Hey listeners, we are so excited to bring you this episode. It's an interview with Dr. Jessica Ware,

who is a dragonfly and damselfly expert. In this episode, we talk about how dragonflies have

changed from prehistoric times, because they've been around for like 400 million years.

And we also talk about how you could maybe even discover a new species of dragonfly.

We spent a lot of the summer looking for new species and we didn't find any, but we did think

of some really cool names for dragonflies, including cool factus about animalists. I wonder what

you could name your dragonfly species if you found one.

Anyway, we really hope you enjoy this episode.

It is a little bit longer than our usual length, but I just couldn't stand to cut any of it

because just everything that she was talking about was so super cool.

So we hope you enjoy it.

Here's the episode.

Thank you so much for agreeing to speak with us for our podcast.

We're very excited.

Oh, super.

It's always fun to talk about insects.

But we're hoping you can start by just introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about yourself.

Oh, sure. So my name is Dr. Jessica Ware, and I am an evolutionary biologist and an entomologist.

And what that means is that I use evolutionary tools like DNA analysis, as well as looking at what the body type and body shape are of insects so that I could try and understand how they evolve, when they evolve, where they evolve. In particular, I'm mostly

interested in dragonflies and damselflies, in termites and cockroaches. I'm really interested

in how they've been around for quite some time. Winged insects have been around for about 400 million years or so.

And so I try and use these different tools to figure out, you know,

...