Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Bogolbaum here.

For the last decade, armies of bark beetles have been devastating forest lands in California and other places, and scientists are fighting back.

To do so, they asked citizen scientists, aka the general public, to trap the tiny bugs, which are as small as a grain of rice, and mail them back to their labs for DNA studies.

The only problem, people don't generally keep laboratory-grade preservatives at home.

So how could the Beatles DNA remain intact until it reached their labs?

The answer, researchers found found resided in two common household products,

hand sanitizer and automobile antifreeze.

According to a survey published in the journal Invertebrate Systematics,

Inexpensive glycole-based automobile antifreeze,

and the same alcohol-based hand sanitizer that we're all toting around bottles of now

can each preserve bark beetle DNA for a week,

making them appropriate substitutes for lab grade preservatives.

During the study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of Florida,

33 Ambrosia beetles were left for 2 to 7 days in either 95%

ethanol, the control, hand sanitizer gel, or propylene or ethanol-based automobile antifreeze.

The scientists set the samples outside where they would receive direct outdoor exposure.

Afterward, the researchers checked the beetle's intact DNA

and found that all methods worked equally well for preservation.

We spoke with etymology Sedonia Steininger, one of the study's authors,

who hopes that these results will help increase the number of citizen science projects and participation.

She said, this is great for citizen science projects, but also for researchers who may be out in remote locations

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