Curiosity in Fish: Exploration and Genetics

Curiosity, biodiversity, rewilding -- these are the exciting places Carolin Sommer-Trembo Ph.D. takes us today. Carolin is an evolutionary biologist. Her big goal is to focus attention on animal behavior as it effects evolution and biodiversity. To get there, she has studied curiosity in cichlid fish in Africa's Lake Tanganyika, combining some good old-fashioned field work with exciting new investigative tools, including AI and genetic scissors. I came to the conversation interested in the curiosity angle, but Carolin's impassioned case for the importance of this basic research to eventually rebuilding vanishing biodiversity -- and the aforementioned "rewilding" -- puts the discussion on another level entirely. Curiosity doesn't only promote biodiversity, it might just save us all. Find Carolin Sommer-Trembo here: http://www.salzburgerlab.org/team/carolin_sommer-trembo/ Theme music by Sean Balick; “Lakeside Path” by Duck Lake, via Blue Dot Sessions. Photo Credit: Eleni Kougionis and the University of Basel.