UF Explore Magazine | Spring 2023

Spider Sense

What can we learn from their superpowers?

5

Extracts

What makes life psychologically rich, and other news from around the university

Spider Sense

How makeup and fake eyelashes reveal their amazing abilities

10 24

Antibiotic Avengers

Meet the team preparing for the next superbug — or bioweapon

About the cover:

14 30

‘It Makes Us Feel Powerful’

Unlocking VR’s potential for education, employment and independent living

Rx: Arts

Prescriptions for cultural activities could boost community health

22

Across the Everglades, Again

A coast-to-coast paddle makes history

All Things Beautiful

38

New book reveals hundreds of specimens from the Florida Museum of Natural History

Habronattus pyrrithrix, one of the jumping spider species studied in Lisa Taylor’s lab.

Photo by Colin Hutton

To listen to narrated versions of these and other Explore stories, follow Explore Audio.

Ben Sasse

President

David Norton

Vice President for Research

Board of Trustees

Mori Hosseini, Chair

David L. Brandon

Richard P. Cole

Christopher T. Corr

James W. Heavener

Lauren Lemasters

Daniel T. O’Keefe

Rahul Patel

Amanda J. Phalin

Marsha D. Powers

Fred S. Ridley

Patrick O. Zalupski

Anita G. Zucker

Explore is published by UF Research. Opinions expressed do not reflect the official views of the university. Use of trade names implies no endorsement by the University of Florida. © 2023 University of Florida. explore.research.ufl.edu

Editor: Joseph M. Kays joekays@ufl.edu

Associate Editor: Alisson Clark

Art Director: Katherine Kinsley-Momberger

Design and Illustration: Katherine Kinsley-Momberger

Ivan J. Ramos

Writers:

Douglas Bennett

Alisson Clark

Heather Dewar

Social Media: Phillip Frohm

Intern: Tammy Ferrer

Copy Editor: Bruce Mastron

Printing: RR Donnelly, Orlando

Member of the University Research Magazine Association www.urma.org

This pine dugout canoe, found in the Withlacoochee River, was carved from a single tree about 500 years ago.

Photo by Kristen B. Grace.

A shared purpose

As vice president for research at the University of Florida, I am honored to be part of a remarkable community of research professionals, individually diverse in professional discipline, background, viewpoint and life experience, yet joined together for a shared purpose.

Every day, thousands of faculty, staff and students in the UF research enterprise set out to make a difference, to positively impact our state, the nation and the world by creating new knowledge, translating knowledge into relevant impact, and educating the next generation of thinkers, doers and discoverers.

Across our institution, a diverse community of researchers are using every tool available to push back barriers and better understand the world in which we live, to make new discoveries and to see their research have an impact.

In this issue of Explore, the range of interests, expertise and perspectives that are represented within our ranks is evident. In biology, we are learning how spiders see and use color, which could have implications for electronic sensors. In classrooms, we are exploring the use of virtual reality to empower autistic people to realize their potential. In the arts, we are using cultural and creative activities to enhance healing from post-traumatic stress for veterans. In biomedical labs, we are developing antibiotics to fight some of nature’s deadliest pathogens.

The quality of research and scholarship conducted by UF faculty is evident in the accolades our faculty receive. This past year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society, named 19 UF faculty members as fellows, a record for UF and the most of any university in the country in 2022. Over the past 2 years, 20 faculty members received funding through the National Science Foundation's CAREER Program, the agency’s most prestigious award for early-career researchers. A record $1.085 billion in research spending in 2022 is another clear indicator of our faculty’s competitiveness. Over the last 10 years, UF research expenditures have grown nearly 55%, easily exceeding the national average.

Whether driven by questions in nature, opportunities with technology, or challenges in society, researchers at the University of Florida apply their talents, energy and determination to make the world a better place. This common purpose knits together our diverse community, joined in our mission to educate, to discover and to positively impact our world. I am honored to belong to a community committed to excellence, to integrity, to service, to valuing all people. Together, we will continue to make discoveries that benefit the people of our state and beyond.

David P. Norton Vice President for Research

How corn was born

Plantscientists Karen Koch and Jiahn-Chou Guan study modern corn, but a surprising discovery in their research illuminates how corn transformed from a grass-like plant with kernels like peppercorns to one of the world’s most important crops.

Ten thousand years ago, ears of corn were about two inches long, with a few tiny kernels encased in hard shells. Indigenous peoples in what is now southern Mexico began domesticating the plant into modern corn, but how that happened is largely a mystery.

“Those of us who study corn are always fascinated by how its ear went from this tiny, spindly thing to developing a cob with hundreds of large kernels,” Koch said.

While working with a particular variety of maize, they noticed it had some resemblance to teosinte, corn’s wild ancestor. Previously, only one gene, Teosinte glume architecture 1, or Tga1, had been thought to influence those primitive features. But this variety lacked a hormone called strigolactones, which they hypothesized might also have an important function.

To find out, Guan bred corn plants with genetic mutations that allowed him to test the effect of strigolactones in the developing ears. The plants produced kernels surrounded by partial shells formed by the same protective, acorn-like structures of ancient corn kernels. It was as if the corn had regressed to an earlier form.

“Those were aha moments to me,” Guan said. “It feels like discovering a hidden secret that no one has ever imagined before.” A better understanding of strigolactones may have implications for growing corn in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the parasitic plant witchweed makes growing corn almost impossible. Attracted to the strigolactones in corn’s roots, witchweed sucks away the plant’s water and resources.

“If we could develop maize that doesn’t produce this hormone in its roots, that could be a breakthrough for growing maize in the region,” Koch said.

Samantha Murray

Ancient corn looks nothing like its modern descendent.

Using PANDA to find zebras

Researchers use AI to predict who may develop rare diseases

Researchers from University of Florida Health and Penn Medicine are using a set of artificial intelligence-powered algorithms called PANDA to find rare “zebras” in patient medical records, helping patients affected by certain rare diseases get diagnosed and treated more quickly.

In health care circles, rare diseases are sometimes referred to as ‘zebras’ because they are so unusual and unexpected. Because the symptoms of rare diseases are often vague and perplexing and because so few people are affected, diagnosing them can be difficult, says Jiang Bian, a professor in UF’s College of Medicine and chief data scientist for University of Florida Health.

“Some patients with rare diseases may go undiagnosed and untreated for years,” Bian said.

With $4.7 million from the National Institutes of Health, the researchers will develop “PANDA: Predictive Analytics via Networked Distributed Algorithms for multi-system diseases,” which uses

machine learning to identify patients at risk of five types of vasculitis and two types of spondyloarthritis.

Rare diseases can camouflage themselves as other common diseases. Clinicians also may be stymied by a lack of access to data or other clinicians the patient works with, and a lack of familiarity with such uncommon conditions. An algorithm that automatically scans known information to identify the possibility of a rare disease could be lifesaving.

“The increasing availability of realworld data, such as electronic health records collected through routine care, provides a golden opportunity to generate real-world evidence to inform clinical decision-making,” Bian said. “To leverage these large collections of real-world data, which are often distributed across multiple

sites, novel distributed algorithms like PANDA are much needed.”

The researchers plan to pull data through the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, a partnership of large clinical research networks with health data from more than 27 million patients. De-identified data from these patients, including test results, past treatments and other commonly available information will be used to create the algorithms during the first year of the four-year grant. Once built, the researchers will test each algorithm’s predictive power across more than 10 health systems.

“Ultimately, we hope to build on the algorithms developed for rare diseases and apply them to other diseases,” Bian said.

Diana Tonnessen

“Some patients with rare diseases may go undiagnosed and untreated for years.”

– Jiang Bian

Modified fentanyl could reduce opioid risks

Scientists have discovered a way to alter the chemical properties of fentanyl, offering a safer alternative to the powerful pain reliever.

Fentanyl — a synthetic opioid similar to morphine but up to 100 times more potent — is among the most abused pain relievers in the U.S. and the leading cause of overdose deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a study published in the journal Nature, a team of scientists from the University of Florida, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Southern California and Stanford University, report how they modified fentanyl’s chemical structure to maintain its pain-relieving properties while reducing harmful side effects.

Pain-killing drugs like fentanyl and morphine bind to the mu-opioid receptor on nerve cells. The interaction triggers a series of responses — from beneficial pain relief to serious side effects like respiratory distress, sedation, addiction and even death.

By applying new insights into the receptor structure, researchers designed a medication that binds to the established site of activity on the outside of the mu-opioid receptor, while also engaging a binding site for sodium ions that exists deep within the receptor. Study co-author Jay McLaughlin, a professor of pharmacodynamics in the UF College of Pharmacy, described these receptor sites as switches that turn on and off to control the drug’s effect on the body. Researchers found that when the new drug interacts with both sites on the mu-opioid receptor, it maintains its painkilling effects while reducing harmful side effects.

“The newly designed fentanyl medication is engineered to work as a partial agonist, which are drugs that bind to and activate a receptor but only have partial efficacy,” McLaughlin said. “When the drug binds to the mu-opioid receptor site, the interaction triggers pain relief, but the engagement with the sodium ion essentially turns the receptor off before the adverse effects can occur.”

McLaughlin tested the altered fentanyl drug in mice and found it provided pain relief without causing respiratory depression or other opioid side effects.

“The more we can learn about how opioid receptors work, the closer we get to developing safer pain medicines,” he said. “We can expand this research to target other receptors and see if similar results may improve medications for substance abuse, mood disorders and other health conditions.”

Matthew Splett

“The more we can learn about how opioid receptors work, the closer we get to developing safer pain medicines.”

– Jay McLaughlin

A model of the mu-opioid receptors found on nerve cells. Altering fentanyl's structure to change its interaction with these receptors could preserve the drug's painkilling effects while reducing its risks.

Jay McLaughlin

Undergrad research explores what makes life psychologically rich

Do our routines enhance our lives? Do spoilers actually ruin our enjoyment of the plot? Would you be raised for meat? Undergraduate researchers in Assistant Professor Erin Westgate’s Florida Social Cognition and Emotion Lab presented their work on these and other thought-provoking topics at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s annual conference in February. They gave us a peek into their research.

Do spoilers really spoil?

If you want to be hated on the internet, revealing a dramatic plot twist is a great way to start. But do spoilers actually lessen our experience? When Erika Davis’ experiment revealed the plot of a video to participants, they more accurately predicted how enjoyable and meaningful watching the video would be. When she did the same for a short story, participants underestimated how much they would enjoy it — suggesting the impact of spoilers may depend on the particulars of the story and what’s revealed.

Would you let aliens raise you for meat?

Would you live for 30 years in a community with everything necessary for a good life, and then be painlessly slaughtered for consumption by space aliens, or pass on being farmed and not live at all? In Derek Simon’s study, 77% opted for the farm life, with 70% making the same choice on behalf of a loved one. People were more likely to accept being raised for slaughter if they thought their years would be meaningful and happy — shedding light on what we feel makes life worth living.

Could ditching your routine improve your life?

Routines can be beneficial, but could breaking them give you a new perspective? Kendra Westmoreland asked participants to change their routine by taking a different route or type of transportation on their first foray out of the house for the day. While the study is still underway, she predicts they will find the experience psychologically richer and more interesting than those who stick to their usual pattern, although potentially more frustrating and less meaningful, as well.

Undergraduate researchers Paige Beckey, Derek Simon, Erika Davis and Kendra Westmoreland at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference.

What contributes to boredom?

A task that doesn’t ask much of us (waiting in line, sitting in traffic) tends to induce boredom. But tasks that demand too much of our brain power can have the same result. Michelle Rincones-Rodriguez is testing this idea by giving participants 10 minutes of easy or hard mental math problems. She predicts that the high cognitive demand of the tough questions will leave that group equally bored and even influence their willingness to take on a similar challenge in the future.

FROM THE EXPLORE ARCHIVE

Robot helpers, turtle rescue and the dawn of an industry

Across decades documenting University of Florida research, Explore has chronicled some of the biggest impacts coming out of UF's labs and into the world. We took a look back to our Spring 1998 issue to see what was making news 25 years ago.

Why do we care about future generations?

Another ongoing study looks at “generativity” — concern for those who come after us, even though we may never meet them. Two types of people report higher levels of generativity: religious people and those who say they have grown through adversity. Recent graduate Paige Beckey, now a research assistant in the lab, wondered if those traits were the cause of generative behavior, or just a correlation. To find out, Beckey asks participants to read stories where a character overcomes adversity and finds redemption. Some of the stories are overtly religious, others are not. After reading, participants have the option of donating their compensation for the study to different charities. Beckey predicts that religious and non-religious redemptive stories will inspire donations to charities that emphasize helping future generations.

Alisson Clark

In the wake of a ban on gill-net fishing that upended the Cedar Key region’s economy, UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences helped launch an alternative: clam farming. Today, Leslie Sturmer, the aquaculture agent quoted in the story, continues her research to expand and improve the industry, which brings an estimated $45 million a year to the area some now refer to as Clamelot.

As a mysterious new disease struck sea turtles, UF veterinary scientists suspected that the tumors they were seeing might be caused by a virus related to human herpes. They were right. Today, the Sea Turtle Hospital at UF’s Whitney Laboratory rehabilitates turtles with the fibropapilloma virus and releases them back into the wild, while also researching causes and treatments for the disease.

Long before UF became the AI University, the Florida Machine Intelligence Lab debuted the Lawn Nibbler, a two-foot-high prototype robotic lawn mower that Explore called “Jetson-esque.” It required a buried wire to define its perimeter, but used sonar and infrared emitters to navigate and avoid obstacles while mowing a foot of grass per second. While the Lawn Nibbler didn’t become a household name, the researchers did make a sound prediction: The next innovation would be a robot vacuum.

Inside the lab that’s revealing spiders’ superpowers

By Alisson Clark

Sense Spider

Adult male jumping spider, Habronattus americanus

Most spiders don’t see in color. Not so for jumping spiders, tiny show-offs who flaunt their vivid stripes and fluffy tufts in jazzy courtship dances. The six thousand species in the Salticidae family live in a world awash in vibration and chemical signals and have a 360-degree view from four pairs of eyes that encircle their head like a crown. So why did they need to evolve color vision as well?

Entomologist Lisa Taylor has some theories, and to test them, she and her lab members get artistic. By altering spiders’ patterns with eyeliner no small task for a subject not much bigger than a ladybug t hey explore how color affects mating. And by painstakingly painting termites different colors, they can see if jumping spiders use their enhanced vision to avoid the bold colors that can signal poisonous prey. Conversely, vibrant vision could also make it easier to spot prey: Taylor recently discovered that a species in Kenya can see the blood in a well-fed mosquito, which could help it find the juiciest meal.

Scientists once thought jumping spiders couldn’t see red at all, as most only have receptors for green and ultraviolet light. But in 2015, Taylor and her colleagues found that some species use a filter in their retinas to shift some of their green receptors to red. The Kenyan mosquito-eating species, however, doesn’t have that filter meaning it developed another, still unknown way to see red. Overall, the family evolved color vision at least three separate times, which Taylor calls “really weird.”

“Color vision usually happens once,” she says.

Why do spider senses matter? Learning to fit sophisticated optics in a tiny package could pave the way for sensors small enough to use in wearable technology, microrobots, or augmented reality devices.

“There’s a lot in the basic science that applied scientists can use,” Taylor says. “I’m driven by curiosity: How can spiders perceive and process so much information in such a noisy world, and how do their brains make sense of all that information?”

That’s a superpower we could all use.

Visiting the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Spiders Alive! exhibit? Head to the museum’s West Gallery for a look at Taylor’s research. Spiders Alive! runs through Sept. 4.

Jumping spiders demonstrate their courtship displays.

Colin Hutton

Colin

Hutton

Tyler Jones

“I’m driven by curiosity: How can spiders perceive and process so much information in such a noisy world, and how do their brains make sense of all that information?”

Above: Taylor with largescale models of her tiny subjects. Far left: By using hypoallergenic makeup to disguise a spider’s coloration, Taylor can tease out how color influences their behavior and get clues to why they developed color vision.

Near left: Altering the spiders’ coloration takes magnification and a steady hand.

— Lisa Taylor

Tyler Jones

Tyler Jones

‘It Makes Us

Unlocking virtual reality’s potential for autistic people

By Alisson Clark

Photos courtesy of the College of Education

Feel Powerful’

Christian Cartagena uses a VR headset at a tech camp for young autistic people. Background: Part of an immersive 360-degree video created to help autistic people build confidence with new experiences, such as dining out.

It was the most they’d ever heard him say.

University of Florida researcher Nigel Newbutt had seen this before: immersive technology unlocking potential in autistic people, who often face challenges with communication and social interaction. It was why he’s been visiting the school, Reach Academy, which serves students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

With ASD diagnoses on the rise a ffecting 1 in 36 children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using technology to better serve young people with autism could have sweeping impacts on education, employment and independent living. To make immersive tech the norm, though, Newbutt knows he needs more than anecdotes. He needs evidence. Through partnerships with the autism community, his Equitable Learning Technology Lab in UF’s College of Education puts people with ASD in control of the research agenda.

“They’re the experts on what they need,” he says. “This is a paradigm change toward the involvement of autistic people.”

Reach Academy Director Stephanie Kaloupek agrees. When Newbutt first emailed her, she almost deleted the message. She’s protective of the kids, and new people in their space can be unsettling. Reading more closely, though, she saw that Newbutt didn’t just want to gather data from them. He wanted the students to call the shots, working alongside his team as co-researchers. And he was bringing technology he believed could change their lives.

“I said, ‘Wait a second, this seems amazing,’” she recalls.

Watching the nonverbal student’s reaction when he put on the VR headset, she knew she’d made the right call.

“All of a sudden, he was speaking full, complete sentences,” she says. “It was big.”

In a small private school in Jacksonville, a teenager put on a virtual-reality headset for the first time. Immersed in another world, he chattered excitedly to his classmates and teachers.

Nigel Newbutt

Brianne Lehan

With ASD diagnoses on the rise affecting 1 in 36 children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using technology to better serve young people with autism could have sweeping impacts on education, employment and independent living.

Reach Academy graduate Ethan Anderson plays a VR game in the Jacksonville school’s transition classroom as classmate Dallas Roberson looks on. “We’re learning how technology and artificial intelligence work together,” Anderson says.

Nothing About Us Without Us

Beanbags land with a thud and laughter fills the playground as the researchers jokingly trash-talk their way through a game of cornhole. Newbutt is the reigning champion at Reach Academy, although he’d never heard of the game before coming to UF from the United Kingdom in 2021 he sometimes calls it “corndog.”

Months before their research began, Newbutt and doctoral student Marc Francois began making the drive to Jacksonville to bond with the students through informal activities like this.

“They are so smart, but if you really want to see how smart they are, you need to make space for them to feel comfortable and safe,” Francois explains.

At first, the students didn’t talk much. “Then we started to see them interact and share ideas,” Francois says.

The visits continued, culminating in a summer technology camp at the school. For Ethan Anderson, a Reach graduate who now attends the school’s transition program, the experience showed him immersive tech’s potential for “teaching some other autistic children to do their best behaviors and learning to work hard,” he says.

“It challenges us and makes us feel powerful,” Anderson says. “It changed all of our lives, because VR is the golden age of the future.”

In traditional classrooms, expectations are often set too low, Newbutt says.

“Autistic people have this amazing intelligence, but it’s not always brought out. Traditional education doesn’t speak to their strengths,” he says.

One of those strengths tends to be an affinity for technology. In 2015, when VR headset prices began to drop, researchers envisioned potential for people with ASD (which since 2013 has been the unified diagnosis for what was once separated into autism, Asperger’s and other related disorders). Amid the speculation, Newbutt says, “it occurred to me that nobody had asked them their views on any of this stuff.”

Anthony Nappi of the E-Learning, Technology and Communication team (left) and Irene Kao, an educational technology master’s student (right), direct Piesano’s server Kristina Bukas-Johnson (center) in a 360-degree video of typical restaurant interactions.

The autism community’s top priorities to address with VR:

He decided to change that, and started gaining insight on what the community actually wanted, in alignment with a motto often heard in disability advocacy: “Nothing about us without us.” When Newbutt tested potential uses for a social robot, for example, students with autism indicated that they’d rather interact with the robot in the school hallway than in the classroom. What they wanted to use it for wasn’t learning, but managing their emotions, he discovered. As the team’s work at Reach Academy continues, Newbutt expects similar insights on how immersive technology can best be used for ASD. That could take the form of job-training programs, virtual interview practice, or science interactives to spark interest in STEM a ll of which Newbutt has taken out of the lab and into the community.

“When we put technology into a space and autistic individuals start modifying it or start talking about it not being quite right, that’s a moment where you think, ‘We're doing something right here.’”

Creating an Autism-Accessible City

The director’s slate claps to start the scene, and a waitress walks up to a table carrying pizza and salad. She’s delivering the order to a 360-degree camera, which is capturing what a diner would see sitting at the table. When played through a VR headset, the footage will let people with autism practice the unwritten rules of dining out before actually going out.

When Newbutt asked the ASD community what they’d like to address through VR, independent living joined education and employment as top priorities. So alongside their efforts at Reach, the team is building interactive experiences to help navigate the customs of a restaurant meal. When the order comes out wrong, the music is too loud, or the customer needs to get the server’s attention, a menu of choices will appear so users can decide how to respond, then get feedback on their choice.

“One of the key things we always hear from the autism community is that being able to experience something before going there is absolutely vital,” Newbutt says.

Co-directing today’s filming is Jacob Warshofski, who has autism and works with the Florida-based group Autism Worldwide. Warshofski watches the scene, then offers suggestions for the next take. Once the College’s E-Learning, Technology and Communications team finishes developing the immersive experience, it will be available for free, loaded onto refurbished phones paired with inexpensive VR headsets and shared with autistic people in the community. Then Newbutt’s team will gather data on how the simulation is used, informing the next iteration.

It’s part of Newbutt’s goal for Gainesville to become an autism-accessible city, where 360-degree tours of everything from banks to movie theaters could help people with autism feel

The team's immersive simulations enable autistic people to explore an environment virtually before going there in person.

more comfortable visiting new places. Next up: Partnering with the Florida Museum of Natural History to expand its offerings for the autism-spectrum community.

“All of this is about providing access. The experience of going to a restaurant or museum with family or friends is part of life, and if you’re not able to do that, it limits the opportunities and ambitions that a young person has,” Newbutt says. “When you’re able to give them the confidence to go somewhere they’ve never been before, that’s so meaningful.”

Strengths Over Deficits

Back at their headquarters in UF’s Norman Hall in midDecember, Newbutt and his team wait. Rows of orange and blue Gatorade bottles line the tables. VR headsets and controllers stand ready on the desks.

After a successful campus visit from the Reach students in November, the lab group is hosting six half-day tech-camps for other young people with ASD to encourage them toward STEM careers and show them that college can be a welcoming place, says lab member Zachary Larson, who has autism. A computer engineering student at the University of Central Florida, Larson led the planning of the camps, which are supported by the Patti Shively Foundation.

“We wanted it to be less formal, not just a lecture or a class,” he says. “They’re having fun, but as they’re having fun they’re inspired to understand STEM.”

Young people and their caregivers from Gainesville and beyond have signed up for the free camps, but the first session’s start time comes and goes. No one shows.

It’s disappointing, but not entirely unexpected, Newbutt says. They know that new people and places can be extraordinarily stressful.

The afternoon session turns out the same.

The team starts a list of lessons learned: Don’t schedule camp during the parents’ workday, or during the holiday break. They’re not too dejected, because they’re learning what works and what doesn’t. But they also feel the urgency to get it right, because the employment outlook for people with ASD is bleak.

The advocacy organization Autism Speaks estimates that two years after finishing high school, more than half of young adults with autism aren’t working or going to college, and about half of 25-year-olds with autism have never been employed. Those who are may be underemployed, working in jobs that don’t tap into their skills, Newbutt says. While people with autism may struggle with “soft skills” like reading facial expressions, they can excel in areas like pattern recognition, which can make them well suited for tech jobs, he says.

Francois was drawn to Newbutt’s vision of a future where immersive technology helps educators and employers better understand and develop the abilities of people with ASD.

“As a researcher, I don’t just want to write papers. I want to change lives,” Francois says. “That’s why I work with Dr. Nigel. He shares the same goal.”

On the second day of tech camp, the tide changes. Students and their families arrive, and they’re delighted. Christian Cartagena, a 13-year-old with a passion for robotics, starts the day by learning programming, animating a character with gamebuilding software.

“He’d make a fine computer engineer,” Larson tells Christian’s grandmother, Myrna Carrasco.

Doctoral student Marc Francois at the lab's tech camp, where autistic teens explored STEM careers.

“Now that he’s here, he can see that he can do it,” she replies. “It’s just not me telling him. He’s really doing it.”

Christian dons the VR equipment, testing a job simulator and a cooking game. Every few minutes, he takes off the headset and jogs over to hug his grandma.

“I’m very happy. I want to come here as often as we can,” he says.

“I know,” she smiles.

“Abuela,” he says, “this is the best day of my life.”

On the final day of the camp, more students and caregivers arrive some before the doors even open. For Newbutt, it’s gratifying to see that appealing to their

strengths can cultivate their interest in science and technology.

“It’s about giving them that eyeopening moment where they see there’s a place where their strengths are focused upon,” he says. “That makes it all worthwhile.”

Nigel Newbutt Assistant Professor of Advanced Learning Technologies nigel.newbutt@coe.ufl.edu

Scan the QR code to view and share this story with digital extras.

Nigel Newbutt with Irene Kao, Marc Francois and Zachary Larson, members of the Equitable Learning Technology Lab.

“It’s about giving them that eye-opening moment where they see there’s a place where their strengths are focused upon. That makes it all worthwhile.”

Nigel Newbutt

When UF environmental toxicologist Tracie Baker joined UF graduate and Explorers Club member Harvey Oyer III (shown holding the club's flag) on a seven-day expedition recreating Willoughby's historic journey, she became the first non-Indigenous woman to complete the cross-Everglades canoe trek.

Across The Everglades, AGAIN

Paddling coast to coast, a scientist tracks an 1897 expedition — and new contaminants

Along the way, students from Miami’s Belen Jesuit Preparatory School joined the team, getting hands-on experience in the field. Baker’s message to aspiring scientists: “Follow your passion and go out there and explore.”

Hugh L. Willoughby's 130-mile expedition, recounted in his book “Across the Everglades,” provided the first scientific sampling of the region's water quality.

After up to 12 hours of paddling, Baker, an associate professor of environmental and global health in UF’s College of Public Health and Health Professions, had to clean her collecting gear and prepare the next day’s sampling equipment before taking refuge from the swarms of mosquitoes. “If you leaned against the fabric, they'd bite you through the tent.”

In addition to the water chemistry Willoughby tested, Baker sampled for contaminants unknown in his time, from pesticides and PFAS “forever chemicals” to traces of personal care products and pharmaceuticals. The results — along with eDNA from invasives like pythons and apple snails — will be “a jumping off point to look further at this so we can move the science forward.”

Flamingo Marina, Everglades National Park

Biscayne Bay, Miami

An elite team joins forces to protect us from pathogens

By Doug Bennett

In the fight against terrorism, one weapon is invisible to the naked eye.

The expertise and materials rogue nations or groups need to design disease-spreading bacteria that could inflict devastating harm on military personnel and civilians are readily available.

So, the U.S. government has recruited an elite team of University of Florida Health researchers and their private-industry collaborators for a crucial mission: to develop a new antibiotic to counter these deadly pathogens.

Like so many technologies developed for the military, a new antibiotic would also be a vital tool in civilian healthcare, where antibioticresistant bacteria are constantly chipping away at the effectiveness of current medications.

While the need is urgent, the pipeline for new antibiotics remains just a trickle. For a host of reasons, few pharmaceutical companies are interested in antibiotic development. So when the federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) began hunting earlier this decade for a team to do just that, UF’s Institute for Therapeutic Innovation was among a short list of candidates.

In early 2021, a group of UF Health researchers accepted the challenge. For two years, they have worked with a Salt Lake City biotechnology company, painstakingly sifting through 43 potential compounds.

Each member of the UF team brings unique skills to the effort. Henry S. Heine is an associate professor and research microbiologist specializing in advanced antibiotic therapies for biodefense purposes. Bret K. Purcell, a research associate professor, has expertise in applied therapeutics for emerging pathogens. Arnold Louie, a professor and researcher, has expertise in advanced antibiotic therapies for conventional and emerging bacterial pathogens. He is the lead researcher for in vitro hollow-fiber experiments. George L. Drusano, a professor and the institute’s director, uses complex mathematical models to optimize drug treatment and reduce drug-development risks and poor therapeutic outcomes.

A series of experiments in late 2022 produced their first breakthrough with a primary drug candidate and a promising backup. To be effective, a dose of antibiotic compound has to hit a crucial sweet spot: enough to be effective but not enough to be toxic.

Initial testing in small-animal models left the researchers “surprised and excited,” Heine says. Their preferred antibiotic candidate showed effectiveness at lower doses than the scientists expected.

“Now, we’re getting into the nittygritty work to verify that there’s no toxicity to be concerned about. And then also to determine: Does it really work? What kind of doses do we need to make it effective?” Heine says.

Agents of Concern

Developing a new antibiotic requires patience and persistence. DTRA gave researchers at UF and Curza, the Utah biotechnology company, $75 million and up to nine years to create a new therapy. Their goal is to develop a drug to destroy bacteria that would otherwise evade current antibiotics. As one of a few universities in the country with the specialized research equipment and experienced

Henry S. Heine

Jesse Jones

• A ssociate Professor of Medicine

• Specialization: Advanced antibiotic therapies for biodefense purposes.

scientists needed to create new antibiotics, UF is uniquely equipped to address the challenge, Heine says.

Among the reasons that new antibiotics are relatively rare is that developing and getting regulatory approval can take 10 to 15 years and cost $1 billion or more. With new classes of antibiotics, the failure rate in preclinical development is twice that of other types of drugs. And while development costs are high, the drugs need to be used sparingly to limit the development of antibiotic resistance. All of that makes private pharmaceutical companies reluctant to invest in new antibiotics.

Discovering a novel antibiotic could serve two purposes by protecting U.S. military troops from an engineered biological agent while also treating stubborn infections among the public or hospitalized patients, Heine says.

The drug being developed will be used to fight gram-negative bacteria such as plague, tularemia and another disease caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei, Drusano says. As a biological agent, minute quantities of tularemia can cause skin ulcers, pneumonia and death. Plague, which is caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, is typically spread by an infected flea or a bite from an infected animal but also has potential as a biological agent. Burkholderia bacteria cause melioidosis, which can result in fever, pneumonia and potentially fatal septic shock.

“At the end of the day, these are the agents of concern for our warfighters and for the general public in case of an intentional release of these nasty bugs,” Drusano says.

The main antibiotic candidate being studied is a protein synthesis inhibitor. It interacts with a bacterium’s ribosomes, which contain both RNA and protein. The drug works by blocking the bacterium’s protein synthesis. Its unique binding location on the ribosome also makes it much less susceptible to antibiotic resistance — for now.

“Mother Nature hasn’t figured out any good resistance mechanisms to deal with it yet,” Heine says.

With the support of the federal government, UF and Curza have developed a strong collaboration to develop the new drug. Curza started by making chemical changes to the compounds that are being screened and tested in UF laboratories. Those modifications are crucial to controlling the antibiotic’s toxicity and boosting its potency. That, Heine says, is a key step toward a therapeutic that can someday be used in humans.

Fantastic Four

The four UF colleagues now working on an antibiotic have been collaborators for years, though getting them to UF involved some happenstance. Drusano recruited Heine to a private biomedical research institute in Albany, New York in 2010. Louie had joined the institute at the same time as Drusano. About a year later, while UF was already recruiting Drusano, the New York institute closed. By 2011, they were together again at the UF institute’s labs in Orlando. Purcell joined the group in March 2020, resuming a long collaboration with Heine going back to

Jesse Jones

• A ssociate Professor of Medicine

• Specialization: Applied therapeutics f or emerging pathogens.

Bret K. Purcell

•

Professor of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology

• Specialization: Advanced antibiotic therapies for conventional and emerging bacterial pathogens.

their days with the U.S. Army’s infectious disease research institute at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Purcell served nearly 25 years in the Army, listening to recruiting pitches from Drusano and Heine for part of that time.

“I finally got out of the military and decided Florida sounded like a great place to live and work,” Purcell says.

Drusano’s expertise involves complex mathematical models to optimize drug treatment, reduce drug-development risks and lessen poor therapeutic outcomes. In the field of high-consequence bacterial pathogens, Drusano is one of a handful of mathematical experts worldwide. For this project, the UF team through Louie is using a hollow fiber infection model. That technique lets researchers reproduce the ebb and flow of drug concentrations over time in humans or research animals. The model also allows researchers to identify the dose and frequency of an antibiotic that optimizes the killing of a bacterial pathogen while minimizing the probability the microbe may become drug resistant.

“We can actually study how a drug kills the bacterium and also how it prevents or suppresses the emergence of antibiotic resistance. It’s another arrow in the quiver of drug development,” says Drusano, who describes himself as “the one who does the fancy math.”

Antibiotic concentrations fluctuate widely in humans and animals as their bodies metabolize a drug, so trial-and-error testing can be slow and expensive. The mathematical models Drusano has developed allow the team to save considerable time and use far fewer animal models, Heine says. The computer simulations Drusano has helped develop over the years can simulate dosages in 10,000 patients and predict the outcomes in a matter of days.

“George can apply mathematics and modeling to develop doses that we need for effective treatment,” Heine says.

Late last fall, Heine’s team began animal model testing of lead and backup compounds to further assess their toxicity, efficacy and optimal dose against plague bacteria. Proper dosing of any new antibiotic is especially crucial.

“Most of the antibiotics that are available now were developed at least 20 years ago,” Heine says. “That’s why they’re now experiencing antibiotic resistance. No one knew how to dose them properly. The hollow fiber system allows us to do that without using a large number of animals.”

If the compounds continue to show promise and clear all testing protocols, they could gain Food and Drug Administration approval under an agency rule that allows their use in humans after showing safety and efficacy in preclinical models, Heine says.

Heine says the UF team is largely focused on developing an antibiotic that can be used in bioterrorism or germ warfare scenarios, and Curza would likely be called on by the government  to produce the new antibiotic for the Strategic National Stockpile, but Curza also may be able to use basic data from the UF collaboration to pursue new therapies for more common infections caused by E. coli or Klebsiella bacteria. The latter can lead to pneumonia or infections of wounds and surgical sites.

The joint effort by UF and Curza is a best-case, mutually beneficial scenario for developing a new antibiotic with strategic defense and potential civilian uses, Heine says. Since UF researchers are focusing their efforts on the antibiotic’s bioterrorism capabilities, important aspects such as toxicity studies and some of the clinical studies are funded by the federal government. That frees up Curza to potentially apply the findings to conventional bacterial diseases with broader civilian applications, according to Heine.

The COVID-19 virus pandemic has also heightened awareness of the deficiencies in the current arsenal of antibacterial drugs, says John W. Kozarich, CEO of Curza.

“We are excited to expand our collaboration with the Institute for Therapeutic Innovation to advance our antibacterial platform to include treatments for biothreat agents in addition

Arnold Louie

Jesse Jones

L. Drusano

• Professor of Medicine

• Director, UF’s

•

to community and hospital associated antibiotic-resistant pathogens. If successful, these unique molecules will represent the first new class of antibiotics discovered in the last 60 years with activity against these pathogens.”

Heine admits that the pursuit of a new antibiotic can be both intense and invigorating. One of those intense moments came last fall as the team awaited important results from some mouse testing. The satisfaction, he says, comes from making progress toward their long-term goal.

“You don’t get a lot of eureka moments in the business but, when you do, they’re extremely satisfying,” says Heine.

George L. Drusano Professor of Medicine gdrusano@ufl.edu

Henry S. Heine Associate Professor of Medicine henry.heine@medicine.ufl.edu

Arnold Louie Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology alouie@ufl.edu

Bret K. Purcell Research Associate Professor of Medicine bret.purcell@medicine.ufl.edu

“We can actually study how a drug kills the bacterium and also how it prevents or suppresses the emergence of antibiotic resistance.”

George L. Drusano

The Institute for Therapeutic Innovation is part of UF's Research and Academic Center at Lake Nona in Orlando.

George

Institute f or Therapeutic Innovation

Specialization: Complex mathematical models to optimize drug treatment and reduce drug-development risks and poor therapeutic outcomes.

A R T S

x A R T S

What if your doctor prescribed a creative outlet for better health?

By Alisson Clark

On Friday afternoons, Keith and Stephanie Early load up their service dog, Riley, and drive to Gainesville to fill a prescription. Instead of heading to the pharmacy, the Earlys arrive at an industrial park on the outskirts of town where they’ll spend the next few hours blacksmithing at Crooked Path Forge.

“It redirects your train of thought. It keeps your mind off stuff,” says Keith, who has post-traumatic stress disorder.

He pulls a glowing metal rod from the 2,600-degree forge, places it on an anvil and starts shaping it with a hammer. After 24 years in the Navy and Air Force, he’s used to staying calm in dangerous situations. Blacksmithing, though, is helping Keith and his wife, a fellow veteran, find that calm throughout their lives.

They’re part of a University of Florida program in social prescribing, connecting patients to arts and cultural activities as part of their healing.

John Jernigan

John Jernigan

The pilot, launched by UF’s Center for Arts in Medicine and the Veterans Administration, is one way researchers are laying the groundwork for social prescribing nationwide, and not just for veterans. As overburdened primary care providers struggle to meet patients’ needs, community activities like these show promise to boost wellbeing and prevent the onset of disease, says the center’s research director, Jill Sonke, a research associate professor in UF’s College of the Arts.

After a few months of filling their social prescriptions at the forge, the Earlys are believers.

“It keeps me from the places I don’t want to go in my head,” Stephanie says. “When I feel that’s about to happen, I can start thinking about projects I’m working on. That can completely take it away.”

A National Model

In the United States, you won’t find many doctors sending patients to choir practice or insurance companies covering painting class. But in the United Kingdom, the National Health

Service’s Arts on Prescription connects patients to cultural activities that match their interests a nd funds their participation. Researchers there have linked community arts and cultural engagement with better mental health and overall wellbeing, lower risk of depression, and fewer childhood adjustment problems. That led UF’s EpiArts Lab, a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab, to look for similar correlations in the U.S.

Their findings so far are promising but the vast differences between the health care landscapes of the two countries pose some significant challenges. While the concept is in use in places from Japan to New Zealand, widespread social prescribing has thus far been limited to nations with some level of socialized medicine, Sonke explains.

“We’re one of the first third-party payer nations to explore it, so we need to develop viable, sustainable financial models,” she says.

That requires collaboration across the health care, insurance, public health and arts sectors at the local and state level. Proponents of social prescribing need to show not just economic benefit

“Our health care system doesn’t have a structure that enables people to engage in things that are enjoyable and support their health. We’re acculturated toward taking medicine.”

Jill Sonke

Matt Stamey

through reduced burden on providers, but evidence that Americans will accept it.

“Our health care system doesn’t have a structure that enables people to engage in things that are enjoyable and support their health. We’re acculturated toward taking medicine,” Sonke says. “If your doctor says, ‘I think you need to take a pottery class or a dance class, to get out and be more social and more creative,’ is that going to feel like you’re not being taken seriously?”

Even the name presents an issue.

“Social prescribing as a term works in the U.K., because social care is a concept that everyone understands. In the U.S., social services are highly stigmatized and highly politicized, so that language is problematic,” Sonke says.

They’ll also have to factor in some communities’ differing levels of access to both health care and the arts to ensure that social prescribing doesn’t deepen those inequities. The challenges are daunting, but with more than 30 years of expertise in the field, UF researchers are uniquely

Teenagers who take part in arts and cultural activities are less likely to engage in antisocial and criminalized behavior.

Young people who engage in extracurricular arts activities and creative hobbies have lower rates of substance use.

Key Findings

Older

People over the age of 50 who engage in receptive arts activities just once per month or more are 84% more likely to have healthy aging two years later.

At the Creating Healthy Communities Convening, participants including Dean Onye Ozuzu, center, gathered to envision the future of social prescribing.

Source: UF EpiArts Lab

adults who do creative hobbies at least monthly are 20% less likely to be depressed.

placed to take on the challenge, says College of the Arts Dean Onye Ozuzu.

UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine began in 1990, leading to the nation’s first university-level Arts in Medicine curriculum in 1996 and the founding of the Center for Arts in Medicine three years later.

“We’re at a moment in the evolution of this work where it’s time for people who understand its value to collect around it,” Ozuzu says. “It’s wonderful to see our center as the hub of this electrifying conversation.”

Social prescribing differs from arts in medicine in a few key ways. Instead of bringing arts into a health care setting, it aims to infuse social and cultural activities into daily life. Second, the activities are led by artists and community-based organizations, not health care workers or therapists. Third, while clinical treatments are intended to serve their purpose, then end, social and creative arts involvement can continue after medical intervention concludes.

When a health care provider identifies a patient who could benefit from social and cultural engagement, they refer them to a “link worker” whose role is to match them with an activity in their community, Sonke explains. And while it’s not meant to replace medical intervention, it gives primary-care providers more ways to help patients who aren’t thriving.

“So many doctors relay the frustration of not being able to offer these patients what they need in a 15-minute visit. If we can broaden their toolkit, we can help alleviate the burnout and anxiety that comes from those limitations, and connect people to resources in their own communities that can address those needs.”

To show insurers, health care providers and patients that these programs work a nd make sure they’re implemented effectively Sonke and a network of researchers and advocates have begun studies with 23 pilot programs to explore the feasibility of social prescribing in the U.S.

The center’s work garnered $300,000 in support from the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation in 2022, plus $200,000 each from National Endowment for the Arts and Bloomberg Philanthropies. With the World Health Organization on board as a collaborator, the center gathered like-minded groups in Orlando in October, where they envisioned a prescription for healthier living through the arts.

Creating Healthy Communities

Filing back into the Creating Healthy Communities Convening, participants had the subdued demeanor of a post-lunch conference crowd assembling for the second half of the day’s agenda.

Then Alana Jackson took the stage.

A spoken word artist, researcher and lecturer at UF’s Center for Arts in Medicine, Jackson unleashed a call to action in the form of a poem titled “The Proposal.”

“Health is not merely the absence of disease, but the achievement of wellbeing,” said World Health Organization Arts + Health Lead Christopher Bailey, center right, at the Creating Healthy Communities Convening.

Austin Queen

Excerpt from The Proposal

…what if when Grandma went to the doctor she was given even more than just another pill and another bill what if as part of her prescription she was pointed to a community of movers and shakers that shared her childhood love of dance

reconnecting her with the musical sounds of her heyday showing her that hey her condition was no obstacle to her capacity…

what I’m saying is, people need healing and policies need changing, but WE can’t do that without YOU.

we need the power of your languages to rewrite our policy to the music of transition and keep tempo with the art that lives in each of us which means WE need YOU in order to rem ember that sometimes feeling pulled in two different directions like medicine or music, stability or art,

is actually the key to our equilibrium, once we allow them to coexist art and health are not mutually exclusive.

Throughout the two-day gathering, 450 attendees grappled with the opportunities and challenges of infusing the arts in public health. In his keynote speech, WHO Arts + Health Lead Christopher Bailey explained that arts in health doesn’t mean ‘if we sing this song, it cures that condition.’”

“I would like to disabuse us of that notion up front,” he said. “There’s a difference between curing something and healing something. The arts are about healing.”

The WHO’s definition of health “is not merely the absence of disease,” he explained, while its definition of mental health “is not merely absence of mental illness, but the ability to cope with the everyday stresses of life.”

Those stresses that might bring patients to their primary care provider looking for a medical intervention when a community or cultural intervention might work as well or better, Sonke says.

Studies from the United Kingdom and EpiArts Lab revealed improvements in depressive symptoms, cognition and memory, and overall well-being in older adults. Among adolescents, participation in arts and cultural activities was shown to reduce loneliness, risk of substance use, behavior and attention problems, as well as result in fewer reportedly anti-social or criminalized behaviors and improved self-control. In the U.S, Sonke and collaborators draw on seven data sets to evaluate those connections. So far, the results are encouraging: A forthcoming study of 1,269 older adults showed that, after adjusting for demographic and socioeconomic variation, engaging in arts activities once a month or more was associated with 84% higher odds of healthy aging two years later. (It’s worth noting that the arts activities weren’t even hands-on, but what researchers call receptive activities, like going to a concert.)

“That means engagement in the arts could have a greater protective effect than exercise, in less time,” Sonke says.

Ozuzu hopes findings like these will underscore the value arts deliver for health, not only for the benefit of patients, but the aspiring artists in her college.

Alana Jackson performs “The Proposal” at the Creating Healthy Communities Convening.

Austin Queen

“As artists, we’ve always known that art builds your health, but having it demonstrated in a large cohort in such an undeniable way t hat really got me excited,” she says. “It’s good news for American society in general, and for our graduates’ ability to build middle-class lives with homes and health insurance, making a solid living as artists.”

Forging Connections

Back at the forge, Keith Early puts the finishing touches on a striker for a dinner bell, while Stephenie shapes a lantern hook for their yard.

“This has been so great for the both of us,” Keith says. “I wish it could go on forever.”

While the pilot program a n outgrowth of decades of partnership between UF and the VA has concluded, the lessons learned will continue to shape the VA’s approach, says Dr. Chuck Levy, research physician for the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine.

Levy, who pioneered art therapy via teleheath as chief of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Service at the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System, wants to see success stories like the Earlys’ continue.

“I believe it’s highly likely that our work here will lead to wider scale adoption of this practice,” Levy says.

“Part of our mission is to change how people perceive the realm of health care. We didn’t always believe that diet and exercise were important, or that a physician should ask about those things and advocate for that. The next step may be for physicians to say, ‘What are you doing for creative expression? How are you engaging in aesthetic

Time In Nature May Spur Healthier Choices

Social prescribing extends beyond the arts. A growing body of evidence shows that exposure to nature could help stem drug cravings, says Meredith Berry, an experimental psychologist in UF’s College of Health and Human Performance.

In graduate school, Berry was gathering visitor perception data in Yellowstone National Park when she noticed that “people would share their stories of healing in nature,” she recalls. She’d had similar experiences, and started wondering about the science behind such claims.

As an addiction researcher, she hoped that healing could be brought into play for substance use or misuse. In a recently published study, Berry and doctoral student Shahar Almog found that active exposure to

pring

The complexities of substance use require creative approaches, says psychologist Meredith Berry.

Keith Early has continued working with blacksmith Jordan Borstelmann, right, after the pilot program.

Jeremey Clark

experiences to enrich your life? And if you don’t have anything going on, maybe that’s something we should discuss.”

Along with its successes, including building a referral process and training materials for the arts organizations, the pilot revealed some limitations, including the difficulty in reaching rural areas far from the participating arts organizations one reason for its modest sample size of 18 veterans. That echoes concerns emerging from a recent workshop for policy makers, insurance providers, artists and other stakeholders, including Sonke, at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“Social prescribing needs to be accessible for people who aren’t insured or well insured and don’t have access to preventive care,” she says.

“The big picture goal here is that Americans understand that, like exercise and good nutrition and wearing seatbelts,

being creative and engaging in cultural activities is a resource that we have available to us for our health.”

The idea is gaining momentum: One of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas is consulting with Sonke on how to implement social prescribing for its residents.

“They want to do it fast, and they want to do it big,” she says.

The momentum reflects a dawning appreciation in the U.S. that the arts are more than a luxury, Ozuzu says.

“Artists have always been agents of the kind of collective change we need today,” she says. “This is our moment.”

Jill Sonke Research Director, Research Associate Professor, Center for Arts in Medicine jsonke@ufl.edu

Scan the QR code to view and share the story with digital extras, including Alana Jackson’s performance of “The Proposal.”

nature has protective effects against harmful alcohol use. In other studies, just looking at nature photos reduced impulsive decision-making.

“That kind of decision-making is correlated with a lot of health behaviors like smoking, alcohol use, diet, even gambling,” she says. “There’s some evidence that we can nudge people towards healthier choices.”

In a forthcoming study, people who use drugs looked at a photo of a natural area or a built environment, then reported what quantity of drugs they would buy at various price points, which researchers use to quantify the subject’s motivation to take the drug.

“What we’re seeing is, people report hypothetically buying less of the substance when they’re exposed

to nature versus when they’re exposed to built environments,” Berry says.

A new pilot study extends the work to opioid users with chronic pain, which is twice as prevalent among people with opioid use disorder than the general population. She hopes nature exposure can be a complement to counseling and medication.

“We’re always trying to move the needle, because treatment for things like opioid use disorder, it’s just tricky. Some people respond to pharmacotherapy like methadone or buprenorphine, and others just don’t and we don’t know why,” she says.

Berry sees potential for nature prescriptions to ease the depression and anxiety that often accompany pain and substance use.

“Any of these factors could be helped by nature exposure, but almost none of them have been tested in these populations,” she says. “We need to test these innovative approaches that are all around us.”

Meredith Berry Assistant Professor of Health Education and Behavior mberry@ufl.edu

“What we’re seeing is, people report hypothetically buying less of the substance when they're exposed to nature versus when they're exposed to built environments.”

Meredith Berry

John Jernigan

“All ThingsBeautiful ”

New book reveals hundreds of specimens from the Florida Museum of Natural History

The man who founded the Florida Museum of Natural History more than 100 years ago had a clear purpose: to create a vault where Florida’s astonishing natural and cultural diversity could be conserved forever.

“Many species of vegetable and animal life once indigenous to our state have, through gross negligence, been allowed to become extinct, not only to Florida, but to the world,” wrote Thompson Van Hyning in 1934, 20 years after setting up the first few display cases at the University of Florida’s Science Hall. “The only question is, will we not awaken to our duty before it is too late by conserving all things of historic and scientific value, and in a measure, all things beautiful(?)”

From that modest start museum staffers, students, collectors and donors have built the largest natural history museum in the Southeast, with 40 million biological specimens and cultural artifacts. Museum Director Douglas S. Jones calls it “a library of life.” Hundreds of intriguing specimens, most of them stored out of view in the museum’s research collections, are portrayed in a new book, “All Things Beautiful: Wonders from the Collections of the Florida Museum of Natural History,” published by University Press of Florida in January and excerpted here.

Many volumes in the library of life were once unreadable. But museum science is in the midst of a renaissance. DNA fingerprinting, sophisticated imaging techniques and mass computing power have become more affordable and easier to use.

The advances come when new information is urgently needed, as climate change, diseases, land clearing and other forces trigger biological extinctions and losses of archaeological treasures. Scientists are using the museum’s collection to discover new species and learn how they evolved, where they belong on Earth’s Tree

of Life, and what they need to survive in tumultuous times.

Taxonomy, the science of naming, describing, and classifying plants, animals, and microorganisms, is the museum’s fundamental work. Of Earth’s 10 million or more species of living things, only 2.3 million have been described by scientists. Scientists are finding previously unknown species on museum shelves– from the sea urchins of Oceania’s coral reefs to critically endangered plants on Florida’s Lake Wales Ridge.

DNA fingerprinting can reveal the uniqueness of a specimen that was thought to be something more common. Though time degrades specimens’ DNA, genetic fragments can be enough to make a discovery, and researchers are getting better at recovering them. UF botanists recently used DNA from a specimen collected in 1926 to describe a previously unknown plant from Haiti.

Specimens stored in alcohol lose DNA, but scientists can sometimes recover fragments of an animal’s own DNA as well as traces of diseases and parasites. Eggs, seashells, feathers and fur hold chemical markers of temperatures and contaminants. Herbarium records show whether a plant’s range or flowering period has changed over time.

“We have literally tens of millions of herbarium specimens,” says Distinguished Professor and Curator Pamela Soltis, an expert on plant evolution, “using machine learning to find patterns that we could never have discerned before.”

“Each specimen is a unique, tangible and often irreplaceable representation of life on Earth, past and present,” wrote the authors of a 2020 National Academies of Sciences report on U.S. natural history collections. “Their potential uses are beyond current imagination.”

photography by K ri Sten b g race text by h eather D ewar

Strawberry urchin, Choncrocidaris brevispina.

Reflecting astonishing diversity, these eggs come from seabirds, shorebirds, forest and grassland birds, even a giant flightless bird. Charles Doe, the museum’s first curator, collected or bought them between the 1890s and 1930s, creating the museum’s first research-ready collection. (top)

Schaus’ swallowtail butterfly, Heraclides aristodemus ponceanus, nearly went extinct in the wild after 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. Museum scientists hand-raise the native butterflies and release them in the Upper Keys, where in 2021 researchers tallied more than 1,700. Their coloration is shown from above on the left; from below on the right. (above)

Rarely seen, blanket octopuses, Tremoctopus violaceus, live offshore in tropical oceans. Adult females have color-changing cells called chromatophores that can make them appear to have many eyes, to scare away predators. This is the museum’s only blanket octopus. (above) Florida is home to the Eastern US’ tiniest woodpecker (the downy), the largest (the pileated) and the rarest (the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker). The state’s varied forests and mature trees are fine habitats for them. (top, center)

It is rare to find a complete fossil plant as ancient as this 48-millionyear-old extinct sycamore, Macginitiea angustiloba, Museum paleobotanist Steven Manchester collected it at Oregon’s John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. (right)

This two-headed baby sea turtle, Caretta caretta, found at Tampa Bay’s Egmont National Wildlife Refuge in 2008, is the kind of oddity that once was featured in cabinets of curiosities, the forerunners of today’s natural history museum. (top)

This 1,200-year-old cypress plaque portrays an ivory-billed woodpecker, revered by Indigenous people and now extinct. It was found in 1896 at Key Marco among artifacts of Southwest Florida’s Calusa people. (above)

This Columbian mammoth, Mammuthus columbi, 12 feet tall at the shoulder, probably died near a grassland watering hole in a dry period 12,000 to 25,000 years ago. Museum paleontologists found it in North Florida’s Aucilla River. (top)

Found in an abandoned grove in Citra, Florida, these seed pods, with hooks that snag animals’ feet, are from a South American plant known as devil’s claw, Ibicella lutea. The herbarium specimens record the non-native species’ dispersal. (above, left)

The only native parrot of the Eastern US, Carolina parakeets, Conuropsis carolinensis, were driven to extinction, their once-vast flocks shot out and their nesting grounds logged. The last confirmed sighting of a wild Carolina parakeet was near Lake Okeechobee in 1908. (right)

The three-inch-long Maryland darter, Etheostoma sellare, inhabited just two small streams, and has not been seen since 1985. It is one of three US freshwater fishes known to have gone extinct in the past 35 years. (top, left)

This bottle, mouth-blown and hand-decorated in the late 1600s, was found in a St. Augustine well. It is kept in distilled water and can only be briefly exposed to air, or it will shatter. (top, right)

Like corals, these heart cockles, Corculum cardissa, have a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic algae. The Indian and Pacific Ocean mollusks have tiny windows in their shells where the algae live safely, helping to nourish the cockles. (above)

The elders of the Seminole Tribe of Florida gave this coiled basket to the museum in 1997. Agnes Billie Cypress made the basket of sweetgrass and cotton thread. Lucy Johns crafted the lid with its palmetto fiber doll. (center, right)

Kingsnakes, Lampropeltis floridana x getula, can survive venomous snake bites and swallow bigger snakes whole. This beautifully patterned animal, a natural hybrid between an Eastern kingsnake and a Florida kingsnake, was found on Paynes Prairie, once a snake hot spot. Once common, kingsnakes have become rare. (right)