VoE- Nathan Whelan === Nathan Whelan: [00:00:00] The most exciting part about finding a species that we thought was extinct is that then we can actually try to conserve it. Then, we actually have an ability to protect what's still there and potentially do captive propagation, reintroduction to put it in places where it used to be but aren't anymore. Jen Farmer: From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff. With departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics, and languages, among many others, the college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now. David Staley: I am speaking this morning with Nathan Whelan, Associate Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. He serves as Director of the Museum of Biological Diversity, which we're gonna [00:01:00] be talking about this morning. Dr. Whelan, welcome to Voices. Nathan Whelan: Thanks for having me. David Staley: Well, and let's start with the Museum of Biological Diversity. What would you say is the core mission of this lab? Nathan Whelan: The museum here at Ohio State is really a research collection. We don't have a public facing exhibit, so most of what we do is focus on research, although we are trying to get more into the community since I've started. But really what we, what we do is support research on organism biology, a lot of conservation research, and we have several collections that are strengths of our museum, including the mollusk collection, we have a great entomology collection, we have... David Staley: Bugs. Nathan Whelan: Bugs. Yeah. Bugs, yeah. Herbarium, which is plants. We have a tetrapod, so those are things like birds and you know mammals collection, and we also have a bioacoustics collection, which is, which is unique, so these are recordings of, of biological sounds, like birds and, and insects. David Staley: So, why these collections? Maybe I should start with that, what's the purpose of the collection, I guess? Nathan Whelan: Yeah, I mean, the purpose of the collection really [00:02:00] is to document the natural history of our world. So, the organisms that are out there, that were historically out there, we have some strengths of our collection about the, animals that are here in Ohio, the animals and plants here in Ohio. For example, our fish collection, we have at least one specimen of every native fish from Ohio. We also have a lot of specimens, especially in our, our mollusk collection of specimens from Ohio that have unfortunately gone extinct or have been extricated or gone extinct, specifically in, in Ohio. So, these are records of the historical biodiversity of the state and of, of other areas in the world too. So, we can use that to understand current biodiversity in the context of what used to be there and what is still there. David Staley: Comparable to any other institutes in the world? Nathan Whelan: I mean, I would say that, there's a number of universities and other institutions that have collections that are about our size, university of Michigan, for example, has a similar collection. You know, in terms of size, University of Florida you know, my expertise is mollusks, so I know a little bit more about mollusks collections. But [00:03:00] our mollusk collection here at Ohio State is probably one of the most scientifically valuable mollusk collections in, in the nation, both in terms of size and importance of specimens. We have some of the last collected specimens that were ever collected here in Ohio, species that, that are now extinct. David Staley: So, why mollusks, of all the things in the world to studied, why mollusks? Nathan Whelan: I mean, that's a good question. You know, one of the things that fascinates me about mollusks is how understudied they are. You know, I think they need an advocate, and part of that is because they're so important to the healthy functioning of our rivers and streams. Here in the US and Ohio, you know, if we have a good population of freshwater mollusks, so mussels and snails, then we can probably expect that river to be pretty healthy. And of course, water's very important for society, we need that to function, we need fresh water, you know, we, use water every single day in our lives. That water, although it comes from our faucets, you know, it really comes from rivers and streams in the areas, and so making sure that we have healthy mollusks can help make sure that we have drinkable healthy water. David Staley: And I [00:04:00] know one of your research focuses, maybe your most important is to prevent the extinction of these mollusks; say a little more about what the danger is, I guess. Nathan Whelan: Yeah. So mollusks are really sensitive to changes in water quality and habitat, and so that's one of the reasons why, you know, if we have a healthy, healthy mollusk population, we're likely to have a healthy river because they're very sensitive to pollution, they're really sensitive to habitat modification. So when a dam goes in, you know, that can modify the habitat and cause species decline. So, a lot of what my lab and my research does is I'll oftentimes using genomic data to assess populations and to better understand species and understand what can be done to conserve these animals, but also we use genetic data to evaluate conservation programs, so things like hatchery propagation and have habitat restoration to kind of see how these mollusks are responding in real time or, you know, a few years later to conservation actions. David Staley: Say a little more about genomic data. I know this has become really important in, in [00:05:00] biology. Nathan Whelan: Yeah. So, you know, when I started in grad school in the, in the mid two thousands, we were sequencing a single gene. Here and there, and, and the lab work was actually rather time consuming. Now we can sequence whole genomes or a subset of the genome, of a single organism very rapidly and for relatively cheap. So that's enabled us to do a lot of more fine scale analyses because the data is higher resolution if we have a whole genome rather than a single gene. So we can look at things like what's called demographic modeling, so understanding population size through time that can, that can tell us a little bit about what happened before. Humans were affecting the ecosystem. And then we can also look at the use genetic data to look at, for example, population size or what's called effective population size, which is essentially the number of individuals contributing to the next generation. So that gives us a sense of how healthy a population might be, and having that higher scale genomic data really allows us to do things that we couldn't do 10 years ago. And that's especially true for these really understudied organisms. David Staley: How is this data collected? [00:06:00] Nathan Whelan: Yeah, so we go out into the field a lot of times, or maybe we'll have a partner. We work a lot with different agencies like US, Fish and Wildlife Service, Ohio Department and Natural Resources. And so the first thing we do is we go out and we, we sample these individuals. A lot of the sampling we do is non-lethal. So one of the things that my lab developed was non-lethal methods for getting genetic material that could use for genome scale analyses and freshwater mussel. So what we'll do is, we'll, we'll go out there, we'll find a mussel, we'll kind of pry open a little bit. We don't think it really hurts the animal. And then we stick a little swab into the, into the animal and swab its foot. This is very similar as if you, you went to the doctor and had a swab on the inside of your cheek to get genetic material for, for yourself and you, maybe you've done like a, a 23 and me, it's very similar to that in the way that we, get that material and then we bring into the lab, we do some, some lab work, and then we we then it's ready for, for sequencing and typically we send sequencing off to a core facility. And then we'll get gigabytes and gigabytes worth of data. We do a lot of computational biology to process that, so [00:07:00] that's also a big part of, of this work. David Staley: Just a quick definition of computational biology? Nathan Whelan: computational biology is just really any kind of biology that's taking place, you know, using computer. So analyzing the data, you know, when you have gigabytes of data, you've gotta kind of sift through it and figure out, you know, these are the, these are the, the variable parts of the genome that are actually gonna tell us something about the biology of these organisms. And then we use computational tools, different programs to actually analyze things like genetic diversity of a population. We can look at how individuals and and populations are related, which can tell us a little bit about how we should maybe approach conservation of the organisms. David Staley: So, when you say collection, when you say museum collection, is it a collection of data or is it a collection of like actual squishy things? Nathan Whelan: Yeah, it's, it's a collection of actual squishy things or in the case of moles, hard shells. You know, we have a lot of well, actually one of the strengths of our, our museum is that we actually have a lot of soft bodies in our mollusk collection. I'm gonna talk a little bit about mollusks because that's kinda my background, but [00:08:00] this is also really unique to the Ohio State Museum of Biological Diversity. Is that, you know, a lot of mollusk collections just have the shells or maybe they'll have a handful of soft bodies preserved. But our collection has a lot of soft bodies, and it's curated in such a way that we can track the, the soft body directly back to the shell. And so that's a, that's an additional resource to kind of understand these animals. And we're actually thinking right now about ways to use those soft bodies for research. They've kind of been, I think, may be overlooked, especially on the snail side. And so we're trying to understand or think about how we can use that, that incredible resource to better understand the biology of these organisms. But then we also have, you know, insects that are pinned to shelves. A lot of that's kind of how insects are preserved. Our fish are a lot of, are mostly in, in chemical preservatives like ethanol and formin. And so depending on the organismal type really depends on how the organisms are preserved. But at the end of the day, these are collections of actual specimens that you can go and feel and see. And in some cases we can actually even [00:09:00] get DNA from specimens that have been collected, you know, 20, 50 plus years ago, which is another huge resource. David Staley: I know a lot of your work focuses on generating information that can improve conservation outcomes. Give us an example of, of this sort of work. Nathan Whelan: Yeah, so a lot of conservation work right now is focused on, I mean, obviously preventing extinctions, but one of the things that has been done for a while with fish and it's moving into other organisms, is captive propagation. So this is happening, you know, at things like zoos, but also at hatcheries, so state run hatcheries or national fish hatcheries, or we even have a mussel facility out here with Ohio State. That's a partnership between Ohio State the Columbus Zoo the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. And one of the things that. conservation practitioners are doing right now are propagating lots of mussels and thinking about putting them back into places where they used to be, but for some reason the population declined. They're not there anymore and we wanna put 'em back to restore the habitat. So a lot of times if we think about habitat [00:10:00] restoration, we might be thinking about restoring a river bank or taking out a small dam, but another part of that is actually restoring the organisms that used to live there. Mm-hmm. So one of the things that goes into that is, is you know, making sure that we are propagating in a hatchery, genetically diverse individuals. We don't wanna release individuals that don't have any genetic diversity or a population that doesn't have any genetic diversity. So one of the things that my lab has done in the past is evaluate hatchery programs, evaluate the methods that we're using for, for example, with freshwater mussels, to make sure that we're actually generating genetically diverse captive cohorts that can be put back in the wild and. Why that's valuable is because generally genetic diversity is seen as giving an organismal or an organismal group a better chance of long-term survival. David Staley: I hope this isn't impertinent to ask, are you in effect designing an ecosystem? Nathan Whelan: Well, I mean, I think a lot of time, well, I wouldn't say we're designing an ecosystem. I would say that we're trying to restore what had been there in the past. You know, these ecosystems evolved over millions of [00:11:00] years and, you know, essentially in a very recent timeframe, humans have come and a lot of instances, unfortunately degraded habitats and resulted in species level decline. So we're trying to restore. What used to be out there, you know, we're not moving mussels or snails or fish somewhere where they didn't used to be. And actually one of the benefits of having such a great natural history collection is that we can see where these organisms used to be. And so, you might be asking, well, how do you know they used to be there? Well, we look at those specimens that were collected in the 18 hundreds in the ni, in the, in the 20th century. And then we can see, okay, this species used to be there. We've been out to those sites recently. It's not there anymore. We think that habitat maybe is, is restored. Maybe there's been some physical restoration. Maybe the water quality's improved with land use changes. And we're gonna maybe target that system as a place to put a species that is still around in other places. Back in the area where it used to be. And by doing that, we can hopefully make the ecosystem look like it did before humans caused [00:12:00] habitat degradation. David Staley: Is your work in this area mostly in Ohio or is it happening elsewhere? Nathan Whelan: Actually, a lot of my work has been in the southeastern. States. So I actually started here at Ohio State in August and before that I was working in the southeast with US Fish and Wildlife Service in, in Auburn University. So a lot of my research did happen in the southeast United States, and that's where a lot of it you will likely continue, but one of the things that's really exciting about moving to a new place for me like Ohio is being able to expand my research and focus on some, some really pertinent questions in Ohio. And I think there's some really. Exciting work that that needs to be done on freshwater mollusks diversity here in Ohio. David Staley: You'd said before we started recording that a common theme, at least in work that you've done in the past, is that most common knowledge about freshwater snails is wrong. Nathan Whelan: Yes. David Staley: What do you mean by that? Nathan Whelan: Yeah, so, you know, this is the case for a lot of understood. Organisms, you know, since they're understudied, you know, maybe one group gets, gets a really detailed study. Maybe [00:13:00] somebody's very interested in, we'll use apple snails for example. And what happens sometimes is if somebody finds you know, a a, something about the biology of apple snails, since a bunch of other snails haven't been studied, sometimes they'll get extrapolated. And, you know, repeat it as like, oh, well this happens in all freshwater snails. But freshwater snails are a really diverse group. I mean, they've been on this planet for hundreds of millions of years, and so, you know. What happens in one, the biology of one group of snails might be very different than the biology of another group of snails. So one of the things that I realized early, early on is some of the common knowledge, some of the things that have been said and repeated both anecdotally and in the peer reviewed literature about the snails that I really study. It's a family called PLE Erde. They're here in Ohio, very diverse in the eastern United States. A lot of things people have been saying was wrong. For example you know, we'd been saying in the literature a couple, you know, a few times that these individuals, the, the females would lay eggs once and then they would die. [00:14:00] It's a common life history strategy out of nature. For example, we know octopuses do that. But we were pretty sure this was wrong. In fact, we knew it was wrong because we were working, I was working with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources looking at captive propagation. And they had females that they knew had been laying eggs multiple years because they would keep the age cohorts separate. And every year for about six years. You know, this species, these females would lay eggs. So we knew that was wrong. And so we published on that. We also we're doing an anatomical study where we were looking at reproductive anatomy. And we started you know, looking at snails that we had collected in August. And, you know, we were pretty confident they were females, but we couldn't find any evidence of sperm storage, even though all the. The literature and anecdotes that suggested that these snails store sperm for a long time. Well, we did histology and we, we realized that was simply wrong. Mm-hmm. We think now based on what we've seen in captivity, although watching. The [00:15:00] actual mating is a little difficult in these small snails, but we think they actually m mate and then they lay eggs about two weeks later, and then the eggs would hatch about two weeks after that. And they, they don't over winter sperm, they're, they're incapable of, of doing it. And so you, things like that are some of the, the common knowledge that we, we've, we've kind of really tried to examine and, and, and assess. David Staley: I'm sitting here trying to understand what explains this misunderstanding. Nathan Whelan: Yeah. David Staley: About this, it sounds like it's been persisting for a long time. What explains that? Nathan Whelan: I mean, I really think it's just how few people are studying it, right? So, you know, if we think of, you know, I'll use, I'll use birds and reptiles as an example. There, there's a lot of research, and it is not to say there isn't more research needed on those organisms, but there's simply more people studying birds than there are freshwater snails. And so, you know, if somebody, you know, says something about a bird species, because there's so many people studying it. It's probably gonna find out really quickly whether oh, that's right, or that also happens in this other organism, or it doesn't happen in this [00:16:00] other species. And that's just not the case for freshwater snails. You know, somebody may say something about a species and, and they might think it's right, and then somebody kind of just. You know, repeats it for this other species, or simply because there's no data, it's the best we have to work with. So we say, okay, well this species is doing one thing. This closely related species must be doing it as well. And since there's no one really studying those organisms, you know, it may be years or decades before somebody actually assesses that and says, okay, well that is true. This species is doing that. Or actually that's not the case. These species aren't, you know, for example, overwintering. Sperm or mating in the fall and then laying eggs in the, in the spring. So I, I think it really just comes down to how few people are studying these organisms. And, you know, that's one of the things that really fascinates me. That's one of the things that I really like training students in, because, you know, it's a group that needs more. Researchers and needs more advocates, and that's one of the reasons I'm really passionate about 'em. David Staley: You just drew attention to the fact that you, came to Ohio State just a few months ago from Alabama. What drew you to Ohio State? What drew you to the Museum of [00:17:00] Biological Diversity? Nathan Whelan: I mean, really the opportunity to lead a world class natural history collection was, you know, something I just couldn't pass up. You know, I, I really am passionate about. Organismal biology and research collections are really important. They, you know, as I mentioned, they document not only our, our shared natural history, you know, what used to be here, but they also source, serve as a resource for documenting current biodiversity and being able to deposit our research vouchers in these, in these collections. So, you know, being able to. Be the director and make, you know, think about some strategic leadership opportunities at such a world class institution was really something that, that, that compelled me to want to come to Ohio State and be the director of the museum Biological diversity. David Staley: Moment or two ago you said that the museum doesn't do public exhibitions for instance, but that you're starting to do more work in the community. Like what? Nathan Whelan: Yeah, so well, we actually have an open house planned on March [00:18:00] 28th. We're really excited about that. David Staley: March 28th, 2026. Nathan Whelan: Yes. March 28th, 2026. And, and this was something that had been happening for, for many years and it stopped in 2020 with the, with COVID and then it never really started back up. And I think, you know, it used to be a very large and one of the premier outreach events in the College of Arts and Sciences. And we're really looking forward to restarting that and, and again, becoming a premier outreach and public event. for the College of Arts and Sciences and, and specifically the museum. We're also, you know, working and trying to get some of our stuff back into the community. And, you know, we're kind of thinking about how we can engage with, with the community more often. You know, I think when people hear about a natural history collector, a naturalist museum, they might think of the Smithsonian. If you've ever been to the Sea and seen that, you know, we don't have an exhibit like that, but we have the research specimens that the Smithsonian has. Maybe not quite as big in some areas, but you know, that's part of our thing. And so we're thinking about how we can use our, our collections to design exhibits that [00:19:00] can you know, small exhibits that we can get in the community, participate in other outreach events, and really just excite people about what we have here at Ohio State and also in Ohio. David Staley: Where is the museum located? Nathan Whelan: Yeah, it's on, it's on Kinnear Road, so it's in West Campus. So off the main campus kind of in a nondescript building. You know, and that kind of comes with a territory of not having a public exhibit, but it should be pretty, pretty decked out for the open house in March. David Staley: So we were talking about genomic data and computational methods, computational biology: what are some of the new technologies that you're, that you're bringing to research and interpretation of these collections? Nathan Whelan: I mean, I think one of the things that really excites me with some of the genomic tools is being able to use, specimens that were collected, you know, 25, 50, a hundred years ago to do, you know, actually whole genome sequencing on species that might be extinct. So that's something that we're really excited about pursuing. You know, we can you know, make small drills into you know, a shell material, for example, to get genetic [00:20:00] material. And it's, it's very degraded. DNA, it's, it's, it's fragmented, but with new, new genomic technologies, we can, potentially sequence the DNA of, you know, extricated and extinct populations, and also get a better sense potentially of genetic diversity through time. And we could do that with mos, but we can also do that with our other collections in the, in the museum. So that's definitely one technology that we're, we're excited about. You know, with genomic data we can also better assess. Genetic diversity and kind of like, as I mentioned earlier, demographic history. So getting a more fine scale sense of what's really going on in the, in the populations that are still out there. And maybe what happened in the past is something that we're really excited about. And, you know, we try to stay on top of the latest genomic sequencing technologies for, for a very long time. Well, the technologies haven't been around for that long, but for as long as they've been around. A lot of the sequencing is very short read, so you might sequence a hundred base pairs. So an A, C, G, or T, you know, a hundred base pairs. DNA, yeah, yeah. The DNA. [00:21:00] So you're sequencing short fragments and then, you know, it can be difficult going back to the computational biology to kind of assemble that into meaningful stretches of what the genome actually looks like. And so there have been recent advances in what's called long read technology. So sequencing, you know, 500 plus, you know, 10,000. Base pair you know, sequences of DNA at once and that can have help us better assemble the genome of these organisms and, and we can then look at things like structural variants in the genome to get a better sense of kind of what's going on and how these organisms have evolved, but also how, changes in habitat and changes in conservation status have affected their genomic compositions. David Staley: I pay a little bit of attention to CRISPR technology, gene editing technology: is that technology worked its way into, into organismal biology? Nathan Whelan: I mean, it certainly has in some fields. It's not, it's not a technology that we've used in my research, but you could certainly imagine, you know, potentially down the road it being used for, for conservation, especially if there's a trait that we know, a genetic trait, a gene that's [00:22:00] very beneficial. To organisms when we think about captive propagation, you know, this is very hypothetical, but you could certainly, you know, think of ways that, that CRISPR and gene editing technologies could improve conservation outcomes. And then of course, right now, and this is not something my lab does, but there's you know, some movements to, to do de-extinction of, of different organisms and, and you know, that's not something my lab is involved with. And, you know, I think there's... David Staley: Jurassic Park. Nathan Whelan: Right? Yeah. And, and you know, it's, it's kind of difficult when you're, you know. Whether that's really, you know of, of, you know. The, the best, you know, focus of our resources, you know, because there's a dichotomy, right? We could, we could focus on conserving what we still have out there, which I would argue is actually a little easier than trying to make something come back to life. Or we could focus on bringing, you know, something that kinda looks like we're never gonna de extinct something completely. But, you know, maybe it looks like for example, a dire wolf hit some headlines recently. Yeah. And so. You know, that is certainly a technology [00:23:00] that, you know, who knows where things go. You know, with genomic stuff, things move very, very quickly. So, you know, that is a, an emerging technology. I'm not aware of anyone using that at the museum or even at Ohio State, but you know, you never know where things might go. And unfortunately, we're in a biodiversity crisis and so. Hmm. We, we are getting to a point where, you know, I don't think any idea can be shot down just out of hand when it comes to trying to prevent extinctions. David Staley: I know that part of the mission of the museum is to train the next generation of biodiversity scientists. How are students engaging with the collections? What opportunities do you see for future workforce development? Nathan Whelan: I mean, yeah, advising, educating students is one of the most enjoyable parts of my job. So each of the research labs there have graduate students working in their labs. So we have a lot of graduate students working in our collections. Whether that's, you know, depositing specimens that maybe they collect for their own research or using the, the historical documentation of, you know, organismal diversity as part of their [00:24:00] research. There's a big, big part of that. We also have undergraduate researchers working at the museum. We'll often also have times we'll have classes come by the museum to kind of, you know, educate them about a different, a specific organismal group. Maybe that's plants. Then give 'em a really specific tour of the herbarium or just kind of a broader scale you know, tour, looking at kind of the whole museum, but also, you know, how museums work and how research collection might differ from a very public facing museum. And then. We have you know, we'll have student groups come through like the zoo. You know, I gave a tour with a colleague just the other day for the Zoology Club and just kind of showed 'em our specimens. And it, it's always really awesome to see, you know, students and, and young people get excited about the natural world. And I, you know, I think my experience has been that people are, are really interested in this sort of thing. They're really interested in what's here in Ohio. And, and people generally like protecting what. What they have and what, what is unique to a, to a place like Ohio. So I, we like emphasizing, at least, I like emphasizing when I give tours the things that [00:25:00] are unique about Ohio because a lot of the people who come through the museum are from Ohio. David Staley: Your site emphasizes creating an environment where all the lab members feel empowered. Nathan Whelan: Mm-hmm. David Staley: How do you cultivate that culture and why do you think it's important to create such an environment like that? Nathan Whelan: Well, I think it's really important that, you know, students have some ownership in, in their learning generally, because I think that kind of allows them to kind of. To learn more. It, it excites them a little bit more when they, when they have some kind of shared ownership and they get to choose what, what they want to do. I mean, in terms of creating a, an environment where everybody contributes, I mean, I think a big part of that is making sure everyone has a voice. When we, when we have meetings, when we do research, I really encourage my students to come up with research ideas. On their own, you know, with, with feedback from me and others and their, and their collaborators. But, you know, I really like students seeing, you know, how they can develop their, their research skills and, and a lot of that CO is coming up with new research ideas. That's a [00:26:00] huge part of research. And so, you know, one of the things I try to tell my students is like, Hey, did you want me to do this analysis or this? And I usually like, well, it's not so much what I want you to do is like, does it make sense? I mean, I might say something bonehead one day, and like, it's, it's good for my students to be like, Hey Nathan, that doesn't, doesn't make any sense. And I, I encourage that, you know, I want to be you. Make sure that my students are thinking through the method and not just doing it because, you know, that was in some other publication or I had mentioned it, you know, in a lab meeting for example. So really encouraging my students to do things. Because it interests them, because it makes sense to them. It's scientifically val valid. Not just because, oh, that's what this paper did, or that's what Nathan mentioned. I, I might wanna do, because, you know, again, that might be how we, we start repeating some common knowledge that's not true. And certainly, you know, I am, you know. I think of myself as an expert, but I certainly dunno any, everything. And, you know, I like learning from my students too. And so that's why I really encourage them to, you know, develop their own voice as a scientist, their own ideas as a scientist. I think that's really important, especially for graduate [00:27:00] students who are, you know, learning how to do research to go out in the field and, and make an impact. David Staley: Where did your interest in evolutionary biology come from? Did you know when you were four years old you were gonna be a biologist? Nathan Whelan: I mean, not really. I, I thought for a long time that I was gonna be a, a high school teacher. And I went to, I went to college. David Staley: A science, science teacher? Nathan Whelan: Yeah, science teacher. Biology teacher. Potentially. I mean, I always interested in biology. I thought conservation was really important. I, I don't know exactly when I developed that, but you spent a lot of time outdoors as a, as a kid. So it probably just came, came from that and. You know, I decided when I, when I got to college, I, I went to school at a small liberal arts college in northeastern Missouri called Truman State University. And I did I did some undergraduate research and I got really interested in, in organismal and evolutionary biology really, that I, I'm not sure I really knew that you could do research as a career. I mean, I knew they were professors and I knew that they, you know, taught classes, but I, I don't think I had a sense of the kind of research that's going on at a lot of universities. And so that's when I got excited about it. I went off to grad school. I decided I wanted to [00:28:00] pursue a PhD. I did that at the University of Alabama, and that's where I really got interested in freshwater snails. I, I wasn't so set on when I got to grad school, an organismal type. I mean, I actually joined a fish lab for grad school. But I, shortly after joining the lab and getting to Alabama met, some people with the Alabama Department of Conservation as a resource. In fact, one of 'em, I still work with Paul Johnson and he's an expert, you know, he knows much more than me on, on these freshwater walls and snails. And I met with him and, you know, it was very clear that there was a need to do good genetics research, good evolutionary biology research, and on these organisms. And his enthusiasm was really infectious. And that got me involved and that, you know, that actually speaks to how important mentor, good mentors are in, in this field. And I've been very fortunate to have good mentors throughout my career. What would you say has been the most exciting research find of your career thus far? Well, one of the things that got me super excited and really, you know, convinced me that this was, you know, work worth doing is [00:29:00] when we found species in the wild that people thought were extinct. So, and this kind of goes back to that, you know, common knowledge issue with these snails. They're again, very understudied. Not many people looking for 'em. But you know, there were a handful of species that had been dis declared extinct, and some of them probably are, but a few of them, we, we found out weren't. So for example, in, in 2011 when I was still a grad student, this really invigorated me as a grad student. There was a species oblong rock snail that is in the Cobb River in Alabama, and it was the only snail species that had been apparently had gone extinct in the Cobb River. This is one of the most unmodified river systems in, in the southeast. You know, I'd asked colleagues who had been doing this much longer than I had, you know, why did this species go extinct? You know what, what about it? You cause it to go extinct, and I, I never really got a satisfying answer. And so after doing some work actually at a natural history collection, but down in the University of Florida, you know, I kinda had a sense of like, okay, this is where the species was most abundant or most commonly found historically.[00:30:00] We should go look for it. Like when was the last time? And, and so I gathered up some friends and we were like, okay, let's do a, let's do a canoe trip down like a haba. And we, we'll, we'll enjoy our Sunday. We'll also look for this nail. We put our work canoes and kayaks in, and I would say about five minutes into the, the, the trip, we find the snail. And so it was great. And we, I was like, you know, I don't think my friends believed me at first. I was like, guys, we found it. I think they're like, okay, we just started. You didn't just find it. And, and sure enough, it was, it was right there. It'd been overlooked. You know, not the easiest place to access. It was kind of about as far from Birmingham as you can get downstream. But still kind of, you know, be above a, another kind of moderately sized city, Centerville and so difficult to sample area, but I, I just don't think people would look for it. And so ever since doing that, it was kinda like, okay, we might not know where these species are as well as we think we do. And so then back in in 2024, I think it was 20 23, 20 24, we, we actually found another species that people [00:31:00] thought had been extinct in, in Mississippi. And, and that was an example of. Some colleagues were doing mussel mussel research. So, you know, mu I think are understudied, but compared to snails, they're much better studied. And I, you know, I told 'em, I was like, Hey, I know you're searching for mu but keep an eye out for, for some, for some snails, you know, there's a species that is extinct in the big black river, but you know, I think it might still be out there. I don't think we've looked hard enough. And you know, about six months after they did the survey, I got an email from one of my colleagues. I was like, oh, hey, I forgot to mention we did find the shell. You, it wasn't, it was a dead shell, but you and I was like, well, that's it. It's gotta still be out there. And he was kinda like, well, you know, this river, the shell's kinda reserved and the silt. And I was like, I've seen a lot of these shells. That's not a 60-year-old shell. We gotta go look for it. So we look at the map and we're like, well, geez, that's a two hour jet boat ride from the nearest boat launch. I mean, this is a remote part of Mississippi. And, you know, how are we gonna get there when the water's low, which is the best time to sample these things? And so on the map that there's a wedding venue near or an event venue nearby, and we're like, well, let's call up the event [00:32:00] venue and see if they'll just access our land. And, you know, sometimes you hear stories about people you know, not wanting, like biologists tramping on their land. And so, you know, we, but we, so we, we, we asked a colleague who does a, with Fish and wildlife service that does a lot of work with landowners, if they could call the person and kind of put on the sales pitch and, and the, they were like, oh yeah, come on by, you know, come on through, we'll let you access their land. And so we went to that spot. My colleagues got in the water and I mean, literally millions of 'em at that site. Very easy to sample. We did some very quick, you know estimates to understand how many there were on, and we, we think there were probably close to a million of, of the individuals that they're very locally abundant. Even when they're very rare. And so that, that's really exciting. And what's the most exciting part about finding a species that we thought was extinct? Is that then we can actually try to conserve it. We can't conserve something generally that's already gone extinct, but once we find it, then we actually have a, an ability to protect what's still there and potentially do captive propagation, reintroduction to put it in places where it used to be [00:33:00] but aren't anymore. David Staley: So as director, what are your aspirations for the Museum of Biological Diversity over, say, the next decade? Nathan Whelan: Well. I think it's, two things. On the research side, I wanna see our collections build. I wanna see, you know, I want, I want this collection to be the museum, to be somewhere where people deposit their vouchers. And certainly we have researchers. Now that deposit their stuff. But, you know, I want to, I, what I'd like to see is, you know, if you're doing research here at the Ohio State University and you have organismal voucher specimens, you know, we wanna, we wanna, we wanna voucher them at the, at the museum. We want this to be a repository and a resource for the researchers here at Ohio. So that's on the research side, really building our collections even more on the, on the public engagement side, I really wanna see us do more with that. You know, I think restarting the open house is a big, a big part of that, and I expect it to be a, a really great annual event. But I really wanna thank, you know, down the road strategically about how we can get our science, get our [00:34:00] collections, you know, in front of the, the community, you know, people in the Ohio State community, but also in Columbus. Ohio and the Midwest more broadly. And so, you know, one of the things that I hear in the community when I, when I've talked to people, met people since I've moved here is, you know, I'll mention the museum. Like, oh, that open house, are you guys gonna be doing that? That was great. I was like, yes, now we actually are. So, you know, people who have experienced the museum have been engaged and have been excited about it. And so what I wanna see is that excitement build. And I want people to not talk about something that happened. Six years ago, I want to hear people talk about, oh, that, that open house last year that, that thing y'all did you know, earlier this year was exceptional. And so I think building the research collection and building the public engagement, you know, when I, when I retire you know, if we see that having been built, we, we have more specimens, you know, maybe build our endowments as well, that'd be great. You know, and also, you know, having made an impact in the community, I'll be, I'll be very happy. David Staley: Nathan Whelan, thank you. Nathan Whelan: Thank you for [00:35:00] having me. Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.