Ducks Unlimited Podcast

00:00 Mike Brasher Everybody welcome back. We are on location today on the campus of Mississippi State University the College of Forest Resources It's my old stomping grounds. I went to school here for a number of years and I'm super excited to be joined by Two good friends one that goes he and I go back While longer than we probably should admit. Dr. Brian Davis here at Mississippi State Brian. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you and a Repeat guest on the podcast. Dr. Phil of Retsky Phil. Good to have you man Happy to be here finally in person. That's right I we are in person and we had the opportunity to come down and visit with with you here on campus to Give a presentation here later today We're gonna miss that but we wanted to come down and talk with you about some other work that we're doing but this was another opportunity to catch up with you on some of the Latest work that you're doing in this really exciting field of of waterfowl genetics If you'd asked me three years ago if I would have ever used those words together I probably wouldn't exciting in genetics, you know, but it really Is it really is that this is an area? Some people have Brian I think you even kind of described it as sort of a new frontier and some of what we're studying in waterfowl research And and I would have to agree with that and I think some of what you're you're finding It's certainly corroborates it before we get too far before we'd launch kind of into the discussion on some of the latest And greatest work that that you two have been collaborating on Brian will get you to introduce yourself to our audience This is the first time that we've had an opportunity to get you on the ducks unlimited podcast We this will not be the last time we do so you've been on our radar for quite a while for a number of reasons But didn't want to do it unless we were in person. So we've got that opportunity now

01:45 Dr. Brian Davis So introduce yourself to our audience. I've been around a while, right? So you and I go back a couple of decades originally from Missouri went to the University of Missouri and graduated spent Six years with California Waterfowl Association and then came here for masters and PhD and then worked for DU from 2001 to 2009 and then moved back here in July of 2009 I've been here since so a little bit around the country Arkansas, Louisiana, California, Missouri, Mississippi Your areas of expertise in the waterfowl world. What are some of the things that you focused on basic applied waterfowl ecology and management We've had some telemetry studies, of course wood ducks is a big one We've got to collaborate on coastal wetlands and in South, Louisiana, which has been fabulous Currently working on a golden eye project in Alaska working on pollinators and wetlands and kind of just a little bit of stuff all across the board of course the genetics work now that The famous dr. Levretzky has been great

02:44 Mike Brasher So you're the person that we're going to connect with eventually for our wood duck species profile That's we've had several people reach out to us and ask when's that one coming and like well It's coming. I know who the person is gonna be. I know who our guest is gonna be but I want him here in person We're not gonna do that one today. We don't have enough time We'll get you to Memphis in studio to do that one now because yeah That's been a big focus of yours throughout your career and it's good to we've stayed in touch all these years And and it's it's good to be doing this here with you. I'd have you be part of this Thank you and Phil for those that may be catching You on this episode for the first time a brief introduction of yourself in your area of expertise and where you are

03:24 Dr. Phil Lavretsky Yeah, so my name is Philip Levretzky and I run a wildlife genetics lab at University of Texas El Paso we study obviously our primary system being waterfowl ducks key swans But we essentially do anything under the Sun that's got DNA and a bit of funding So we try to answer all sorts of questions for state federal private individuals and happy to do so

03:46 Mike Brasher We had have had you on four prior episodes where you've helped us out The first first time that you visited with a Ducks unlimited podcast was I think that was back in 2020 because we did that remote That was yeah, that's right. We had to rerecord that one. It was like a two-hour conversation Something happened to the audio is you me and and Tom Mormon and we had to we had to record that so hours of me talking I mean, yeah about genetics who would have thought But and those were episodes I think like 140 139 through 141 And then most recently like in January of 23 of this year We connected with you sort of on short order to talk about hybrids That's another area of sort of interest of yours is trying to explain the genetics behind hybrids and using some advanced techniques to defend definitively identify the parentage of these of these hybrid birds and that was on our what the title of that episode was our Hybrid waterfowl sterile and that was episode 465 so encourage folks to go back and listen to those if you hadn't haven't this is sort of the next installment in this story of It's a it's a story of discovery. I was coming to someone that and I think this is fair to say you guys tell me if it's different and Most of the things that we do now in waterfowl science. It's rare that we find true discoveries, right? We're we're We're understanding in more detail a lot of things that we have understood and figured out over the years and that And that and that and that fine-tuning is allowing us to do better with certain aspects of management, but It's it's relatively rare to find a true legitimate discovery that Fundamentally changes the way we start thinking about the birds that we're seeing and managing is that is that fair?

05:39 Dr. Brian Davis Brian would you agree with that? Yeah This is amazing discoveries and it's I Don't know how to put it exactly but it's almost like we've done so many of the tangible things like we locate nests You know, we watch birds go from habitats a B to C those kind of things But I kind of look at this stuff that Phil does is sort of the invisible Like the within that isn't apparent to the eye. We've never focused on that We're always interested in how many birds are over here over there. Where do birds nest and why and things like that? You know, there's been a lot obviously a lot of work on food and physiology and things like that So there's been a lot of work on on the internal Mechanisms of birds, but at this level, you know chromosomes and genes like hey Maybe this has a lot more Emphasis or driver than we ever thought, you know, and I'm sure we're not there yet Hopefully not because he'll be out of a job But I think we're heading that direct sort of the intangible things or the unseen things and

06:39 Mike Brasher You guys you guys are giving me goosebumps I was gonna ask you are we being too generous a little bit

06:49 Dr. Phil Lavretsky No, this is I mean it's taken a lot to get not every field, you know accepts Certain aspects and everything and I've been working to showcase how genetics can be just as much of a tool as Telemetry units or core sampling or habitat assessments or any of those types of things TME analyses It's it's just a level of information that allows you to then further fine-tune and dig into those questions potentially Decreasing biases that you didn't know were there by I mean to be to be fair It's basically creating a foundation where you actually know for for real certain what you're working with

07:31 Mike Brasher and it's been kind of cool for me to see the the development of Of your program because having worked for the Gulf Coast Joint Venture Model ducks were a species of concern for us. The hybridization was an issue and so I recall remember whenever you started working with you and other folks started working with Florida yeah, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission on study over there and and I remembered the name where I first heard the name of Retsky and It was that that's right and little did I know that however many years later We'd be doing multiple of these episodes But at that time we were talking to you about this earlier this morning You had you were dealing with just like a small number of I don't know snips or something of that nature And so it's just grown astronomically since then that's getting way down in the in the weeds but now basically the amount of data that you're working with right now in order to To Describe some of the genetic makeup of these individuals

08:29 Dr. Phil Lavretsky It's like Matt orders of magnitude greater than I was you had thousands fold. Yeah over what you had just what ten years ago Yeah, even in my own PhD I I spent three years collecting the data that you're talking about with model ducks and Mexican ducks and black ducks and others took me three years to collect 20 loci and within my fourth year of my PhD I recapitulated everything Into the thousands with these new methods, of course, I didn't publish I waited to publish, you know The first stuff first to make sure that got out But yeah, what we were that you just we weren't seeing these types of leaps and bounds and in in genetics it took computational Advancements sequencing Sequencing advancements all these things had to come about and that's why in genetics Their lag time was almost a decade for most things like you had allozymes that micro satellites and then and then Sanger sequencing finally got to the point where you could get like lots of different loci But you're still dealing with tens to twenties But that only lasted for almost five years only even less when all these new methods of partial genome Sequencing where you get where you can access a great proportion of the genome just in an instant Rather than me spending, you know a year just collecting 20 for a species in In like a month at that time. It took me three months, you know, I had 150 samples done now We do it in two weeks, you know one week to two weeks. We can we do 250 samples So it's just our capacity has grown to the point where we can really look at population level ask population level questions that we couldn't do Even just yeah

10:15 Mike Brasher Like you said ten years ago and I reference that we're here to talk about the next chapter in this story And it's like you're writing these chapters increasingly rapidly, right? Yeah Because a lot of the things that you talked about there so brief recap of kind of where what this big picture issue is and we're gonna be talking about the occurrence and what we're learning about the occurrence and frequency of game farm mallard genes in In our mallard populations, let's just kind of say that broadly That was the big discovery that you made a few years ago Is that there are these game farm mallard genes that are making their way into the mallards that we are seeing in various flyways Give us the kind of that 10,000 level view of that story and where we are Now I guess kind of stop short of where we are now because we'll get into that with sort of like the next next thing

11:06 Dr. Phil Lavretsky That y'all have done but the backstory on it Yeah the backstory four years ago I was under the same dogmatic principles as most everybody else where you know We knew about game farm mallards or and other domestic Mallards and but they had no relevance to wild populations Until I started looking at it big story. It was really I wasn't even looking for it I was looking at black ducks and Mallards and and wallah that these signatures that didn't make any sense kept coming up and Through additional analyses with known game farms and other other park ducks park mallard like ducks like khaki camels and Peking duck and whatever you can think of when you go to a restaurant We identified that that other thing in North America was was due to the the Hybridization with game farm mallards and and and if your audience doesn't know this Game farm mallard is just like all those other mallard things called ducks Peking ducks khaki camels. They're just bred for a very different purpose and essentially what you can consider What a game farm mallard is is a husky of the dog complex. It looks like a wolf, but it ain't a wolf And so it was specifically bred for hunting shooting purposes So we wanted it to still look like a green head and have certain characteristics, but over the last So 400 years the first time this this ever was noted buzz by King Charles the second 1650 Asking his people to go and catch wild Mallards so he could propagate and shoot them So this is where we think the line started So hasn't been that old it's been a lot of time, but these things have been transformed now, you know cut cut to three years later We've learned a lot in fact I would say we've learned a decades worth of knowledge in a very short amount of time That's because we're trying to catch up. We're playing catch up right now to understand. How bad is it?

13:05 Mike Brasher Yeah, and so you said how bad is it? But I think what you're basically talking about there you kind of getting a little head of us there in terms of sort of the Implications of them. So the first question is how prevalent is it? I'll use the word prevalent instead of how bad is it? How prevalent is this is this situation where we're seeing game farm mallard genes? I'm a hybrid ization basically between wild Mallards and game farm Mallards that have been released and a lot of those releases Most of those releases at least historically have been on the Atlantic seaboard Associated with some some put-and-take shooting clubs or something of that nature's it and and what are the numbers there?

13:39 Dr. Phil Lavretsky I don't know. Yes, currently and the last time fish and wildlife ever did a survey was in 2013 those numbers were about 250,000 annually with releases releases 210 being the Atlantic flyway My personal guess is a lot more than that Yeah, and go back farther in time and it was almost half a million a year With almost all of them at that time as far as the records show, you know from 19 about 1920 1950 19 Late 1950s. It was almost half a million a year

14:07 Mike Brasher Mostly on the Atlantic flyway and the assumption all along had been that these birds are not adapted to the wild So we're gonna be releasing those those that don't get shot would die out or not reproduce or whatever. And so But your data

14:21 Dr. Phil Lavretsky If you didn't survive you shouldn't be having babies and your genetics shouldn't be on the landscape and if that was the case I shouldn't Find you that's right

14:28 Mike Brasher But you but you definitely are so much so that to the to the to the extent now that in the Atlantic flyway I've heard we think you've gone on this gone over this before if you harvest a mallard in the Atlantic flyway The current rate is 2% chance that it's that it's a wild Mallard 98% that it's a Simply a game farm a feral game farm mallard and this case a feral is a game farm that is now in the wild and that hybridization it could range from what 90% Game farm genes to what 40% game farm game farm genes

15:05 Dr. Phil Lavretsky No, I mean basically anything over 10% and under 90% We found almost every digit you could imagine so any if it has from 10% to 90% game farm genes That's our cut off right now We're fine fine tuning that as we gain more data particularly full genomes to really understand what is wild And once we have right now, that's our that's our cutoff. It's it's

15:32 Mike Brasher It's not based on biology yet, but it's it's closely linked. Okay, so that's the question of prevalence We started in Atlantic flyway. There's a also the question of water and you've done some work on this and we've The what we'll talk about here in a minute is the next step of that where else we're looking and what have you found? But then the issue is like are we seeing this move west? Are we seeing these game farm Mallards mallard genes move west into the Mississippi flyway? The answer short answer is yes Yes, there's then the next question that we'll get to a little bit later on but I'll sort of I'll tease it now It's like well, okay, so what right that's that's what that's what some folks would think sorry It's still a mallard with a green head and and I can still harvest it and and okay, so so what's the big deal? well some of the other work that Ongoing work and some work that job. I don't know if you've had any publications on this yet or not, but you're learning Why it's important potentially important and I would say important and then others may say well What are the practical implications of that? Maybe that's still to be determined but nevertheless there are some some implications just beyond the occurrence of that phenomenon, right? So that kind of leads us to the to the work that we want to talk about today And that's where colleague. Dr. Brian Davis comes in he's got deep roots here in Mississippi in the lower Mississippi Valley one of the one of the premier experts of waterfowl ecology and habitat management in this part of the world and so They got tons of great ideas up in that noggin and I've heard a lot of them through my years and so you began to wanted to partner with Phil to to on this issue of prevalence of Hybridization between wild and game farm mallards kind of in this neck of the woods so talk with us about that Brian

17:21 Dr. Brian Davis So we probably stumbled into this by being naive I would say so when I first moved back here A partner with dr. Dianne outlaw on campus and biological sciences She's a geneticist and really what spawned all that was you know thinking about climate change and some birds move and some don't Some move at certain times and some you know some come early some come later And we've always and you even back when you were here. We joked about the Halloween dogs You know mallards that come here in October That if you think about it, they're really not physiologically compelled to move. Why would you move? Out of Greenwich, Dakota's Canada, whatever in October. It's really not that cold there yet The thought was who are these birds? Why do they come here early and then you related back to hunting? You know it's like wow if these birds have this specific We use the term site fidelity for wintering birds if they have this site fidelity here Then it's really important for us to know where they nest on the breeding grounds to sort of safeguard that stock You know if you want to be selfish about birds in a specific region, so You can do that with you know in thinking 2009 2010 We don't we didn't even have the GPS radios that you would need now to sort of look at that annual loop So we were like well What are the genetics of these individuals so we ended up? Harvesting birds and it really was Areas that I hunted like Western, Missouri for example and then here in Mississippi, and we're actually even Sample birds on this part of the state in the interior foothills and the Mississippi Delta because actually band recovery suggests that birds that winter on in Eastern Mississippi actually have more of a Derivation or derivation or inclination towards the Great Lakes regions those in the Delta jet back to the prairie So there was even a little bit of there may be variation based on band recoveries so long story short We actually collected the feet And Diana analyzed those and at the time she did and Phil can talk about this more later in terms of genetics, but MTD and a the maternal DNA and and what that tells you is is the lineage We know who you are we know who your mother is we know your grandmother and you can go back in time And so one thing led to another And one of the things the data reveal were the old world and new world and into a non geneticist Oh, wow, is this significant, you know, we got birds that we know are European descent in the new world meaning North America we know That you know, that would make more sense. We should have birds here in North America But we found two and I don't remember what that ratio was but nonetheless We're like wow, this is pretty cool stuff one thing led to another we never published it. So then we got back to it It's not that we hadn't been doing in the meantime But all these other things came about and you know you get on other things but nonetheless We got the the genetics fever back and and I reached out to Phil especially watching more his work get done And I'm like, hey man, check this out. You know, this is what we did. This is why we wanted to do it What do you think and he's like well, I've published a lot on this. He's like, it's really not that earth-shattering now I've covered a lot of the MTD a but then Phil says hey, can you get me some new samples? I'm like, yeah So long story short in the world of genetics He can talk about it all day long, but you have this maternal MTD in a Which you have a history on and then what Phil did that we didn't do ten years ago So this data was collected ten years ago Phil says hey, can you give me some new samples? That was two three winners ago. Anyway about a ten year about a decade old spam, which is exactly a decade Yeah, which is really cool Because these things can can change quickly and I said heck yes So we got more samples and then he ran MTD and a to compare, you know apples and apples across time But also nuclear so the nuclear DNA tells us who are you right now? So he ran that he's like, oh dude, this is really cool. You know, so So the other work we're gonna talk about today the other genetics project that we have really was kind of unrelated to this But I think what probably the best way to synthesize This work that we just did and published is sort of like putting another piece in your puzzle. It's like, okay Now Phil knows who the birds are from Western, Missouri and mostly Western, Mississippi He's already learning a lot from the eastern birds and we're kind of moving this way to the West and now he's got a couple More pieces of puzzle like who's who so I think that was really advantageous that we're able to do both MTDNA and the nuclear The bottom line is the end of the day there really wasn't any change, you know It's there you know that's in your over that 10-year period, right? You might think there's gonna be more game farm genes marching southwestward, but really wasn't the case, right? so so that was that was advantageous and then the other project is It's all kind of related but it is different and you know, we'll get into that

22:29 Mike Brasher We'll get to that and get to that in a minute Phil can you like on second grade level for me MTDNA versus nuclear DNA? MT is that mitochondrial?

22:40 Dr. Phil Lavretsky Mitochondrial DNA. So at least I remember that. Mom gives it to all her kids boys girls Doesn't matter you get the same exact copy only mom dad does not provide anything whether that's humans or birds Same situation mom gives you the mitochondrial DNA. That's it. So that's the maternal lineage the problem with mitochondrial DNA is that you don't have dad and with waterfowl dad is the Wanderer right the one that might Provide genetic variation from one population to another So oftentimes what we see in waterfowl is that mitochondrial DNA is really structured meaning The female lineage is really specific and we would expect that because mom and her female Offspring and female grand offspring and so forth might breed in the same exact locations over and over creating structure And so people for a long time are like, oh look at all these ducks They're super structured and then when we come in with our nuclear we say where we have mom and dad, right? So you get one copy from mom one copy from dad all of a sudden It's not there and that you in in this story kept coming up over and over and so Showcasing how important males are male bias dispersal of

24:02 Mike Brasher Moving those genes around in waterfowl and so basically what that what that means is there's not as much Structuring in the population as you would have concluded Using just mitochondria. Okay. I just want to make sure yeah

24:15 Dr. Phil Lavretsky And so with Brian stuff so he they they collected in 2011 2012 And they had a proportion and interestingly enough that proportions about 70 30 70 Percent is new world 30 percent is old world new world or new world old world Yeah So the translation is these we group them into these haplogroups, which is this a and B. They're about half a million years Separated the evolution of the new world was half a million years after the evolution of the new world or old world haplogroup and that and that is that is almost identical to what we expect when Mallards actually colonized North America, is it too simple for me to say that old world is more game farm? So this is where this story goes so What Brian's alluding to is for a very long time People argued and hypothesized why there are old world genes in in North America because if you went to Europe all you'd find is old world whether it's a game farm whether it's it's a wild or whatever and I'll explain why that's the case, but What we're what we finally figured out is that? The thousands of samples that we've gotten all of the a all those old world a haplotypes group to fit only 15 Types and they're all found in in game farm preserves I see and so now we've really identified the source of why they're even here and their game farms to Get that to get back to why a game farm has a haplotype Domestication of of Mallards occurred in China and Europe and The wild source would have been Eurasian which carries an a haplotype and thus all your domestics carry a haplotypes

26:14 Dr. Brian Davis You were fit you were fidgeting over here you guys gonna simplify Is it fair to say that when you were talking about old world we're talking basically talking about Europe Yeah, and it so within Mallards. It's still fair to say that we have two populations, right? A lot of people the like hunters would probably say hell. There's a population in Montana population in Mississippi But genetically there's two

26:37 Dr. Phil Lavretsky Worldwide populations of Mallards right one's an old world European and one is new world North America Yeah, and only recently at the nuclear level could we distinguish between a Eurasian wild and a North American wild? The mitochondrial lineages are so different because of the female phylopatry That you just don't have cross-section nuclear had been moved longer between the two groups than then mitochondrial did and so nuclear wise They're only a 1% different almost like a black duck in a mallard But at mitochondrial they're almost 10% different It's just the the longevity of those two types of markers and the fact that females don't move across barrier across

27:24 Mike Brasher Landscapes like that like they're more phylopatric is correct. That's right. Yeah, they move they move Just want to clarify when you say that you're talking about they're more phylopatric

27:32 Dr. Phil Lavretsky That same native. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So once once a female lineage establishes in the prairie potholes It's probably you know in this particular location in the prairie potholes She and her daughters and her granddaughters potentially are going to keep going back there Okay, or a higher rate than a male offspring would okay. That was a bit of a detour

27:51 Mike Brasher But we do that sometimes so back to the results from the from the samples that Brian and his colleagues had collected you said

27:59 Dr. Phil Lavretsky 70 70 30 70 30 70 B It's a new world 30% a so and that's generally what we see in The Mississippi Flyway when you take an average up and down up and down on average on average like you take all the birds in Mississippi Mallards and Mississippi when I sampled in my 19 paper And 20 paper that was about the same exact average that we got and the interesting thing is that when we sampled again in 2020 2021 exact same thing it was 6931 basically the same. Yeah, it's amazing. And so what that tells you though because that a haplotype is an indicator of hybridization So it had to have happened a haplotype old world old world. Yeah, so that means Female game farm Mallards must have come in and introduced that haplotype into the population So here's the premise if it happened recently We should find lots of hybrids with our nuclear data if it happened in the past and through Back crossing where the offspring these high at one point hybrid offspring Interbred with wild and continuously interbred with wild the nuclear would become wild again. You essentially recapitulated the wild genome again through back crossing and So when we looked at the 2020 2021 data set They were they were 93% of all the samples were wild. We only found one hybrid in Louisiana three hybrids in Mississippi Missouri and Arkansas zero hybrids Which is wildly different than many parts of Eastern North America So you gave me that average across the Mississippi Flyway, but what I think you just have 7030 7030 at the mitochondrial Right. So remember this so that means what this suggests is that there was an input into the system in the past and Then something happened when those lineages must have back crossed to a wild Parental population that their kids are now wild

30:10 Dr. Brian Davis that the nuclear when we talked about that, that's the fascinating part of this to me because Again, we want wild mallards and the scare is oh boy. They're coming, you know, they're coming from the Northeast. They're gonna be here and Really? I think this is correct to say you're the geneticists, but it's almost like it's reversed going back

30:28 Dr. Phil Lavretsky It's not what you would think is something happened in the past in the at some point There was an influx of game farms. It must have seized if it didn't I would we would have found early hybrids You know some f1s or f2s or something like that But because there's so few and all of them are way late generation back crosses Whatever the hybrids that we even found were just super late generation They're like one generation removed from their kids basically being wild

30:57 Mike Brasher so I think it just clicked with me in my mind because I was trying to catch up and So the the mitochondrial DNA from the mother shows a higher Prevalence of that old world have a type But then when you look at the nuclear which incorporates the DNA from the male correct and the males are the ones that are roaming farther those males are What I think you said is that it would be more likely that or perhaps that one of those females would have one of the hybrid Females would have bred with a truly wild mallard and would have taken the offspring of those Towards wild towards wild and you would get that from the nuclear correct DNA

31:36 Dr. Phil Lavretsky But the problem is is that a haplotype is perpetuated for much longer because mom gives it to everybody And keeps and all those females just have the a haplotype So she's gonna give it to everybody again and again and again So it takes a very a very a much longer time if ever that Unless that mitochondrial is is detrimental to somehow making them less They it would just be perpetuated as long as those lineages are there so the a haplotype gives us a historical perspective of that it did occur and the nuclear gives us a contemporary or today's

32:13 Mike Brasher Perspective okay after hearing it six times it finally clicked for me, so I'm happy about that We're gonna take a break right now all right, and we're gonna come back We're gonna kind of wrap up this little part of it, and then we're gonna talk about sort of the implications next steps What are some of the really exciting things that you're that you're discovering so hang with us folks? Welcome back everyone we're here with dr. Brian Davis of Mississippi State University and dr. Phil of Redsky of University of Texas El Paso We're on campus at Mississippi State down in Starkville, Mississippi or Stark Vegas as some I'm referred to it right Brian correct So we put when we took the break we had well I had kind of pieced things together finally in my mind of what I was going on So let's kind of wrap up like what are the implications of what you discovered with the with the birds from Missouri, Mississippi Alabama what's the big take-home there?

33:16 Dr. Brian Davis Let me say the simple part and he can say the the smarter part to me What's fascinating is a lot of this work? It's like wildlife science in general a lot of times we see the what like birds did this they didn't do that Whatever, but it's more the why you know why are these things happening so in this part of the work? Like before you get real excited about some really deep ecological reasons Why it could be a timing thing kind of like our discussions earlier about radio marking birds We're actually marking the birds that got here at a certain time and probably have some fidelity to this region But we didn't capture the birds before we got here, and so we don't really know who those individuals are so it could be Based on the time we collected the birds It could be that it could be that Some of the the old world genes might be more prevalent. We just didn't capture them But to me the other the exciting part and kind of keeps us wanting to do more research is you know Are these birds sort of self regulated through a sort of mating and that's basically like individuals You know old birds pairing with old birds things like that whether or not that's happening I don't know, but it's exciting to think that maybe There's some self regulation in these birds and whether that Holds any kind of water. I have no idea. I mean Phil Phil offers his opinions, but to me That's kind of exciting In thinking that hey we once had game farm genes here But it seems to be reverting and going back to wild to me that is just incredible

34:50 Mike Brasher Yeah, that means that's a wise of that is that some that's for the for for those of us that that Value truly wild mallards. That's a point of optimism right yeah showing that just Just the the mere introduction by itself isn't necessarily doesn't necessarily mean. It's a sort of Unidirectional progression right there is an opportunity to recapture those birds or to for that that wild signature and

35:17 Dr. Phil Lavretsky perhaps wild traits and and behavior and that actually gives you the first indication of that of how negatively selected those traits might be by by natural selection because of natural select if if these birds were equally Good at life as a wild bird their genetics would still be here otherwise But if they're not the fact that they're not means that there's something that is what we would consider maladaptive about them that the genetics has something about maladaptive now What Brian alluded to with a sort of mating? we're definitely gonna look into that because I'm super interested in it and but but one thing that I I I would I would have to Say here that potentially is occurring is that the source for the birds in this region is Likely those of the prairie potholes and the Dakotas of the prairie potholes that there's a break somewhere though, right? There's a yeah and and potentially the size of that population is large enough that it could sustain The hybridization because there's so many of the parental population that you know It doesn't take very many generations to basically through back crossing that you've got wild Yeah, and that is distinctly different from the Atlantic flyway that is no longer There's not enough of that parental wild that would even permit for Offspring to have the potential that that next generation is going to be more wild because they don't exist and that is a distinct feature that I find very interesting not for this region because it's Sort of surrounded by stories that are completely opposite north of them into the Great Lakes and east of that Into the Atlantic flyway completely different situations going on

37:08 Dr. Brian Davis Regionally and so I guess another way to look at this if you think about the northeast It's the opposite of here even though those may be maladaptive individuals

37:17 Dr. Phil Lavretsky They're just so many of them that they persist they persist well, and there's a continuous supply of them And there's a continued it's a continuous trickle of individuals of inputting and we can go definitely into the weeds of what happened in New Zealand was happening in Europe, but but that's the basic The the premise here is that we continue the continuous input is continuously causing a decrease in in wild in certain regions

37:45 Mike Brasher we might get to the New Zealand Europe story here a little bit later on but but like Across the Mississippi flyway there is an average there's an average values that you talked about But that average is not constant across that that landscape talk about what you've learned and dr Mike Schumer's partnered with you on some other work that recently came out speaking about I think some of the presence of these wild game farm mallards in in some states Maybe it was Ohio if I remember correctly so talk about what we what you're seeing in different parts of the flyway

38:15 Dr. Phil Lavretsky Yeah, so so if you so again I have to promise this if I look at the Atlantic flyway doesn't really matter where I look at really it's like a US Canada kind of like breakpoint of what's occurring in the Mississippi flyway there is a breakpoint of Sort of like north of Tennessee and south of Tennessee and what's occurring there is completely wildly different So like I said with Brian when we when we looked at down here in the lower Mississippi alluvial Valley You know better than 92% of all our samples were wild right genetically wild in our paper that we with Mike Schumer That we just published one location in Ohio 300 samples hunter harvested samples 35% wild so it's a complete opposite flip Between what's what potentially is occurring in Ohio and potentially in the Great Lakes more generally as compared to what's happening here in The lower part of the Mississippi flyway And that is what we consider what we would consider meta population dynamics because the obviously the sources The the sources migrating or moving or breeding in though that are that are the sources for those locations have to be

39:28 Mike Brasher genetically distinct because otherwise if it wasn't it should all be the same thing and you're seeing some of the same type of Breakdowns in terms of hybrids and wild and game farm in states like Michigan other parts of the great

39:42 Dr. Phil Lavretsky Yeah, so we've got preliminary data. Hopefully we'll be publishing it in a year or so a lot some of the work with the state agencies there plus The work we're doing with Ben looking in it with at Michigan And the and to my surprise the Great Lakes Kind of look like France Wow and and France right now the perspective of the the percentage of Wild and it's I mean Michigan's like the worst I would say don't know why But but the only places I can find early hybrid so like an f1 What an f1 what what we consider an f1 would be that first generation pairing between a wild and a true game farm that creates An f1 and the only places you should find that is where game farm Game farm males and or females are prevalent enough that they're actually making it into the breeding population and Besides the Great Lakes. I find it in Jersey, and I find it in France right and the and what those Signatures provide me is that it's a those are the regions where it's continuing every Every year if it didn't happen that breeding season there should not be they shouldn't exist Right, it'd just be a bunch of like various back crosses or or or just wild But the fact is is that not only are we finding f1s in those locations? But we're also finding simply feral and simply wild and everything in between so we know that Continuous input is having an effect in those in those regions in those areas specifically

41:21 Mike Brasher Let's get to the so what why does why is this important kind of as a as a backdrop to this? I'll I'll make the point that ducks unlimited has has you know keeps an eye on Waterfowl population status and trends in the different regions and breeding stocks and we we try to understand with our partners What's going on with those populations? What's driving those declines? What are the the limitations on those populations? Some of those have been a bit mysterious for us to try to figure out Great Lakes Mallard population It's in a long-term decline Eastern Mallard certain some parts of that when you partition out that Eastern Mallard population you find I think it's the the US side of the of the population has been in a Decline maybe a bit more stable in Canada when you pull out the the Canadian Mallards and look only at those Those are the type of questions that we and ducks unlimited and our partners think about is like what's what's going on there and the work that you're doing allows us to get to what Brian was talking about and ask questions of why through a different lens and You're learning through some of the work that you're doing right now that Genetics aren't just something that we that we we study and that birds have them and there's there's no And it you know stops there genes determine who we are and what we do and what our traits are and what our characteristics are and you're finding the same thing with Mallards and so then the key question is our Which genes are responsible for some of those traits? That would position birds to be better or worse at surviving and reproducing and are those genes associated with Do they differ between let's just say game farm Mallards and wild Mallards right there frame up that question perfect, okay So you guys have been think you and Mike Schumer and maybe others have are involved in a pretty big study in

43:30 Dr. Phil Lavretsky That we were able to secure National Science Foundation money funds Through a grant that we that we put together you know it took ten years for for for us for me to Explain to NSF why ducks matter by not saying ducks No, so so yeah, so we we got the these funds to look at it to to further Understand the implications of when why generally understand what happens when wild and domestic Types interbreed and this has implications not just for ducks, but this happens all the time pigs goats sheep everything You get all the at all the fisheries that have stocking the ag's Plants that interbreed between wild and domestic and what how what those implications are for wild populations So obviously we're showcasing the Mallard and with it what we're doing is again playing Thankfully with those funds and others that we've been able to raise Playing catch-up and to answer the same exact that question now. We know this is happening at a landscape level didn't expect that What are the implications is it does it even matter and I think that you touched on that you could at least See the association everywhere you just mentioned population declines are the exact locations where there is a continued There is an increasing influx of hybrids and simply feral game farms so that already gives you an indication of Something might be happening there. So now what Brian me Mike Schumer and and the many partners we we put together are trying to understand Is what are those differences and how does that translate in the wild? Because as I say it, you know, there are many things that we like about animals in a cage and those things Rarely if ever translate to anything good in the wild

45:27 Mike Brasher So yeah, so we can definitely go down the rabbit hole of of those traits foraging efficiency, right? That's one of the traits Migration behaviors you're partnering with some with some other folks very generous partners and providing access to DNA samples of birds that have Have these GPS GSM transmitters on them. So you're getting these behaviors and so they're providing those DNA samples are you gonna be able to tell which of those individuals is a pure wild mallard or Which is a hybrid or game farm and then you're gonna be able to look at some association See if there are differences in those behaviors Yeah between those wild mallards and those game farm or and the hybrids and wherever those birds fall along that that gradient

46:11 Dr. Phil Lavretsky So foraging efficiency migration movements. What are they some of the other more for morphology general morphology? It goes towards those traits but to quantify How how different is that bill do they have different wings do they have different? Tarsis that might change the way they can move Walk or swim how they fly and all the all of these things. So we're trying to piece all of those Pieces of the puzzle together to get a better picture with the underlying foundation of genetics telling us exactly who we're looking at And that's the biggest difference between this Form of study versus previous studies where you know, you just assume oh, it looks like a mallard must be a mallard Let's put that in the mallard data set Here we're not just saying oh, it's a mallard. We're saying okay. Well, this is a wild mallard This is a form of hybrid and then even within the hybrids we can start to parse out to understand Okay well Is there some sort of ancestry break point that all of a sudden that bird or that bird's lineage and its kids all of a sudden? You know at least showcase wild traits And how quickly does does the really bad traits get selected against in the in the population?

47:28 Mike Brasher Okay, so let's take each of those here briefly and if you don't mind this study is still ongoing So right and so you're still collecting data. Yes Can you talk about some of what you're finding from a preliminary standpoint? Absolutely sort of general trend So let's talk about the foraging efficiency

47:44 Dr. Phil Lavretsky Yeah forging efficiency, what are you finding with yeah, so and this is a captive partly captive deal, right? Yeah, so so we so Brian had a 50% of the of that part and then Mike Schumer did and Susanna his grad student did the other 50% At Forbes and Brian did at Pinolo. So we had these two different locations to try to see if environment has an effect And so essentially what we do is we brought in wild birds We genetically vetted all of them not all of them were wild but which was beneficial to us But you knew that right we knew that we were gonna get a hodgepodge out there Which was which I was actually hoping for because then we could like, yeah anyways And then we went and bought game farm mallards right from a couple different breeders We vetted to make sure that they were all of the same ancestry. Yes They're all the same thing no matter what state I look at And they are all of old world descent And so we brought them into captivity and we did these various feeding trials to see how well how efficiently they they fed and foraged on wild seeds versus more of what we consider domestic seeds like corn And and quantify their capacity to eat Those those types of seeds and this all stem from the fact that their bills This gets to the first part where we looked at the bill morphology, and it's not just us the first indication was our European colleagues They published a couple different papers showing that their mallards are turning more goose like Then shorter bills shorter fatter bills the lamella are getting spaced out further La melee are those or the fine comb like structures on the bill that the birds filter feed with allows them to retain the food as they're filtering water and all that for exactly and so the the wider that spacing the

49:39 Dr. Brian Davis The what the larger the seed has to be for them to actually retain it so small seeds will just fall out is the idea and The other important foods are aquatic invertebrates. There you go. So yes, so you need the title of melee to water goes out All the important nutrients go in And if you're just all you have to do now is pick up a kernel of corn or some seed why I have really yeah

50:05 Mike Brasher Think about the extreme example there would be baleen whale You know if they ended up if they had to change in the the spacing on their structures that retained all that really Not be able to feed and gain those

50:16 Dr. Phil Lavretsky Retain that is efficiently right so then so our hypothesis in this in this part of the study was that Well the bills have changed, you know through artificial selection like Brian here just said we picked for ducks that could move on on Ground faster so they can run over like a chicken and pick up as many seeds as they can because we just threw them into A cage that's what we were selecting for And of course you would never expect, you know, you could say like oh, well, could we really change that? Well, we we did make a wolf into a chihuahua. So I'm pretty sure we could do this So our hypothesis would be that they can't filter feed wild seeds small tiny seeds would fall out and And to be fair, that's that's what we found essentially. What about what would be next? We wanted to talk about the yeah, so essentially when we looked at the bird itself We found four unique characteristics one being the head morphology like we talked about bills are shorter fatter More more more of a goose bill than than an actual dabbling duck bill the next thing we found is that Morphometrically like the size of the tarsus the size of your wing was no longer in proportion They're just simply out of proportion, you know And so what happened is that we in fact made them runners their tarsus is actually longer so they're Run better runners than our than our wild mallards, but their wings are short-loaded so we essentially took a jumbo jet and we put What's it called a fighter jet on it? But the other part that is interesting and we've only we only have observations on this is that we made them into a jet a fighter jet But we also got rid of all their fuel and What I mean by that is that when we were doing these feeding trials and we put wild birds back on Purina Chow They put on fat But when we put game farm mallards back on Purina Chow They didn't and they won't put they they simply did not put on fat. So physiologically they are completely different animals So now what you've got is a bird that is technically flightier because they have these shorter wings, but they've got no fuel and So what we're what we what we're hypothesizing now what we're learning is that these birds Can make short bursts distance movements, but unlikely to migrate that's our hypothesis that we're hoping with some of the telemetry units that that you mentioned That we've got out there will help resolve that and and help us test that Or their migration patterns correct yours may be different maybe Materially different. Yeah, correct The other the other interesting aspect of all of this was that when we when we had these birds in captivity Female mallards will were creating nests not necessarily potentially having a few eggs But the stress was was probably limiting their ability to to to manufacture to make eggs But a game farm mallard would Would either have no nest partial nest but almost none of their eggs were in the nest It was essentially a chicken and you essentially put eggs on the ground and you walk around And you would know as Mike mentioned Mike Schumer was telling us these stories and in fact I had a tech out there telling me the same things as she was helping out with with getting this project Going is that you could walk into a pen and you'd know exactly what that was if it was a wild or domestic Based on the fact if there were just eggs that morning or not

54:08 Mike Brasher So you can go make an omelet. Wow. So we what we've done is we we turned a duck into a chicken That's incredible. And I think you and I were talking about it last night It's as though these game farm mallards are more like gallop

54:21 Dr. Phil Lavretsky Gallinatious birds the short burst, you know birds that that yeah, so we're we're excited about that I have a master's student right now just getting into it We're gonna do 3d imaging of these of of wings of birds that we know The genetic origins is the fact it's good most of them are gonna be part were part of the feeding trials and we're actually putting them into flight simulators to look at true loading and efficiency of their flight capacity and You know if this works out the way it is in my head we can like, you know pretend They're in a storm and see how they do just like we would with an airplane We've partnered with some folks at UTEP in our aeronautics group to help out and they're just like blown away that we're putting They're like wire. What is happening here?

55:07 Mike Brasher it really is an incredible time to Yeah to be in this conversation Brian it causes me to think back about on all the studies Genetics has suddenly become an incredible incredibly valuable covariate right for explaining any kind of Phenomena that you're studying in in these birds I think back to any number of studies that have been conducted over the years and you get conducted in one location then you do the analysis look to results and and and then Describe similarities or differences to other locations and other studies at that time I don't know if any of us thought that you know genetics might have been a potential Important covariate there's gonna be landscape effects and all that type of stuff as well But you're dealing with me that they're potentially what they are different birds in some landscapes and

55:59 Dr. Phil Lavretsky significantly different they are they are again significantly different across everything we look at if you just want to look at baseline genetics as I've said in other Podcasts you know American black duck in the mallard one and a half percent Game farm mallard in a wild mallard ten percent different They are ten times more different from each other than a wild mallard and a black duck is So so there's those implications, but I got to tell you so Rick Kaminsky you gave a story. I'm gonna give another story I don't know what decade this was but he told me they used to do feeding trials and they were wanting to do it was early form of TME Looking looking at feeding feeding of mallards or whatever it is that they were doing but they they specifically went to a farm and they bought They thought they bought these what they thought were mallards and what you know mallards a mallard at that time This makes you rethink everything and he said he they trashed the whole thing because they were feeding him Purina chow and they would just Have 30 40 eggs and they just keep making eggs as long as you made Purina chow and it was biologically Irrelevant to a wild mallard and they he basically was he's like he saw it But but it took you know until now to really understand like oh no these things are very different

57:15 Mike Brasher There are reasons that they're they're ecologically biologically different. Well, and the fact that they're different game farm versus wild Okay, big deal. But the fact that we have game farm genes intermixed among our wild population. That's the different thing Yeah, if you just have your game farm mallards restricted to your backyard your commercial flocks or whatever it is and no big deal

57:37 Dr. Phil Lavretsky But that's not the situation that that is not the situation and you going back to the question of what does it really matter? I mean, hopefully, you know Brian and I and others will will be able to answer that question At least scientifically and I guess all of us would have to have that conversation if it if it socially matters But at a at a biological aspect in the management perspective if you want to go ask that question You can go ask our fisheries friends and ask them You know when you input a bunch of rainbow trout or salmon that you that you populate into From a cage into you know a tank into the wild. How does that work out for you?

58:14 Mike Brasher And they're gonna tell you well, there's a reason we're still stalking him. Yep. It's one of those questions where you five years ago Somebody might have thrown this idea out there and and would have said mad. I mean there's we just don't Somebody would have probably been dismissive or said now that's probably not gonna be the case But it's one of those issues. You don't know unless you look that's and it takes someone and and and a group of partners And funding entities to take that leap and say we don't know but we're gonna be willing to invest in the study to take A look somebody did that for you You found something and now it has literally sort of opened up a new frontier as you described it last night and there is the number of questions and linkages to things that are important to population viability and population characteristics and the behaviors and tendencies of these birds that are important to hunters hypothetically in terms of migration timing migration weather Patterns all right things we have mallards that are that are presumably thriving in urban environments There are there differences between the birds that we see in urban environments and rural environments I know you have some partners that are gonna be giving you some you're getting some information

59:35 Dr. Phil Lavretsky So far preliminary data. Yep, there is The if you've got more than 30% game farms, so you're looking at 70% or less wild Your tent I think you have two times the the tendency to be in urban settings than if you were wild more rural Migratory patterns look look the same where you're do again. It seems like this it is probably linked to this short burst bird with little Fuel in them there there their movements are just these short distance migrations or they're not even migrations They're just kind of moving about in an urban setting going back to the park where they were a lot of the times Very rarely moving long distance like we would like we expect mallards to do again preliminary We're still looking into it, but that that's that's what we're finding and so far the pieces keep Sort of telling us the same story and which is which is great And I'm waiting for the ball to drop but so far it hasn't so so it's it's it's and the the nice thing is we've got European counterparts looking at similar trends, and they're finding and they're a hundred years ahead of us and

01:00:46 Mike Brasher Their populations aren't doing so great. So so hopefully we can we can pay attention to what's going on there. Yeah Brian where does this kind of rank in terms of the things that have gotten you? Intellectually excited in your career. You've been around for a while. What's your kind of big picture view on this and where it goes?

01:01:06 Dr. Brian Davis Yes, it's fantastic. I mean I was thinking your discussions about Genetics and sort of being foreign to a lot of us probably the terms, you know natural selection survival of fitness those are the things that we've always had beaten in our head, you know, and it's not necessarily the Biggest and the fastest that survive. It's those that are most adaptable and to me it just The underlying sort of the sort of more of the wise and who these birds are to me just it's just a whole fascinating world that That a lot more remains to be discovered I think and like you said earlier, you know, we know so much about waterfowl It's hard nowadays to really get oh wow. Look at this In this to me is similar to and I'm sure you've done podcasts on the incubation Incubation and birds we've always you know, it's really important, right? If you don't incubate you don't have but who would have thunk that you know, one to two percent difference in temperature In temperature it can make all the difference in the world and we've always just kind of dismissed incubation Oh, it's really important But you know the hens they do their job and all as well and you start doing these experimental studies of some of our colleagues And it's like wow just one to two percent difference natural selection, you know genetics so to me it's the the whole genetic realm is one of those things that's Sort of been invisible but yet we're finding out how relevant it is and So as we learn more about the wise I think maybe we can make more sense about the what you know in terms of migration And things like that. So it's exciting and I think it's important for the the conservation community the hunters to know You know who who are the birds? Where are they? What are the implications and and and those stuffs?

01:02:57 Mike Brasher Those things are becoming more and more revealing so and we've tried to answer the why questions as long as we've been doing research but we've we've restricted those those inquiries to more tangible things physical things like the landscape the animals that they interact with the distribution of the wetlands and the grasslands and all those things are still important and those are things that we can Quantify and study at large scales and incorporate that into where we target our conservation planning and all that type of stuff But there are other things happening kind of beneath the water So to speak that are equally and in some cases may be more important if we've got something going on out there That's where we have some maladaptive traits that are filtering into maladaptive being those that are not not conducive to to the system in which the birds are living and And if if those things are working there through through the population that's we need to be aware of those and That that Potentially could be explaining some of the things that well

01:03:59 Dr. Phil Lavretsky I would be explaining some of the things that we see with regard to trajectories and you know You know it in maladaptive maladaptive is relative right so I would say Do you buys a golf course leave it as a golf course in in New Jersey? And you maintain carrying capacity for that mallard change the golf course into a beautiful wetland you decrease carrying capacity For that mallard for the mallards that exist there now Much game farm in them and and the translation of gene to You know morphology and morphology to being able to feed to move so forth right you're you're you're You're if you're unable to forage on small. You know small wild seeds and vertebrates Well, it doesn't make much sense then to turn a golf course into a beautiful wetland with those characteristics It'd be better to just like throw corn out there

01:04:53 Mike Brasher Just to be clear ducks unlimited is not purchasing a golf course Mention want to make sure we get that on the record at least not that I know But but yeah Let's see I think we've covered a lot of ground here We could we could continue on in this discussion if we wanted to I know there's some more exciting things going Coming in the in the in the next few months and and years ahead We'll be reconnecting with you Phil on some of those We're trying to get a little partnership going and that's something that that hunters may be hearing about hopefully we'll be hearing about that's about As much of a tease as I'm gonna give at this point, but later this this this year Keep your ears open stay tuned to the podcast and all other things ducks unlimited And you'll be you'll hopefully be seeing how you can engage and help out with some of this work before we go I want to give you guys an opportunity to acknowledge and say thanks to all the other many partners that have helped in this research

01:05:55 Dr. Phil Lavretsky So Phil there's gonna be a long one. Yeah, but yeah, no the first and foremost I want to thank all the hunters and private landowners that have provided samples all throughout this time But then I also want to thank my funding Ddu has been a great partner NSF and others but then the the the collaborations just like Brian and I all you know started collaborating finishing projects moving things forward None of this work would be would be possible if it wasn't for the collaborative nature of all the state federal agencies both in the US side and Canadian side as well as the university partners just like Brian Mike Schumer Ben looking in Who my dad? Yeah, Doug Osborne out of Arkansas. Those were our main collaborators for some of the telemetry work Arielle Fornier out of Forbes great great Access for for those the folks at Pinola and and and Brian's help out there Tennessee Tech Tennessee Tech Tennessee Tech Brad Cohen Nick Masto Tennessee Tech Brad Cohen Nick Masto can't can't forget them as well and

01:07:15 Mike Brasher Probably some others. I know I put you on the spot like that. And so if you got left out that's on me. It's

01:07:21 Dr. Phil Lavretsky It's I think the point is it's a long list. It's a very long list Kaminsky was a big help as well We were able to engage with him and getting some of the earlier samples out of Mississippi, South Carolina South Carolina DNR providing those samples North Carolina don't list all the states because you'll be here You're telling me last night that you've got samples for one project or another from from nearly every state from every right nearly every state Yep, and province. Yeah and Mexican state

01:07:55 Mike Brasher Yeah, and we've got some some DU staff some DU volunteers have contributed samples I mean, so there's a lot of interest in this There's a lot of people you've been very open about you can't do this by yourself No, you know, it takes it takes financial resources it takes the the in kind support and and You know, I I appreciate you taking the time to help with the communication on this I know you've been on a number of podcasts Ramsey Russell had you on a few weeks ago and Kudos to Ramsey for bringing this story to his listeners as well It's really important and trying to marshal support for it. So it's it's it's really I mean one of the more exciting

01:08:33 Dr. Phil Lavretsky The conversation has to continue or else it'll always go back to status quo

01:08:38 Dr. Brian Davis And I'm not sure if we that's where we want to go at least I don't yeah, right Brian any acknowledgments from you similar I want to thank dr. Diane outlaw here on campus You know get when you when you come to the university one of the first things you're doing is looking to collaborate with people We wrote small research grant and of course Rick was was huge and all that too and thinking about all that So but then from there the list, I mean he's pretty much covered it It's this to me at this point my career especially just being able to collaborate with a huge group is a lot of fun Everybody brings different things to the table and it's just it's just cool to really do the big picture kind of things to me

01:09:16 Dr. Phil Lavretsky You know, so it's been it's been great and that that's exactly it without It's not like I have to be Knowledgeable of everything. I just need to have the partners, right?

01:09:26 Dr. Brian Davis I'll bring things to the table and everybody brings things to the table and we can actually get stuff done in our earlier Conversations he would call me and say these are our ducks. This is what's going on like inside He's like why is this happening, you know, and we started talking about migration and who's who and all that

01:09:42 Dr. Phil Lavretsky So it was really it's fun Everybody's got decades of knowledge that not everybody has right and so I can give you a pattern of The genetics and be like I can make up a story but you tell me the history No, and and we'll we'll actually come come to a real conclusion and some real implications

01:10:01 Mike Brasher Yeah, Brian Phil. Thanks for your time. We'll be connecting with you again multiple times. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah Thanks for everything you're doing Thank you a very special thanks to our guest on today's episode Dr. Brian Davis here at Mississippi State University and Dr. Phil of Redskie of University of Texas El Paso We greatly appreciate all they're doing We thank our producer Chris Isaac for the wonderful work that he does with these episodes and getting him out to you and to you the listener Listener, we thank you for your time. We thank you for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation