One Species at a Time
By Encyclopedia of Life
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Podcast Description
Lend an ear and discover the wonders of nature—right outside your back door and halfway around the world. In our new season of audio broadcasts, we’ll be learning about life as small as yeast and as big as a bowhead whale. Hear people's stories about nature and hone your backyard observation skills. We’ll be exploring the diversity of life—five minutes and One Species at a Time. Listen to us online, or download us and take us with you on your own exploration of the world around you. Hosted by Ari Daniel Shapiro and brought to you by the Encyclopedia of Life, and Atlantic Public Media.
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1 |
Starlings | This week, we hear a story in two acts about a very familiar bird—the common starling. It's a non-native species that is omnivorous, gregarious, adaptable, and highly successful in its adopted land. It turns out we humans have inadvertently put out the welcome mat for this alien species. Act One tells the story about this winged invader with an $800 million appetite for fruit crops. As for Act Two, we’ll let independent producer Josh Kurz and the theater troupe Higher Mammals explain. read more | 2/23/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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2 |
Ugandan Butterflies | Ugandan lepidopterist Perpetra Akite studies at a university in the capital city, far from the farm where she grew up. Since she began studying butterflies as a girl, the landscape of her homeland has changed radically, for butterflies as well as people. It’s change that can be measured in many ways—in the inches of rainfall, acres of forest cleared—or the span of a tiny butterfly’s wings. Ari Daniel Shapiro reports from Kigale. Photo Credit: Perpetra Akite read more | 2/9/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 |
Mangroves | Follow researchers Candy Feller and Dennis Whigham as they scramble, climb, crawl, and creep through the tangled roots of a mangrove forest. Along the way, learn what’s threatening these unique ecosystems where the ocean meets the land. Studying these flooded forests is a challenge, but pursuing science in this strange landscape has its own rewards. Photo credit: Gary M.Stolz, BioLib.cz Download podcast script | 1/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 |
Sanibel Shells | Ari Daniel Shapiro joins the serious beachcombers along the high-tide line of Sanibel Island, Florida. These “shellers” come in search of beautiful sea shells, sometimes no bigger than a grain of rice, that are the remains of marine snails, bivalves, and other mollusks. Along the way, Ari learns why Sanibel’s shores are so rich in molluscan treasure, and how shelling has captured the imaginations of scientists and enthusiasts alike. read more | 1/10/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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5 |
Sea Grapes Google Earth Tour | “Sea grapes” may sound like something Poseidon would snack on, and not a killer algae. Yet Caulerpa racemosa var. cylindracea poses a serious threat to marine life. Spread by the bilge water of boats, this fast-growing alga is quick to take root, squeezing out native species. But there is one spot in the Mediterranean where cylindracea hasn’t yet taken over, and biologists like Juan Manuel Ruiz Fernández are trying to discover why. read more | 12/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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6 |
Greenland Shark | Join shark expert Greg Skomal as he ventures under the Arctic ice in search of the Greenland shark. Sharing this icy, blue twilight with an apex predator is a thrill--so long as you don’t end up being mistaken for a ringed seal, the shark’s favorite meal. In this episode, we’ll learn how Skomal’s research is revealing how these evolutionary survivors endure despite astonishing obstacles. Photo Credit: Jeffrey Gallant (GEERG) read more | 11/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
Red Knot | The red knot is a tiny shorebird that undertakes a mind-boggling migration from the tip of South America all the way to the Arctic Circle. One of the few stops on that marathon journey is the Delaware Bay, an estuary that offers a banquet for migrating birds. Here, for some 20,000 years, red knots have flocked by the thousands to fuel their journey. But humans may be writing a tragic ending to this extraordinary evolutionary success story, unless biologists armed with an unusual tool can win a race against time. Photo Credit: Kevin Karlson read more | 11/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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8 |
Dinoflagellates | Science contributor Josh Kurz, tells the story of dinoflagellates through “music from the bottom of the food chain.” There are “billions of these microscopic creatures in every bucket of the salty sea,” Kurz reveals. Learn which dinoflagellate has a special glow, and which one is responsible for killing more people every year than sharks. read more | 11/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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9 |
Ediacaran Fossils | When the cod fishery collapsed in Newfoundland in the early 1990s, the hopes of the local fish harvesters collapsed with it. Hundreds of Newfoundlanders moved away and businesses that depended on the cod fishery closed. But retired schoolteacher Kit Ward of Portugal Cove South wasn’t content to watch her community vanish with the cod. She and some friends teamed up to find a solution that was right under their feet, in the reddish rocks of Mistaken Point. Photo credit: Phoebe A. Cohen read more | 10/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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10 |
Martens | On the forested mountain slopes of the Basque country, we follow two Spanish biologists on the track of a pair of secretive mammals. Pine and stone martens are elusive carnivores that make their homes among the moss-covered, ancient oaks, leaving few clues to their presence. Determining just how changes to the forest are affecting the two species requires some scientific detective work—and the willingness to gather some rather smelly data. Photo Credit: Martes martes, SD Lund, BioPix read more | 10/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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11 |
Muskox | There’s a chill in the air this week as we travel to a mountain range in Norway in search of muskoxen, Ice Age survivors that once roamed the far north alongside the woolly mammoth. Introduced to Norway from Greenland in the 1940s, muskoxen flourished on these cool, dry slopes until 2006, when the seemingly healthy animals began to die. Ari Daniel Shapiro investigates the muskox mystery. Photo Credit:U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Download podcast script | 9/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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12 |
Marine Iguana | No iguana wants to be cooked alive on a hot rock and then served up as dinner for a Galapagos hawk. But it turns out the marine iguanas have a strategy that warns them of the presence of hawks they can’t see. They learned to tune in to a kind of police scanner…the alarm calls of mockingbirds. Photo Credit: Phil Myers, Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan Download podcast script | 9/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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13 |
Atlantic Bluefin Tuna | What is it like to be eyeball to eyeball with a fish the size of a Volkswagen? Learn about the process of tagging tuna and how those tags are revealing surprises that might help save tuna from their own popularity in sushi restaurants. Photo credit: Opencage, Japan Download podcast script Google Earth Tour Video Credits: read more | 8/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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14 |
Branch-tip Spiders | The hills near Missoula, Montana, are changing, native grasses and other plants increasingly squeezed out by nonnative plants. Knapweed, cinquefoil, and other weeds aren’t only changing the look of this ecosystem but its very structure. As ecologist Dean Pearson’s research has shown, however, some species are benefitting from the changed habitat in unexpected ways. You just have to look closely to see them. Photo Credit: Dean Pearson read more | 8/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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15 |
Box Jellyfish | Learn how three fiery, painful stings during an early morning swim in Hawaii changed the life of researcher Angel Yanagihara. Once the young biochemist had recovered from her box jelly encounter, Carybdea alata had her full attention. Now she works to unlock the secrets of venom of these beautiful, and sometimes dangerous, angels of the sea. read more | 7/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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16 |
Riftia | Host Ari Daniel Shapiro dives deep to discover a white worm as tall as your refrigerator that breathes through bright red feathery “lips.” This isn’t a creature from outer space. Meet Riftia, a tube worm that lives in deep-sea vents, and learn the surprising lessons this denizen of the abyss is teaching scientists about life on Earth. Photo credit: Vicki Ferrini, Marvin Lilley Download podcast script | 7/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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17 |
Sea Slugs | Come one, come all! See the amazing, the astonishing, half-animal, half-plant! Journey to Tampa Bay, Florida, where scientist Skip Pierce and one of his students first made a remarkable discovery twenty years ago. Meet Elysia chlorotica, a bright green, solar-powered, algae-slurping sea slug that’s still turning our understanding of the classification of life upside down. read more | 6/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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18 |
Insects of Costa Rica | In this episode, EOL education director Marie Studer journeys to Costa Rica to experience firsthand the astonishing variety of insect life in this tiny Central American nation—20,000 different kinds of butterflies and moths alone! read more | 6/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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19 |
Giant Squid | How do you get two dead Giant Squid the size of a school bus from a fishing boat in Spain to a museum in Washington, DC, USA? Call in the Navy! Find out how Operation Calamari unfolded and how the museum managed to put their new Giant Squid on display. Photo Credit: Glenn Rankin, Smithsonian Institution Download podcast script | 6/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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20 |
Polar Bears | In this podcast, host Ari Daniel Shapiro relates two close calls with polar bears. Listen as Heather Cray recalls how, dumped by a storm on a small Arctic island, she got an unexpected wake-up call. And when researcher Steve Amstrup accidentally crashed through the roof of a polar bear’s den, no one could predict what happened next. Photo credit: Sea Mammal Research Unit, World Register of Marine Species Download podcast script | 5/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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21 |
Water Hyacinth | It may have pretty purple flowers, but Eichhornia crassipes can be a green menace. Introduced to Africa from the neotropics, this invasive weed is choking Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest lake. Water hyacinth has carpeted vast stretches of the lake, fouling fishing nets and blocking harbors. Ari Daniel Shapiro teams with reporter in the field, Gastive Oyani, to speak with local fishermen and botanist Helida Oyieke. They learn how the lake and the lives of the people who depend on it are responding to this weedy challenge. read more | 5/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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22 |
Red Paper Lantern Jellyfish | Vacuumed up from its habitat a mile down in the ocean, the red paper lantern jelly may not look like much. Mostly water, it’s so fragile that once brought to the surface it’s reduced to a tattered blob in a jar. But this unassuming jellyfish has lessons for scientists. It’s teaching researchers in Japan how intricately life is connected down in the ocean’s deep, dark depths—and how the fate of this small red lantern sheds light on the fragility of life close to home. read more | 4/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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23 |
Red-Shouldered Soapberry Bug | In the lab at American University in Washington, DC, evolutionary biologist David Angelini and graduate student Stacey Baker are studying a snazzy red-and-black insect called the red-shouldered soapberry bug. These tiny insects with the big name are speedy and hard to catch—and speedy in other ways, too, as Ari Daniel Shapiro discovers. Photo Credit: Crystal Perreira, Soapberrybug.org read more | 4/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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24 |
Coral | Coral reefs are bustling cities of marine life, until rising ocean temperatures turn them into ghost towns. Can reefs spring back from devastating bleaching events? Ari Daniel Shapiro and researcher Dr. Randi Rotjan of the New England Aquarium, journey to the remote Phoenix Islands to find out. Photo credit: Page Gill, NOAA Download podcast script | 3/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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25 |
Great White Shark | Students from Martha's Vineyard Regional High School in Massachusetts and La Salle Academy in Rhode Island question shark researcher Greg Skomal about this charismatic predator at the top of the ocean food chain. Learn some surprising facts and the answers to such questions as what preys on the Great White and do they mate for life? Photo credit: Klaus Jost, Animal Diversity Web Download podcast script | 3/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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26 |
Sea Cucumbers | What reef animal comes in a rainbow of crazy colors, can throw out its innards to immobilize predators, then creep away and regrow a brand-new stomach? It’s the sea cucumber, prized as a gastronomic delight by some cultures and beginning to yield some of its secrets to scientists. Follow host Ari Daniel Shapiro from a Chinatown market to the reefs of Fiji to learn more about this amazing creature. read more | 2/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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27 |
Quinine Tree | In a large greenhouse at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, there grows a slender sapling of Cinchona pubescens, a tree that has played a remarkable role in human history. Journeying to this artificial tropical forest under glass, Ari Daniel Shapiro asks curators Carmen Ulloa Ulloa and Charlotte Taylor just what makes this famous “fever tree” special. read more | 2/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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28 |
E.O. Wilson | Renowned evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson has spent his long career cracking the code of ants. It’s the ants’ ability to communicate and form tight-knit societies that lies behind their extraordinary evolutionary success. Ari Daniel Shapiro visits Wilson in his office at Harvard to learn the nature of the ants’ special language—and what’s in an ant’s name. Photo Credit: Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology Download podcast script | 1/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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29 |
Lichens | Most of us walk past lichen-covered rocks, splotched with grays, greens, and golds, without giving them a closer look. Ari Daniel Shapiro visits with mycologist Anne Pringle and graduate student Benjamin Wolfe to learn about these amazing symbiotic organisms, formed when a fungus partners with an algae. Each lichen can host an entire microcosm, a microbial landscape teeming with life. These worlds-within-worlds are proving an invaluable tool for scientists studying our changing landscapes. Umbilicaria. Photo Credit: Benjamin Wolfe read more | 1/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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30 |
Right Whale | Hear how research unfolds at sea. Playing female whale calls into the water, researcher Susan Parks suddenly finds herself the center of attention of a group of male North Atlantic Right Whales. Will she be able to gather crucial data before a breaching whale crashes down on her boat? Photo Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Download podcast script | 1/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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31 |
Island Fox | In this episode, reporter Molly Samuel journeys to Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of California, to look into the mystery of the island’s tiny foxes, descendants of gray foxes who rafted over from the mainland more than ten thousand years ago and branched off to form a new, smaller species. Despite weighing a mere three pounds, these diminutive grey foxes thrived and for millennia they reigned as the island’s top predator. But twenty years ago, their numbers began to plummet, from three thousand in the early 1990s to fewer than one hundred by 2000. read more | 12/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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32 |
Ediacaran Fauna Fossils | In this episode, journey back in time to learn about Ediacaran Fauna, a diverse group of organisms that lived in the world's oceans about 580 million years ago. We’ll meet Dickinsonia rex, a sort of living bathmat without eyes or a mouth, and other strange denizens of the primordial slimebed. Paleontologists Mary Droser and Jim Gehling explain how they’re working to reconstruct this ancient ecosystem by studying fossils and shed light on the enduring evolutionary puzzle of how and why the first complex life forms arose. read more | 12/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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33 |
Scottish Wildcat | Scottish Wildcats or Felis sylvestris grampia have been around since the last ice age. A symbol of strength and independence, the cats used to roam the whole of Great Britain, but researchers believe there are now fewer than 400 left in the rugged highlands. We journey to Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland to learn about the threats that have this secretive species on the run and what the Cairngorms Wildcat Project is doing to help protect them. Photo Credit: Marc Evans read more | 11/16/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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34 |
Beetles and Moths | How much trouble can an unassuming black beetle no bigger than your fingernail be? Plenty, as we learn in this episode of One Species at a Time. Tiny stowaways like the European Gazelle beetle are arriving on container ships and wreaking havoc with native ecosystems. Long-standing pests like the gypsy moth have been joined by new exotic species that are crowding out North American fauna. Ari Daniel Shapiro journeys to the forests of Oregon to meet the beetles. Nebria brevicollis. Photo Credit: BioPix read more | 11/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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35 |
Bowhead Whale | Writer Karen Romano Young takes an icebreaker to Barrow, Alaska, to join in the festival of Naluqatak and learn about the intimate relationship between the Inupiat Eskimos and the bowhead whale. Listen as she tells Ari Daniel Shapiro how the whole community turns out for whale hunt, how the bowhead nourishes the Inupiat, both physically and spiritually—and how the hunt is proving to be an unexpected gift to scientists. Photo Credit:David Rugh, National Marine Mammal Lab, NMFS, NOAA read more | 10/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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36 |
Chamois | Growing up in a village in the foothills of the French Alps, Francis Roucher used to hunt the chamois, a cross between a goat and an antelope. But on the day one of his shots went astray, Roucher was transformed from hunter to game manager, working to reverse the chamois’ decline. Download podcast script read more | 10/6/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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37 |
Chaffinch and Winter Wren | Every morning when he walks the dog, retired professor of natural history Peter Slater can identify as many as thirty birds by their song alone. On a walk in a Scottish town with Ari Daniel Shapiro, Slater explains what two common songsters, the chaffinch and winter wren, are singing about, and how even city dwellers can learn to “bird by ear” in their own neighborhoods, with rewarding results. read more | 9/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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38 |
Lebanon Cedar | Mentioned in the Bible and in the 8000-year-old epic Gilgamesh, Lebanon’s iconic cedars have been reduced to a fraction of their former range by centuries of logging. Ari Daniel Shapiro walks the Shouf Cedar Reserve to learn how scientists are working to save the last remaining trees from a more insidious threat—climate change. The answer may surprise you. Another version of this podcast is available on Public Radio International's The World. read more | 9/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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39 |
Foothill Yellow-legged Frog | How is a tadpole like a short-sleeved white tee shirt? The answer lies in the Alameda Creek outside San Francisco, California, USA. Ari Daniel Shapiro wades into the issue of dams and biodiversity with two biologists sampling the DNA of this threatened frog in order to save it. Download podcast script | 8/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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40 |
Four-Leaf Clover | Scientist-in-training Summer Praetorius has an unusual skill—she is really, really good at spotting four-leaf clovers (Trifolium repens L.). A single gene causes the normally three-leafed clover to produce a fourth, supposedly lucky, leaf. As it turns out, good science depends on both close observation—a skill Praetorius uses to spot tiny shelled animals called foraminifera—and a little bit of luck. Ari Daniel Shapiro explains. Photo Credit:KEBman | 8/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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41 |
One Species at a Time | Our most recent episode on Marine Iguanas concluded the pilot season of our podcasts featuring marine species. We will be back next time with a new series - same idea, but we’ve changed the name to One Species at a Time. Along with marine species we will be exploring things that flutter, wriggle, burrow, blossom, and hop - everything from bacteria to gorillas. Many classrooms are using our podcasts and we hope you continue to do so. Some of you will begin to hear it on the air since we’re making it available on public radio stations. read more | 7/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 41 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Needs more length
Too short! The idea behind the podcast makes it rife with possibilities, but it is unrealized due to its brevity.
Fantastic!
Wonderful little gems of information. Yes they are short but that makes them very accessible, I can see these being used in a classroom, for example.
Very fun listen
Good length and great information. The "one species at a time" title is inaccurate. For example, "Insects of Costa Rica" is about thousands of species. That aside, this is an amazing podcast and worth every minute.
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