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08/12/2017

The Botany Bake Off (2017 edition)

Cakes and baking have always been running themes in the Botany Department here at TCD. This year, members of the Department have turned things up a notch for the second ever Botany Bake off! The rules were simple; bake something that represents your research or work in the department. The stakes don’t get higher than this…

This cake represents the research of Prof. Jennifer McElwain using fossil leaves to reconstruct the evolution of the earth’s atmospheric composition and climate over millions of years. The leaves around the edge are of the Ginkgo tree. The pattern on the cake top shows what these leaves look like under a microscope. The ‘molecules’ on top of the cake represent the CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere around the plant leaves.

This cake was presented by Dr. Laura Russo to represent her research in the food webs of pollinators. The apple pastry roses represent different plant species, depended upon by various fondant pollinator species! Continue reading “The Botany Bake Off (2017 edition)”

29/11/201721/06/2019

What happens to animals when their habitat burns?

When you live in Ireland, it’s easy to forget that a good proportion of the world’s ecosystems regularly burn. In many regions, plants and animals have evolved to tolerate or even rely on fire. My recent paper investigates the factors that drive the success of an Australian gecko after fire. I found that the geckos were healthier after fires because of the availability of lots of prey, showing that these feeding relationships matter for a species that thrives after its forest burns. Continue reading “What happens to animals when their habitat burns?”

20/10/201418/02/2019

Nature jargon

At a recent meeting on “Natural Capital”, Jo Pike from the World Forum on Natural Capital drew our attention to a “sustainability jargon buster” that they developed last year. Jo has a background in communications and highlighted an important point: if we are to conserve and sustainably exploit the environment, we need a common language. Ecologists can’t always agree on terminology amongst themselves but when we try to talk to economists and businesses to try and convince them of the value of the natural resources, conversations and actions can be frustrated by jargon and our opposing academic backgrounds.

How do we ever expect the general public to engage when we are thoroughly confused ourselves?

As part of a first year undergraduate module, members of the public in Dublin were interviewed to find out what they know about biodiversity and ecosystem services. People were asked 3 questions:

what do you understand by the term “biodiversity”?
do you know what “ecosystem services” are?
do you think it’s important to maintain green space in urban areas?

Only 12% of respondents could give a complete correct definition of biodiversity and 28% had no idea what biodiversity was or had never heard the term before.

Even fewer people knew what ecosystem services were, with 23% of respondents giving a correct definition or defining them as “something nature does for us e.g. food/air/water”. Nearly half (48%) had no idea what ecosystem services were.

Despite this lack of understanding of the jargon, 74% of respondents answered that urban green space was essentially important and only 4% said that it isn’t at all important and that we should leave green space for the countryside.

So let this be a lesson to us – be clear, be concise and be consistent.

Enough said.

Author: Jane Stout, stoutj[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit: http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+eschew_obfuscation_small_framed_print,579649105

24/12/2012

The 12 days of NERD club

NERD club, for the uninitiated, is a weekly meeting of the Networks in Ecology/Evolution Research Cluster Dynamic of the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. We present and discuss our research and also general aspects of academia such as science communication, job hunting and using twitter. The members include interns, PhD students, postdocs and both junior and senior faculty, so it’s always full of interesting research and heated debate! Essentially, it’s my favourite hour of the week, so as it’s the festive season and I’m in a festive mood, I decided to write a Christmas song for NERD club.

It’s to the tune of the 12 Days of Christmas. It’s also not very good, but I had time to fill on the train…

“On the 1^st day of Christmas the NERD club gave to me…

parasites in a fractal stomach

On the 2^nd day of Christmas the NERD club gave to me…

curious bluetits

and parasites in a fractal stomach

On the 3^rdday of Christmas the NERD club gave to me…

debates about twitter

curious bluetits

and parasites in a fractal stomach

[And so on until]

On the 12^th day of Christmas the NERD club gave to me…

a million chocolate fingers

specialist pollinators

ecological stability

mixed effects models

test tubes full of glitter

cryptic flowerpeckers

bats living longer

poisoned honey-bees

news on seminars

debates about twitter

curious bluetits

and parasites in a fractal stomach!”

Merry Christmas everyone! See you in the New Year (provided I survive the hippos – see Keith’s hippo-critical post last week).

Natalie Cooper

@nhcooper123

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons