Ep. 718 - duckDNA, Mossy Oak Waterfowl Conservation Stamp, and New Discoveries
Hey, everyone. Join us on this episode where we announce the return of Duck DNA for the twenty twenty five-twenty six season. We visit with Doctor. Phil Reztsky at the University of Texas El Paso and have him share some updates on some very cool results that we've gotten from the first few years. We also have Kayci Messerly and Ty Sharrow joining us here to tell about some of the great work they've been doing associated with Duck DNA, and we hear from Daniel Hayes of Mossi Oak on their great support of Duck DNA through the Mossi Oak 2025 Waterfowl Conservation Stamp.
Mike Brasher:Tons of information. Stay with us. You won't wanna miss this episode.
VO:The following episode of the DU podcast features a video component. For the full experience, visit the Ducks Unlimited channel on YouTube, subscribe, and enjoy.
VO:Can we do a mic check, please?
VO:Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, doctor Mike Brasher.
VO:I'm your host, Katie Burke.
VO:I'm your host, doctor Jared Henson. And I'm your host, Matt Harrison.
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Mike Brasher:Hey, everyone. Welcome back. I am doctor Mike Brazier. I'm gonna be your host on this episode, and it's a very exciting episode. I'm happy to be joined in studio by two of our conservation science assistants.
Mike Brasher:First, to my right, Ty Sharrow Ty, great to have you.
Ty Sharrow:Great to be here.
Mike Brasher:You've been with us here at Ducks Unlimited since when? February?
Ty Sharrow:February, yeah.
Mike Brasher:You've been working hard behind the scenes on a whole variety of things, duck DNA being one of those, and I guess I just sort of let the cat out of the bag. We're here to talk about duck DNA, exciting stuff, and so you're gonna share some of what you've been doing. Also, to my left, Casey Messerly, another one of our conservation science assistants. Casey, good to have you back here.
Kayci Messerly:Glad to be back.
Mike Brasher:I will give a shout out to our other conservation science assistants that is in the studio here with us that's off camera helping us keep us straight on various aspects of the conversation. Katie Tucker, she was on last year with us, and Katie is still here and involved in a variety of things. And so we are indeed here to talk about Duck DNA returning for the twenty twenty five, twenty six season. And as always, when we do so, we welcome our friend and famous guest, doctor Phil Thevetsky, all the way from El Paso, Texas. Phil, great to have you back.
Phil Lavretsky:Always glad to be here. Yeah. We've here we
Mike Brasher:are again doing another one of these. We are excited to announce officially on our ducks on on the ducks unlimited podcast that Duck DNA is back for the twenty five, twenty sixth season. The announcement the official announcement, I guess, that we first put out, I guess that went out by way of social media, something of that nature, that was when? Early September?
Kayci Messerly:Yep, on Instagram.
Mike Brasher:Okay. So Instagram, Facebook, we made that announcement. We already have how many applicants? What do we have?
Kayci Messerly:We've got 2,700 and a couple extras in there.
Mike Brasher:A couple extra. Great. So if you've already applied, thank you. If you have not applied yet and you're interested in having your name in the hat to, you know, be eligible to participate, go to duckdna.com, follow the instructions. We're gonna step you through a lot of that and some of the changes that we've made this year.
Mike Brasher:We're gonna show you some fancy things. We're gonna be some results from the past couple of years. We're gonna talk about some of what we posted on Instagram and some of the questions we get. In a in a few minutes, at some point here during this during this episode, we're gonna be joined by a good friend from Mossy Oak. I'm gonna sort of leave a little bit of mystery there in terms of who's gonna join us, but we have some exciting things to announce regarding Mossy Oak and their support for what we're doing.
Mike Brasher:So I think where we will start is introducing folks to sort of the new process, the new way that you apply. We've for the past two years, we've we've had our our standard three vial kits, and then you can contact us by Instagram or email and request a kit if you had a hybrid bird or something of that nature, and we've we've tried to formalize the application process for both of those kits a little more this year. So what I'm going to do is we're gonna go to the we're gonna go video here, so if you're listening to this in your vehicle or wherever, you know, you'll wanna check out some of the video that we're putting together for this. We're going to duckdna.com, and we're gonna show this on the screen, and then I'm gonna let Casey you're gonna I'm gonna navigate. You tell me what to do, and and we'll kinda see all this as it as it comes up, if that's okay.
Kayci Messerly:Sounds perfect.
Mike Brasher:And, Chris, you let me know when we are ready. We're good? Okay. We got the thumbs up. So duckdna.com website is the same as it has been.
Mike Brasher:There's a bit more information here, results and so forth, and we're gonna talk with Ty about that here in a second. But you go here, three different places where you can apply. If you participated or if you applied in past years, you have to have to apply again. So what we're going to do is go to the website, duckdna.com. I'm going to navigate.
Mike Brasher:Casey, you're going to kinda tell me what to do here, and but we get to the Duck DNA website kind of the same as it has been in previous years, a few more bits of information that we'll get to a little bit later on. But yeah, first thing, go to apply today. I think I said this already, but I'll say it again. If you applied in previous years, participated in previous years, you have to apply again to be considered or eligible for being selected this year. So go to apply today, and this is where it gets different.
Kayci Messerly:Casey? Yes. So after you click that apply today button, you get taken to our new Duck DNA application portal, so this is new for everyone whether you've applied before or not, And so what you can do is you can then scroll down and you've got a little additional information, and at the very top there, we have got two options for events. We have our standard sampling program and our hybrid sampling program. So these two options should sound pretty familiar to most of the people that have applied before, but we've created a spot where you can select in one location either option.
Kayci Messerly:So that standard sampling program is what you get when you apply and you haven't had a bird harvested already. You get the opportunity to receive three vials to harvest and submit mallard like ducks over the course of the hunting season, and then our hybrid sampling program is if you have already harvested a unique or interesting looking duck, and this is when previously you had emailed us. Instead, you're gonna go to this portal this year and click on apply today for the option that is best representative of what you wanna do this season. And you are able to apply for both. So if you get a hybrid later in the year, you can still apply for that hybrid program even if you sign up for the standard sampling to start with.
Mike Brasher:So So I'm kinda playing around here. I don't know.
Kayci Messerly:Yeah. So you're perfect. So it's it's we'll Where
Mike Brasher:do you want me to You want start with your plan today?
Kayci Messerly:Yeah. Click on the apply today for our standard sampling program. Okay. So this is gonna take you into our portal where it's gonna ask for a little bit of information so that we can make sure that we get the kit or select the right person and can contact you. So it'll ask for information like who you're registering, so if you're registering yourself or your child, if they're out hunting with you, your name.
Mike Brasher:Can I? You sure can. Yeah. So you will see this thing here that says sign in. So the platform that we're using is RunSignUp.
Mike Brasher:We've had maybe a couple of questions about this. If you have ever used RunSignUp, if you're a it's used for mostly for, like, marathons or running events, things of that nature, but we have adopted it for this. So if you have a RunSignUp account, if you're familiar with that, you'll know what it is. If if not, don't worry about it. You can sign in, and it will automatically bring up a a bit of your information, I think.
Kayci Messerly:Yes. So if you've already used RunSignUp before and your information is in the system, you are able to kind of auto populate much to the same vibe as like what's on your phone, that it'll fill some of that information in for you before.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. So I'm gonna do this here. So me, me, email address, yada yada yada, we're gonna do all that. And so I guess it's asking me to to register right here.
Kayci Messerly:Yeah. So it's asking you to register
Mike Brasher:k.
Kayci Messerly:Here. And then here, you'll see the option again to select the program you're interested in applying for. So just make sure that the one is selected that you want. Typically, since the hunting season hasn't occurred, most people will be applying for that standard sampling right now, but there are a few individuals who have hybrids from previous years that have already submitted for our hybrid program as well.
Mike Brasher:Okay. And so then I would do all of this.
Kayci Messerly:Yep. So we have our little privacy waiver to say
Mike Brasher:do this here. What if I do this? Do you want me to do this? Okay. So we had to take a little small break there in order to enter some information.
Mike Brasher:We are back now, and I am logged in to my RunSignUp because we wanna do this so you can see the rest of the process here. So if you already haven't run sign up account, they would use that. If not, then they would they would register, and and then it would take them to this. Right? They would enter their information and Yes.
Kayci Messerly:So that'll capture your information that we need, and then you have the opportunity to double check that you're signed up for the right program. Most people will be signing up for that standard sampling program right now, and then you click the continue button. Oh, well, click the waiver.
Mike Brasher:Waiver, do the continue, and Perfect. Now then.
Kayci Messerly:So now we capture just a few more pieces of information. We wanna keep things short and sweet for you guys. So our first question we're gonna ask is in which state you primarily hunt in. So you'll go through the list of states and select the one that you hunt the most in, and then we're gonna ask you about your, what we call your hunting avidity. So how many ducks did you harvest?
Mike Brasher:Definitely more than 11. Actually, that's not true. That's that's not true in Mississippi last year, so more like that.
Kayci Messerly:And we we prefer honest answers in this information. This is just used for us to look on the back end to help us understand sampling and harvesting and the types of birds harvested by certain people. Lastly, we have a section that is only for hybrid participants. So if you clicked on that standard sampling, you can just ignore this little section. You can click continue and move on, but if you have a hybrid, please upload photos of that hybrid.
Kayci Messerly:This is gonna help us also understand what we're looking at. So this is gonna give us information about what that hybrid looks like so that we can fill some of the buckets we need to fill to make sure that we have all of the information we need to do our genetic testing.
Mike Brasher:And then we hit continue, and, oh, what is this?
Kayci Messerly:Oh, wow. So this is something really cool that we've been doing, and recently, for a limited time, we were able to accept donations, and in return, we could send supporters their choice of these lovely Duck DNA branded hats that you see here.
Mike Brasher:And we do wanna give a big thank you to everyone that donated because these hats went fast, Surprised us in many ways, and so thank you for that. So much so that we are now officially out of inventory. So if you've missed out on getting yours, sorry about that, but we are excited to let you know that we have some things in the works. Maybe There an opportunity to get one of these hats in the future. If you're interested, drop us a line at dupodcast@ducks.org so we can get a good idea for the level of demand and also so we can reach back out to you once those do become available.
Kayci Messerly:So you do wanna make sure that you hit the complete registration button. That is gonna make sure that your registration goes all the way back to me and that we have it available for selection.
Mike Brasher:There we go.
Kayci Messerly:And you also get this really cool opportunity at the end to click on this support Duck DNA button, which we may talk more about later.
Mike Brasher:I bet we will. Looks looky there. It takes us to the Mossy Oak store, if folks are seeing that, and pretty soon, we will be joined by someone who can tell us a lot more about that. So so, yeah, anything else on the registration that we need to talk about, that new process and so forth?
Kayci Messerly:Yeah. The biggest reminder is that if you run into any issues or you're unsure about something, we still have our email available, so please reach out via email to me, Ty, or Katie. We'll we all man that system. We also do have our helpline phone number on our website as well. Pick up the phone, give us a call, we're happy to help you in either method that works best for you.
Mike Brasher:Thank you very much, Casey. And so now what we wanna do, Chris, just kinda keep an eye on if if our guest joins us, just let me know. Ty, what I what I think we'll do now is talk about some of the results from last year. We're gonna bring Phil into this as well, but one of the things, that we added to the website last year was a results page. You have been working hard to summarize some of the results, and we're gonna get to that in just a second because we have just been joined by our very special guest.
Mike Brasher:The timing is excellent. Daniel Hayes, all the way, are you in West Point right now?
Daniel Hayes:I'm in West Point right now. I'm at we got a big old porch on the front of our almost 200 year old cabin out here where we duck on Yeah. Mountain country.
Mike Brasher:Anybody that follows you and your family on Instagram will recognize that cabin as the source of a lot, the background, backdrop for a lot of photos and a lot of information that y'all put out. Daniel Hayes with Mossy Oak. Great for you to be with us. We just went through, Daniel, our application, new application process for for Duck DNA, and one of the things that that we once once people go through that application process, and Daniel, I don't know if you've actually gone all the way through this, there is an option on the very last page where it gives folks gives gives folks an opportunity to support Duck DNA, and it takes them to this page right here. Chris, if we can get that up, the Amosy Oak 2025 Waterfowl Conservation Stamp page where you can get yours, and there is a very good reason why we are directing people to this site, and it relates to a very generous offer that you and your family and your entire company made to Ducks Unlimited, UTEP, Doctor.
Mike Brasher:Lavretsky, our staff in supporting the Duck DNA project. And so, Daniel, I want to give you an opportunity to talk about that from your perspective, and thank you again for joining us here.
Daniel Hayes:Yeah. Thanks for having me, you and Phil. It's it's been great to build a friendship through Molsty Oak, and we're so proud of the gamekeeper side of of the brand and and all that dad and my granddad have injected into Molson Oak with the culture of conservation, and we always say that one of our biggest goals is to make conservation cool. Certainly, the two of you have have gone as far as anybody in recent memory in the duck world to make conservation cool for waterfowl. You're doing a heck of a job, so I think we're all kinda kindred spirits.
Daniel Hayes:And we're we're honored to support and be a part of this project. I didn't even know about it when when Phil first came on the Gamekeeper podcast. I was not in West Point that day, and Bobby Cole sent me the link after the episode came out. And my brother, Neil, and I both listened to it, and we were mind blown. All this was kinda happening under a bunch of duck hunters' noses without ever really being brought aware of it.
Daniel Hayes:And so it was one of those episodes that that you hear occasionally where you send it to every single duck hunting buddy that you have because you want them all to to hear it too. And and that's how you know that you're you're onto something is that I think that thousands of duck hunters have had that same response when they hear about the work that you're doing. They want everybody in their group text or everybody at their duck club or that they they hunt with to hear about it. And so the work started to get around and, you know, then people start to look for more information about it and wanna get educated about it. And and that's where you you start to uncover how cool the work that you're doing is where for the first time in a long time, there's not a lot of projects that have that that hunter citizen scientist aspect to it in the year 2025, but this has such a cool aspect of participation that you just don't get very much anymore.
Daniel Hayes:So it it's all been such a cool project for us to learn about and and help spread the word about. Yeah. Well, Daniel, we our entire group here, and
Mike Brasher:I know Phil online as well, have been absolutely thrilled to welcome Mossy Oak into, you know, the support for this project. We had a conversation with y'all several months ago, and you shared with us the idea of wanting to use a proceed from the sale of these waterfowl conservation stamps to to help fund this project, and, you know, we were ecstatic, and we're like, absolutely. We wanna do it. They have we have a ton of ideas on how we can help promote, what y'all are trying to do sort of in tandem and and then helping the project in the process, and so this is a great I mean, we've done a little bit of of that kind of promotion up until now, but with this with this episode and a lot of stuff that we have forthcoming, I think we have a really good opportunity to showcase what we can do as as partners on this project, and so I guess just to to kinda get into some of that, when people go to the Mossy Oak store, and I mean, if you get if you arrive there after you've applied for Duck DNA or if you just go there on your own, you will go to the you'll you'll find the waterfowl conservation stamp, get yours today.
Mike Brasher:They can purchase as many of these as they want. Right? There's no limit on the number that you can purchase. So, me, Daniel, but I think what this says here is there's a beautiful message here from your dad down here at the bottom of this page. It talks about what conservation means to him, means to your family, talks about the excitement and the interest that y'all have in this project, and it says that 100% of the proceeds from the sale of these stamps will go exclusively to support UTEP and Ducks Unlimited in delivering the Duck DNA project.
Mike Brasher:I mean, is a really cool thing for I mean, anytime in in our profession we get support for the science that we think is valuable, it's it's a really special thing, but to do it sort of under the banner of names like Ducks Unlimited and Mossy Oak, I mean, that's pretty cool. Mossy Oak, it it also means a little bit something extra special to me just because you're a Mississippi born and made, and you continue to be there in Mississippi business, and I have Mississippi ties there, and so I have a lot of pride there as well personally, but it's so cool, and everything that you've done here, think, allows that to shine through. So thank you, Daniel. Anything else like tell us about the artwork. Share with us anything else here about what's going on.
Daniel Hayes:Yeah. We we wanted the the artwork to kinda have a little bit of of old school flair. So our you know, really, the when the stamp originated, we've we've done four wild turkey stamps. And when it started, it was really just because, you know, the past five, six years, there's been a lot of concern in the turkey hunting world about the state and the health of wild turkey population. And Phil did a lot of crossover work there with our our buddy, doctor Chamberlain.
Daniel Hayes:So he he knows a lot about it, but there was a lot of concern for the the health of the wild turkey. And we were kinda sitting around talking about we love old, you know, old books and print stories, all that kind of good stuff, wildlife art. And we're, you know, talking about the fact that you have the migratory bird stamp, which is the most famous stamp in the world. But forty years ago, you couldn't hunt or fish for any species in any state in the country without having either a fish or wildlife specific license or a stamp for that type of game. And, you know, if you're looking really broadly at every every state, they're kinda gonna cater to the big two, whitetail deer and largemouth bass.
Daniel Hayes:And so from a really distant view, you wouldn't think that any other species even exist. Thankfully, because of the conservation history that from Ducks Unlimited and just from our government, ducks have always been taken care of. But because of that, we're we're like, hey. Well, you know, why don't anybody sell a a turkey stamp anymore? There's only, like, two states at this time that do it.
Daniel Hayes:Every every other state other than the duck stamp has kinda discontinued every other species stamp. And so we're talking about it. We're like, well, I mean, there's no rule that says Molsior can't just make our own stamp and see if anybody buys one. So, you know, we we printed turkey stamps. We've listed them on our website for $15.
Daniel Hayes:Every penny of that $15, we just covered the cost of the printing and stuff like that ourselves. And so all $15 went to this grassroots fund we started called Gamekeeper Grants so that we could write grants to whatever project we wanted to. Put it on our site, and it was right when turkey season had had kinda gotten kicked off. And before the end of turkey season, we had sold over a $100,000 of turkey stamps, which was just crazy. It blew us away.
Daniel Hayes:And so we've we've done that every year since. And we didn't wanna we wanted to do a duck stamp, but we didn't wanna do a duck stamp unless we had because there's just not the same state of concern with ducks as there was with turkeys. And because of the way funding is set up for for ducks, it didn't seem as as urgent to just do it without having a project tethered to it. And so once we met doctor Phil and learned more about duck DNA, I was like, oh, this is this is perfect. We you know, as nobody knows better than Ducks Unlimited because the the iconic magazine and all other forms of media that have matured over the years through Ducks Unlimited, nobody knows better the importance of culture and marketing and message behind conservation.
Daniel Hayes:You can't just have funding. You can't just have good people that are willing to do the work. You have to have buy in from whatever your community is. Nobody gets that better than DU. That's always been a pinnacle of of Molsty Oak's culture, what we stand for.
Daniel Hayes:That's why Gamekeepers exist and all that. So, anyway, we learned about Duck DNA. We're like, this is the perfect project. It's a great thing for Malsy Oak to to use the gamekeeper side of our brand for and the core part of Malsy Oak to help spread the word about. And then also the stamp is a is a really cool direct way to raise more funding and to give you know, if somebody just has $15 to give or just has $30 to give and they want it to go to a good cause, you know, every penny if you, you know, if you're also enthusiastic about Duck DNA, you know, every penny from that donation to buy a stamp is gonna go to this project.
Daniel Hayes:And you get a cool little piece of artwork that's preserving you know, it's it's pretty hard to make a living as a wildlife artist these days. Not a lot of them. And so you're preserving a cool art form as well. So all of that together makes for a really cool project that we're really excited to to help support and and do whatever we can. And then also, we've got you know, we the DU Expo was was such a blast and had a great turnout for first year being back in Memphis.
Daniel Hayes:And we had our Friday night gathering, drink one for the ducks, and it was 10 or $15 cover charge to get in the door there, and all that money goes to Duck DNA as well. And so it's just fun to have all these any little project that we can do in the duck world right now that has a conservation message tied to it. It's fun to have Duck DNA be the recipient of it. It's such a worthwhile project that we wanna make sure that it's easy to get enthusiastic about anything, not just in conservation, right when you hear about it, and then your enthusiasm wanes, but, you know, you need commitment year after year after year. So hopefully, all these different sources of funding and enthusiasm behind DugDNA will will help the longevity of it.
Mike Brasher:A couple of things to point out here, Daniel, like, again, massive thank you to you and your family for doing this, and then I'm gonna give Phil a chance to to say a few words and offer his thanks as well. But you mentioned the the federal DUG stamp. Coincidentally, today is the day of the federal duck stamp judging of the contest. It's going on right now as we record this. We were actually watching it a little bit before we came in here.
Mike Brasher:So that's pretty cool to reference that stamp while we're talking about talking about this. The other thing that I'll do, you you mentioned the stamp, the so this is I actually got this at the the DU Expo, what I'm showing here, the the envelope containing one of the stamps. I sort of borrowed a borrowed a page from what typically happens with the federal waterfowl stamp. If you're there the first day of sale, you get signatures, you get people to sign it, all that kind of stuff. So I met you and your dad and your brother, and I got all three of you to sign sign my stamp, and so that's pretty little or a pretty special thing in itself.
Mike Brasher:And so this is I guess if we Chris, if we can we do the the overhead shot? This is what the stamp looks like, and I'm assuming yep. There's the there's the stamp. Now I don't know that you will and then I'm not trying to suggest everybody swing by well, I guess I could suggest everybody swing by West Point and see if they can get the signature. If everybody's there, sure, more traffic for the business for you.
Daniel Hayes:You might not slam me if I'm out
Kayci Messerly:here, obviously.
Mike Brasher:That's right. But anyway, it is it is modeled after sort of the the design of the of the current federal duck stamp in terms of the shape and self adhesive nature of it, so pretty cool in that regard. The other thing that I will point out, and this overhead shot will have just revealed, is that this is a mock up of the kit, first time this has ever been seen by the public, I think. Actually, it may have been seen one version of this may have been seen elsewhere at at a DU event associated with DUX. This is the new kit that people will that lucky participants will receive.
Mike Brasher:This is a mock up. This is some outstanding work that Katie Tucker did on very short notice when we came up with this idea. It's like, let's get the the shadow grass camo. We actually have one that's in in Bottomland also, but we ended up going with shadow grass, and Katie printed this off, and and I don't know if we used Elmer's glue. Probably didn't use Elmer's Was it Elmer's It was Elmer's glue.
Mike Brasher:She's shaking her head. So this was, like, in our office mocking this up to show to Daniel and and his team, but this is what folks will receive if they are selected, is a mossy oak shadow grass camo pattern that is printed on the the kit. This is a single vial hybrid kit, does not have any of the material in there. But, yeah, we did this in, what, like a day, two days, something of that nature, and so it was that was a pretty cool thing in itself, and it's exciting to be able to share that as part of this episode. I've talked enough.
Mike Brasher:Phil, I know you have some exciting things to say and words of appreciation to pass along to Daniel and kind of what all means to you and the great relationship that you've developed with Daniel and his family.
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah, I was wondering if I was gonna talk. I was waiting. It's really difficult for me to wait. In fact, you took my sort of thought behind it away because I have
Mike Brasher:my name
Phil Lavretsky:right here, but it's not signed. But it's going on our YETI. And I yeah. Every actually took a a picture of us talking here because as you were talking, Daniel, a, hey, how's it going? B, as you were talking, it blew my mind because because a long time ago, at one point, I was sitting in a blind thinking about what I was seeing in my data and thinking about like, God, I wonder if anybody else gives two thoughts on what I'm seeing and if it's important to them.
Phil Lavretsky:And your words of encouragement and thankfulness of like, Yeah, thank God we we now know what we know, you know, really speaks volume. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate you, your family, Mossy Oak for everything you guys have been able to do, becoming a partner on this so quickly. I mean, huge things. And as you were saying, I mean, I wish I was at Ducks and at this drink event.
Phil Lavretsky:I didn't even know about that. I'm learning so many things right now. I didn't even know. That was actually the first time I ever saw our box.
Mike Brasher:Oh, really? So you're thinking, what other surprises do we have? I was like, yeah.
Phil Lavretsky:No. I mean, like I said, bottom of my heart, thank you to you, your family, and Massey Oak for everything you guys have done. And I hope that this partnership will continue to grow and and now into the future. Hopefully, everybody else, gets excited about Duck DNA as we are, as you are. I think you're right.
Phil Lavretsky:We're gonna share some of the results that we're just starting to find and and a lot of the things that we found would not be possible if it wasn't for Duck DNA and the hunters out there. And thankfully, the hunters think it's cool. They're getting a piece of information. They're helping to grow our knowledge base of what are the problems if they are there, and what else can we do about them. So, again, thank you.
Daniel Hayes:Yeah. Thank you, guys. You're the ones doing the work. We're just trying to help out and support where we can, and that shadow grass looks so good on those boxes. I haven't seen it in person yet.
Mike Brasher:Yeah.
Daniel Hayes:We're gonna make sure
Mike Brasher:you get a copy. You and your family get get a couple of those kits, and and and we are we haven't seen the printed versions yet. We're still waiting on those. We are we are optimistic that they are going to be be outstanding, and we'll make sure you get a copy of those.
Daniel Hayes:We we we made a custom batch of Whistling Wings Light with our friends at Flyway Brewing for that party, Phil, so you missed out. We had a chef mask can. We printed the stamp on the side of the can. It's a great duck camp beer. We have we have a few cases left, so we'll have to send you a couple of six packs.
Phil Lavretsky:Or bring me out there either way.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. We'll just come pick up and get it.
Phil Lavretsky:I'm happy to come out there. What are you are you guys teal hunting? What are you doing?
Daniel Hayes:We're not doing anything right now. It's it's 91 degrees, and we're
Phil Lavretsky:Oh, Jesus. We don't
Daniel Hayes:have a lick of water anywhere. That's not a fishing pond.
Phil Lavretsky:Right on.
Daniel Hayes:We're not doing much of anything. We got
Phil Lavretsky:we're just praying
Daniel Hayes:for rain till the time November gets here.
Phil Lavretsky:There you go.
Mike Brasher:So, Ty, Casey, y'all are also involved in this that I think y'all may have had a chance to meet meet Daniel, but any opportune anything to say, pass along based on your experiences or or what you have going on?
Kayci Messerly:First of all, just a giant thank you. This is something that we're all so excited and passionate about, and we get to see how excited the hunters get with this opportunity as well. And part of our questions over the last year was, are we gonna have to start charging for some of this? You know, like, where do we stand? And this has helped alleviate some of that as well.
Kayci Messerly:And so I know the hunters are gonna be extremely grateful and absolutely thrilled to also get to engage and be a part of this and its new form that it's taking on.
Ty Sharrow:Yeah. Just a big thank you for doing this. This is a great idea. I think the artwork on it is beautiful and another opportunity to feature some wildlife artists, and it's there's definitely demand for getting back to the project and getting back to conservation. So thank you.
Daniel Hayes:Heck yeah. A couple of things I forgot to say. One is pointing out that Blake Gore is the guy who did the artwork, but it was based on a hen mallard brood photo by Gary Kramer, who's been contributing to the magazine for years and years. So the other thing I wanna say is that today is our big charity event, the Foxhole Shootout down here in West Point. I'm actually headed back out to the venue now.
Daniel Hayes:We've we've got a bunch of live fire cooking going on all day. Those guys are out there sweating their butts off and leaving away for what's gonna be a really good meal. The the primary benefactors of of our event are St. Jude Children's Hospital and Catch a Dream, but the mission is kids and conservation. That's where most of the money goes.
Daniel Hayes:But then we also have a little bit of money from the night going back to Ducks Unlimited and and to Duck DNA as well. So that's a good conservation part of this. And another thing I wanted to say that I thought was cool that happened on its own, but with the turkey stamp, we we saw people that started you know, Phil said he's gonna slap one on a Yeti cooler. We've had plenty of people do that. But we've we've had some people that have bought batches of stamps when turkey season ends to use it as a self tag so that if they kill five turkeys, they buy five turkey stamps at the end of the year.
Daniel Hayes:And our buddy, Jared at OnAxe, actually started he's done it each year, and he has this cooler with all his stamps lined up on it. It it looks pretty cool year over year. So I don't if somebody has a successful ducks season, I think they might go broke, donate money.
Mike Brasher:Maybe you might have
Daniel Hayes:to divide by six or something. I'm I'm gonna win that you buy tag, man.
Mike Brasher:We're okay with that, Daniel. We're okay with that, Daniel. We could I don't know. Think about that. Could we do, like, a I don't know.
Mike Brasher:I don't We could do increments of a 100 or something, and we can figure something out if that be the case. Yeah.
Daniel Hayes:Y'all are having a better season than we have the
Mike Brasher:past couple
Daniel Hayes:of years. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Yep. Daniel, I do know you have to get back to your your charity event, the fact that you're, you know, Saint Jude is right here in our backyard. We've actually collaborated with them on a few things lately, and we've talked to some of their folks about a potential a potential for some of what we do through Duck DNA to allow them to reach out to hunters for some of the information and engagement that they're looking for as well. So there's all sorts of sort of tangential sort of connections here with what y'all are doing and the things that we're involved in now, so that's all really cool. Again, and and that's wonderful news about some of of what y'all are doing this evening coming back to to DU as well, but, you know, again, thank you.
Mike Brasher:I guess one of our challenges here as we close out, you said there was over a $100,000 contributed to the first the inaugural turkey stamp. I mean, I certainly hope waterfowl hunters can get behind this and and blow that number out of the water. You can do that through the stamp. If you if you have an interest in giving at a higher level for for any of this, get in touch with us or get in touch with your Ducks Unlimited director of development. If there is interest in that, we can can have those conversations and figure something out.
Mike Brasher:But but this right here, the 2025 Mossio Waterfowl Conservation Stamp is an outstanding way for everyone to get involved at really whatever level they want to as well. And, Daniel, it's made possible by you and your family. Thank you, and we'll stay in touch as the season unfolds and may get back together on another episode, but I wanna let you get back to what you're doing. So thank you, Daniel.
Daniel Hayes:Yeah. And on our site too, I should have one on right now, but I've got my old Shadow polo on. But we have two new shirts that we made for ducks. One just says conservation is cool across the chest. That's a great shirt for anybody.
Daniel Hayes:It's on a Shadow Grass t shirt. And then we have another one that has the stamp printed on the shirt. So both of those are great great T shirts for this project. And let's we we should if you find a little a Saint Jude patient who who loves ducks, we should and has a little bit of artistic ability, we should let them paint their own little stamp. We'll do a little kid's shirt or do a you know, I love you talked about the the federal duck stamp program.
Daniel Hayes:I love how they always do the kids competition.
Mike Brasher:So Yeah.
Daniel Hayes:For sure. We dig a little deeper there and do something cool.
Mike Brasher:Sure. And I left that shirt, the the one with the stamp on it is actually in my office. I came down here without it. So but yes. So I have that one, and I don't I can't find it right now on the site, but it's there.
Mike Brasher:But, anyway, go to the Mossy Oak store, search for the waterfowl conservation stamp, waterfowl conservation t shirt, find all those good things that support the project. So thank you, Daniel. We'll let you get back to your day.
Daniel Hayes:Yep. Thanks for having me on, and I appreciate y'all's friendship.
Mike Brasher:Okay. Thanks, man.
Phil Lavretsky:See
Daniel Hayes:you. See you.
Mike Brasher:Alright. Well, thanks to Daniel. I probably what we'll do right now is take a break, and then we'll come back, and we will talk with Phil some more, and finally give him a chance to talk in a little bit more detail along with Ty about some of the results that we've had come in for the first couple of years. So y'all stay with us. We will be right back.
VO:Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey. After these messages.
Mike Brasher:Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I'm doctor Mike Brazier. We're gonna continue this episode where we're talking about duck DNA. And, so again, thank you to Daniel Hayes who joined us prior to the break.
Mike Brasher:I wanna go back to the website, Mossy Oak website, Chris, because during the break, I did find the duck stamp t shirt that Daniel was talking about. There you see it in the Mossy Oak, the original shadow grass, conserve our wetlands featuring the stamp that appears on, on that waterfowl conservation stamp. So, and it does reference the the stamp here, and and when you purchase the stamp, you do support Duck DNA. It takes you back to there. So very easy to find both of those, and, yeah, go check those out.
Mike Brasher:Great opportunity to to support Duck DNA, Ducks Unlimited, and UTEP, and all the great work that's going on. And so speaking of great work that's going on and results that we have gotten, Ty, do you want to take us through here? You go to the homepage, and we've got view results, and you've added a lot of information to that.
Ty Sharrow:Yes. We've had plenty of samples and plenty of plenty of new data to add to this, but this past season was a great year. We greatly expanded from our first season. In total, we had eleven fifty eight samples that have come in to Duck DNA.
Mike Brasher:That just last year.
Ty Sharrow:Yeah. Just last Yeah. It's almost twice as many as we had in that first season, so we definitely expanded. And hopefully, this season, we'll be able to expand even more and accept more samples and get even more data. So, yeah, Mike mentioned on our homepage, if you press this new button, view results, and this has a greatly expanded and updated results page for us.
Ty Sharrow:There's three different tabs that you can look at. You can look at all seasons, which has our total results, and then you can get a breakdown between our two previous seasons.
Mike Brasher:I'm gonna go to '24, '25 just real quickly. Yes. It shows that.
Ty Sharrow:There you are.
Mike Brasher:Now I'm gonna go back to all seasons because we have more information on that all season page. Right? Okay.
Ty Sharrow:Yeah. We have some more detailed breakdowns of how many participants we had by flyaways, how many samples by flyaways. You can see, if you're viewing, a nice map of all our samples that we've received sparkled all across The US from
Mike Brasher:All 48 states.
Ty Sharrow:All 48 states, believe it or not. Yeah. You can see there are still some areas that we have not had samples yet. So if you hunt there, definitely apply, and we will definitely like to have your your samples from there. And also below that, we have some scientific insights, just a few of the really interesting things that we found through Duck DNA, highlighting some of the interesting three species hybrids that we've come across, that famous Northern shoveler blooming teal, cinnamon teal hybrid, that three way cross, so that was really surprising and interesting to see for sure.
Ty Sharrow:Then also some of the first state records that we were able to genetically confirm through duct DNA. We had a Mexican duck in Idaho, another one in Arkansas, and also a Bicol teal in Nevada, which was really exciting to see and have come in.
Mike Brasher:We double and triple checked that Mexican duck in Idaho, didn't we?
Ty Sharrow:Yes, we did.
Mike Brasher:One of the things I will say is that, you know, the group here that we have doesn't just give Phil and Virgie and his lab a pass and just say, okay, this is what Phil says, it must be what it is. I mean, there's been probably a dozen or more instances where you don't know all this, Phil, but they come to me and they're like, we have some questions about this, and it's like, should we reach out? I'm like, yeah, reach out. Ask your question. Let's double check these types of things, and that has proven very valuable in some instances because there's additional information that comes into play at times, and I would prob I mean, most of the time, Phil replies back and says, yeah, that's what I said it is.
Mike Brasher:Right?
Kayci Messerly:Is that fair?
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Yeah. Well, but I guess the other thing would say that y'all y'all y'all are pointing out and bringing to his attention these samples that may look a little bit curious. Right?
Kayci Messerly:Well, and I think Phil said on, like, the last episode we had, like, Phil doesn't get all the extra information we get, right? So Phil is running these, I will say blind, right?
Ty Sharrow:Very objectively.
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah. So Pretty much pretty yeah. Was just gonna add, I I don't look at the pictures. I don't look at anything. It's just I call them as it as it is.
Phil Lavretsky:If they're if I see mix ups, in in in things, then I might ask for more information. But typically, I just don't even look at it. So a lot of times when I see the Instagram, like recently with the teal, that's the first time I'd ever looked at that picture. You're
Mike Brasher:missing out. You're Thank missing so
Phil Lavretsky:God, thank God the genetics is so right. Anyways.
Kayci Messerly:But it makes it a super fun day in the office too because everyone's like, is it real? Is it not real? Like, is it? And so we all get really excited and, like, it's just an adventure. It's a fun time, and then we get to kind of sit a little earlier than, you know, we release some of these images.
Kayci Messerly:We get to sit on it and kind of get excited about the release of this next one, you know.
Mike Brasher:What else, Ty?
Ty Sharrow:Yes. If we keep going down, we've got this big table of all the different hybrids that we've come across. Plenty of mixes with wild mallards, and then some interesting ones with game farm mallards, including like a wood duck with a game farm mallard, some model ducks, and then even our breakdown of some of the three types of hybrids we've had. So that includes mostly, it's been wild mallards with a game farm mallard and then a third species of duck, but we have a few, like I mentioned, that that three way teal hybrid too.
Mike Brasher:There's some geese down in here. Yes. Foreshadowing of some exciting stuff coming in October, y'all. Stay tuned.
Ty Sharrow:Yes. That'll be definitely check the the social feeds for that one. We'll be showcasing some of those. And then if we keep going down, we've got highlighting some of the Game Farm Mallard ancestry results. This is one of the the big objectives of Duck DNA is to look more into this.
Ty Sharrow:And we have some really cool maps that you can see broken down by flyways. And this is this first map here that is looking at just mallards and the percent of game ancestry that we've had from those Mallard samples. So you can see in the Atlantic Flyway, 73% of Mallards that we've received from those standard kits had some game farm ancestry in them, which is the highest compared to the other flyaways, which Mississippi had 22%, Central 10%, and the Pacific Flyway had 20% of Mallards with those Game Farm Ancestry genes in them. And then also you can see it in a pie chart form, better visualization, and you can see between the Pacific, Central, And Mississippi flyways, it's all kind of relatively similar, about 80 to 90% of birds had were pure wild mallards, and then one to 2% were those pure game farms, and then a mix of nine to 22% were those hybrids between wild and game farms. But if you look at the Atlantic flyaway that is switched with 71%, again, containing those game farm genes of a hybrid between that and the the wild type.
Ty Sharrow:And then two, you can see specific locations where we've come across those samples that had game form Mallard genes. And looking at it, it is a pretty even spread all across The US. Atlantic Flyaway does have a lot, but even everywhere from Texas to Oregon and Maine and Minnesota, they all have had game farm mallard genes in those mallards.
Mike Brasher:45 of the 48 states that we've is where we've encountered the game farm ancestry thus We're pretty sure that given enough samples and time, we'll find game farm ancestry in in every state here. California, the Pacific Flyway is particularly interesting. I know Phil thought about that, and I even had a question on a call the other day. You know, we are really interested, like, are those associated with game farm releases, or are they associated with birds that have been released into some of those city parks and urban areas and that occasionally venture out into areas where they're harvested? Phil, do you have any insight, any thoughts on that?
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah, no, that 20% is being heavily pushed by California, and I do know that there is a breeder, specifically of game farm mallards in California exactly in that little hot spot that we found in that Central Valley area that are clearly being put out. It's completely outside of this. These proportions, like especially for across these flyaways, are almost identical to when I do external surveys for, let's say, Fish and Wildlife or state agencies, and that ratio was almost identical. When we got 100 birds out of the Klamath, 20% of them had game farm or were just simply feral game farms. So they're in that pool and that was a random sampling out of the Klamath area in Northern California and Oregon.
Phil Lavretsky:And it mimics what we find here. So I'm fairly certain that the Pacific Flyway signatures is largely driven by that. We definitely need some participants out of Washington, more of them.
Mike Brasher:But, yeah, no. Know, we enrolled a large number of people from Washington. I wanna go back and see where our samples are. Yeah. Look at this.
Mike Brasher:So a large number of duck DNA samples from Washington. The other map I was showing, are the locations of birds with game farm ancestry, which is interesting. I got another map we're gonna show you here in a bit too where we can get a finer level information that nobody else has seen. Has Phil seen it?
Ty Sharrow:I don't think he has. No. Know.
Daniel Hayes:Don't think I've ever
Mike Brasher:seen it. Yes. He's all.
Kayci Messerly:Well, should visit our website more often, Phil.
Mike Brasher:Come on. That's right. Okay. What what now?
Ty Sharrow:Yes. Yes. So there's more maps, more more graphs too to look at. So one of the things with those standard kits, it's not just for Mallard's, it's for Mallard like ducks. So that includes black ducks, Mexican ducks, and mottled ducks.
Ty Sharrow:So further down, we have a breakdown of each of those three species, some more pie charts looking at the percentage of their hybridization not just with game for mallards, but other mallard like ducks. You can see American black ducks, we had a whole bunch of samples of them, almost 300, so a good sample size. And about 42 were pure black ducks, and then another 42% were black duck wild mallard hybrids. That remaining percentage was mixed with a game for mallards and one black duck mottled duck hybrid as well, which is interesting. Mexican ducks, haven't had many of those.
Ty Sharrow:We'd love to have more to analyze, only about 18. But again, that was about 50% were pure Mexican ducks, and then a bigger breakdown of hybrids with those game farm birds. Then finally, those mottled ducks. For this one, this is combining the Florida Coast population and the Western Gulf Coast population, which doing duck DNA, we can separate those two subspecies, but for this pie chart, this is combining them. And you can see there is a much higher degree of hybridization with them and wild mallards and camphor mallards and other mallard like ducks as well.
Ty Sharrow:So that for that species, it does seem like they they are hybridizing more with with other mallard like ducks. Know that's something that Phil's gonna be getting into a little bit more detail later, but, yeah, this is what we have on our website. That's just a big
Mike Brasher:mix of things right
Ty Sharrow:there. Is. It's widespread.
Mike Brasher:Model ducks, wild mallards, the game farm wild, game farm, black ducks, Mexican ducks. Yeah. And the Mexican duck thing, so that's the other part that does sort of predispose model ducks to to that wider, I guess, range of hybridizations is you've got a Western Gulf Coast population where they do interact with Mexican ducks, then you've got the Florida population of model ducks where you're gonna get more encounters with black ducks. And then, Ty, as you said, we can go to the specific years and learn get a few additional details about where these birds have been have been sampled from.
Phil Lavretsky:And I I was just gonna note that American black duck, we published a paper, but that that found the same exact thing, but the introductions of model duck into Carolina, South Carolina, that's the reasoning behind that. And we found a couple different papers, North Carolina and South Carolina, where we find the same signatures of breeding ducks in that area. So this is it. It's nice to see that things are kinda holding up, and now we can sort of monitor that. Yeah.
Phil Lavretsky:Breaking that model duck up into Florida and Western Gulf Coast will get you a bit better understanding of what's happening there. But we'll chat on that some more. But, and then I was also gonna say the American black duck thing. What I was hoping to see is a heat map of that, because my hypothesis has always been that interior US side are hybrids, and coastal black decks are your true black decks. So I'm wondering if our sample sizes are big enough now to try to figure that kind of thing out, but
Mike Brasher:I don't know if they're large enough yet. I know you have done some heat maps, but I don't know if it was for black ducks based on that. But you did some interesting things with black ducks, looking at where the hybrids mostly occur, I think, East West or something of
Ty Sharrow:that nature. So did have I wanted to plot the black ducks and mallard duck hybrids, and that was something interesting we found because we had quite a few that were in the Pacific And Central Flyway, black ducks usually are only in the Atlantic and and some in the Mississippi Flyway, but we saw that there were some hybrids even far off West, even we had several in California. So that was very interesting. We're thinking that those are more of the second or third generation hybrids as those genes get more diluted and those birds migrate and move more that they can spread further west. But even in California, you can get a black duck mallard hybrid, but you gotta confirm it through Duck DNA.
Mike Brasher:Are we ready to show Phil this next thing that you've developed?
Ty Sharrow:I think so.
Mike Brasher:Okay. Here we go, Phil.
Daniel Hayes:Oh, man. Oh, boy. So
Phil Lavretsky:many surprises on this.
Ty Sharrow:Yes. This is the Duck DNA interactive map, and this has not been added to our website quite yet. That results page is published, and you can check that out right now, but this will be added hopefully in the next coming weeks.
Mike Brasher:Too advanced for you? I'm struggling here.
Ty Sharrow:A lot of buttons and things to scroll in with this for sure.
Mike Brasher:So this is, like, reminiscent of that whole the COVID COVID dashboard, like Johns Hopkins had, and and so now this platform is you can develop this where it summarizes it at the county level. Well, state level or county level, right? So tell us what's going on here.
Ty Sharrow:Sure. This stuff.
Mike Brasher:I gotta
Ty Sharrow:On this left side, we have some filters that we can use. As we've talked about, we have two different
Mike Brasher:Arkansas.
Ty Sharrow:Sampling kits, those hybrid and standard, so you can or both, you can switch in between those if you'd like, and then search by state. So if you wanna look at results just from maybe Arizona, you can click that. It'll zoom in.
Mike Brasher:I'm in Arkansas though. Oh. Yeah. Arizona. Was Mallards.
Mike Brasher:There are some.
Ty Sharrow:Any any state you'd like to look at. So Arkansas, it'll zoom in there, and on the right side, it has some of those metrics and stats, and that'll be specific to what filter you're choosing. So that is showing now those stats for Arkansas, how many samples that we've received so far, how many participants. Even has a pie chart breaking down, again, those Mallard like ducks and what proportion other ancestry contains game farm genes. As you can see in Arkansas, they've got, what, 6% have had contain game farm genes.
Ty Sharrow:That's interesting. Then below that, we have a table of all the different samples that we've received from that state saying the identity of that taxa and then how many we've received. Then even if you want to look dive even deeper down, we can look at the county level as well and look at those same metrics, but at the county level.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. I'm trying to figure this out here on the fly. You're watching me. Right? So I am.
Mike Brasher:Okay. I can do this. Will that work? So Yes. And will it change over here?
Mike Brasher:No. I have to go over here and select this. Like, if I wanna go to Arkansas County in Arkansas, then I can do this, and then it's gonna change this over here, and it will show it had five participants, 13 samples submitted from Arkansas County, Arkansas. They were all 100% wild mallards. So locations that you see plotted are not your harvest locations.
Mike Brasher:They are the centroid of the county in which you indicated your harvest occurred, just to be clear. Over here, we have this is Tallahatchie County. Chad Manlove is a big supporter and promoter of the project. He worked here with us our development department, and so Chad has been hard at work, and his boys have been hard at work filling a number of vials from Tallahatchie County, and so in order to get there, I think what I'm gonna have to do is I have to reset up here, and then I have to go to Mississippi. Right?
Ty Sharrow:Yep. You can type Mississippian.
Mike Brasher:If I can spell it right. Oh, I have to type it all the way out.
Phil Lavretsky:Oh, I think I see my my pie chart. While you do, I have to
Mike Brasher:do this. I have to do this. I had to reset on the county thing yet at first. Okay. There we are.
Mike Brasher:Now we do this. Alright. And so Tallahatchie County, we're gonna go so and for the state of Mississippi, it's not this. The oh, 92 sample total samples from Mississippi, 19 participants, and we're gonna go to Tallahatchie County over here, and it's gonna tell me what I've the percentage over here. I could have clicked on it as I did, and it'll tell me the total number of samples, but if I want the percentage, the breakdown by ancestry, I have to change it over here.
Mike Brasher:Right? And then it shows up here. So 91% of the samples from Tallahatchie County over the first two years were pure wild mallards. Right? Yes.
Mike Brasher:What do you think of that, Phil? That's pretty cool.
Phil Lavretsky:This is actually a dream I had. Could you you filter for just a particular hybrid? So basically being like, I wanna I have a I really want a pintail mallard hybrid. Where's the highest likelihood that I might be able to do that? Have you can you filter for that?
Ty Sharrow:Currently, we cannot, but that is something that we can definitely work on.
Mike Brasher:So I went up to the top left, and I selected just hybrid. Right? And so 387 let me do this. Oh, okay. So I was actually on both sample kit types originally.
Mike Brasher:Did you know that?
Kayci Messerly:I was aware that
Mike Brasher:you were on there. Yes. And you let me do that.
Kayci Messerly:I thought I thought
Mike Brasher:you knew what you were doing. What I was doing? No. See? Yeah.
Mike Brasher:You were wrong.
Phil Lavretsky:We we are learning as
Mike Brasher:we're going. See how I turned that back onto Casey? It was it was her fault. Yeah. She was wrong.
Kayci Messerly:Ah, yes. Not the
Mike Brasher:That's person right. Gave me the So we can go to the hybrid kit type, and it will show three eighty seven now does this include, like, somebody submits like, I submitted a bird that I thought was a 100% wild mallard, but it came back, like, 75% wild mallard, 25% black duck. Is it in here? Or is this only the kit,
Ty Sharrow:the hybrid? That's based on the kit.
Kayci Messerly:So this is based on what you registered to do. So if you registered for a hybrid kit, then you're under the hybrid selection. If you registered for that standard kit, then you're under the Okay.
Mike Brasher:Cool. So and we have had some show up. Alright. Well, this would explain a few things. So we have had some people submit something that they thought was a hybrid, but it turns out not to be.
Mike Brasher:Right? Okay. That's what's going on there. Widgen. Yep.
Mike Brasher:And some of these also, think, would be well, no. They're they're just unique looking birds also that we would have sampled.
Ty Sharrow:Could be blonde or
Mike Brasher:Yeah.
Ty Sharrow:Some leucism So or
Mike Brasher:back to Phil's question, we can't necessarily we can't do that yet. Right?
Ty Sharrow:No. But you can still explore, like, what county that you do the most hunting in. You can see what we've analyzed so far from there, what you can expect in nearby counties. If the county that you do hunt in is not on our map yet, you can go out and and scout for there and try to get some some more samples and fill in that map.
Mike Brasher:So I have a lot of other questions here, but we're gonna probably move along. So go check this out. Well, you can't check it out just yet because it's not up for viewing. It will be soon, we hope. So, okay, we're gonna try to move through a few other things.
Mike Brasher:Phil, I know there was one thing that we encountered during the first two years, and it related to model ducks from Florida. It was a particularly interesting discovery. We had a number of people that would submit birds, presumed 100% wild Florida mottled ducks. They looked beautiful. They had amazing photos, had all the characteristics of mottled ducks, and they would go in for analysis, and the results would always come back in like 88%, 92%, 94%, whatever.
Mike Brasher:It would not get to that 100% pure threshold, and ultimately, it got to a point where we were talking with you about this, and we're like, that's just kind of weird. Let's double check that. And so you took all of those samples that had been had some model duck ancestry in them, may have had I don't you can tell us if you did Mexican duck ancestry too, but I know it was the ones that had the model duck ancestry, and you reran those because you were curious about something, so tell us what happened, and I'm gonna go pull up that PowerPoint while you're talking.
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah. If you can. Yeah. So this was, again, one of those situations where I get email being like, this is kinda curious. And then Mike's being like, yeah, they're all 88 something.
Phil Lavretsky:And then I was like, Mike, you're right. Something is odd. So when we start seeing multiple individuals independently getting almost the same assignment, there's some ancestry in there. We call it ghost population, where the analysis can't quite figure it out because something's changed in the genetics of that group, that when I compare it to Florida model ducks, what I considered my reference set, but sampled from 02/2010 hunting season, I assumed anything that is a pure model duck today would have been the same thing, you know, fifteen years ago now, but what's occurred is not that. Something has shifted in that population.
Phil Lavretsky:And so what I needed to do was pull in every model duck, Florida model duck that we've got access to, and then do a single analysis, not just where there's one or two samples in that analysis, but all of them together. So if there is a change in their genetics for whatever reason, I would be able to find that. And that's exactly what happened. So once we pulled it, stopped seeing the weird assignments of Florida Model Duck by something and something else or something else. Like we had talked about early, like sometimes it would be against the Khaki Campbell, which is our sort of park duck representative, against Game Farm, against Wilds, against others.
Phil Lavretsky:And when it's switching around like this, where it's 88% Florida model duck and 12% something else, there is something wrong there. It doesn't know what to do with that 12% is what it was telling me. But once I put it all together, then it resolved itself because we finally got enough samples of Florida Model Ducks for it to work. Are we gonna pull that thing up?
Mike Brasher:I think I have it on my screen. I don't know. Are you gonna be able to see it? Will he be able to see it, Chris?
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah.
Mike Brasher:We'll be working on it.
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah, So whoever's watching this on YouTube or wherever this is, then you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. I'll try to explain it as best as I can to the audience that's listening to this at three in the morning when you're driving to your duck spot. The first part, so what you're looking at, what I'm gonna show you is a bunch of cluster analyses. So each ball represents a sample, and where they cluster tells me something about their genetics. The closer they cluster, the more similar their genetics is.
Phil Lavretsky:The further away they cluster, the more dissimilar their genetics is. So, for example, what we're showcasing right now are just the reference population sets that we compare everything against. In this case, it's Mexican duck, wild mallard, Western Gulf Coast model duck, Florida model duck, Game Farm mallards, and Khaki Campbell. And in this clustering, the first thing you should see is that both model ducks are very different. And they're very different from wild mallards.
Phil Lavretsky:And all of them are extremely different from Game Farm Mallards and Kaki Campbell. So you could see how different those domestic birds are from wild birds. But you could also see that Mexican ducks and wild mallards are extremely similar, much more similar to one another than either of the model ducks are to the wild mallard.
Mike Brasher:Hey, Phil? Yeah. Where would black ducks be in this space?
Phil Lavretsky:I didn't wanna put them because they would cluster very, very it it would be, the top, it would be, like, right but offset of Mexican duck, wild mallard, black duck. It'd be this triple cluster there. Really? Yeah. It'd be offset, and if I zoomed into it, you'll see the differences.
Phil Lavretsky:It just it looks like they're overlapping just because the size of the of the balls and how zoomed out they are, but they they do they do separate out.
Mike Brasher:And so just briefly, if people are wondering, so the separation that is occurring here, we don't need to get into the statistical analysis or whatever, but it's grouping based on a variety of measures from the portion of the genome that you're analyzing, right, and it's finding degrees of similarity or elements of similarity across all the different old measurements that you're taking from the genome, right?
Phil Lavretsky:Exactly. It goes variant by variant, or the single nucleotide polymorphism, so SNP, and we have 30,000 of them, and for every single SNP, it asks the question, are you similar or dissimilar, and it clusters them this Okay.
Mike Brasher:Alright. Good. So that's what this space is on these two
Phil Lavretsky:axes. Exactly. Then what you'll see here, but in general, a hybrid would be some sort of intermediate space between whatever parents hybridized, right? And so this is just a way to visualize the population structure and the differences. And this really showcases how different model ducks are, how similar Mexican ducks are, but in particular, how different Game Farm Mallards and Kaki Campbell are from wild mallards.
Mike Brasher:You tell me when you want me to to the next slide.
Phil Lavretsky:Next slide.
Mike Brasher:Okay, got it.
Phil Lavretsky:So when I reanalyzed all this with all the model ducks that we got from Duck DNA against those samples from 2010, I immediately saw was that there really is a genetic shift. And it clusters over Florida monteleduct, but they're shifting. Click one more time. So when we blow it up, you can actually see that shift. So what this is telling me is the genetics of the population over the last fifteen years has randomly changed, and they've shifted their ancestry by random processes that we call genetic drift.
Mike Brasher:And they've gone farther away from any of the others. I don't
Kayci Messerly:know if
Mike Brasher:that's the right way
Phil Lavretsky:Right, to talk it's about it's that's the shift. Right, so you imagine the diversity of a population is some sort of normal distribution, and what's happening is that for whatever reason, frequencies of the left side of that distributions were picked or favored, and so that population shifts. Now, the only time we see a shift like this in population, is when we're dealing with very small populations where the loss of one or two or a few individuals is actually quite significant. We don't see this kind of shift. When I looked at Western Gulf Coast model ducks collected at the same exact time in 2010 versus today, you don't see that shift.
Phil Lavretsky:They just completely overlay in the same genetic space. But these guys have shifted, and this now explains why all those birds that you're seeing right there are now a 100% true wild Florida monolux, which is great to know great to see. But why all of them initially had this 88 plus something is because that plus something is that shift that the program could not figure out when it was just one or two samples. It was like, yeah, it's mostly Florida mottleduck, but there's something different about them.
Mike Brasher:So then And
Phil Lavretsky:now we know that.
Mike Brasher:And so how do we know it's not just, like, some product of increased hybridization with game farm mallards or something like that?
Phil Lavretsky:Well, now that we have these samples, I can actually identify those hybrids. So if you click one more time, we can overlay the rest of those, duct DNA samples, and we can start actually seeing those hybrids. So the Florida game farm mallards, so the ones in there's a bunch of birds in blue, blue boxes. So all the boxes are hybrids. So those are Florida game farm mallards, and you could see they encompass some sort of intermediate space between today's Florida Model Duck and Game Farm Mallards, right?
Phil Lavretsky:So we can see that shift. And in fact, those pink boxes that is a Game Farm Wild Mallard hybrid that bred with a Florida Model Duck, you could see that shift towards wild mallard as well, right, in that space. And then on top of it, we have those two Florida Western Gulf Coast wild mallard. That was a bird out of, I think, Eastern Texas. But you can actually see that green box sort of being in that shift.
Phil Lavretsky:And when I look at the true ancestry, it's mostly Florida model duck. That's why it's clustering there, but it's away from those orange boxes and towards sort of this intermediate space of Western Gulf Coast and Wild Mallard. Right? So, anyways, so now we've sort of figured the situation out. We have samples that allow us to actually identify what's happening today in our Florida model duck, and we recovered a potential issue or conservation concern that might be occurring for Florida Model Ducks that we would otherwise be, that would otherwise be left unknown right now.
Phil Lavretsky:So, yeah.
Kayci Messerly:So Phil, if we go back one slide and we look at that genetic drift you're talking about from 2010 to now, our current day samples of duck DNA.
Mike Brasher:You're talking about this stuff here?
Kayci Messerly:Yes. Yes.
Mike Brasher:Yellow to the Yep.
Kayci Messerly:The yellow to the brown slash orange, whatever color you think that
Mike Brasher:is. Yeah.
Phil Lavretsky:I think it's orange because that may be orange.
Kayci Messerly:Yeah. Get them. So we talk about that genetic drift.
Mike Brasher:Burnt's orange for the Texas because you're from Texas. Right? So
Kayci Messerly:Well, Auburn is gonna be the way I lean there, but okay. What is the implication here of this genetic drift over such a short period of time?
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah, so what this is telling us is that the only way for this to occur is that the breeding population of Florida model ducks has gone to a small enough level that there are significant implications one generation to the next. So this is something that we see in endangered species, in small population sizes, where the number of breeding So I need to take one step back. Your population could be quite large, but the number of individuals contributing every generation is called your effective population size. And if your effective population size declines to a certain level, then the randomness of life, like who survives and breeds, actually has an impact on genetic diversity. And at that point, if it does, that's when we see actual changes in that diversity from one generation the next, and if you do see that, then you need to start asking the question, what is happening to my population?
Mike Brasher:Can you calculate effective population size from a sample, from genetic samples over time? From these samples, yeah. You can. And so as you go forward, in theory, if you had a large enough sample year to year periodically from the same geography, you could measure, you could see what the trend in that effective population size is.
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah, so in fact, as you were saying that, I'm like, oh, I should've done this for this podcast. But we can analyze the yellow dots, so twenty ten, and the auburn. Orange. Orange.
Mike Brasher:Let's just go with orange.
Phil Lavretsky:No, no. Orange box ones, and actually see, has that changed, right? So why is are we seeing a decline in the last fifteen years in the effective population size? And that essentially translates to the number of breeding pairs that are on the landscape and contributing effectively, contributing from one generation to the next. And now with Duck DNA, we could do this year in and year out if we have at least 10 to 20.
Phil Lavretsky:25 is always our magical number. 25 good Florida model ducks. Then we can get really good estimates from the data that we already have. And that's the beauty of this project is now we can start asking these kinds of meaningful questions without having to go get more data. The data's already there.
Phil Lavretsky:We just need to plug it into some models and get some numbers out of them.
Mike Brasher:It's a fascinating discovery. I think one of the things that listeners need to be aware of is that if you hunt in Florida, you know, you there's probably what will probably be I mean, I think there's justification for us trying to enroll a few more hunters from Florida this year, maybe Western Gulf Coast as well because of to get a little bit more information, make sure we get enough information on this particular issue. So that is, as as Phil said, sort of the way that we can leverage what we're doing to inform very specific scientific questions. Thoughts?
Kayci Messerly:I think too, just a reminder, like, you'll hear us request certain species of ducks, and part of this is for what we call our reference library that we keep bringing up. Right? This is so that we can grow a more robust set of genetic datasets for these species so that we can do these comparisons and we can ask these questions and we can kind of dig deeper into some of these scientific inquiries that we'll find as we go along the way. And that's the exciting and beautiful part of Duck DNA growing and getting a large enough sample size that we can do these things.
Mike Brasher:Phil, I have Ty, did you have anything? No. You got it. So I we're gonna start wrapping this up here. Before we do, I have two other things.
Mike Brasher:One is we continue to get questions this time of year about whether people from Canada can participate in in this. I just wanna wanna clarify. The challenge with that is our ability to or the ability of participants in Canada to ship those samples back. Whenever you take I mean, you have to have a special permit to ship a tissue sample back to The US, so you're dealing with sort of international border laws and regulations there, and so we don't want to expose people to all of the issues that kind of come along with that. We thought we were gonna be able to we thought we would have time this year to find a partner in Canada to where people could send samples, and then we could ship them back in bulk under the proper permitting and all that type of stuff.
Mike Brasher:We didn't get to that, and so it's not easy for us to collect samples, to enroll participants that would be collecting samples from Canada, so we haven't gotten that figured out yet, so stay tuned, we might in a subsequent year. The other, I have several other questions that we routinely get from our Instagram post or Facebook post or hybrid of the week that we're doing, and I only wanted to focus on one of them here because it's probably the one that is most frequently asked, and that is when we have a first generation hybrid where the parents are pure species a and pure species b, and the result comes back with, 48% species 52% species two, we ask people will comment often, why isn't it fifty fifty? If it's a first generation, two species, why 40 eightfifty two or 40 sevenfifty three? I'm gonna find one of those while you're talking, Phil.
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah. So the simple math of it is that that's a point estimate, so it's like an average across the genome. And what we really need to look at is the standard error that is provided when I do these analyses. Obviously, nobody else really sees them, but I do. So typically, our standard error is plusminus 3%.
Phil Lavretsky:So in fact, something like something like what you just put up, this fifty two forty eight, both of them just overlap 50% if you put the standard error. But we report the point estimate, that that single number. Now, there's also another reason for some of these things, and that's because a lot of the genome in waterfowl is pretty well conserved. It just says duck or goose, right? And so a lot of that is also that random stochastic, events that occur, that may sway it one way or the other, but again, it gets resolved within the standard error.
Phil Lavretsky:That error will go up and down, actually, the more conserved just ancestral duck or waterfowl an individual has. So that's the easy way of answering it. Now, you've shown a lot of interesting stuff here. I will tell you that I am a couple steps away that people are going to not only get a certificate, but they're actually gonna get the chromosomes of their ducts painted. And they can start looking at it, and I could better answer this question soon, but through those visualizations, because what we're gonna map is not only whether what parts of the chromosome is pintail and mallard, but also what parts are conserved and what parts we keep seeing as conserved, right?
Phil Lavretsky:And so we could start actually asking or answering the question folks are asking. Why are we getting that fifty two forty eight? Is that simply just a math thing? You know, with missing data, not everything's complete, and so you just have to take the standard error into it, or is there biological meaning behind that? And so we're hoping to get to that, and I'm sort of hoping to roll it out this year, but we'll see how this goes.
Mike Brasher:And here, I was hoping you were gonna give us an easy answer. And you held you were kinda holding something, had something up your sleeve too. You kinda felt like you felt left out. Right?
Phil Lavretsky:That you didn't left out.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Had any evolution to drop Everybody on
Phil Lavretsky:was dropping all this awesome stuff, and I'm like, oh, man.
Mike Brasher:Yep. And shout out to, again, to Evan Barefoot. If we get this one on the screen here, this is the Mallard pintail hybrid that is featured on that green hat. Thank you, Evan, for allowing us to use that. So alright.
Mike Brasher:What else do we need to talk about?
Phil Lavretsky:I I wanna I wanted to say, because this reminded me of something. So we're finally getting to some numbers on the hybrid side. I have a I have a brand new student that we're in addition to this whole mapping thing, we're hoping to map plumage traits that we're finally figuring out onto that map to start understanding why certain traits in a, let's say, a pintail mallard, Gadwell pintail, Gadwell mallard, whatever it is, show up. Is there some predictability to that, or is it simply randomness of who mom and dad were and what they had? You're talking
Mike Brasher:about some of the facial patterns that show up, it's like this doesn't look like the genetics, say it's these two species, but neither of those parent species have that defined trait or doesn't express that trait as a pure individual. Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Kayci Messerly:I have lots of questions, but I won't go down that rabbit hole right now. So when we're in Texas, I've got questions for you.
Phil Lavretsky:Yeah. Yeah. Have any questions.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Our team is finally gonna go out after, like, two and a half years or maybe three years of doing this. We're finally gonna get together as a team and discuss and and go over certain things. It's been an exciting ride so far, Phil, just to kinda think how far this entire effort has come in in that period of time. And and, again, it it doesn't happen without without the hunters that are so enthusiastic about participating.
Mike Brasher:So thank you all for that. Spread the word about the availability of the of the project. You now have a way to directly support the project, and so, again, you know, Mosseo Waterfowl Conservation Stamp, thank them so much for their support of Ducks Unlimited, UTEP, and Duck DNA. We yeah. Go to duckdna.com and apply if you haven't.
Mike Brasher:Am I missing anything? Think we're
Ty Sharrow:Check out our social medias too for more posts for TealTember.
Mike Brasher:That's right. We are active we right now, recording this, we are actively in what we are referring to as TealTember, paying paying tribute to the the early teal season and the opening of of hunting seasons across across North America right now. And, again, stay tuned for October. Can we Katie, can I give them a hint? Do I need to want me to use the name?
Mike Brasher:Okay.
Kayci Messerly:Do the mic drop full.
Mike Brasher:Mic drop. What's it gonna you need to do it. Are you
Kayci Messerly:guys ready for this?
Mike Brasher:Yeah. We're ready for this.
Kayci Messerly:Next month, we will officially launch our Goosetoberfest. Oh.
Ty Sharrow:Spooky is
Mike Brasher:it it's a spooky goose
Kayci Messerly:Spooky Goosetoberfest.
Mike Brasher:Fest. That's right.
Kayci Messerly:Whatever that means to And
Phil Lavretsky:to be fair, hybrid geese are are spooky looking, so
Mike Brasher:That is what we will be featuring. Each of our Hybrid of the Week posts during the month of October will highlight some of the geese, hybrid geese, that have been submitted, and we're gonna continue to welcome in those hybrid geese for analysis this year. Selections. By the time we don't know when this episode is going to be released by the time this episode is out, the first round of selections will probably have already been made. We are going to try to enroll up to a thousand participants for our standard kits this year with up to two fifty or so hybrid kits issued.
Mike Brasher:We're pretty confident we will have a waiting list for the hybrid kits the same way we do with the standard kits now. We're working to figure out how we're gonna make those decisions and and what options might be available for I mean, how we're gonna make decisions on who to enroll. Stay tuned. Stay tuned for more on our social media channels. Check out duckdna.com the check the results out and yeah, engage with us if you have questions on on our Instagram, Facebook, or send us an email.
Mike Brasher:Thanks, folks, for joining us. Phil, thank you so much for all the work that you continue to do. Thanks to Virgie. Thanks to Victoria, all the other folks that are influential and very critical in your lab. Casey, thank you for joining us here in studio.
Kayci Messerly:Glad to be here. Glad to help.
Mike Brasher:And Ty, thank you for making your first appearance on the Ducks Unlimited podcast and for all that you're doing with Duck DNA.
Ty Sharrow:Thank you. It was fun.
Mike Brasher:And then thank you to Katie Tucker, who's been minding us over there and making sure we stay on track, over there in the corner. And so you'll be hearing from Katie Tucker later on in some future episode about some future topic. And as always, we thank, we thank Chris Isaac for the great work he does, Rachel Jarrett as well for her effort on all these, on all these episodes. We thank you for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation, dunk DNA, and science.
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