{"id":693,"date":"2015-08-10T11:22:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T16:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maryville.edu\/mpress\/?p=693"},"modified":"2016-02-23T10:19:31","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T16:19:31","slug":"krakos-delivers-tedx-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maryville.edu\/mpress\/krakos-delivers-tedx-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Krakos Delivers TEDx Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading time: 4 minutes<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

When Kyra Krakos, PhD, assistant professor of biology, delivered a lecture on \u201cPlants, Pollinators and People: A Love Story,\u201d\u00a0at the Sheldon Concert Hall, it wasn’t her usual presentation. This time, it was for TEDx Gateway Arch<\/a>, and she wowed an audience of 500 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lecture I\u2019ve delivered hundreds of times and I\u2019ve had to make it interesting,\u201d says Krakos, who also serves as a research associate at the Missouri Botanical Garden. \u201cPlant scientists have to work harder than many other scientists to generate interest in their research. \u2018Save the Sunflower\u2019 doesn\u2019t get people excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krakos was chosen by TEDx Gateway Arch\u00a0to deliver the 16-minute talk, one of 17 presentations during the event, held last February. TEDx programs are independently organized by\u00a0communities, organizations and individuals at the local level. The events are produced under a free license from TED, the highly successful national nonprofit with the tagline, \u201cideas worth spreading.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you solve the basic problems in life: survival, finding a mate and getting your babies out into the world, if you can\u2019t move?\u201d Krakos asks her audience. She likens the dilemma of plant life to a middle school dance \u2013 girls on one side, boys on the other and they\u2019re never going to meet.<\/p>\n

She goes on to explain male and female plant body parts in human sexual terms and the critical role played by bees, birds, butterflies, bats and other pollinators to make babies (seeds).<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember, plants can\u2019t move,\u201d she says. \u201cThey can\u2019t walk across that dance floor and give their pollen to a likely candidate. This immobility is a huge deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

With slides of colorful flowers, and frank talk of promiscuous sex among the daisies, Krakos explains her study of 54 Oenothera flower species. Her research question: How accurate are pollination syndromes and how good are they at predicting who pollinates you based on your traits?<\/p>\n

\u201cTake the Ophrys orchid,\u201d she tells her audience while flashing a slide of an exotic purple, yellow and white flower with red fuzzy edges. \u201cIt looks and smells like a female wasp in heat. Any guesses on the pollinator? It would be a male wasp, albeit a sexually frustrated male wasp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krakos says the TEDx Talk required her to deliver a lot of scientific information to a large audience of laymen. Unlike the hundreds of days she walked into her classroom and offered the same presentation, however, at TEDx there were endless details, months of practice and very specific rules she had to follow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t be too technical, it had to have a narrative, a discovery, and it had to have a call to action,\u201d Krakos says.<\/p>\n

Krakos\u2019 call to action ends on a hopeful note, because saving the \u201csmall but mighty pollinators\u201d seems doable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do we care about plant sex or predicting pollinators?\u201d she asks. \u201cBecause plants can\u2019t move. And as our climate changes, our world alters and more habitat is lost so that plant\/pollinator relationship becomes broken, fractured, uncoupled. And we humans face serious consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krakos says 85 percent of flowering plants must have a pollinator to succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver 100 of our crop plants must have a pollinator or we go hungry,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd we can\u2019t do what pollinators do. But you and I can do something to help them today. Build a bee house, plant native plants in your yard, the corner lot, at the edges of a crop field. We need pollinators and they need us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krakos says the Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵAPPcommunity was highly supportive as she prepared for the presentation. Administrators, faculty and students attended the event. The University is a sponsor of TEDx Gateway Arch events.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo take something you\u2019ve been doing for years and look at it in a new way \u2013 I thought it was a wonderful learning experience. I was thankful for the opportunity,\u201d Krakos says.<\/p>\n

Watch Krakos\u2019 TEDx Talk here<\/a>, or below.<\/p>\n