The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(4)

The technician uses a small pick and a swab to go underneath my fingernails. She’s very gentle. I’m surprised that she didn’t know what chytridiomycosis is, but I guess I shouldn’t be. Although she’s dressed like a scientist, she’s a technician who specializes in gathering forensic samples, not examining them.

After shifting through a few pages, Glenn glances up at me with a puzzled expression. “Bioinformatics? You’re a biologist?”

“Not exactly. It’s a cross between computational science and biology.”

Although he’s trying to make his questions seem broad and ignorant, I can tell Glenn is intelligent and listening to what I say and what I don’t. Since I have no idea where he’s going with this, I keep answering in earnest.

“We use the tools of computational science and apply them to biology. Mostly in genetics. For example, DNA. It’s so complex, you need computers to try to understand it.”

He nods. “So you’re a kind of geneticist?”

“No. I study DNA from time to time, but that’s not my area. My current area is phenotypic plasticity.”

He looks over at the technician, who is shaking her head, then gives me a raised eyebrow. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that has nothing to do with plastic.”

“Not quite.” I search for one of my cocktail-party explanations and remember how much I hate to explain my work to nonscientists. “Did you play sports in high school?”

“Football.”

“Did you bulk up for that?”

“Twenty pounds of muscle I wish I still had.” He gives a self-conscious grin to the tech.

I suspect that when they’re not grilling suspects and looking for damning evidence under their fingernails, they’re just like any other coworkers with their own in-jokes.

“Gaining muscle like that is something mammals can do and reptiles can’t,” I go on. “We can dramatically change our muscle mass. A silverback gorilla gets more food, increases his testosterone, and literally gets bigger muscles and a silver back . . .” I pause. “I don’t mean to bore you.”

Glenn shakes his head. “No, Professor. Please continue. I find this kind of thing fascinating.”

“Well, phenotypic basically means the code in our DNA that makes us. Plasticity applies to how it can have variability. For example, Chinese children are growing much taller than their parents. Their DNA didn’t change. It already had built-in code to adapt to increased amounts of protein, larger womb size, et cetera. Obesity is another example. We evolved for an environment where calories were scarce, so we can triple our body mass if we’re not careful. That’s a downside to phenotypic plasticity.”

“So you’re up here looking at animals that can change their body type?”

“Basically. In particular, were-phibians.” I smirk at my quip I’ve said a hundred times in front of slightly amused students.

Glenn and the technician don’t share in my joke.

“Were-phibians?” asks Glenn.

“Were-frogs, or tadpoles, to be more precise.” I awkwardly continue. “Wood frog tadpoles are quite interesting. If you get too many of them in a pond, one or more go through a change. Their jaws and tails get bigger and they go from herbivore to cannibal. They resemble mini-piranhas and start eating other tadpoles. When the numbers go back down, their jaws and tails return to normal, and they’re just like any other happy little tadpole waiting to grow up into a frog.”

Glenn takes a moment to let this sink in. “Interesting. Were-frogs. I get it. And you’re looking for them?”

“Not exactly. I’m studying the environment that creates them. I don’t think it’s a behavior exclusive to tadpoles. It can be on a smaller microorganism scale, or human size.”

Glenn arches an eyebrow. “Humans?”

“Yes. You can see this in the womb, where one fetus takes nutrients from another, causing varying birth weights. In vanishing twin syndrome, probably one in ten pregnancies results in a twin, but one is absorbed by the other. Did the mother cause this? Did the evil twin? If so, the evil twin always wins.

“Within a contained environment, like a pond, one organism spontaneously regulates the population, then returns to normal. Apex predators—a dominant animal at the top of the food chain—is going to be emergent when the population gets to a certain size. You see this with cannibal rats, spiders, and even with computer programs.”

“A sheep turning into a wolf?” asks Glenn.

I think for a moment. “Perhaps. It’s a bit harder to find these behaviors in domesticated populations. They’re extremely homogenized and intentionally culled. But in livestock going feral, like pigs, you see them reverting to different forms. It happens in dog packs, too.”

“Huh. Well, this is very interesting, Dr. Cray.” He turns to the technician. “Caroline, do you have everything you need?”

“One second.” She swabs around my thumb and places the Q-tip into a plastic bag marked RIGHT THUMB. “That’ll do it.” She puts all her samples into a bag, seals it with tamper-evident tape, and displays them to the camera before leaving.

I observe the camera observing me, wondering who is on the other side playing the Watcher.

Glenn stands up. “Dr. Cray, if you have a moment, I’d like to get your professional opinion on something. And we’ll see if we can find you some shoes.”