, amazing detail, it's it really just felt like I was standing over your shoulder while you're having some of these conversations.
Rosemary Grant 8:35
No, I didn't keep a diary. Now, Peter did. He had a diary. Later in life, he kept a diary. I never did, and I think I have, I'm lucky to have a sort of photographic memory, and I can just remember so vividly the situations, certain situations. And in a way, I'm glad I didn't have a diary, because there would have been too much there. You know, every day, there's something. But it was just the vivid things that I remember, the unusual situations that made an impression on me, and it was those that I used. The other thing that I did was I just wrote, especially the early parts, just, you know, a couple of pages or something at a time, almost like writing a letter. Yeah.
Cameron Ghalambor 9:22
So, you mentioned that your a lot of your motivation was to pay homage to the people who inspired you. And you described this very, just, very rich upbringing in the Lake District of England. And as I was reading the book, I felt like I was watching, you know, an old movie of you growing up in England, in this very kind of difficult time during the war. It just made me think that like it was, it's so different than like, for example, my own childhood. And are those experiences still still there, or has life kind of moved on since then?
Rosemary Grant 10:15
No,I think, I think the experiences are still there. The English Lake District is unique in some ways, as being this area where there, I think even now it's only about 2500 people, and it's also part of the Lake District that is really quite isolated. In fact, it's so isolated in a way that when the Romans invaded Britain 2000 years ago, they bypassed that area because that estuary is so dangerous. And they went, when they were going up towards Carlisle and Hadrian's wall, they went inland from there. So the whole place has been very isolated for a long time, and yet it's beautiful. It right on carboniferous limestone.
Rosemary Grant 11:01
And the people there, well, because my father, being a medical doctor, introduced us to, well he was doctor for all these people. And I think I mentioned how some of them had never been to school at all, some of the older people have never been to school, and yet they were remarkably they taught themselves to read and write. And so I was very impressed with that. And the people there cooperate with each other in order to, what is called, hefting the sheep on the hills. And I think this cooperation is still there, and I still see this. I mean, not everywhere, especially when you read the news, you don't see this, but you still see many, many people who have this goal of being a sort of ethical line. So I think that, I think it's still there. I mean, if it wasn't still there, I'd be very sad, and I'm sure it is still there, because you see many people like this. Both my parents did have this strong ethical view, which I didn't really appreciate. I mean, I never even thought of this when I was writing the book.
Rosemary Grant 12:22
I think you said in my in the last time, did I write this book with this ethical line through the book? And I didn't. I just, I was just writing incidents that happened. And so I it made me think twice when you asked me that question last time, and I didn't write it because to show this strong, ethical line at all, in fact, made me think, I suppose there was one there, and I didn't. I didn't, I wasn't conscious of it.
Marty Martin 12:52
Yeah. So what was it like growing up with your father as a doctor and a surgeon in particular, right? I mean, with all of the many, many people coming through the house, and the all sorts of experiences that a young child would have, would have had.
Rosemary Grant 13:06
Well, I think I said there was a the sort of surgery wing of the house, and there was a soundproof door, which actually my father had made. He made the soundproof door. But still, he would come up roaring up the stairs sometime. I didn't put this in the book, saying, "Will you children be quiet? I'm trying to work." And it was very much a general practice. I mean, he did everything from delivering babies to bending broken limbs to basically everything. And he was, he was quite an extraordinary person, because he his hobby was engineering, really. And also he was very, in those days, he was very Victorian, brought up very much in a classical education. So he would quote reams of Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare and things like that.
Marty Martin 14:00
Wow
Rosemary Grant 14:00
So he was very keen that we read. And he was quite severe, but also very kind. So it was... The nearest I get to him was reading, now, sort of some of the Russian novels, a little bit a little bit like that. I mean, very different. I don't know people like him today so much.
Rosemary Grant 14:23
And it was I found one part that was very interesting when I later, when I came and said, Why are you so good at diagnosing? Because he was exceptionally good at diagnosing. And he would go to London every year for a so-called refresher course that he would take and there they got to know how good he was at diagnosis. And so quite frequently, the London hospitals would telephone him when they had a difficult case. So I asked him this how did he really why was he so good. Because I thought it might help me with my own research. And he said, "Well, what I do is I things are usually obvious. Somebody might come in with some sort of heart problem, and you go down the, you know, the normal routes, and then often you find there's something which just doesn't quite match." And he said, "It's always by following these exceptions that I actually come down to what the final diagnosis is." So, you know, and I'm very conscious, if I go to the doctor now, you know, they will say, Oh, they might say, I mean, it's not, but they might say, "Oh, your cholesterol is a little bit high. You should go on this, that and the next thing." But my father would never say that. He would maybe register the cholesterol was high and this was high and that was high, then he would go down and find something completely different that didn't actually match all that. So it was always follow your exceptions.
Cameron Ghalambor 15:52
Well and but your mother also plays a very prominent role, I think, in your childhood. And was also quite extraordinary in her own way.
Rosemary Grant 15:59
Yes, she was, well, she, of course, grew up at a time when women didn't even think of working or anything like this. But she actually did. She trained as a pharmacist. She was always a bit ashamed about that, because she really wanted to be a medical doctor. But her, as I think of her, she was very knowledgeable about music. She had a lovely voice, which I unfortunately didn't inherit. My brother did, but I didn't. But she very knowledgeable about classical music, and loved classical music. She read a huge amount, and was very energetic. She helped my father a lot. And then we also had, as I think I mentioned, we had to grow all our own food during the war. So she was, you know, feeding hens. And, well, we did have, we had help, and I mentioned that, but she was very, very energetic, and always read to us at night, and wasn't very strict to us children. I think both my brother and I felt that we had a lot of leeway, and she would reprimand us, but we knew that she only thought of it as rather mischievous pranks or things we were doing. We should tell us not to do this or that, but it didn't really mean anything, until we hit something that was she thought was doing some harm to people, or something like that. And then she'd come down like a ton of bricks. And she knew a huge amount about she knew all the birds, she knew a lot about all the plants, the names of all the plants, she loved plants, and then the fossils, there's lots of fossils there, and she knew a lot about the fossils. he read a lot, so she would tell us, me particularly, because I love this, and we would go for long walks and find fossils and find plants and all that sort of thing. So
Marty Martin 17:54
So maybe, maybe say a little bit more about that. What were your experiences, you know, with your mother and your father, the gardener, the other you know, folks that lived in Arnside. I mean, do you remember individual, particular experiences that shaped your path?
Rosemary Grant 18:16
Well, yes, and I think I put those experiences in the book. So one was, you know, meeting this man, because he had shell shock, and I described meeting him as a very small child. And that was a big experience, because this was when the war had just started. So, you know, we didn't know, I didn't as a small child, why were people trying to kill us. And then meeting this man who was so terribly disturbed after having shell shock, and that was in the First World War. So this was, you know, sometime later.
Rosemary Grant 18:59
But the other thing that was very important was meeting German prisoners of war. And by that time, I was probably six, seven years old at that time, and sort of conscious that Germans were trying to kill us. And hearing the, you know, the bombers going over every night and being sort of thrown under the kitchen table when they came too near, by my parents. But at the same time finding out that these Germans also wanted the war to stop, and it was that learning, and that my parents explaining that it was Hitler who was the real problem, and that we mustn't think of German people all like that, that sort of thing. And of course, we, my brother and I, were meeting these German prisoners of war every day in their tea break and talking to them, and we thought that our parents didn't know anything about it. But, of course, the car had already told them. So they knew perfectly well what was going on. But that was a very and also, I talked to my brother later in life about it. You know, we hadn't talked about it, but unfortunately, he died about 10 years ago, and but just before he died. I mentioned, do you remember talking to these German prisoners of war? And he said, "Oh, yes." And so he had exactly the same experience about this. And the fact that you mustn't just think that because German people were fighting us at that time, that all Germans were the same/
Marty Martin 20:37
Yeah, did these experiences have any influence on your sort of path to being a scientist, or maybe I can imagine they would have influenced the way that you mentored people and worked as a scientist, you know, with colleagues and such. But how did, if they did, how did these experiences shape your career?
Rosemary Grant 20:57
I think what you have said is exactly correct. They influence how I interacted with people and all people from all walks of life. There are very, very different students that are very different, so that sort of thing. Yes, that influenced me. But actually the science part, I think I was more influenced by my, well, my parents and also Jerry, the gardener. Even as a young child, I was conscious that individuals are very different. And so I would discuss this with Jerry. And Jerry would say, "Well, you know, it's all due to the environment. Look how I'm growing, you know, cabbages here and cabbages there, and the ones in the sun are doing better than the ones in the shade, etc, etc." And on different substrates, like alkaline soil and more acid soil, that sort of thing, because we were living on this limestone area. So that, I think. influenced me. My father very much influenced well, both my parents influenced me as far as the science went. You know, my father suggested that I should read Darwin's Origin of the Species when I was 12. And, of course, it was really too early. And but when I thought, well, this is boring, because it's all about pigeon breeding. But my mother took me up to see a pigeon breeder, and then I got fascinated, because he told me all about how some of his pigeons had been used to send messages to the front line during the war. And I don't know if this was first or second world war, but he did this. But anyway, that became very interesting. But then later, much later, discussing how he crossed and back crossed to get different, different characteristics in his pigeons, that was very interesting, because that was a method of how he could get the different characteristics in the pigeons.
Marty Martin 23:05
I've always wondered how many people may have been turned off from that book because of its emphasis on pigeons, early. I had the same experience. My grandfather, when I was about 12, told me to read this book. I know I just struggled so much to get through the pigeon chapters. It gets much better after the pigeons. And then as you learn a little bit about what Darwin's intentions were, the pigeons become interesting. But boy, not to a 12 year old mind.
Rosemary Grant 23:30
Yes, exactly. And I felt exactly the same. And then, of course, reading it later when I was older, it became much clearer.
Cameron Ghalambor 23:39
Right. Yeah, the importance becomes more clear. So it's, I guess it's one thing to be inspired to want to pursue science and further your education, but you grew up during a time when opportunities for women to continue with their educations was very limited. And so the idea of going to university, as opposed to staying home, and, you know, having children, was sort of the expectation at the time. And I felt like, you know, you described the challenges that were, you know that you faced, I guess. But at the same time, you don't really dwell a lot on the the unfairness of the system, but rather just more on your resilience, of like, how you navigated the challenges that came up and and I'm, I'm just kind of curious about where you felt that resilience came from and if you have also advice for for people today who face similar kinds of challenges.
Rosemary Grant 24:48
Yes, I think I just accepted what life was. I mean, I didn't actually... Looking back, I didn't really get very angry about certain things, I just accepted this, and more or less thought, how am I going to study for biology? I think part of it is that my mother had discussed with me how unfair it was when people's marriage broke up and women were left to look after the children. I think she had seen several examples of this quite recently, when she told me about it. And she said, you know, these poor women, they are left, they've had no training, and suddenly they have children to look after. And in those days, men were not expected or not forced to give alimony so often, they were suddenly in poverty, having to raise children. And so that really struck home. And I thought the point was, I'm going to be very careful who I married, if I'm going to marry. And I thought, well, and then I think at one time, I was thinking, Well, I'd rather do biology than marry, at least I can do something when I look after myself and I won't be left destitute. And that was more the sort of thing.
Rosemary Grant 26:11
But when I was at school, I just went along with everything. And I went along thinking, yes, the money should go to the boys because the men have got to look after the family and women don't. And this was the argument that women should not go to university. But very few people did go to university in those days in England. I think it was much better in the United States and in other places, but in England were very, very few people did. And of course, the schools were for in those days, there were no co-education schools. It was all boys or girls, and the girls were. I didn't realize quite how poor the girls' education was academically compared with the boys, until I left school and took this correspondence course. So there again, that was the best thing that could have happened to me. So I was trying hard to take the university exams at the school, but I would have failed. I'm sure I would have failed if I had done that, because this level of education was so low, and it was only when I left school that took a job and then, and then took this correspondence course that I realized how far behind I was academically. And it was pretty easy to catch up, the correspondence course was very good and, and so I managed to get into Edinburgh that way.
Marty Martin 27:40
Before we turn to Edinburgh, Cam and I want to ask a relatively selfish question, in the sense that we both have daughters that are, in my daughter's case, starting university in a few months. In Cam's daughter's case, not that much longer. What are your thoughts now on their sort of way to prioritize things and how to think about navigating university? I don't know Cam, about your daughter's plan necessarily, but mine is perhaps thinking about the sciences and maybe biology, but probably more medically inclined for our listeners at those ages, and then maybe college students in general, what kinds of things do you think are important for them to be thinking about?
Rosemary Grant 28:22
Yes, I always say, "Follow your heart." You know, whatever you want to do, really do that. But I think what I also would say, if you if you can't actually go on the straight trajectory, which is basically, if it's science, let's say undergraduate, then graduate work, postdoc, a straight trajectory like that, that if you do other things, don't be afraid of doing other things because you learn so much doing it. You don't think you're going to but you do learn a lot, at least every side step I've taken, I've not regretted it, because I've learned a lot. So I would say, just throw yourself into it, but always think that you can drop that and come back to where you were. I mean, I did this, and I was I didn't want to do school teaching when I did it, I wanted to get back into doing research work, but I was so glad I did, because I learned so much at that time.
Rosemary Grant 29:26
And with my own daughter, Nicola, who was an art student, she was also interested in sciences as well, but she was really interested in comparative literature and oral literature, that sort of thing. And then she went off to Nepal and India. She played the violin, took her violin with her, fell in love with a classic sitar when she was in Nepal and then came back, finished her degree at Dartmouth. This was just a year abroad during her career, and so came back, finished her career in comparative literature, and then went back to India, this time to immerse herself in training for as a classical sitar player. And did very well. Just one year she was doing concert tours in Europe with tabla player and another sitar player. And then said, I want to do medicine. And so she will say everything she did, from her doing arts at university, doing the sitar, training for the sitar, going off and living with people to study oral literature in a remote area in Nepal, and all those things she thinks actually helped her medical career when she was doing medical career, and now when she's got to go back to art, she still has that ability to write. She would say that you learn a lot by not going to do a straight trajectory. So I think what I would say just do something that you want, that you can do at the moment, and you can always go back, and you learn a lot by doing that. So it's a bit justifying my own kind of winding path. But I think I do, I do see it, and I, as I say, I see it very strongly in my own daughter, Nicola.
Cameron Ghalambor 31:36
Yeah, so let's go back to your path going to university, and so you did your degree at the University of Edinburgh. And in the book, you write about you know that transition from moving from the Lake District to Edinburgh, which sounded a little bit challenging at the time, but you also write a lot about the professors who were very supportive of your pursuits. And some people that you know really caught my attention were people like Conrad Waddington and Falconer, who a lot of people will know from his quantitative genetics book, Charlotte Auerbach as well. And so one thing that I think I've talked to you about before is I've been very strongly influenced by Waddington, personally, and his writing and his ideas, I think are still very influential. And I'm just kind of curious if you could tell us a little bit more about your interactions with Waddington and these other people that you ran into when you were at university.
Rosemary Grant 32:44
Yes, and this genetics course. He was starting this quantitative genetics course when I was there. I don't remember whether he'd already had one year of it or or not. But anyway, it was a really interesting course. It was a whole year. You didn't do anything else but go to the genetics department. And there were 12 of us students, and then also Falconer was writing the first edition with this quantitative genetics book. So each discussion was a chapter from that book, and I remember it was I had to work so hard just to keep up, because the ideas were all so new and different and the discussion that we had was really great. We would read this, and then the course was just discussing this one chapter and the ins and outs of this. And we had to go every at 11 o'clock in the morning, and at four o'clock, I think it was in the afternoon, we had to go for coffee and tea. And everybody joined there. And there was about half an hour's discussion with everybody. All the people in the genetics department were there, and all the visitors came as well. So Sul Wright was a frequent visitor who would come up, and Lerner was another one, and Dobzhansky was another one that came. So there was a strong discussion there. Waddington took very much part of this. He made a huge effort to bring us in. You know, usually we sat quietly, because we couldn't possibly discuss at that level. And but then he would, you know, say, and what do you think? And we would have to sort of stammer what we thought. And then he also had, he was a very unusual man. He also painted a lot, himself. And he had one part of the genetics department, there was a library with all the books and lots of reprints. And then the other library across the hall was just of arts books and literature and art. So and he said, I expect you to spend equal time in each it's very important that you do. So and I think I say that we didn't have any exams until right at the very end. And the first question, I think, was, this is the best of all possible worlds. Discuss this from a genetics point of view. You have one hour.
Rosemary Grant 35:13
So I remember sort of liking that, liking doing it. But I'd actually hate to see my the essay I wrote. I have no idea what I put. But I just remember enjoying that challenge. Yeah.
Marty Martin 35:32
Did you ever engage him about, I mean, obviously that's a Voltaire quote, but did you ever engage him about how he put those two worlds together, and how he used art and literature as inspiration or grounding, or what was his method?
Rosemary Grant 35:49
He said that he got a lot of concepts from literature. I think that was his goal of making sure that we were broadly educated and that we used concepts from various different I think that was the main, the main goal, yeah.
Cameron Ghalambor 36:10
But I think it also speaks to just a very different kind of philosophy of being well-rounded. And I guess I'm surprised by some of my colleagues who I think are a little bit dismissive of being broad in that sense, you know, you should spend all of your time focused on, you know, on the science and being very narrow, because there's so much to know. And, yeah, I think we, you know, we're potentially missing something about the importance of being widely read, and, you know, something about the scholarship, something seems like it's being lost.
Rosemary Grant 36:55
I think so too. And I think the, probably,all these sort of media that people are subjected to now, when it's so easy to just google, you know, you're thinking of a question, and it's so easy to google it to get an answer. And so I think we, in some ways, we gained hugely by a lot of information being opened up. But another way, we've lost maybe the deep thinking about things, spending time actually thinking and cross thinking from literature to science
Cameron Ghalambor 37:31
Yeah, yeah, that ability to synthesize and see the connections.
Rosemary Grant 37:35
Yes
Marty Martin 37:36
One other quick question about Waddington. You tell a story about a conversation you once had with him about studying animal and plant genetics and evolution in the wild, and he, I think, surprised you in how supportive he was in that idea. Because can you tell us a little bit about that, and sort of maybe whether it had anything to do with how your research career progressed thereafter.
Rosemary Grant 38:00
It did, actually, it had an enormous impact. I think it was almost a turning point, because I, you know, did loads of experiments, and we were encouraged to do little experiments on our own, etc, but we did a lot on ourselves. We did a lot on Drosophila and, you know, other lab organisms. And I thought, well, I asked him, and I can remember very clearly he walked in late one afternoon after another. A friend and I had been working together on an experiment. And these Drosophila, you know, must have been very much constrained being in the lab for so long, and the variation must be really selected out, and that they would no longer be able to live in the wild if they were let loose. And so I asked him about this, about what was done being done in the world. And I was amazed at how he literally took his pipe out of his mouth. He sat on the bench, and he discussed it. He must have discussed it with me for about almost an hour, I think, and about all the things that he thought might be changing. And as he left, I was amazed, because as he left, he said, "You know, I think really what we ought to have in the genetics department is a really good ecologist." And so he was extremely supportive about this, which encouraged me to think even more about doing work in the wild. And I mean, he did, you know, we discussed the obvious things that you couldn't control experiments easily in the wild, but on the other hand, there was this huge amount of genetic variation in the wild, which was lost in the lab. And he had just done his heat shock experiments, and he said he went out and caught wild Drosophila because of the variation that so I was amazed about that too, although I think he does say it in his paper, but I had missed that factor. Yes, and I think it was, I think it was that ability, because there were so few people that you had time to actually have long discussions with, as a student, as an undergraduate student, with professors, which was so nice. And I did with Falconer too. Lots of discussions with Falconer, and also a man called Beal, who was working on paramecium.
Cameron Ghalambor 40:22
Well, that conversation with Waddington, you, you talk about in your book that you, you sort of made a decision that you wanted to continue on to do a PhD, and you wanted to study speciation and diversification of arctic char in Iceland. And so, you know,
Rosemary Grant 40:42
You know, I still love that project, because other people have done now since then, but that idea of doing arctic char, I thought was fantastic. I love that project. Still do.
Cameron Ghalambor 40:56
Well and of course, there's been a lot of research on diversification and char and, you know, I think, you know, it's interesting to think how your career might have taken a very different trajectory had you become a fish biologist. Exactly,
Rosemary Grant 41:12
Exactly, yeah, and I wouldn't have met Peter,
Cameron Ghalambor 41:15
Because that's right. So you, rather than pursuing the PhD This is one of the sort of sideways experiences that you had. You ended up moving to Canada to teach embryology at the University of British Columbia, yes, and that's where you met Peter, I guess.
Rosemary Grant 41:34
That's right
Marty Martin 41:35
I don't know if Peter would appreciate the sideways part
Rosemary Grant 41:39
It was definitely sideways. I just say one thing about the char though, I think you can probably see many of the ideas about how I had worked out, how I wanted to do the char. Those actually ideas were and, cause Peter had had similar ideas too, were very similar to what we actually did in the Galapagos. So the actual, actually putting together genetics and the environment was very similar in the char to the Galapagos. So it wasn't conceptually, it wasn't hugely different. But yes, meeting Peter, and the reason why I went to Canada was, not only did I not have any money, and this was one way of earning a little bit of money, and also it was a very exciting, you know, for a young person, it's extremely exciting. And also, my parents didn't want me to go to Iceland, and my professors didn't want me to go to Iceland. They did like the char project, but they didn't want me to go there as a single woman in Iceland. They'd read too many sagas, about these dangerous Vikings. So I went. I don't know why they might have thought Canada would be safer. But anyway, I went to Canada and met Peter. No, I mean, it was very exciting finding that Peter had the same ideas, because now not many people did want him to understand the process of speciation. And Peter did, and I did. And he came from a different angle, the much more ecological angle. I came much more from a genetic angle. And so that was really very stimulating. Peter was actually my TA, which is an absolute no, no. We're exactly the same age and even to the same month, but he was the TA for my course.
Marty Martin 43:41
So how did you discover your mutual interest in speciation? And maybe tell us a little bit about those first interactions with you, coming from the genetics angle and Peter tackling things more ecologically. I mean those interactions were they sources of inspiration? And, oh, wow, I'd never thought about it that way? Or were there maybe some arguments about various topics?
Rosemary Grant 44:06
I think the probably were, I don't actually, what I do remember is having long conversations with him, actually walking on the shore about this. And he was actually starting a PhD there on birds on the Tres Marías islands in Mexico. And he was interested in very much, very little about the genetics or or the changes, but he was interested about the way the ecological differences, both on mainland Mexico and the Tres Marías islands, were different. So it was very ecological. And I then brought in, you know, about genetic variation and things like this that would be similar, different. And so I think it was talking about this, and I knew that, I mean, I'd already discussed the ecological side with Warrington, so I wasn't adverse to that at all, but I was interested in putting the two things together. Now I just remember as having very stimulating conversations about that. We had other arguments, but with the science, I think it was really coming, coming at the same question from two different angles, and Peter was far greater knowledge on ecology than I had. And I had a far greater knowledge at that time on genetics. And Peter did, I think it was set but, but I was also interested in the ecological side bit as well.
Marty Martin 45:44
So we're maybe you're gonna run the clock forward a little bit in the interest of time, and I'll just ask you about something that's been so central to both of your or your careers, the Galapagos Finch work. What's the origin story there? Which of you came up with the idea to work there, and what was the sort of motivation for the first trip, and how did that come to be?
Rosemary Grant 46:05
Oh, okay, so we were we wanted to find out what was a good system. And we discussed lots of systems. And of course, I was saying the char was a good system.
Marty Martin 46:16
Of course
Rosemary Grant 46:17
And Peter was thinking about other things, but we had both read David Lack's book independently on Darwin's finches, and I was fascinated by the variation, the phenotypic variation in some of the populations, where you wouldn't expect them to be phenotypic variation because of the environment, and why was that so? And so we honed in on the Darwin's finches on the Galapagos and Peter very interested in competition at that stage, and how did competition work ecologically? So we honed in on the Galapagos archipelago and decided but we didn't, couldn't get the money, or didn't have enough money. And then what happened was two people in and Lynette Abbott from Australia wrote to Peter and said, could they do a postdoc with Peter? And they also have read David lacks book, and thought the Galapagos might be a good place. So that stimulated us to work harder to get money to go to the Galapagos. And in the end, we got it. Lots of places failed but in the end, McGill University supported a first project there. And then, of course, we had young children at the time. I was basically, I think I was already school teaching then and or if I wasn't, I was about to start school teaching I can't remember exactly the order, but anyway, they came and they went down with Peter, first of all, or Peter joined them for a month in February. I think, yeah, I was school teaching, that's right, I was I couldn't go, so I was school teaching, but it seemed possible that then I could get back into it. So we went. We went later in the year, and we decided to take our children with us then, and that's when my part started in the Galapagos. Yeah,
Cameron Ghalambor 48:24
Yeah so I'd like to talk a little bit more about doing field work with children, because, you know, a lot of us that are field biologists have children, and, you know, it's a struggle to either be away from family, or you take your family with you. And so I think I may have told you that, you know, I work a lot in Trinidad. And after I contracted Dengue fever on one of my field trips, I was very afraid to bring my family and my young daughter with me into the field. And so how did you and Peter sort of decide to bring the kids, and what was the experience of having children in a remote island far away from the amenities of, you know, city life?
Rosemary Grant 49:15
Well, I mean, I really feel for you about dengue. And we'd had dengue in Galapagos. I mean I think since then, dengue has come into Galapagos, but not on the uninhabited islands. But then that was one of the things that did concern us, and one of the things when Peter went down, first of all was that he really checked it out and really there was, Galapagos was, as long as we sterilized our water and filtered our water, really there was nothing that could harm the children. We knew there were scorpions there, but you could really take care of that. And so that was utmost, when we first went down, was it safe enough for the children to go? And I think. That time, it was because I was rather desperate to get back to do a PhD and if we had done the char work, Iceland, of course, would have been fine to take the children to. And taking the children out of school didn't really worry me, because I thought that we could carry on with their school education. It was mainly the medical things that... and we took a lot, we took huge medical kit. I talked about this with my father, and you know what I what we should take. And so we had antibiotics, we had splints, we had everything. Fortunately, we never used anything.
Rosemary Grant 50:42
But taking the children to the field was really wonderful. They were very responsible, because they knew not to go swimming when we weren't there, that they were only allowed to go swimming when we were there. So when they were very young, they were always within, well, I knew where they were on the islands, and so they considered they had a huge amount of freedom just to roam, although we knew where they were. They also helped us, like in taking birds out of the net, that sort of thing, with their little fingers. They loved finding nests, and they were very good at it, which was actually hugely helpful for us. And then they had time to do what, basically do what they wanted to do. And then at lunchtime, we did their schoolwork with them. So that worked very well. And as they grew older, they still had to do their schoolwork, they got more independent by doing their schoolwork. And then they also did their own little project, one on the doves and one on mockingbirds. And they threw themselves into that, and they loved it. I mean, they both say that it's the best thing we ever did. You know, we weren't perfect parents, but at least what we did was take them to the Galapagos. So I would strongly recommend people, if they can, and if it's safe, to take children with them. I never felt that it held us back at all. And I know Peter didn't. Peter thinks that, actually, he thinks of those 10 years as being the high points when the whole family was together. And I think the same. It was a really wonderful time, just being a family alone on an uninhabited island. And remarkably, we had, well, I'm sure they will say that we had, I don't remember any major arguments or anything like that, but I'm sure there must have been but anyways. And they also say the same. They just think it is wonderful time of their life.
Marty Martin 52:47
My favorite story about safety involves not your daughters, but Peter. You would take showers in his near miss with a marine friend. Can you tell us a little bit about that one?
Rosemary Grant 52:58
Oh, the shark story? Yeah. The only way to wash on Daphne is to go down onto a little ledge. And so we'd cover ourselves in shampoo, dive into the sea and swim round. And the children and I had done this, and they were still quite young. And then Peter came down, and when he went in, it's very clear of Daphne, and we could see this shark coming up and coming up from the depth and going into attack mode and coming towards Peter. Now my point of view is this shark was a white tipped reef shark that came up and went towards his neck and then suddenly turned away. The children, now, think that, and this is what, how many 40 years later, or something. Children now, one child thinks that it was a whole school of sharks that came towards Peter, and another child thinks it was a hammerhead shark that came towards Peter. But actually, if it was a hammerhead shark, it wouldn't have mattered, because they don't, they wouldn't have done anything. Anyway, it suddenly turned away, and we called to Peter to come back, and he came, swam back, climbed up onto the rocks, and we all said, it must be the shark repellent shampoo. So we all called it shark repellent shampoo. Anyway, after that, we only used buckets of water. We didn't go diving in again. And when we got back to Montreal, there was an article in the newspaper, in the Montreal Star, I think it was, that said that somewhere in the Philippines, they had found this ingredient that people who dived used to scare off sharks, and they gave the chemical formula. So we went rushing to the shower, picked up the shampoo bottle, and there it was, the chemical formula in the shampoo. So it really was a shark repellent shampoo that. That was our nearest danger, whether anything would have happened, but it was. It was pretty frightening, actually, to see it in attack mode.
Rosemary Grant 53:20
So when you made it one of these trips, what would the typical duration be?
Rosemary Grant 55:12
Three to four months
Marty Martin 55:13
Okay, and the what was the typical day? So if it's birds, it's definitely early mornings.
Rosemary Grant 55:20
Early morning. Get up early before it gets light. We would put up the nets, before furl the nets overnight, so nothing will get stuck in them. And then get up before it got light, open the nets and collect the birds for about 20 minutes. And we'd usually get the lot in 20 minutes, but we wanted to get them out while it was still very cool, take them into the shade. Then in the shade, we would measure them, put bands on their legs, measure the body measurements the wing, the tarsus, weigh them, and band them, and then take a small drop of blood for later DNA analysis. Then we would look for nests, and depending on the season, we would if they were breeding or not, and then check the nests and who was paired with who, and the number of eggs and number of nestlings and fledgings. Then we would do quadrats to see what seeds were available that year. And then we would also measure the number of berries on, I think we had, what's it, 20 trees that we and then on 10 pontiac bushes we would measure, we would count, the number of fruits and flowers, and so really, to quantify the food that was available. Oh, yes, and then, of course, feeding observations, watching the banded birds, what they fed on, because then we had the measurements for that. Then also we'd record the song and of course, this would vary if it was a dry year and there was no breeding, and if it was a breeding, then, etc, yeah. But catching the birds was always the first thing, yeah.
Cameron Ghalambor 57:07
So Rosemary kind of taking your many years working on the Galapagos and and studying the diversification and speciation process in the Darwin's finches. You know, one thing that strikes me about the Galapagos system is the the arrangement of the islands and the potential for some movement between islands. And when we think about the mechanisms of speciation, whether it's more common in allopatry or sympatry, and the sort of the geography of how populations are arranged. I'm curious whether you feel like the processes that you've observed and quantified in Darwin's finches sort of are generalizable across, you know, just in general, across all species. And I ask that question, kind of thinking about the Cocos Island finch, which is a single island where you have one kind of, like a Darwin's type finch there that hasn't diversified, because maybe it's only a single Island, as opposed to this archipelago? What are your thoughts on these processes and how they generate speciation?
Rosemary Grant 58:25
Absolutely. I'll start with the movement of between islands. First of all, and then there's a little bit of movement between islands. Mostly birds will move when they are very young, and typically they will go back to their island of origin when they breed, but not always. And, of course, we had this situation where there is introgression. And so I think, I think our work is very generalizable, and I think it has been shown to be generalizable. And I think one of the things that we didn't expect at the beginning, and is was an I think, extremely important was hybridization and introgression. And that, of course, has been shown in the cichlid fishes, and it's been shown in many butterflies, and it's been shown Schuters work. And so I think that is very generalizable and very important for the early stages of speciation, and saying the early stages because this is the process that we were interested in, the early stages of the speciation process, rather than complete genetic incompatibility, which, of course, is also interesting, but it's much further along. So the other thing that I think is very generalizable, is, and possibly is less appreciated, is the is imprinting process. So the birds imprint on song, Darwins finches are what we call these closed learners, so they learn in a very short, sensitive period of time, the whole situation would be different if they were not closed learners, but the fact that they imprint early in life, in their case, on song. But of course, we get things like, well, with the char would be like this. They would imprint on the place, and salmon on the place that the eggs hatch in. So they go back to that place, to the spawn themselves. And that we see it in many fish species, but it's often not uppermost in people's minds. I mean, it was at one time. So I think this imprinting process is important. So what else?
Cameron Ghalambor 1:00:34
Well, I wanted to follow up on hybridization and integration, because you said that that was surprising for you and when I think back to, you know, my like reading evolutionary biology textbooks and thinking about, like, Ernst Myers contributions, hybridization was viewed sort of as a, you know, a bad thing. It broke down differences that existed between populations, as opposed to this mechanism that infuses variation and sometimes also will create strong selection, like in the case of secondary contact. So did you have these same biases, like as you were studying the finches, and had to sort of overcome, like your training, to say, like, oh, wait, this hybridization, introgression is actually not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's adding fuel to the process.
Rosemary Grant 1:00:34
So well I'll say that we didn't expect it. We saw it on Genovesa. I think it was a Genovesa work that when we first, we first sent a manuscript didn't even go out for review, it came straight back, saying, birds don't hybridize. And I think this, I mean, I really think it was a different stages people are looking at. I mean, this, you know, well, with Ernst Myer, for example, he was looking at the end point of speciation, and, you know, after there was genetic incompatibility, and so then you could get hybrids that, well, people would talk about, you know, lions and tigers hybridizing and that sort of thing. I mean, we were surprised when we first saw it, because we weren't expecting it, but I wasn't. I didn't think that this caused a huge change in my thinking, because I had already seen- maybe this was Darwin's book about his pigeons, because I had already gone up and talked to many people who were pigeon fanciers and people who were breeding well dogs and things like that, and how they would get certain, oh, even actually more than that. I mean, it wasn't. It was talking to people like Falconer, who was part of the agricultural group, and so the way they got bigger milk yields in cows and things like this was the cross, then backcross. So actually, that concept was not, was not completely new to me. I just thought, wow, this is really interesting, because this actually will explain how you get, particularly on Genovesa, where everything said you shouldn't get a lot of genetic variation, and yet we had this huge amount of phenotypic variation which was heritable, so obviously genetic variation behind that. So this actually made things very clear to me. It was suddenly, wow. Well, this is why we're getting this huge amount of genetic variation.
Rosemary Grant 1:03:38
And what was interesting is we were getting it in what was then called conirostris, which was hybridizing rarely, but was hybridizing. And we followed that with magnirostris and also with the ballacillus. So then conirostris was a variable one, and on Daphne, fortis is a variable one which hybridizes with scandens and polliginosa. So they were getting genes from the different areas. And even though it was just a trickle of genes, you could work out how, and I did this with the Genovesa work about how this could actually maintain the variation. So it was actually, I found it very exciting. And even though Peter and I weren't expecting it, suddenly was almost, ah, a eureka moment- this is why we are getting this huge amount of variation. And of course, you know, this is commonplace now. But it was amazing early on we went. There was the people, the botanists, people like Loren Rieseberg, were looking at it and of course, earlier than that too, but very few people were and now you see masses of papers, all with hybridization.
Rosemary Grant 1:03:49
So years ago, Rosemary, Art woods and I talked to you and Peter both about your research. And a big part of that conversation was Big Bird. Was Big Bird one of those individuals that showed up in Genovesa, or I'm remember, I'm forgetting the details of the story. How does Big Bird fit in here?
Rosemary Grant 1:05:08
The Big Bird fitted in, he turned up on Daphne at a time when Trevor Price was actually a graduate student, then on Daphne, and he caught the bird and banded it and weighed it, and it was, it was a time when all the birds on Daphne were banded, so we knew that it had come in from somewhere, and it was huge. I mean, it was like a blown up fortis. And then it didn't breed. It couldn't get big. It sang a completely different song the next year. Tried for two years to get a mate, but it had all the wrong song and all the wrong shape and and then finally, at the very end of the second year, a female fortis who lost her mate, she'd bred for several times that year, but at the very end, she'd lost her mate, and then she moved into that territory and bread with him. So that's how it all started.
Marty Martin 1:06:03
Okay and how is that lineage going? Now, do you know?
Rosemary Grant 1:06:07
I wish I could tell you, absolutely, I can tell you that we went back just before Covid and, onto the island just for one day, and saw, saw a couple that it was just for a very short. So it was the lineage was alive then, I'm not sure now, and some, Eric Anbody, and Carlos Vai went there a couple of years ago, and they didn't actually, they were just netting, and they didn't actually catch one, but they, we don't know if birds, the birds weren't singing. So they didn't. They didn't. Couldn't be sure whether they saw one or not. And we would very much like somebody to go back. I mean, it may have, it may have petered out, and so I hope not, but it may not have done and it would be really interesting to know what is, what is truly happening. We're doing more sophisticated genetics on it with long reads on the whole group. And there's another person who's, in fact, we had a Zoom meeting yesterday. And yeah, so the genetically, it looks really, I mean, it looks really interesting, and it is a completely, it's a combination of the conirostris from Espanola, which was what 5110 turned out to be, and the fortis ancestry. But the interesting thing is that the offspring have a relatively large head on a small body, so the conirostris head on a fortis body, and the genes are segregated throughout the whole lineage like this. So it'll be really interesting to look in more detail exactly how this is actually.
Marty Martin 1:07:52
Did you ever collect data- I'm starting to be dwelling on the species- but did you collect behavioral data? Or are the offspring relatively competitive? Or how did they fare against the other species?
Rosemary Grant 1:08:03
Our behavioral data is very interesting because they feed on, largely on Tribulus seeds, and they go around with magnirostris and feed on tribulus seeds. So we collected the cracking time. We compared the cracking time magnirostris, and the big birds, and they are just as efficient. So our argument was that if there's another drought and tribulus is left behind, they're actually likely to be highly competitive with that magnirostris. Now the fortis, because of introgression and selection the porches, is so small that hardly any of them are capable of cracking tribulus seeds. No, it's really just now the big birds and magnirostris that are cracking these tribulus seed.
Marty Martin 1:08:50
Yeah it definitely sounds like someone needs to get back and find out what's happening.
Rosemary Grant 1:08:54
Yeah, I think somebody will. I think Eric will be going. And yes, there are so many things still to do on Galapagos. It's not just, I mean, tons of things to do, the physiologists needs to go there too.
Cameron Ghalambor 1:09:10
Yeah. So, so Rosemary, like listening to you talk about this particular, you know, individual one thing that really strikes me. I mean, in general, you know, I think people talk a lot about the value of long term data and the benefits of being able to see, you know, beyond just a two or three year grant lifecycle. But I think the other thing that really strikes me is you also have this very intimate knowledge of individual birds and individual organisms and that is something that I think is maybe it's a little bit more common in some of the behavioral, long term behavior studies, like I can think of, like primates, where, where people know these individuals, but I find like that's actually maybe fairly rare, even among field biologists, to have that kind of detailed information on individuals and and I'm just kind of curious about your thoughts on that, because it seems like it gives you insight into things that are not really accessible for most other field biologists.
Rosemary Grant 1:10:24
Yes, it's interesting. You know, we just had Martin Wikelski staying with us a couple of days ago, and we had a similar conversation how, I mean, he brought it up, how many people are looking at trends with large groups of animals going from one place to the other, but missing the individual exceptions. Yes, I think, I suppose it's the same with all trade offs, like the trade off between using wild animals and using lab organisms. I think that the advantage of living in, as we did, on the islands with the animals, you can't help but and having them all banded, you can't help but follow individuals. And maybe if we hadn't followed individuals, we would not have picked up the introgression, hybridization and introgression as early as we did. We'd have to take large groups of and do, well now genetic analysis to find out if there had been any introgression, rather than knowing the individual that introgressed and why. Yes, just say probably it's a behavior. I think this is a huge advantage of being able to put together behavior, ecology, genetics together and also living, living in the same environment with your organisms.
Cameron Ghalambor 1:11:51
Yeah, I worry about, I mean, like on one hand, we have these very powerful now molecular tools that allow us to, you know, sequence large numbers of individuals. But that part, in some ways, is easy, integrating the behavior and the ecology that seems to be what really is is more challenging, and maybe what often is missing in a lot of the types of studies that I see being done today.
Rosemary Grant 1:12:20
Right. Yes, I think what you just said, I mean, you could, for example, you could sort of get it something like this, if you did an ancestry analysis on the genetics, but you wouldn't know who the individuals, well maybe you, wouldn't really know, you know that this was happening, but you wouldn't really know who the individuals were and why and why they were actually introgressing in that way, something like that. Yes. So it's putting the two together, but there's always these trade offs, isn't it?
Cameron Ghalambor 1:12:52
Yeah, no, it's true. So one last big picture kind of question. So we started talking about, you know, your origins and experiences growing up and navigating the social norms of the time, and then navigating the academic kind of environment. And I'm curious whether you have opinions that you could share about how the system can be more accommodating to women pursuing careers in research and academia. I feel like, on one hand, I see things like that I didn't used to see, like childcare at conferences, which I, you know, welcome as a really big improvement, but, you know, that's like a very small part of a bigger problem. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on, on how we might be able to improve the system.
Rosemary Grant 1:13:53
This is a really interesting problem. And I've just spent, I was in Germany the Max Planck Institute, and this was, it was a whole four days discussing exactly this, how we can improve it. And I had to give one talk about the research work, but then another talk about my own life, and then join several discussion groups about what could be done. And my discussion group, we were talking about the two body problem. But it sort of it brings in everything. I mean, it brings in the sorts of things that could be done to improve the whole situation. And it's interesting how different countries have tackled this. I mean, probably the best country is, well you're in Norway now, aren't you? So Norway has a rather different viewpoint to the United States or Britain, and Finland is more similar to Norway. But yes, to have training where those parents can rear offspring, can have daycare, which wasn't in my day ago. Here, in very many cases, in the United States, daycare is so expensive that you have to have two very good salaries in order to afford this, which, of course, postdocs and graduate students do not have and cannot have, and so that is very difficult.
Rosemary Grant 1:15:26
Also, the thing that came up very strongly in that week was all sorts of other things that could help, like, often there isn't equal medical care for both males and females because they medical care doesn't cover the reproductive side of things, so it doesn't cover birth control and that sort of thing, which is more on the female side than the male side. The other thing that came up particularly, and I know this happens in the United States but also in Germany, is that when one person gets a job, what help do they have for another person in academia? Because 70% of, or more than 70%, of people in academia have academic partners, and so what can be done to help them having in place, a place in the university that actually deals with this and helps to get the other partner a job that is preferably in the same institution, but not in the same institution, somewhere nearby, so that they can live in the same place. So daycare, help for partner hires, and this is across the board, same sex or different sex or and also the other thing that came up very strongly was help in getting visas from different countries, because so many people are coming from different countries and have visa problems, and it might be okay for the person who has got the job, but for their partner, it's not okay. And this was, this was astonishing, the number of times that this came up. So that is another thing. And then another point that was raised was, could universities when they, or actually any academic organization, when they actually put out the advertisement for hiring people, could they put something in that advertisement to say that they are willing to help partners to establish themselves? Some in the same sort of wording they have that we are an academic institute that you know looks at diversity, to actually include that in, in that wording. So these were the things that after this conference, that we're all thinking of writing up to include, so that it can be included in, and so this is not just Max Planck for all universities.
Marty Martin 1:17:58
Good. Well, Rosemary, this has really been great. We appreciate your time, especially because this is round two with the technical troubles we had before. So thank you, for making the effort to try again. And I really enjoyed the conversation. The book is fantastic. Before we go, we always give our guests the chance for sort of the last word and the last point is there anything that you wanted to say about the book, or advice to young scientists or or anything else that we didn't, we didn't prompt you.
Rosemary Grant 1:18:26
I don't think so. It said that I would like to yes, maybe say, which I didn't say at the beginning, well maybe I did, but that I really did write the book for to encourage young scientists, not just women, but anyone was having any difficulty. I mean, often people of color having a lot of difficulty. People coming from different parts of the world, people coming from poor backgrounds, have problems. So that was really why I wrote the book.
Marty Martin 1:19:00
Good. Okay, well, thank you so much for joining us.
Rosemary Grant 1:19:03
Well, thank you very much, and I hope we can meet in person sometime.
Marty Martin 1:19:07
Yes, yeah, that would be that would be really good.
Marty Martin 1:19:22
Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, let us know via X, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn, wherever, or just leave a review where you get your podcasts, and if you don't like what you're hearing, we'd love to know that too. Write to us at info@bigbiology.org,
Cameron Ghalambor 1:19:36
Thanks to Steve Lane, who manages the website, and Molly Magid for producing the episode.
Marty Martin 1:19:41
Thanks to Dayna de la Cruz and Carolyn Merriman for their social media work. Keating Shahmehri produces our cover art.
Cameron Ghalambor 1:19:46
Thanks also to the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida, our patrons and donors and the National Science Foundation for support.
Marty Martin 1:19:54
Music on the episode is from Podington Bear and Teiren Costello.