Episode 114: Plants, Pollinators and People: A Epic Love Story with Dr. Kyra N Krakos, Professor of Biology and Director for the Sustainability Program at Maryville University

Dr. Kyra N Krakos is a Professor of Biology and Program Director for the Sustainability Program at Maryville University, and a Research Associate at Missouri Botanical Garden. Kyra is a St. Louis Biodiversity Fellow in the Living Earth Collaborative and a Plant Humanities Fellow with Dumbarton-Oaks. Kyra is currently serving a three year elected chair of the Teaching Section of the Botanical Society of America. She was named Science Educator of the Year by the STL Academy of Science in 2016. She teaches courses in Ecology, Plants and People, Evolution, Conservation and Sustainability, and Botany. Her lab focuses on three main areas of research that emphasize the need to understand the dynamics of the natural world in a changing environment. First, she studies the evolution and ecology of plant reproduction, including plant-pollinator interactions and breeding systems. Second, she is the PI for the Maryville Honeysuckle project that is studying local, green solutions to invasive species. Finally, she is co-PI on an historical ethnobotanical study that researches the plants of the last ruling Medici, Anna Maria Louisa, in recently translated 17th Century archived records. Kyra did both her undergraduate and Masters in Integrative Biology at Brigham Young University, where her thesis work focused on the impacts of invasive species on the pollination systems of several tropical plant species. She did her doctorate at Washington University focusing on the ecology and evolution of plant reproductive biology, using the Oenothera genus as a study system. She is a member of the Botanical Society for America, American Women in Science, and served as the co-director the Missouri state Junior Science, Engineering, and Humanities Symposium from 2012-2016. She has received funding from NSF, BSA, Sigma Xi, American Women in Science, National Geographic, and USDA. You can find her TEDx talk from 2015 under “Plants, People and Pollinators: A Love Story

Why should we care about climate change?

There are times when it can be very overwhelming and hard to get your head around. It is frightening as well. There are consequences we cannot avoid. It's not like climate change is something we go well in the future that will be an issue, or we will have consequences for our actions. There are already many consequences for our actions. We see an increase in erratic weather patterns, shifting coastlines and even political problems arise too like water rights and climate refugees. There is also the part where we cannot hit the IPCC goals of the degrees of warming that we were warned about. Even if we were to change, the impacts of climate change, we would still have to mitigate. There is a mess that has been made and the damage is done. There is a twofold approach where you talk about climate change and how we deal with the consequences that we can't avoid and the second part is how we can put in place mitigating future consequences. It is frightening and part of that is due to this being a global problem. If everyone does little things to help, it does matter. Nations even talk together because big problems take big movements by governments, the market economic policies, and legislative policies where our votes certainly matter.

What made Integration with our Ecology an Idea?

Dr. Krakos is a biologist who did not like to be inside for a long time and wanted to see the world. Being a field biologist she was placed in jungles, deserts, and all over the place. She was driven by the old human desire to see what is on the other side. She worked with a team that was in tropical biology. This is where she had the thought that plants cannot move but they have to solve all the problems that we do. They have to survive and reproduce. This is where she had the evolutionary perspective of how you do this, what adaptations are needed, and how do you solve those problems from that perspective of not being moved. This unlock this secret green world, because suddenly everything she was looking at in the rainforest made sense, all the things plants did make sense. From there Dr. Krakos started to focus on the evolution of plan sex and pollinators. It all depends on how we interact with our habitat. There are some extinction events that are going to be very sad. Pollinators are one area that we can absolutely do something about and given our dependence on them for our food supply. Acting locally does make a difference and what you plan makes a difference. It is nice and accessible.

How to balance human life and plant life?

There is a lot of misunderstanding when people talk about population control. Our population growth is slowing and that is not a bad thing. When we say growth, we don't mean that there aren't enough humans, or that there won't be enough. There are plenty of humans and it is still growing but the birth rates slow down. By large, when you give people access to health care and when you educate women. It's a good thing that our birth rates have slowed in the last century because that came with increased survival rates of babies and children. We do need to alter our lifestyle in a deprive yourself kind of way but it is very much innovating those different energy resources. We think a lot about how much stuff we can get and how much we can consume and that mindset has not always been true about human culture, and lots of cultures on the planet don't view that day to day. There is a big shift with the upcoming Gen Z students in the way that they view happiness and success compared to the older generations. They sift towards their value on consumption and relationships, in having things or sharing things. There is a problem with having many humans and the cities that are continuing to grow. There is a huge field of study that is increasing in urban ecology. What if we do not think of ourselves as separate from nature and look at our cities as ecological landscapes? This is about the commitment to having a green world in every aspect integrated into our cities so a lot more rooftop gardens within the city, the way we think about transportation, and also that our wildlife is more integrated into part of the cities. These cities that are shifting that way are the ones that are examples of how urban ecology is healthier. The humans are healthier, the air quality is better, and you get more local produce. This reminds us that humans are animals on the planet too and we are the ecosystem also.

Contact Dr. Kyra N Krakos

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyra-krakos-8336798/

Plants, Pollinators and People: A Love Story TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xGDSikwJj8

Learn more about Maryville University Sustainability program : https://online.maryville.edu/online-bachelors-degrees/sustainability/

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