- Hi there, I'm Frank Graff.

Why scientists and state officials want you to kill a beautiful insect, forensic science solves cold cases, and what's killing the tiny creature that helps keep our waters clean, we're talking deadly science, next on Sci NC.

- [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] Funding for Sci NC is provided by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

[gentle music continues] ♪ - Hi again and welcome to Sci NC.

You know, North Carolina has almost 200 wineries across the state, it is a huge industry.

And it is threatened by this.

This is the spotted lantern fly.

It's beautiful, but it's invasive, and it threatens the state's agriculture industry.

Samantha Hoffman from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media has more.

- [Samantha] More than 200 wineries in North Carolina are attracting tourists who come for a taste.

But vineyard owners are worried about an invasive insect with a big appetite.

Meet the spotted lantern fly.

It's small, with a one-inch wingspan, but this insect brings power in numbers.

Threatening agriculture along the eastern United States, this bug's spread caught the attention of social media users and people in the wine industry.

NC State Forestry Professor Kelly Oten says vineyard owners have much to fear.

- Spotted lantern fly are piercing, sucking insects.

That means they use sucking mouth parts to feed on the sap of the plant it attacks, whether that be grapevine, tree, whatever, but they're directly removing nutrients from the tree.

Over time, that weakens the tree or the plant.

- [Samantha] The spotted lantern fly comes from China and other parts of Southern Asia.

Scientists speculate the lantern flies traveled via a stone shipment, with the first infestation reported in Pennsylvania in 2014.

Since then, the bugs have spread through Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and several other states.

In 2022, the first lantern fly colony in North Carolina was found in Forsyth County.

Oten says lantern fly deposit what she calls egg masses that hitch rides on cars and trucks.

- It kind of looks like a smear of mud on the side of tree.

It starts off shiny, but then it dries up and cracks.

It's really hard to see, so you can understand how it could easily be missed and accidentally move from place to place.

- [Samantha] Vineyard manager Joseph Geller is preparing for the lantern fly's arrival at Dynamis Estate Wines in Jonesville.

- We've been worried about spotted lantern fly for about the last five years.

It's really hit the news, hit the extension bulletins.

The Department of Agriculture has sent out quite a bit of information to keep people abreast of all the information.

- [Samantha] Oten says people can mistake several species for the evolving lantern fly.

For example, the nymph stage can look like a tick.

An adult lantern fly can look like a giant leopard moth.

Most infected areas have now implemented kill-on-site programs, but before you kill the bug, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture wants you to take a photo, [shutter clicks] note the exact location, and send both to badbug@ncagr.gov.

Biologist Oten says you can also monitor the population through what she calls circle traps.

- And the way this works is, as the insects migrate up and down the trunk of the tree, they climb into this trap, they continue to climb upwards, that's their natural inclination, and then eventually they end up in the baggie.

And so then you come and check the baggie.

They will not move downward once they're already in the bag.

So you will come, if this tree is infested, you should see many spotted lantern flies in that bag.

- [Samantha] Besides catching the insect, Dynamis manager Geller is cutting down host plants, like this tree of heaven, from his 1500-acre vineyard.

Like the lantern fly, the tree of heaven comes from Asia.

- The tree of heaven is really important because it is an invasive plant itself, and this being an invasive insect is actually from the same native range as the tree of heaven.

So here in the United States, it is the preferred host of the spotted lantern fly.

- [Samantha] You can identify the tree by its light bark, or the shape and branching veins of its leaves.

When crushed, the leaf.

- Smells like burnt peanut butter.

- [Samantha] With more than 500 vineyards in North Carolina, the lantern fly is a threat to business, says Dynamis winemaker Matheson Worrell.

- It takes a lot of guts to really get into this industry and make that investment, and to have that at risk, it's a terrifying thing.

Besides money being at stake, it is, it's a whole culture behind wine making.

And North Carolina is still kind of like a developing region and it's been decades of progress, kind of coming to this point.

- [Samantha] North Carolina Vineyards now employ nearly 10,000 people.

They need your help to prevent the spread of the lantern fly to new parts of the state.

- Look at your vehicles.

These insects are excellent hitchhikers.

They could easily lay egg masses on your cars, RVs, firewood, equipment that's moved around.

And don't be the reason that this insect moves around.

- [Samantha] If you find the lantern fly, remember, reporting is key.

- In other areas where spotted lantern fly is already found, there's big news releases, a lot of public pressure to kill it, kill it, kill it.

But here in North Carolina we are still trying to detect it.

So yes, kill it, but also report it to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

- [Samantha] With detection efforts, growers and the public can keep this invasive insect at bay and continue developing the state's budding industry.

- Want more Sci NC?

You can find these stories and more on our YouTube channel.

Like and subscribe.

Now to the story of our lives, as told by our remains.

To a forensic scientist, our skeletons reveal not only how we died, but also how we lived.

Our bones tell the story of us.

They also give a voice to those who have died.

A new effort combining law enforcement and science is providing answers to grieving families of those who are missing.

[somber music] - A personal identity is a basic human right.

Everybody is born and they get, they have a name, they are given a name.

And so after you die, if you don't know that person, or that person becomes a Jane or a John Doe, they still deserve their name back.

- [Frank] That search for identity is what drives the North Carolina Unidentified Project.

- Everybody deserves their identity.

And as far as forensic genealogy, I mean, the evidence is in the bones.

Their DNA is in the bone.

And so it doesn't matter if there's a, the murder weapon is there, we're gonna bring their identity back, at a minimum.

- [Frank] Identity is defined as the fact of being who a person is.

Your identity is what makes you, you.

But there are roughly 135 cases across North Carolina in which human remains are not identified.

Most of the cases are homicide.

The cases date back to the 1950s.

- I guess it's the way that we treat those who have died is just as important as how we've treated them when they're alive.

And giving them an identity when they aren't able to give one to themselves is kind of the most powerful thing about our work.

- [Frank] So the State Bureau of Investigations is working with the North Carolina Human Identity and Forensic Analysis Lab at NC State to reexamine the remains in hopes of restoring identity.

- So we establish that biological profile to help police narrow down potential missing persons so they can ultimately identify the remains.

- [Frank] Forensic techniques have changed, technology has improved, but every profile starts with the roughly 206 bones in a human adult.

The bones change throughout a person's life, but together, those bones tell the story of you.

- For sex, the most reliable is the pelvis because females have to give birth, so we have some shape differences in there, mostly that women have like a wider pelvis.

Their pubic bone, which is this bone right here, is a lot broader and has more of a rectangular shape.

In males, it's more of a triangular shape.

- [Frank] The ratio between the lower leg and thigh bone reveals a person's natural height.

- And then we plug in those numbers through some equations that are population and sex-specific to get an approximate stature.

- [Frank] Most of the joints in the body get worn down by age or the intensity of our activities.

But the joint that holds the pelvis together, as well as rib number four, are reasonably stable, and can be used to estimate age.

- There's some characteristics in there that follow age ranges and so we use those.

- [Frank] The skull can also be used to determine sex.

In general, males have a more robust skull.

The skull also reveals ancestry.

- We do that by taking several points and measurements along the skull and inputting them through a computer program, and it estimates then, statistically, assigning a population which it most closely resembles.

- [Frank] The skeleton also records your childhood, how you lived your life, even your nutrition.

Taken together, that biological profile is the first step in restoring an identity.

- You have to work in a multidisciplinary setting.

Anthropology is not solving them.

Anthropology just provides a very small piece of the puzzle.

It requires the medical examiner.

It requires law enforcement.

We need investigations.

Without them, we can't do it.

And when the cases warrant, we will also send them out for forensic genetic genealogy.

- [Frank] Think of forensic genealogy as submitting a DNA sample to find your family origin, but then reverse it.

- [Ann] You're trying to find that one origin that you don't know who it is instead of you finding your family.

So we find the family and go back to that, the identity.

And even though they are identified by forensic genealogy, then we send out for a familial DNA match.

You need a scientific validation for that identity.

- The number one priority is to find out who you are.

You have to know who your victim is.

Bring their identity back, do some digging into their background, and then the case may be revived, if you will.

- [Frank] SBI investigators search their files for cases with the best chance of a victim being identified.

The cases selected are those in which significant amounts of remains were recovered, and there is enough information still available to law enforcement to move forward.

- The minimum we could do is to get their identity back, return the remains.

- [Frank] The identities of eight unidentified remains have been restored in the past year.

- [Ann] We had one case that didn't have a name, and they died in 1976.

- Due to his remains, we were able to find his DNA and identify him and return his remains to his family.

- Family had been hoping and waiting to see them walk through the door all those years.

So now they know, which is good, but it's still painful for them.

- [Nathaniel] We may not be able to solve his homicide because so much time has passed, but we've brought him his identity back, and we've returned his remains to his family.

- [Narrator] Follow us on Instagram for beautiful images of North Carolina and cool science facts.

- Now to the search for what is killing freshwater mussels.

And because those mussels help clean the water in rivers and streams, it puts our water supply at risk.

You might not think about, but many communities around the nation get their water from nearby rivers.

We found scientists studying several North Carolina rivers as part of a nationwide effort to save freshwater mussels.

[water rushing] - [Erin] I just think it's, their strategy is really cool.

I think that things that don't get a lot of attention are kind of interesting and cool.

Yeah, I just, I think, you know, freshwater mussels are cryptic and they're really neat.

- [Frank] There's a hidden world beneath the surface of rivers and streams, and the freshwater mussels that live there are vital to the health of those waterways.

- [Erin] Here's one right here.

- Is that alive?

- It's a live mussel.

- All right, so how?

It looks like it was on its side there.

So how does it live in the stream?

How does it exist here?

- Yeah, so they, if my hand is the bottom of the stream, they kind of bury themselves and kind of nestle in just a little bit like that.

And then they'll open a little bit on the top.

And here their two siphons are, where they're breathing the water kind of in and out.

So they bury themselves a little bit, but not completely.

- So the current's coming this way, so it's gonna be open enough so the water just flows through it.

- That's right.

- And filters.

- Yes, the water will flow and it will breathe it in and release the water out in a perfect way.

- How much water can a mussel filter in a day?

Any sense?

- Depends on the mussel, but I think a lot of mussels can filter like 30 gallons of water in an hour.

- An hour?

- It's amazing.

Freshwater mussels breathe the water, in terms of they pull the water in, they sort through it, figure out what's food and what isn't food, and then they release water that is cleaner on the other side.

So it eliminates bacteria and viruses and pulls sediment out of the water into the bottom of the river, making our rivers cleaner.

- The mussels transfer that stuff out of suspension into the bottom of the stream, where it's a critical food resource for aquatic insects, bacteria, crayfish.

And all those creatures in the bottom of the stream are sort of the foundation of the food web in a stream.

They're important to game fish and virtually everything else in the stream.

- [Frank] That filtering helps the environment.

It also helps people.

- Which means that when you turn on your tap, you're gonna have clean drinking water, and it's not gonna cost too much, because these mussels are out here.

Some people say that they're the lungs of the river, other people say they're the liver of the river, and they're really gonna help keep our water clean as a part of that healthy ecosystem.

- [Frank] Trouble is, freshwater mussels are dying at unprecedented rates.

- 152.3.

- The one silo, they grew, the other one was pretty full of sand.

- [Frank] Scientists are scrambling to figure out, not only what is wiping out freshwater mussels, but also what can be done to save them.

- There are a lot of ideas about why mussels are disappearing, and many of those have good support in one specific area.

Others are more just speculation at this point.

But there's never been a study to try to look at what factors might be associated with either healthy mussel populations or declining mussel populations across a large area.

- It does look beautiful here, and everything does seemingly look okay, but still they're not doing well.

So I think that's the interesting aspect of it, is like okay, so yeah, this technically on the outside looks really good, but it's still not, so.

- [Frank] Researchers from federal and state agencies and universities are in the midst of a three-year study.

They are monitoring 100 rivers and streams across 13 states.

10 of those waterways are in North Carolina.

This is the Catawba River.

- Streams are this different little universe that has a lot of unseen factors going on, as far as water quality, sedimentation, what this stream looked like 100 years ago and what it looks like now.

It's normal to us what this stream may look like, but what it is supposed to look like is a factor that people alive today probably haven't seen.

Mussels are filter feeders, so we're not seeing that with the naked eye.

That's all things that are going on that require a closer inspection.

- [Frank] Researchers collect water samples, sediment samples, and core samples of the river bottom for analysis.

Oxygen levels in the water are checked.

- You can imagine, like when you eat food that doesn't have a lot of the nutrients you need, you can't grow as big as you could if you had all the nitrogen and phosphorus and carbon you needed to grow big and reproduce.

- [Frank] And in a unique experiment, scientists place 20 mussels into four silos that water flows through.

The weighted silos are then located in various points in the streambed, fast and slow moving currents, as well as calm eddies.

Three months later the mussels in the silos are collected to see how well they grew.

So they're growing.

- They are growing.

In a stream like this, I mean, it could be that this is normal.

This stream is cool.

There's obviously not much in the water.

- So maybe not as much food?

- Not as much food, exactly.

Yeah.

- Okay.

- [Wendell] And so that's one of the things we're trying to figure out, is what kind of growth should you expect to see.

- [Frank] All of the mussels grew, but the growth rate varied.

- We take the mussels that we've had in our silos, the enclosures that our baby mussels have been growing in for three months, we'll take those out at the truck, put them in a vial and freeze them in liquid nitrogen so that those samples will be used later to look at a host of different things, including parasitology, toxicology, virology.

We're just trying to test as many things as possible, anything that people have thrown out as potential causes for mussel decline or any issues that could be going on.

We're really trying to just capture all of that so that we can look at it and see if we see any trends across the large area.

- So we're looking at that biological part.

We're also looking at sediment.

How are the sediments in the streams, and might that be having an impact on the mussel populations?

We're also looking at freshwater mussel food, and other kind of water quality indicators as well.

So we're looking at a lot of data to investigate what's happening.

- [Frank] The study's initial findings hint that freshwater mussels may be facing their own pandemic, but that's not confirmed.

What is known is that some species have completely disappeared from rivers.

More species could be lost soon.

- [Erin] Ecosystems are really complex.

And I think we often don't understand all of the relationships that are happening until maybe we lose something.

So for the average person, maybe they've never seen a freshwater mussel and maybe they never will, that's okay.

But every single person needs clean water, and that's the cornerstone of a thriving community.

So we want to make sure that we are protecting biodiversity before we lose it.

- [Narrator] Check out our weekly science blog to take a deeper dive on current science topics.

- So let's stay in the rivers of North Carolina for this next story.

You might think the sweet tea colored waters of the Lumber River mean the river is dead.

NC Culture Kids explains the river's color and why the Lumber River is still very much alive.

[high energy music] - Hi, it's Brandon.

Today we're here at Lumber River State Park, and today we're gonna check out some really interesting black water.

So let's check it out.

Hey Sean.

- Hey Brandon.

- That water's really black.

That can't be normal.

- Yeah, it really is unusual.

There's two main places on Earth we find blackwater rivers, in the Amazon River Basin and here in the southeastern United States.

The black waters of the Lumber flow for 115 miles, crossing from North to South Carolina, and eventually emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.

There are also blackwater rivers in Florida and Mississippi that drain to the Gulf of Mexico.

Still, across the world, blackwater rivers are pretty rare.

- But is it dirty?

- No, it's actually quite clean.

Waters are designated as national wild and scenic waters, which means there's no dams, and no major human changes to the river's natural flow.

Much of the swamp forest along its banks are protected.

The forest filters pollution, roots keep soil from eroding into the river, keeping that black water clean.

- Why is it black?

It kind of reminds me of tea.

- Yeah, absolutely, and it's actually the same process going on with tea, although I wouldn't drink it.

It starts with the buildup of plant materials, like sticks and leaves in the swamp forest.

As rainwater soaks through, natural chemicals from plants, called tannins, drain out and stain the water brown.

Tannins are the same chemicals that give us the brown color of sweet tea when water drains through the tea leaves.

Despite that dark appearance, the Lumber River is a healthy home for animals that are adapted for life in the water.

- I wonder how the fish and other animals see through that black water.

- Well, they can see, but it's true that the sunlight doesn't travel as far through the black water as it does a clear water river.

Even in a clear mountain stream, fish have a special adaptation that's like a sixth sense.

Along the sides of fish, from gills to tail, is a sense organ called a lateral line.

It looks like a line of pinholes in the scales.

The lateral line senses slight water movements to help fish find food and avoid predators.

In a blackwater river, the sense of smell and the lateral line are probably even more important for fish.

- What about the swamp forest?

Can you go hiking out there?

- Oh yeah, on our state parks hiking trails you can.

The swamp forest is a wetland with water-loving plants and water-logged soils.

Stay on the hiking trails, or you're likely to lose a shoe in the mud.

Even the park's trails can get flooded, especially after strong storms.

While the forest is flooded, even more of those dark-colored tannins are dissolving into the water.

- What else lives in this blackwater river ecosystem?

- Well, some of the can't-miss producers are these bald cypress trees.

They can grow more than six feet across and live for over 1,000 years.

The older bald cypress trees tend to be hollow, as their inner heartwood decomposes.

Giant hollow trees are great habitat for owls, raccoons, bats, and wood ducks.

In the water, we find turtles, river otters, and I've even seen a deer swim across the river.

The Lumber River black waters are really unique, just like the Amazon River.

- I'm wondering how can I explore my neighborhood, like we did today?

- Right, well, you may not have a blackwater river nearby, but I bet you can find a wetland in your neighborhood.

Look for some low-lying areas that tend to puddle up certain times of the year, and see if you can notice different kinds of plants growing around that neighborhood wetland.

I also like to make forest tea.

So out, collect leaves and sticks and put it in an old jar, fill that with water, and watch how it changes color over a week, two weeks, just like these blackwater rivers.

Just don't drink it.

- [Brandon] So basically we have a river of tea out here.

- [Sean] Absolutely, thanks to the swamp forest ecosystem here at Lumber River State Park.

- Well, thanks for explaining it.

- Yeah.

- I'm really thirsty for the ride home.

Can I take that with me?

- Uh sure, but don't drink it.

It's not been treated.

- I'll take it anyway.

- But it is forest tea.

- It's fine, I'll take it.

- A brown but beautiful river.

And that's it for Sci NC for this week.

If you want more Sci NC, be sure to follow us online.

I'm Frank Graff.

Thanks for watching.

[gentle music] ♪ [gentle music continues] ♪ [gentle music continues] ♪ [gentle music continues] ♪ [gentle music continues] ♪ - [Narrator] Funding for Sci NC is provided by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

- [Announcer] Quality Public Television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.