ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career researchers (ECRs) working in experimental biology but also the huge variety of animals and physiological systems that are essential for the ‘comparative’ approach. Jordan Glass is an author on ‘ A thermal performance curve perspective explains decades of disagreements over how air temperature affects the flight metabolism of honey bees’, published in JEB. Jordan conducted the research described in this article while a Graduate student in Jon F. Harrison's lab at Arizona State University, USA. He is now a Postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of Michael E. Dillon at the University of Wyoming, USA, investigating how environmental factors affect the performance of pollinating insects to determine when they can be active and where they can live.
Jordan Glass
How did you become interested in biology?
I have always loved the natural world and being outdoors – I grew up camping, hiking, and spent most of my time catching critters in the Sonoran Desert. But, unfortunately, my middle school and high school biology classes didn't hold my interest, which was a missed opportunity to make the connections between my passion for nature and my curiosity. However, a community college biology course for non-majors changed that. Not only did the course begin to shift the way I saw the world and improve my critical thinking, but subsequent instructors showed me that I could make a living while satisfying my curiosity.
Describe your scientific journey and your current research focus
My first real research experience during undergrad was in Gamboa, Panama, at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. There, I had the chance to run my own experiment where I showed that the defensive biting of a stingless bee, Tetragonisca angustula, was not suicidal, as everyone supposed. I was hooked – by the end of the trip, I knew I wanted to go into research.
After graduating with a BSc, I was accepted into a master's program. My research interests were broad, and I struggled to narrow my research focus for my thesis. However, shortly after starting the program, I had the chance to attend the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) annual meeting. I remember a talk by Shane Campbell-Staton, then a postdoctoral researcher, on the genetic underpinnings of thermal performance and thermal tolerance in anole lizards from different islands. I don't remember what he found, but I do remember the feeling of deep wonder and amazement. This was my first real exposure to environmental physiology, specifically thermal physiology. His and many other talks at the meeting inspired me to focus my master's thesis on how variations in food availability and temperature influence the developmental plasticity of flight capacity and life-history tradeoffs in a wing-dimorphic cricket, Gryllus firmus. I later investigated the effects of agrochemicals and climate warming on the flight performance and energetics of honey bees for my PhD dissertation.
In my current role as a postdoctoral research fellow in Michael E. Dillon's lab at the University of Wyoming, I am working to better understand and predict what environmental factors determine where insect pollinators can live and whether these animals have what it takes to persist in a changing world. I do this by combining different techniques that measure molecular, physiological and behavioral responses to dynamic environmental factors.
How would you explain the main findings of your paper to a member of the public?
One of the biggest challenges scientists face is getting others to see things from their unique perspective. Unfortunately, we often view a phenomenon from a single vantage point, which can limit our ability to consider other perspectives – especially if our perspective is incomplete. In our study, we show that decades of discrepancies and disagreements over whether air temperature affects the flight metabolism of honey bees can be reconciled by shifting our focus from the effects environmental temperature has on flight performance to considering how flight metabolism is affected by changes in the body temperature of the animal.
Paint-marking bees allows researchers to track individual bees to study things like aging, foraging preference and in-hive behavior.
Paint-marking bees allows researchers to track individual bees to study things like aging, foraging preference and in-hive behavior.
Why did you choose JEB to publish your paper?
JEB was the original stage for the debate regarding whether air temperature affects the flight metabolism of honey bees. In our JEB paper, we show that discrepancies between studies going back to 1980 can be explained through the lens of the aerobic metabolism thermal performance curve of flight muscle. We strategically chose JEB as the final resting place for this dispute given that this decades-old debate has taken place primarily within its pages.
What do you enjoy most about research, and why?
Perhaps the most enjoyable part of research is synthesizing the information I've learned and forming research ideas, which usually happens as I read other articles. Often, reading papers raises more questions than they answer. What I find most satisfying is the follow-up. If a question is particularly interesting and exciting, I enjoy searching through the literature to see if anyone has found a convincing explanation. I get excited when I find a study that convincingly answers my question. But adrenaline spikes when I can't find an answer. Which means I have the chance to try to answer it. Absolutely thrilling.
What is the hardest challenge you have faced in the course of your research and how did you overcome it?
Whether we are talking about creating or fleshing out an outline, or even starting a writing project, writing has always been my hardest challenge. I thoroughly enjoy writing, and I especially love reading well-written research articles. However, organizing my thoughts on paper and communicating them clearly to others has always been a struggle. A struggle that I actively work on every day.
Knowing that I struggle with writing, I block out time each day to write. To minimize distractions and put myself in the best possible situation to maximize my productivity, I put a ‘do not disturb’ sign on my door, turn off notifications on my laptop and silence my phone. I then open the writing project I plan to work on and treat writing the document as if I were chatting with a friend, giving them my undivided attention. After all, how many of us would you stop mid-conversation to respond to an email? By being consistent and using this technique, I can keep written projects moving, which helps me consistently improve at writing – something I want to be good at.
What is the most important lesson that you have learned from your career so far?
An important lesson I have learned is to be kind and patient with myself. I still struggle with this. In our field, we all want to see immediate improvements and positive results, and it can be easy to compare your worst performance to the best that other researchers put forward. I have to constantly remind myself that everyone is at different stages of their careers and that we all have aspects of research we struggle with. It helps me to remember that the researchers I look up to were once at my stage and that they became excellent scientists one painful lesson at a time. Just like me. We all need to be more patient with ourselves – we'll eventually get there.
Jordan Glass's contact details: Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
