I think one of the most common reactions that I get when I tell people that I've discovered new species
is utter surprise that there are new species left to be discovered.
- That’s a male of a new species, that’s the first male we got!
- No way! - Yeah!
What we're doing is looking under every rock, every log, every debris on the ground...
you really have to put yourself into the shoes of an arachnid and imagine,
'if I was an arachnid, where would I be hiding?'
I'm definitely not in the lab all the time.
That's really a stereotype that's inaccurate.
I think the stereotype that I'd like to imagine myself in a little bit more is like
Indiana Jones sort of situation, exploring the unknown and trying to discover something new.
Why did it have to be snakes?
I am scared of snakes - legit.
I don't even want to admit that right now!
I'm really scared of mosquitoes, and I'm scared of birds flying out of the bushes at night.
(sighs) Yeah...
There's moments when I'm in the field that I don't feel like it's the most glamorous job,
when I haven't showered and I've run out of water
and I just want to go home and watch some Netflix...
- Hello! It's the end of my first day out in the field.
But I’m already pretty tired, hot and sweaty...
- Hello, it’s Lauren!
I just got back from my morning of collecting
and it was hot and sweaty as you can probably see...
...but at the end of the day it's something that I really love doing, and that's everything.
Arachnids are both diurnal and nocturnal,
and arachnids are often what we call cryptic species, which means that they're trying to blend in,
and so that makes them really hard to see.
So we do have a number of tools that we also bring along with us when we go out
into the field, and one of those is a leaf litter sifter.
You shake all the leaves around, and at the bottom is a funnel that collects all of the little leaf particles,
and lots of insects and arachnids, and even some other weird things like amphipods,
which are a kind of crustacean.
We also bring a vegetation beater or a beat sheet, which is like a white kite
that you hold under vegetation as you knock a stick or something against the vegetation
and spiders and insects rain down,
sometimes ants rain down into your shirt too, which is not the most fun.
Then you use a pooter, which is like a mouth vacuum,
to suck all the insects and arachnids up and collect them into a vial.
I want to get a logo screen printed on my fanny pack
that says, "Just poot it."
That'd be good, right?
As soon as you get back to the base camp and start looking at what you've collected,
you may notice that you've collected all the same few species, which is a sign of a disturbed forest,
or you've collected a lot of different species, which is a sign of a healthy forest.
- This is some of the stuff we collected over the last two weeks.
It might not look like a ton, but in each of those little baggies
there's anywhere from two to a few hundred to maybe even a thousand specimens.
Then once night completely falls, we'll take out our ultraviolet lamps and start looking
for scorpions. We'll work until 1:00 in the morning or so and then try to get some sleep.
- I don't know exactly for sure what it is, but I'm going to find out!
Ah-HAAAA!
I think that my research stems from a need that I have as an individual to understand
the biodiversity of the world.
Somewhere between 30 and 50% of the arachnid species on Earth are only known to science.
What I've made my personal life's mission is to try to document the remaining 50%, and
what that requires is a lot of on-the-ground, hard work, and also back in the lab working
the microscope and in the genetics lab.
- This one is a new species.
AHHHHH!
We're pretty excited.
It's like the whipped cream on top of the ice cream sundae.
We found it the first day, and this one is an adult female, which means it's a really valuable specimen:
we can actually use it for describing the species formally.
and, I don't know, I couldn't be more happy.
We're losing species at a rate that's higher than the rate we're discovering species,
and unless we understand what's out there, it's impossible to understand how to protect it
and how to conserve it.
So for me, I feel a fundamental duty to the Earth really to document and improve our knowledge
of species on the planet.
In this next episode, see firsthand the deadly risks a volcanologist takes
when examining an erupting volcano.
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