 
THE FOLLOWING KQED
PRODUCTION WAS
PRODUCED IN HIGH DEFINITION.
 
What Darwin really provided
all of us as biologists
was the idea that things
were related to each other,
not just immediately
closely related,
but in the broadest sense.
 
These things have developed
together from common ancestors.
And that’s the basic
idea of evolution.
 
I think Darwin started out
with beetles, as I did.
I just never outgrew that phase.
AS ONE OF THE WORLD’S
FOREMOST BEETLE EXPERTS,
DAVID KAVANAUGH HAS SPENT
40 YEARS DISCOVERING AND
DESCRIBING NEW SPECIES.
It’s important to describe new
species because we don't know
all the players.
We don't know how they interact
with one another, which
ones are vital to the
functioning of communities
and ecosystems.
 
The diversity of them
is just so spectacular.
Some of them have
beautiful colors.
Bizarre shapes.
Some of them are huge.
My interest is in
beetles that live
at high elevations and high
latitudes — in cold places
- cause those are the
places I like to be.
KAVANAUGH FOCUSED HIS RESEARCH
ON A GENUS OF ALPINE BEETLES
CALLED NEBRIA.
They’re graceful,
beautiful, fast.
You don't really get to see them
very often unless you go out
at night with a headlamp.
Hey, big guy.
Look at that.
DURING HIS CAREER,
KAVANAUGH HAS DISCOVERED
73 NEW SPECIES OF BEETLES.
HIS MOST INTRIGUING DISCOVERY
HAPPENED IN 1980 IN NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA’S TRINITY ALPS.
In the 1980s, while I was a
scoutmaster with my boys --
three of my sons
were in the troop --
we went hiking in the Trinity
Alps and we went out and found
a new species.
I named it Nebria
turma duodecima,
which means Troop 12, in
honor of the Boy Scout troop.
THE NEW BEETLE HINTED AT A WEB
OF EVOLUTIONARY RELATIONSHIPS
THAT WOULD TAKE KAVANAUGH THREE
DECADES TO PIECE TOGETHER.
FIRST, KAVANAUGH FOUND THAT HIS
BEETLE WAS RELATED TO A SPECIES
OF BEETLE IN OREGON AND
WASHINGTON’©S CASCADE MOUNTAIN
RANGE.
THIS NORTHERN BEETLE HAD BEEN
DISCOVERED ON WASHINGTON’S
MOUNT RAINIER IN A PLACE CALLED
PARADISE VALLEY AND HAD BEEN
NAMED NEBRIA PARADISI.
KAVANAUGH NOTICED A CURIOUS
THING ABOUT NEBRIA PARADISI:
IT ALWAYS TRAVELED WITH ANOTHER
BEETLE, CALLED NEBRIA VANDYKEI.
What I really found out was
that they really live together.
I found them under the same
rocks during the daytime.
They’re out together on the
snowfield foraging at night
and actually finding mates.
And they are very closely
tied to one another.
And that’s what gave me the
idea that I probably should
look in the Trinities for
the companion of Nebria
turmaduodecima.
 
IF THE BEETLE ON MOUNT RAINIER
WAS RELATED TO THE BOY SCOUT
TROOP BEETLE IN CALIFORNIA’S
TRINITY ALPS AND IT HAD A
CONSTANT COMPANION, KAVANAUGH
REASONED THAT THE TRAVELING
BUDDY ALSO SHOULD HAVE A
RELATIVE IN THE TRINITY ALPS.
FINDING THAT RELATIVE WOULD
MEAN DISCOVERING AN ENTIRELY NEW
SPECIES, AND REAFFIRMING
A CENTRAL FOUNDATION OF
DARWIN’S WORK.
What’s really exciting about
this is there haven’t been
too many examples of situations
in which taxonomists like
myself or biologists have
been able to predict things.
Perhaps the most exciting
examples involves Darwin,
who on finding an orchid with
a nectare that was about ten
inches long predicted that
there must be some pollinator
that’s attracted by that, that
orchid and feeds on that long
nectare.
And it was decades
later that actually
the moth, a sphinx
moth or a hawk moth,
was found with a
tongue that long.
It’s fun to feel like you’re
in the company of someone like
Darwin who makes a prediction
based on the certainty that
this long nectare
meant something,
it wasn’t just the chance
occurrence in nature,
that it was related to something
else that was co-evolving with
that flower, probably
its pollinator.
And he was right.
LIKE EVOLUTIONARY
BIOLOGISTS EVERYWHERE,
KAVANAUGH’S WORK IS FRAMED BY
CHARLES DARWIN’S DISCOVERY OF
EVOLUTION.
150 YEARS AGO, THE ENGLISH
NATURALIST PUBLISHED HIS
FINDINGS IN A LANDMARK BOOK
CALLED “ON THE ORIGIN OF
SPECIES BY MEANS OF
NATURAL SELECTION.”
IT WAS THE CULMINATION
OF AN UNLIKELY JOURNEY.
 
He was a wealthy young man
whose father was a physician,
and he went to medical
school in Edinburgh
and he decided that he did not
wish to become a physician.
But he was interested
in natural science.
SO DARWIN TOOK UP STUDIES
TO BECOME A CLERGYMAN, WHICH
WOULD GIVE HIM
PLENTY OF FREE TIME
TO PURSUE HIS
PASSION FOR NATURE.
BUT AT 22, HE ONCE AGAIN
ABANDONED HIS STUDIES,
THIS TIME TO ACCEPT AN
INVITATION TO TRAVEL
AROUND THE WORLD
AS A NATURALIST.
DURING THE FIVE-YEAR VOYAGE
ON BOARD THE H.M.S. BEAGLE,
HE COLLECTED SPECIMENS AND DATA
IN OCEANIA, AFRICA AND SOUTH
AMERICA.
 
OTHER NATURALISTS OF HIS DAY -
AND EVEN DARWIN’S GRANDFATHER
BEFORE THEM - HAD PROPOSED THAT
LIVING ORGANISMS CHANGED OVER
GENERATIONS, BUT
THE IDEA WAS TABOO.
During Darwin’s time, the
general idea is that species
were unchangeable.
They talked about
immutable species,
and this comes from the
idea of special creation,
that God had created
the kinds of organisms
pretty much as we
see them today.
DURING HIS VOYAGE
ON BOARD THE BEAGLE,
DARWIN MADE
OBSERVATIONS THAT FLEW
IN THE FACE OF THIS BELIEF.
The fossils that Darwin
found in South America
were very similar to the
animals that were living there
when he visited at
the present time.
And he eventually
came to the idea
that there could be an
ancestral relationship
between those earlier forms
and the present forms.
THE FIRST EDITION OF “ON
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES”
SOLD OUT AND CAUSED A STIR.
IT WASN’T ONLY BECAUSE THE
BOOK INTIMATED THAT HUMANS
DESCENDED FROM OTHER ANIMALS.
IT WAS BECAUSE CHANGE IN THE
NATURAL WORLD DIDN’T SEEM TO
BE BROUGHT ABOUT BY
DIVINE INTERVENTION.
There was no planning,
no foresight, no design.
Things simply grew and developed
by what seemed to be a chance,
blind mechanism.
This one was referred to as
the archaic humans, something
around 200 to 400,000 years.
THE CONTROVERSY REMAINS.
THOUGH EVOLUTION BY
NATURAL SELECTION
IS TODAY THE FRAMEWORK OF
THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, ITS
TEACHING HAS BEEN CONTESTED —
LARGELY UNSUCCESSFULLY —
IN PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS
AROUND THE UNITED STATES.
POLLS SHOW THAT 40 PERCENT OF
AMERICANS DON’T ACCEPT THAT
HUMANS DESCEND FROM
EARLIER SPECIES OF ANIMALS.
God did not take millions
and billions of years
to produce his complete
creation, including man.
The Bible teaches that
God finished his creation
in 6 literal days.
BUT SOME SCIENTISTS FEEL IT IS
POSSIBLE TO BRIDGE THE DIVIDE
BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION.
There really isn’t
an essential conflict,
if you assume that evolution
was the mechanism by which God
created, if you will, the
diversity of life on Earth.
It all had to start somehow.
IN THEIR QUEST TO UNDERSTAND
EVOLUTION’S MECHANISMS,
SCIENTISTS ARE USING
EVER-MORE-SOPHISTICATED TOOLS.
WHILE BIOLOGISTS DURING
DARWIN’S TIME RELIED
EXCLUSIVELY ON THEIR KEEN
OBSERVATION OF SPECIMENS,
TODAY’S SCIENTISTS CAN ALSO
GLEAN INFORMATION BY LOOKING AT
THEIR GENETIC MAKEUP.
 
KAVANAUGH TEAMED
UP WITH UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
STUDENT SEAN SCHOVILLE
TO DO DNA SEQUENCING
OF HIS ALPINE BEETLES
IN THE TRINITY ALPS.
I met Dave Kavanaugh early
about five years ago when I was
starting my PhD, because I’d
found some interesting beetles
in the mountains of California,
and I didn't know what they
were.
And Dave was an expert
on this group of beetles.
IN THE SUMMER OF 2008, SCHOVILLE
PLANNED TO CLIMB THE TRINITY
ALPS,
THOMPSON PEAK TO COLLECT BEETLES
FOR KAVANAUGH’S DNA STUDIES.
KAVANAUGH SEIZED THE
OPPORTUNITY TO COMPLETE
HIS 28-YEAR-OLD
EVOLUTIONARY PUZZLE.
AS DARWIN HAD PREDICTED
HIS MOTH FROM THE ORCHID,
KAVANAUGH PREDICTED THAT
SCHOVILLE WOULD FIND A NEW
SPECIES OF BEETLE TRAVELING WITH
THE BEETLE HE’D FOUND WITH
HIS BOY SCOUTS IN 1980.
I told him, while
you’re there,
be on the lookout
for a much bigger,
black beetle that will be
living right with that one,
if it’s there.
It’s totally unknown,
but I’m telling you,
you’re gonna find him.
I’m a little less mobile
than I used to be and he’s
a young, strong guy,
like I used to be,
and he volunteered to
go get them for me.
The hike was about a 6-hour
hike, and a very beautiful hike
along a narrow canyon with
a series of waterfalls.
It’s very, very lovely.
And I passed the last waterfall
and got up to Grizzly Lake.
There’s a series of streams
that come into the lake.
And I searched along
those streams for beetles.
I wasn’t having much
luck until I got very close
to the glacier.
And the habitat just
changed dramatically.
The trees disappeared.
It was mostly barren rock.
I flipped over the first rock.
And bingo!
He found it.
He recognized it because I’d
told him exactly how big it
would be and what
it would look like.
TWO MONTHS AFTER THE
DISCOVERY, KAVANAUGH
HAS STARTED THE
PROCESS OF FIGURING OUT
IF THE BEETLE
SCHOVILLE RETRIEVED
IS INDEED A NEW SPECIES.
One of the easiest and
most frequently useful ways
of telling different
species of insects
apart is to examine very
closely their genitalia,
the male and female genitalia.
The male structure is called the
adeagus and that’s the tool
to transfer sperm to the female.
On the female side, she has
what we call a bursa copulatrix,
the sac in which
copulation occurs.
And so today I’m gonna
be dissecting both males
and females to look at the
details of their morphology
of their respective reproductive
structures and see if I see
differences in those
compared with the populations
for the Cascades species
that’s a close relative.
And I’m expecting
to find some.
I hope so.
Because if I do, then that’s
a strong indication that these
things are independently
evolving and probably represent
distinct species.
 
So these have to cook
for a little while.
This is what clears
away all the muscle
and lets me visualize the
very soft, membranous parts
of the reproductive system.
It might be
surprising to realize
that species living
hundreds of miles
apart, maybe 3 or 400
miles at the closest
are in fact very
closely related species.
 
IN ORDER FOR NEW
SPECIES TO DEVELOP,
MEMBERS OF THE COMMON
ANCESTOR SPECIES
NEED TO BECOME SEPARATED
FROM EACH OTHER.
THIS IS WHY ISLANDS
OFTEN PROVIDE RESEARCHERS
WITH AN IDEAL LABORATORY
TO STUDY EVOLUTION.
IN 1835, FOUR YEARS INTO
HIS VOYAGE ON THE BEAGLE,
DARWIN LANDED ON THE
GALAPAGOS ISLANDS OFF THE
COAST OF ECUADOR.
HE FOUND EVIDENCE THAT 13
SPECIES OF FINCHES, EACH
WITH A DISTINCTIVE BEAK SHAPE,
HAD DEVELOPED FROM A COMMON
ANCESTOR MOST LIKELY
ARRIVED FROM THE SOUTH
AMERICAN MAINLAND.
 
SO IF THE CALIFORNIA
BEETLE TURNS OUT
TO BE A NEW SPECIES
RELATED TO THE BEETLE
FOUND ON MOUNT RAINIER, DID
THEIR COMMON ANCESTOR ALSO GET
STRANDED ON AN ISLAND?
THE ANSWER COULD LIE IN
BIG CHANGES THAT HAPPENED
ON THEIR RESPECTIVE
MOUNTAIN RANGES.
Certainly these
areas would have been
united by a common habitat.
During the Ice Ages, these might
have been continuous habitat
for these species, with
snow fields and glaciers
on smaller mountains.
So what would be created here,
by the warming of the lowlands
and the retreat of
cold habitats higher
and higher in the mountains
is islands, habitat islands
that are becoming more
and more isolated.
SO WHERE WOULD KAVANAUGH
SEARCH FOR EVIDENCE OF A COMMON
ANCESTOR THAT WOULD
HELP HIM CONFIRM
THAT THE TWO BEETLE
SPECIES ARE RELATIVES?
SINCE MOUNTAINS ARE
CONTINUOUSLY ERODING,
BEETLE FOSSILS ARE
NEAR-IMPOSSIBLE TO COME BY.
SO KAVANAUGH WILL RELY ON DNA.
 
SCHOVILLE WILL COMPARE A DNA
SEQUENCE FROM BOTH BEETLES.
You can reconstruct
the relationships
of a group of individuals
or a group of species
based on that DNA sequence.
And those relationships
are determined
based on how similar
the sequences are.
THE BEETLE’S GENE
SEQUENCES, JUST LIKE OURS,
ARE MADE UP OF COMBINATIONS
OF FOUR NUCLEOTIDE MOLECULES,
REPRESENTED BY THE
LETTERS A, T, C AND G.
THE PLACES WHERE THE NUCLEOTIDES
ARE DIFFERENT IS WHERE A
GENETIC MUTATION
HAS TAKEN PLACE.
 
Genetic mutations are events
that happen by chance.
They’re typically errors in
how DNA is replicated during
the division of cells.
Sometimes they end up being bad,
creating proteins or products
that are bad for the organism
and that organism will die.
BUT BENEFICIAL MUTATIONS GIVE
ORGANISMS AN EDGE OVER OTHERS
IN THEIR SPECIES, LIKE A
BETTER BEAK, FOR EXAMPLE.
AS DARWIN FOUND,
MANY MORE INDIVIDUALS
ARE BORN THAN CAN SURVIVE,
SO THOSE WITH AN ADDITIONAL
ADVANTAGE WILL HAVE A BETTER
CHANCE OF REPRODUCING AND THUS
BE NATURALLY SELECTED.
TO INTRODUCE HIS FINDINGS
ON NATURAL SELECTION,
DARWIN CLEVERLY STARTED HIS BOOK
“ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES”
WITH A SCENARIO THAT WOULD
BE FAMILIAR TO HIS READERS.
HE TALKED ABOUT THE BREEDING
OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS,
PARTICULARLY PIGEONS.
 
I have a common pigeon.
This is the rock
dove, so to speak.
This particular kind of bird is
ancestral to all of the other
domestic varieties, whether
they’re eating pigeons,
racing pigeons, show pigeons.
You notice it’s a
fairly small bird.
And it’s adapted to flying
around fairly short distances.
Whereas the birds that I’ve
been breeding and other pigeons
fanciers for quite awhile are
developed as a much bigger
bird.
It can do up to 600,
700 miles in a day.
So they’re really
flying athletes.
I’ve had these
since I was about 7,
the same family of pigeons.
I’ve tried to hold on to some
traits and get rid of others,
especially the ones
that didn’t seem to be
advantageous to long
distance flying.
The ones that don't perform as
well, I give to my competition.
 
Darwin used the
analogy of human beings
selecting certain pigeons for
their ability to fly very far,
selecting other pigeons
for the ornamentation
of their feathers, for example.
He wanted to use that as an
analogy for nature in the wild
being able to select for certain
characteristics of an organism
to make it survive better
and live longer and reproduce
better in the
environment that it had.
 
Darwin really understood
natural selection quite well.
What he didn't understand is how
advantages individuals possess
were actually passed
on over generations.
As it turns out, we have genes,
and a genome within our bodies
and that’s how our information
about who we are, what we are,
is passed on
through generations.
And Darwin didn't know this.
He didn't know that DNA exists.
BACK AT THE LAB, SCHOVILLE
EXAMINES THE RESULTS
OF HIS GENE SEQUENCING COMPARING
THE BEETLE FROM THE TRINITY
ALPS WITH THE ONE
FROM THE CASCADES.
What you can see is that most
of the nucleotides match.
They all have the same
nucleotides at these positions.
But then we get into areas
where there are differences.
You can see here there’s
a, a group that has T’s
and a group that has C’s.
And then further along there’s
a, a group that has G’s
and a group that has A’s.
And these differences
are mutations
that have happened
over a time since they
had a common ancestor.
KAVANAUGH AND
SCHOVILLE ARE MEETING
TO SHARE THEIR FINDINGS.
KAVANAUGH HAS FOUND A NUMBER
OF PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
THE MOUNT RAINIER BEETLE,
CALLED NEBRIA VANDYKEI,
AND THE UNNAMED
TRINITY ALPS BEETLE.
This is the female bursa
copulatrix from vandykei,
and it’s really symmetrical.
See, it’s got a nice rounded
what I call dorsal lobe.
Whereas, in the new one,
this is very asymmetrical.
And if we look at the
male, at least vandykei
seems to be much thicker across
here, a much thicker shaft.
But they’re not as
different as I expected.
 
USING THEIR DNA
SEQUENCES, SCHOVILLE
HAS PREPARED A TREE FOR
KAVANAUGH THAT SHOWS
HOW THE TWO BEETLES ARE RELATED.
So this is the
point in time where
the common ancestor
occurred, and it gave rise
to these two separate lineages.
One lineage became our
new species in the Trinity
Mountains, and the other lineage
became this species that’s
found in Mount Rainier.
They’re not only different,
but they’ve been separate
for a long time.
And have had a chance to
accumulate genetic differences
over that period of time.
What I found is quite a
distinctive difference
with the grouping
of the new species.
There’s about 20 mutations
that separate them, which —
Wow!
 — could be a significant
amount of time,
perhaps half a
million years or more.
So that’s good news.
I’m pretty confident that on
all those grounds we’ve got
something new.
And it’s pretty exciting.
But I’m really happy to have
the genetic backup to go along
with the morphology.
We’ll leave a legacy behind
with the name of the new
species, and that’s just
a great honor and a real
excitement for me.
I’m thinking of calling
it Nebria praedicta,
because in a sense
I predicted it.
It could also be expectada
-- I expected it.
Maybe that’s less
pompous, but we’ll see.
Most of my colleagues think
I should go with praedicta.
ONCE IT HAS BEEN
NAMED, THE NEW BEETLE
WILL TAKE ITS PLACE IN THE
HIERARCHY OF LIVING BEINGS 
A TREE THAT HAS BEEN EVOLVING
IN COMPLEXITY SINCE DARWIN’S
DAYS.
 
SO FAR, ONE MILLION SPECIES
OF INSECTS HAVE BEEN DESCRIBED
AND NAMED.
IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT, BUT
SCIENTISTS ESTIMATE THAT AT
LEAST ONE MILLION
MORE REMAIN TO BE
DISCOVERED IN PLACES LIKE CHINA.
 
Now tonight what
we’re going to do,
we’re going to do a one-night
trap for ground beetles.
And we’re just going
to put beer in there.
DARWIN SAID THAT EVOLUTION
HAPPENS AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS.
TODAY, SCIENTISTS WARN THAT IN
THE FACE OF HABITAT DESTRUCTION
AND GLOBAL WARMING, THE RATE
OF EXTINCTION IS ACCELERATING.
 
This past summer, I found that
pretty much throughout western
North America, but I think most
dramatically in California,
I actually had to go higher to
find the same things that I was
finding in, at particular
elevations in the ‘70s
and early ‘80s.
And to find their
optimum temperature,
the beetles are having
to move up the mountains.
Paul Erlich had this
great analogy of, of Earth
as an airplane flying through
the air and we’re through
extinction are losing
rivets indiscriminately.
And we don't necessarily know
which of those rivets is gonna
be vital to the safety and
functioning of that airplane
and so we worry about
every rivet that’s lost.
 
Oh, my gosh!
We got Aristicroa!
Oh, baby!
That’s a new species.
So that’s worth all
the effort right there.
 
