— You once were part of the biology club at the Darwin Museum of the All-Russian Society for the Nature Conservation. How did you end up there?
— When I was a little boy, I was initially fascinated by dinosaurs, but that didn't lead anywhere... Then in sixth grade, I suddenly realized I really liked animals, especially birds. So I started asking about hobby clubs and study groups, what types were there? I was told about three then: the club at the Central Pioneers Palace, the Young Biologists' Zoo Club, and the Society for the Protection of Nature Club at the Darwin Museum. Initially, I went to the Pioneers Palace and spent two days drawing  an aquatic insect, a common backswimmer. And I need to say that I neither like nor am good at drawing. Also, since I have already heard about Durrell, I started asking when I could join an expedition. I was told that if I studied diligently and behaved well...

— And drew well.
— Yes! [Laughs] ...then maybe they would take me on an expedition in ninth grade. Then I started asking about the Young Biologists' Zoo Club and was told I had to pass an interview to get accepted. Since I have always disliked exams, I decided not to go there. In the end, I went to the Darwin Museum. The first lesson there was dedicated to dogs. And I must admit that dogs... I wasn't very fond of them back then, or I was rather scared of them. However, the club leader and chief curator of the Darwin Museum, Pyotr Smolin, was a truly unique individual. The lecture was so entertaining that I thought “Wow!”. If he could talk about those dull (as I saw them) animals in such a captivating way..... Then, after the class, everyone went out on the porch to chat. I started asking if I could join a trip to some nature reserve or an expedition. They said, "Of course, why not! However, you're unlikely to go anywhere alone yet because you don't know anything, but if you gather a couple more people or join someone, Pyotr Petrovich, or PPS as we called him, will write a recommendation, and you'll go wherever you want." So that’s how I went to the Oka Nature Reserve.

— What were classes like at the club?
— If I remember correctly, there were classes every weekday except Tuesday, and on weekends we would go on field trips and watch birds. I almost stopped studying because I was always in the forest. After eighth grade, I wanted to transfer to a biology school. I was studying at an English school then, which I was fortunate enough to get into.
When I came to apply to this school — and I had already been on another expedition by then — they told me they needed people like me. However, then they asked to see my school grades and changed their mind, I was told they didn't need people like me. I was readmitted to the English school with great difficulty.

— This is my first time meeting a biologist with such a story!
— Yeah, well... Because I didn't study well, I didn't get into university either. We had an average pass grade, and mine was 3.32, "the price of expensive port wine", as I used to say. In the end, I was drafted into the military. When I returned, I took advantage of the "system for fools” as we called it, and went to a rabfak. You pass an interview and are automatically admitted to the preparatory department, where you repeat the school curriculum. And when you finish it in a year, the rule is that if you pass the exams successfully, you can automatically get into the first year at university, even before high school students pass their exams and compete for the vacant places. A success was a 3, that is, anything above a 2 (though by then I was already doing well grade-wise). That's how I ended up at university and then graduated.

— You enrolled at Moscow State University, correct?
— Yes. I believed back then that only Moscow State University could provide a quality education. I enrolled in the biology faculty and graduated from the department of vertebrate zoology.

— What field did you major in? Was it the birds you loved so much?
— I was always studying birds indeed. However, you know, ornithologists have always had it tough, and besides, I was somewhat interested in other things too. I didn't want to do pure faunistics... For instance, as a student, I studied birds of prey in Kalmykia, specifically the steppe eagle from the hawk family (Aquila nipalensis). It is believed that the steppe eagle is a classic example of a stenophagous species that only eats grond squirrels. However, I then started reading a lot about it, and one fact surprised me. In some places grond squirrels hibernate for eight months. Males reproduce and go into hibernation. Females raise the young and, when their offspring grow up a bit, also go into hibernation. But the steppe eagle needs to eat something, right? This was very puzzling and very interesting to me. In addition, another distinctive feature of this bird is that it nests only on the ground. We [my research team and I] went to Kalmykia and found that more than half of the nests — we found almost 60 — were in fact in trees. And it turned out that there just weren't any trees in the places where the steppe eagle usually lived. Due to Stalin's plan for greening the steppes, they planted lacebark elms as windbreaks in the 1940s in Kalmykia. Consequently, these elms grew up, and the steppe eagle began nesting on them without any trouble.
That was the kind of research I wanted to do, more ecological ones. Then I was told about a place run by Lev Dinesman, who studied the history of ecosystems in the Holocene. So I went there. It was a basement on Voykovskaya, an hour-and-fifty-minute walk from my home in Yasenevo. As I was making my way there, I thought to myself, "I'll talk to him but won't immediately agree, even if I like what he says! I'll say to him, 'I'll give it some thought and get back to you.'" However, when he explained what they were doing and asked if I was interested, I instantly said yes!

— Could you please tell me about your lab. What do you do there?
— We run a historical ecology lab. We study the history of ecosystems over the past 10,000–12,000 years, specifically during the Holocene epoch following the last ice age. Lev Georgievich introduced a principle that I greatly appreciate, and we uphold it — in our lab, professionals from various fields work together. This is uncommon not just in Russia but internationally as well. Our lab comprises palynologists, botanists, zoologists, dendrochronologists and other. We work on sites together, which allows us to discuss our findings.
Generally, in science, being a "narrowly focused specialist" is much more advantageous for an individual. You become the sole or one of the few scientists capable of answering a specific question. I had a conversation with a friend of mine who studies a relatively exotic group of organisms. I said, "Wow, you're doing great!" And he replied, "Yes! I'm ranked third in our country!" I was impressed, and he added, "Although, you need to keep in mind that there are only three of us." Naturally, it's quite convenient. You work solely for yourself. You're not dependent on anyone else, and overall, things are much simpler for you. Managing a large team, on the other hand, can be quite challenging. We can assemble a complete puzzle because each method reveals a different aspect of the subject, though.
Let me give you an example. We are conducting research in Mongolia, studying caves and peat deposits. From the bones in various layers of these deposits, we noticed that the number of desert animals is increasing. This suggests an aridification of the desert. On the other hand, our study of the peatland shows that moisture and precipitation have actually increased. How can this be? To get a more comprehensive picture, we used other methods and discovered that people had started overgrazing, which destroys the sod, leading to the formation of shifting sands. These sands, in their turn, became the habitat for the creatures we find. So, this entire desert is a man-made formation. We have many such examples.

— Could you elaborate on the methods you generally use? You must have a vast array of them.
— Did you come here for a whole week or something? [Laughs]

— We really can’t do that in five minutes, can we?
— Let's try! So, the primary method is radiocarbon dating, which is essential for determining the age of discoveries. However, it has its challenges because science is always advancing, and accelerator mass spectrometry is now considered cutting-edge technology. There are over 100 such laboratories worldwide, but in our country, there is only one facility in Novosibirsk, which has just started operating and is already overwhelmed with work. That's quite unfortunate.
Currently, our institute has a device that can identify stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen. Their ratio can help us understand what animals ate and how their diet changed over time. Sometimes, interesting stories emerge. For instance, the Chukchi and Eskimos (Inuits) have a legend about predatory walruses known as keglyuch. According to the legend, they hunt seals and occasionally humans. A person can be walking along the shore, and a walrus suddenly leaps out and drags them away. So, we went there and analyzed the isotopes of a large series of walrus bones. One bone from an adult was identical to that of a polar bear, which primarily feeds on seals. So, the keglyuch  from the legends turned out not to be a walrus at all. You can measure anything, bones, plants, any biological objects. And non-biological ones too — like oxygen in stalactites and stalagmites to determine how the temperature has changed. It's an absolutely fantastic method! And the best part is, it's not that labor-intensive and quite affordable.
Of course, we use a full range of botanical methods, such as spore-pollen, on dung, on peat bogs, and on buried soils. By the way, there is another interesting story associated with the latter!
There is a cave called Shanidar in the Erbil Governorate in Iraq. A Neanderthal boy was buried there and covered with flowers. How did scientists figure that out? They found a large amount of immature plant pollen and assumed it was part of a ritual... but in reality, the immature pollen indicated that the scientists had analyzed animal feces. The child was buried in a cave, which animals frequently use. And since animals love to eat flowers (because they're high in calories and tasty), their feces naturally contain a lot of immature pollen. Archaeologists aren't too fond of this interpretation because it's one thing to bury a boy and cover him with flowers and another thing to bury him, pardon me, in a pile of dung.

— But was he really buried in feces? That sounds rather illogical...
— In reality, they buried him in the loose deposits that were in the cave. Naturally, everything there is quite small already, but if we sift it carefully through a sieve, we will surely see whole fragments of feces. An article about this boy was published in Science. It's quite old, from the 1960s. It includes a drawing of the spots where samples were taken, mostly around the child. In fact, the results still need to be checked! I ask my students how we can tell if a child was covered with flowers or buried in compost, pardon me again, and there is almost always someone who says, "We should just take samples at a distance, some three to five meters from the burial site." And if the result is the same, then the answer is, alas, obvious!

— You're like Sherlock Holmes. Analyzing clues, solving puzzles...
— That's exactly what we do. We're constantly solving mysteries. For example, archaeologists recently gave an interview. We were working in the Fayum Oasis (Al Fayyum) in Egypt, where the body of a boy with a sack over his head was found in an ancient Coptic cemetery from the first century AD, essentially the time of Christ. And this boy was lying in a pit filled with 142 dogs. The remains were wrapped in papyrus, like a string...

— What's the story with the dogs?
— There were dogs, their bones, whole pieces of fur, and lots of puppies — over a hundred in total. You find a small bag, open it, and find inside one whole puppy, half of a second puppy, two paws of a third puppy, and a paw from a subadult dog. Or you find an adult dog, its lower jaw tied to the skull. But it's tied backward, and the jaw itself is from another dog.

— That sounds like a horror movie, to be honest. But what's the meaning behind all that?
— We started looking into it. It's an oasis, but the cemetery is located not within it but rather in the nearby sands, approximately 500 meters away. Some of the bones are coated with clay, and it's evident that flies have been eating them. The hypothesis is that there was a dog breeding facility in the oasis below. Then a flood occurred, causing all the animals to drown. The remains were left untouched for a while, partially devoured by flies. Then, presumably because those were ceremonial dogs — there must have been a reason people were breeding them, after all — they were gathered and bound as per tradition. There are numerous known burials where animal remains were wrapped in linen and bound with string. Additionally, we looked at the ages of those puppies and discovered they had two age peaks separated by one-and-a-half to three months. Female dogs can't reproduce that quickly . If this was a breeding facility, then, like with many other animals living in groups, their reproductive cycles must have synchronized. Given the two peaks, it seems likely that there were two separate breeding facilities!

— You have so many intriguing stories about the past. But why do we need to reconstruct all this history of animals, nature, and ecology in the first place?
— Firstly, it's fascinating. What essentially is science? It's the fulfillment of personal curiosity at the expense of the state, as Soviet physicist and academician Lev Artsimovich used to say. Secondly, we need it to make the right decisions. Say, the number of certain animal species has decreased. What's the first thing that comes to mind? "Let's establish a massive nature reserve! Let's list this species as endangered, and everything will instantly be fine."

— We'll rescue everyone!
— Yeah, we'll rescue everyone. Except we won't. In fact, in some cases, we'll make things even worse. There is a very illustrative study on the Pechora-Ilych Nature Reserve. Its staff counted elks. Then they created a nature reserve, and the elk population started to decline. This happened because the taiga began to regenerate, and the elk doesn't like dense forests.

— So, by studying the past, we can formulate present-day strategies.
— Exactly!

— Your lab has a fascinating name , the Laboratory for Historical Ecology. Not "paleoecology", as one might expect.
— Yes. Although we do use paleontological methods and could have easily named our lab "The Laboratory for Paleoecology". But when you mention paleoecology, everyone immediately thinks about dinosaurs or at least mammoths. So we chose "historical ecology," even though it's not entirely accurate. But then again, why not? We study contemporary ecosystems. Few species have gone extinct during this period, except for Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), a mammal of the Sirenia order we're currently studying intensively.

— I believe it's even featured on your lab's logo.
— It so happened that in 1991 I visited the Commander Islands and participated in the excavation of Vitus Jonassen Bering's grave. Among other things, we collected over 50 Steller's sea cow bones and dated them.
Before, people used to think that as soon as Bering's expedition discovered these islands, hunters started arriving and exterminated the cow. But based on our dating, we found out that a significant population decline had already started by the time Bering's expedition landed on the Commander Islands. It should also be said that this was the so-called Little Ice Age. Even Steller himself noted that cows were injuring themselves on ice. Steller's sea cow was simply unlucky that we discovered it when it was already on the verge of extinction. By the way, geneticists have already reconstructed its entire genome, and it turns out the cow was essentially as good as dead at that point.

— So Bering witnessed a near-natural process, right?
— I think so. Perhaps it would have survived the Little Ice Age if it hadn't been "finished off", or perhaps not. History knows no "if". These are the questions we try to answer, but not always successfully. For instance, how did the mammoth fauna go extinct? There are two theories. One blames climate change, and the other blames human interference. According to Paul Martin's theory, when humans crossed the Bering Strait into America and quickly moved from north to south, they wiped out a lot of species. A similar process also happened in Europe. However, then there are examples like the Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus). In Ireland, it went extinct about 400 years before humans arrived. If it had survived a little longer, everyone would have said, "See, humans arrived, and the elk immediately went extinct!" However, I'm sure that's exactly how it will be eventually. They'll find an older human and a younger elk, and everyone will erroneously exclaim, "See?" Meanwhile, the Irish elk survived until 5,000–6,000 years ago in Siberia. And there were humans there.

— As I understand, you frequently visit the Commander and Aleutian Islands. What draws you there? What makes this region so fascinating?
— You know, the Bering Sea is like a boiling pot. It's like fish soup you can eat with a spoon! There are auks, colonies of birds, walruses, seals, and whales! There are a plethora of interesting things. The Commander Islands are an extraordinary place for fossil research. Firstly, as I mentioned, there are the remarkable remains of the Steller's cow. And last year, we discovered a massive amount of spectacled cormorant (Urile perspicillatus) bones on the islands. Two species have become extinct in the North Pacific in the last 500 years — the spectacled cormorant and Steller's sea cow. And while there are dozens of Steller's cow skeletons and thousands of bones, the situation with the cormorant is somewhat different. Until recently, there have been only five poorly preserved specimens in museums around the world and a handful of about fifteen bones. And we've found about 500 of them! This is a unique material that we'll be researching.

— Do you remember your first expedition to the Commander Islands?
— My first expedition turned out to be quite amusing. I was working in Chukotka, right next to Cape Dezhnev. There were lots of bird bones there, which is rare in those parts. And in 1991, I wrote a letter to the USA, addressed essentially to no one. I just gave it to one of my friends who was supposed to go to a conference in the U.S. and asked, "If you see anyone with bird bones, give them this letter. Because I'd be very interested in connecting with someone from Alaska." After all, there was no Internet at the time as we know it now!

— Did you succeed?
— Yes. At the conference, my friend met a theriologist who knew an ornithologist working in the Aleutian Islands. His name was Douglas Causey, and he was a representative of the Arctic Research Foundation. After some time we got in touch, and Douglas came to Moscow. I brought him to our lab and showed him our findings, and he said "Cool! These are excellent bones!" I said, "Fantastic! Then come work with us in Chukotka." And he said, "You know, I don't really want to go to Chukotka." Thank goodness, I thought to myself. Because bringing an American on an expedition is by no means easy. Then I asked him if he wanted to go to Alaska, and he said no. There is a tradition among archaeologists... I assumed it was a Russian thing, but it turns out it's universal. If an archaeologist starts excavating a site, other archaeologists can't touch it as long as this first archeologist is alive. Otherwise, it's considered bad manners.

— So it's a code of honor of sorts.
— Something like that. Or you need to ask permission. So Douglas said, "We can't, as long as the archaeologists working there are still alive. How about you join us on the Aleutian Islands, Arkady?" And I said, "Let's go!" And so we set off for the Aleutian Islands.
The first expedition to the Aleutians was in 1994, and it was quite the saga. The thing is, there are no locals on these islands, as they were all relocated to the mainland during World War II. And when the war ended, people were only brought back to the easternmost part of the islands due to logistical challenges. As a result, the only place we could reach was an airbase to the east of the Aleutians, and that's where we went. And, believe it or not, I was the first Russian to set foot on the islands in a century. The locals were utterly clueless about what to do with me. They assigned a guard to me and said, "You can't stray from them." And we were supposed to go to the neighboring uninhabited islands by boat. They put me and an American student behind the helm. Long story short, the boat's engine failed, and we were swept out to sea. Can you picture that? It's the second day since the first Russian arrived...

— And he has already abducted an American student!
— Exactly! We had walkie-talkie radio sets, and we were signaling for help, shouting, "Mayday! Mayday!" But all we got was silence! We were adrift for 12 hours. We also had this inflatable Zodiac boat with two small oars, one of which broke rather quickly. So we were completely helpless.
There was fog all around. But I got lucky again because a Coast Guard plane had just arrived. There were also three ichthyological vessels four hours away, heading for Seattle. They were redirected, or rather, at some point they responded to our distress signals and asked where we were. I replied, "I don't know where we are, but we're drifting north." They said, "Let us know when you hear any sounds or see something, like a plane or a ship." "Alright," we said. And sure enough, ten minutes later, a plane flew overhead. "A plane just flew over us," I radioed. That was the last thing I said that they heard because the batteries in the walkie-talkie died.

— Poor student, he must have been terrified!
— The student was having a meltdown. He was a big young man who naturally started to panic, "We're going to die! Why did they send us here?" I could tell he was losing it. I pulled the second oar closer to me, just in case. Interestingly, I started telling him all sorts of scary stories. And surprisingly, it seemed to calm him down. I told him, "I once was on an expedition where someone got attacked by a bear." And he seemed genuinely relieved.
What else did I do to calm him down? I said, "We're drifting north towards the Bering Strait. Russian archaeologists are working there. We'll give them a shout as we float by, and they'll rescue us." That also seemed to calm him down, because he didn't realize it was 3,000 kilometers away.

— So, how did the story end?
— In the end, we were rescued. After that, we were left at the airbase and prohibited from going to the uninhabited islands. That's how our first expedition ended, quite an amusing one. And the main thing that it was a start of our more than twenty years cooperation with American, French and Japanese scientists in the Aleutian Islands – first of all Dixie West and Ginny Hatfield – excellent archaeologists and our good friends!

— That's definitely something to remember... So, you've been working in your field for a while now. It's undoubtedly facing some changes. What technologies are currently in vogue?
— The latest trend we're actually trying to explore is working with ancient DNA. And now there is not just ancient DNA but environmental DNA as well! In theory, you can scoop up water from a pond and identify the species of fish and frogs living there. The same applies to ancient species.

— From an evolutionary perspective, are miniature insects dead ends? Or do they exist long enough? Clearly, large mammals represent an evolutionary dead end. In every order, occasionally someone emerges, grows larger, and doesn't survive for long after that. Parthenogenesis is also a dead end. Parthenogenetic species appear in many orders, but they don't live long. As for miniatures, can we examine molecular phylogeny to see how far back the current branches extend? Or do creatures become smaller and smaller until they eventually die out?
— I think they are more likely not a dead end because many of them have been around for a very long time. For instance, there is an entire order of thrips that originated in the miniature class. This is a very ancient order, and they continue to exist without going extinct. They once specialized in extracting individual spores and adapted their mouthparts, size, and everything else for this purpose. Then, they secondarily became herbivores, predators, and so on. Some of them have even grown significantly larger than their ancestors.

— Are machine learning technologies impacting your work in any way?
— We've been contemplating this for about thirty years now. We're particularly interested in pattern recognition. We've even started using it with sea urchins (Echinoidea). We recently bought a treadmill and modified it to move slowly, effectively turning it into a conveyor belt. Sea urchins have a feature called a rotula, a mouth apparatus located deep in the food opening, also known as Aristotle's lantern. Aristotle once said, "Oh! This thing looks like a lantern," (an ancient one, of course) and that's what it's been called ever since. You can tell the size of the sea urchin by its rotula.

— Do you mean you can tell it by looking at the size of Aristotle's lantern?
— Yes. It's all quite straightforward. And since our dating of sediment layers ranges, tentatively speaking, from 5,000 years ago to the present, we can take this "lantern" and observe how the size of the urchins has changed. Then we compare how the climate has changed, how much ancient people harvested them, and so on.
But in theory, this can be done automatically by placing a camera above the treadmill and instantly determining the size. My brother is a mathematician, and we're currently brainstorming how to implement this. The main challenge here is technical, as all the sediments need to be in one layer.
In general, many people are trying to create 3D models and algorithms so that you can take a picture of a bone, compare it to a 3D model, and have the analyzer tell you what it is. But we don't know of any successful examples. We need quality samples, as we say, from all age and gender groups.

— That's a lot of good bones!
— Yes, and they need to be diverse to capture all this variability. In general, we always talk about this, and someone is always asking if it has already been done. And we say, "Well, guys, it will take a tremendous amount of time..." Besides, such a device would only be needed by a couple hundred extremely interested enthusiasts. And the rest will say, "Yeah, looks fun." And that will be the end of it.

— Of course, without mass demand, it's hard to expect success. But I love the treadmill idea! This is the first time I've heard of it being used that way.
— Yes. I love that idea too!

— Very well. Time for one last question I traditionally ask scientists. What is your scientific dream?
— To continue my work. I've only just started to understand something. I've barely scratched the surface, but I'm not getting any younger. That's the most heartbreaking part. I've only just started to grasp it all, and I'm already out of time. I look back at what was 30 years ago, and it feels like it was practically yesterday. I wish I could look 30 years into the future... But of course, I can't count on that anymore.