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[piano intro] - Hi there I'm Frank Graff.

How will an iconic North Carolina landmark adapt to a changing climate?

What you didn't know about dragonflies and meet the insect that has adapted to live almost anywhere.

Ecosystems and Insects, next on Sci NC.

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

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

Grandfather Mountain.

It is an iconic North Carolina landmark, but because of our changing climate, the ecosystem of Grandfather Mountain in the future will be different from what is there right now.

Essentially, as the climate warms ecosystems needing cooler temperatures move higher up the mountain.

As we continue our state of change series, producer Michelle Lotker explains how scientists believe the mountain environment will change forever.

[gentle music] - The highest elevations in our Southern Appalachian mountains are very unique.

They support some species of plants and animals that occur nowhere else on earth, only in North Carolina at the high elevations.

There's a very long winter, a very short growing season, and there is a huge amount of rainfall and precipitation in these areas.

- Most of the environments here have thin soils.

They're very acidic.

Here at Grandfather Mountain, we're known for our winds.

We're one of the windiest places in the state.

- [Michelle] The extreme environments of North Carolina's high elevation peaks play host to an ancient and rare ecosystem: the spruce fir forest.

- [Misty] We are sitting in a spruce fir forest near the top of Grandfather Mountain.

This ecosystem is so important for providing habitat for several species of plants and animals that really are unique to this area.

Red sprue, Fraser fir, galax, a variety of mosses and lichens, Heller's blazing star and Roan Mountain bluet.

These species are adapted to surviving these harsh conditions.

They grow very slowly.

They don't disperse very far.

They're really limited to these mountain peaks, which we can think of as almost like islands in the sky.

In order to survive over time, really they just hunker down.

Their strategy is to persist.

- So this is a small Fraser fir, and this is a good example of a small sapling that could be 40 to 50 years old that's in the under story here, just waiting for its opportunity to get sunlight and grow to the canopy.

- [Misty] When we're walking through old growth forests, we often think about the trees as being old.

But many people don't think about the herbs.

This patch of Galax took decades to establish.

It's another reason we need to protect these natural areas and to think about how we can connect them to a resilient landscape.

- [Michelle] Because of the 2000 foot elevation change from its base to the peak, hiking from the bottom to the top of Grandfather Mountain can be compared ecologically with walking from Georgia all the way to Canada, which is what allows the area to support a huge diversity of species.

- Grandfather Mountain is an international biosphere reserve.

There's over 400 biospheres globally, and they identify the most unique places on the planet.

Here at Grandfather, we have more than 70 listed rare and endangered plants and animals that call this place home.

Many of those are endemic.

Meaning there are only found in two or three places on the planet.

- [Michelle] But because they're so specially adapted, these species are threatened by shifts in temperature and precipitation caused by our changing climate.

- [Misty] We don't know how the species are going to be able to adapt over time.

Historically the earth has warmed and cooled periodically, but the changes that we're seeing today may be happening faster than they happen in the past.

- One of the things that's been interesting the last few years have been really heavy rainfalls in the spring, especially in May.

The net when you look at the annual precip, it's about the same as it's been in the past, but the way that that occurs is quite different.

We've had two really epic 300 year flood events that have happened in back to back years in May.

And of course that's followed by droughts.

- [Michelle] Warmer temperatures also mean that faster growing species from further down the mountain could creep upwards and out compete the slower growing species at the top, like the red spruce and Fraser firs.

- Here in North Carolina, there's been a lot of research looking at projections and estimations of how much temperature increase could cause retreat.

We believe about three degrees would cause a thousand foot retreat of spruce fir forest.

So three degree annual temperature could potentially take Spruce Fir Forest off the top of Grandfather Mountain with time.

- [Misty] It's so important for us to recognize these places as unique for North Carolina and to protect them now because if we lose them, we're not gonna get them back.

[dramatic music] - [Michelle] Land conservation efforts are a critical tool for reducing human impact and keeping these unique places around for the future.

Organizations like the Natural Heritage Program and the North Carolina Land and Water Fund work together with local governments and land trusts to establish a resilient network of nature preserves across the state.

- So when we conserve a piece of land, we preserve and protect that land forever.

Grandfather Mountain is remarkable ecologically in its own right.

And fortunately it's permanently protected, the entire mountain, but it actually extends well down the valley.

For example, Wilson Creek has its source on the highest point of Grandfather Mountain and falls 4,000 feet vertically down into what is some of the best trout water in the Southeastern United States.

This landscape scale conservation, like Grandfather Mountain and the areas below it in the valley, are so important because it gives plants and animals a migration corridor during this time of intense stress with climate change.

- [Michelle] And beyond protecting our prized natural areas like Grandfather Mountain, land conservation can actually play a critical role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

- [Misty] North Carolina has been protecting land for many, many years, and we've long recognized the value of land conservation for protecting wildlife habitat, for protecting these unique ecosystems.

What we've learned more recently is that land conservation also helps reduce the effects of climate change by pulling carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere and storing carbon in our trees and our soils and below ground.

- [Jesse] When you think about climate change and you think about the things that are happening in our world, there there's some optimism there that we at least have protected the place so that we can allow those changes to play out.

- [Announcer] Wanna take a deeper dive on current science topics?

Check out our weekly science blog.

- Wherever there is water in an ecosystem, whether it's a marsh, a river, a lake, you'll find dragonflies.

And one of the leading experts on dragonflies is a professor at North Carolina Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount.

- And then I'm gonna take my thumb and my forefinger, and I'm going to grab the wings and pinch them up over the dragonfly's back.

And then I can loosen up the net and I can pull the dragonfly out to see it.

[gentle music] Now, this is a beauty of a dragonfly, isn't it?

It has those gorgeous green eyes.

They're beautiful, first off.

You know they come in different colors and they're iridescent and they just fly around.

And so they just have a charisma.

And then when you get to know them, you discover all these crazy bits about them.

It's striped like a race car.

- [Frank] Ami Thompson wants to teach the world about dragonflies because dragonflies are just a really cool mystery that needs to be understood.

- But it likes to live in these streams, like this one.

- [Frank] There are roughly 7,000 species of dragonflies.

- So this is what I study.

This is a baby dragonfly and dragonflies actually live.

by far, most of their lives underwater as these aquatic nymphs.

In colder environments, they'll live underwater for five, six years before they metamorphose into an adult.

And then they usually do their mating, eat, mate, lay eggs, and then die for a few months or sometimes just a few weeks.

And they are crazy aggressive hunters.

They catch 90% of what they chase.

And this arm on the bottom is called the prementum.

So this arm shoots out lightning fast, grabs food, and then brings it back to the mouth.

- [Frank] So when you think a frog and some other animals do that same thing, this is the- - [Ami] Yeah, it is.

- [Frank] Super fast.

- [Ami] It is the similar adaptation.

A way to get prey that's a little distance away, catch it quickly, and bring it back to the mouth parts.

- [Frank] Dragonflies haven't changed much in the 325 million years they've been around, either perched on a leaf, hovering over a pond, or in the water.

- Anywhere over where there's water, you'll find the dragonfly and the adults can fly long distance.

Some of them migrate.

They don't have to be near water.

The nymphs have to grow up in water, but once they metamorphose into adults, they can fly nearly anywhere.

In my hand, you can see three baby dragonflies or three dragonfly nymphs.

And believe it or not, but these are all the same species of dragonflies.

- [Frank] No matter the species, when dragonflies become adults, the insects can reach speeds of 35 miles per hour in flight up, down, backwards.

dragonflies can experience G forces while making a turn that would cause a person to black out.

- They have really unique physiology, unique behaviors.

There's tons of them around.

Every little aspect of them is a mystery yet to be solved because they're not that well studied.

You think, "Well, why does it behave this way?

Or why does it look this way?"

And the answer is, "Well, we think maybe it's this, but we don't know.

So go do an experiment."

So they're just full of potential.

[gentle music] - [Frank] Thompson's quest to learn more about dragonflies is centered at her lab at North Carolina Wesleyan College.

- [Ami] I am super into this.

It's like, that's what makes it a joy.

- [Frank] Thompson and her students want to understand why dragonfly nymphs are found in a variety of colors.

- And we began to wonder, maybe it's the environment they're in.

Maybe they wanna change color to match the environment that they're in.

- [Frank] It's well known that dragonfly colorings span the rainbow.

But the color question about dragonfly nymphs appears to have never been asked.

- If they do have this camouflage effect.

And if they do, that'd be really cool because it would help them stay away from predators, possibly.

- [Frank] So students collected dragonfly nymphs and they are letting them grow up in containers filled with aquarium rocks of different colors.

Nymphs can undergo between six and 15 molts before emerging as adults.

- And we measured the color before we put them in and we're letting them grow in their containers for a while and they can shed their skin.

And then we'll test at the end of the experiment to see if they have changed their color or not.

- [Frank] The colors of the rock and the nymphs are matched to standardized paint colors to set a baseline.

- We have basically like paint swatches and they have numbers, they're on a number scale.

So we colored the rock.

So we pick which color we think matches the rock the best.

And then we pick the color that matches the nymph a couple days after they egg dice.

So we've been measuring that throughout the whole experiment.

And then at the end, we take all of the color changes and compare it to the initial color of the rock that we said it was.

- When it molts its skin, it could be a color of brown.

And then the next day it could be green, maybe a lighter green, a orange, maybe even yellow.

- [Frank] Any census so far?

- Well, it's really not wise for a scientist to say before they run the statistical analysis, but- - [Frank] But?

Oh come on.

- But it looks like the smaller nymphs are able to change color more readily than the bigger ones.

So especially in the white and green environments, that small nymphs do, from my visual analysis, appear to be different than their original color and to be matching their substrate.

- [Frank] Dragonflies are vital to the environment as predators, especially of mosquitoes and as prey.

And because dragonflies require stable oxygen levels and clean water, researchers say dragonflies are good indicators of a healthy ecosystem.

- [Ami] They are ancient.

They have lots of similar characteristics to the versions of them that existed when dinosaurs were around.

They're a little bit smaller and a little bit more complex, but basically the same.

- [Announcer] Do you want to explore more cool science facts and beautiful images of North Carolina?

Follow us on Instagram.

- Now let's meet the insect that has adapted to live almost anywhere and could probably survive any kind of disaster.

You guessed it: the cockroach.

There are 4,600 species of cockroaches.

Feeling squeamish?

Ah, hold on, a few other facts.

A cockroach can live for a week without its head, hold its breath for 40 minutes, and run up to three miles per hour.

That's just kind of, well, creepy.

Here's Adrian Smith though.

He's at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences to show us cockroaches in a whole new light.

- [Adrian] This is a common American cockroach, a household pest.

When I normally see a roach like this outside my lab, it's usually in a full out sprint running across the floor and diving into a dark corner.

[gentle music] But recently I've been trying to see roaches in a new way.

For instance, have you ever seen a roach do this?

Lift its wings, push itself off the ground, and jump into a short burst of flight.

[gentle music] ♪ Like anybody, I admit that roaches are kind of gross and I don't wanna see him crawling across the floor in my house, but they're also kind of fascinating.

For instance, recently I came across this paper from 2012, which was a first to describe something called a leap roach.

It's a species of wingless cockroach from South Africa that evolved grasshopper like hind legs and a high flying jump.

But in the introduction of this paper, the authors write that no other roach species are known to be able to jump.

As you saw, other roaches definitely do jump.

And what that sentence told me is that no one has taken the time to carefully film, observe, and describe that aspect of the behavior before.

So we've been doing a little bit of that and I wanna show you what we found so far.

Here are three of the most common pest species of roach all jumping.

On the left is a German cockroach, the middle of smokybrown, and then on the right, an American.

These sequences were all captured at 6,000 frames per second.

And they all show that a flight starts with a leg powered jump.

[gentle music] I filmed this behavior by putting the roaches on a platform they couldn't crawl down off of, but even when their aim was down towards the ground, they would still use their legs to push off the platform and jump out and away.

After filming a bunch of these, I noticed one mechanic that I think is unique to the cockroach jump.

If you watch the hind legs, they aren't touching the ground when the roach starts its motion.

Instead, the middle legs initially power the jump while the back legs are dragged up and positioned parallel with the middle.

All three species that I filmed do this repositioning of the back legs once they're jump has started.

To show how different it is, here's a comparison.

Mantis' are the most closely related group of insects that also jump.

Here's how a young wingless Chinese mantis does it.

Notice how it jumps from a standstill.

There's no repositioning of the legs, no sequential push of the middle and then hind legs.

It's just four legs all pushing at the same time.

Side by side, the differences in leg movements seem pretty clear.

Up to now, all that footage was roaches jumping right before they flapped their wings into a short burst of flight.

But we found some situations in which they jump without using their wings at all.

Here's an American Roach facing a gap.

It can feel the other platform with its antennae but when it tries to grab a hold of it with its front legs, it's too far outta reach.

If it wants to get to it, it has to either jump or fly.

This one jumps, demonstrating a full out, leg powered jump without any wing flapping.

When this one gets across the gap, watch as it uses its claws at the tip of its hind legs to grab the platform and anchor itself while it swings its body back down.

Now, even though these roaches can jump, that doesn't mean they're particularly good at it.

Here's another one facing that same gap.

To get across, this one pairs a jump with a flutter of its wings, but it only manages to barely make it across the gap.

It lands face first, bouncing its head off the platform.

The roaches in this video are super common and they're some of our most well studied insects.

So I think it's cool that there's new things to observe and learn about their behavior.

- [Announcer] Hey, parents, teachers, and homeschoolers, looking for lesson plans?

You'll find free interactive ones about all types of science covered by Sci NC online.

- This next insect lives in many different ecosystems and in many different forms.

Butterflies and moths go through a life cycle known as metamorphosis.

That's a Greek word, meaning "transformation."

NC Culture Kids takes us on the journey from crawling caterpillar to flying insect.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Hey everyone, Emily here.

I am inside the Living Conservatory in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences here in Raleigh to talk to Martha.

She is the head of the Living Conservatory and of the Arthropod Zoo.

Martha, thank you so much for having me here.

- Well welcome.

It's good to have you.

- [Emily] I am seeing some very interesting creatures inside of here.

- Yes, yes.

I understand you're here to see butterflies.

- [Emily] Yes.

- Would you like to go check them out?

- [Emily] Let's go see 'em.

- All right.

So I've got these butterflies here.

They just emerged this morning.

Would you like to check 'em out?

- Yes.

I would love to see them.

Wow!

They're beautiful.

- So we've got all kinds of tropical butterflies.

- Woo.

These butterflies are so beautiful, but I'm pretty sure they don't start out this way.

- You are absolutely right.

Butterflies go through complete metamorphosis.

So they start out as eggs.

The female butterflies will lay an egg and that egg hatches into a caterpillar.

I'm sure you've seen caterpillars.

Right?

- [Emily] Yes.

- So caterpillars are eating machines and they live on these plants and they eat, and eat, and eat, and they'll get bigger and bigger.

And then once they reach their full caterpillar size, they pupate.

What that means is the caterpillar will hang itself from a leaf.

- [Emily] Okay.

- Or a branch or some, some structure.

And it transforms into a chrysalis.

So all of sells change and this is what comes out.

- So you're telling me that a caterpillar, these little inchy squinchies go inside of here and then completely form into a butterfly?

- So they don't actually go inside of here.

- [Emily] Okay.

- They actually become this.

- [Emily] Oh!

- [Martha] So that's one of the differences between a butterfly and a moth.

The butterflies actually become that chrysalis.

What a moth does is it spins this big silk cocoon so that a predator can't get to it.

And inside the silk cocoon, it's pupa, it's chrysalis, is protected from the predators.

- [Emily] Interesting.

So moths create a cocoon around their chrysalis and butterflies have just the chrysalis.

- [Martha] Right.

So butterflies, while they don't have this extra layer of protection, they use other strategies like camouflage.

Maybe they're gonna be green and they hang out under a leaf or something so the predator won't see 'em.

- [Emily] And this is a chrysalis in the middle of its metamorphosis?

- [Martha] It is, it's developing into a cecropia moth and you can see that it's got wings and antenna right there.

And this is the part that's wiggling, is its abdomen.

Do you wanna see what he's gonna look like as an adult?

- [Emily] Yes.

- [Martha] So these are cecropia moths.

- [Emily] Wow.

- Those are our largest North Carolina moth.

One of the largest moths in north America.

It's a giant silk moth.

- They're huge.

So that is gonna turn into these?

- [Martha] Exactly right.

- [Emily] Amazing.

[gentle music] ♪ So these butterflies are gorgeous.

They're so beautiful, but I definitely am unfamiliar with most of these.

- That's because most of these butterflies are tropical.

We're a tropical exhibit, but we do have some butterflies here that you might see in your own backyard.

For example, monarch butterflies.

There's a monarch there.

And we occasionally get black swallowtail butterflies.

You would see these in your backyard.

You see things such as the Eastern tiger swallowtail.

That's the North Carolina state butterfly.

- [Emily] Yes.

- [Martha] That's a big yellow striped swallowtail.

There's lots of others that are a little more innocuous, like little yellow butterflies.

Those are sulfurs and hair streaks and question marks and commas.

Lots of butterflies that don't get as much attention, but they're all out there.

- So Martha, I wanna know when I head back home, how can I protect these beautiful butterflies?

- [Martha] Butterflies need food, right?

So they need nectar plants to drink the nectar from flowers.

So you can see this Monarch is on the lantana flower.

Having lots of flowers feeds all the adult butterflies.

Milkweed is another important plant to have out there.

It produces a great flower and monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed so their caterpillars can eat the leaves.

So that leads me to the other type of plant you need.

You need host plants, plants for the caterpillars.

That's different from nectar plants, plants that the butterflies will lay their eggs on are called host plants.

- [Emily] So two different types of plants will make for beautiful, protected butterflies.

- Absolutely.

Providing good habitat so all life stages can eat.

[gentle music] ♪ - Martha, thank you so much for having me here inside the Living Conservatory.

I cannot wait to head home and to make the perfect habitat for both caterpillars and butterflies alike.

- Thank you for visiting today, Emily.

I'm really glad to hear you going to plant some plants and just have a great ecosystem and habitat for our butterflies.

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

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

I'm Frank Graff, thanks for watching.

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

[upbeat music] ♪