#2017MMM: An Example of Multimedia Scientific Communication

I wrote this to fulfill one of the requirements of the 21st Century Scientists Science Communication Certificate at University of Illinois. The certificate is geared toward graduate students, but open to postdocs too! If you are interested about it or have any questions, feel free to e-mail me or tweet me!

To observe a science communicator, I observed March Mammal Madness, which is a public engagement project started by Katie Hinde. Since its inception in 2013, March Mammal Madness has grown into an international event with a large team of scientists sharing the planning and execution of this month-long outreach endeavor. The concept is modeled on an NCAA tournament, with different animals competing against each other in a bracket. Data on each animal’s size, habitat, and fighting abilities are used to generate probabilities of each winning, and randomness is introduced in selecting the winner of each outcome. Higher-seded animals get the advantage of competing within their own habitat in the first rounds, and in the final rounds, habitat is chosen at random. The scientific team then develop a narrative surrounding the battle that incorporates facts gleaned from peer-reviewed sources, and then live-tweet the narrative of each battle. After each set of battles, the tweets are documented via Storify and posted on Hinde’s blog and the March Mammal Madness Facebook page.

My 2013 Bracket--I think this was my first selfie EVER!

 I originally participated in the first March Mammal Madness in 2013. Back then, it was on a smaller scale, and it seemed that it was just for a bunch of animal biology nerds to have some fun with March Madness. Since then it has grown exponentially, and some educators now build classroom curricula to coincide with March Mammal Madness. This year, the organizers made the bracket selection available to educators early to plan curricula, and over 200 educators took advantage of this. The scientific planning team has now expanded to include eight scientists narrating the battles. Additionally, a scientific illustrator creates accompanying artwork, two additional scientists tweet facts about the individual species, and the American Society of Mammalogists and Cleveland Museum of Natural History tweet facts and images. This year, #2017MMM began with additional fanfare, including an outreach event at Arizona State University and a green-screened theatrical version of the wild card battle. Additionally, fans have created their own blog or video recaps.

I’ve followed along March Mammal Madness every year, but my interest often wanes. Each year, I start out following enthusiastically, but lose interest as my favorites become eliminated. This year, I intended to follow the entire tournament. I was especially invested in this years’ battles, as my favorite animal and study species, Geoffroy’s spider monkey, was a competitor. One of the great strengths of March Mammal Madness is that it’s easily adaptable to needs of different educators and interest groups. In the past, my participation was for fun. However, I have colleagues that used it in teaching undergraduates and high school students. For some, it was a fun teaching opportunity that they could incorporate for extra credit. For others, they could build a curriculum around it. Many scientists and educational organizations now use it as an opportunity to share facts about their study species. This year, in addition to incorporating it as one of our lab’s social activities, I wrote a blog post about the spider monkey’s shot at the championship and took advantage of the spider monkey battle days to tweet pictures and fun factoids about spider monkeys. And, since many scientists enjoy trash-talking the competition, I took advantage to share pictures, facts, and some trash-talk about a fellow primate competitor, the white-headed (or white-faced) capuchin monkey.

Capuchins are cute, but seriously, they are little punks!

            The drawback of March Mammal Madness, however, is that it’s so drawn out, and keeping up with the live-tweets is time-consuming. The first week, each battle day took about three hours to live-tweet—for a total of approximately nine hours a week. Despite my best intentions, I didn’t have the time or energy to spend following the live-action, so I ended up focusing on tweeting and following the action on days when the spider monkeys competed, and caught up the next day with recaps and Storify. However, while they were useful summaries of who won/lost, reading through the Storify can be tedious, and I imagine for those that aren’t familiar with twitter, it may be hard to follow.

            While the spider monkeys made it to the final four, they were beaten by the honey badger, and as usual, my interest waned once my favorite was eliminated. While, March Mammal Madness is fun, and a great opportunity for educators to introduce mammalian biology and behavior, I think it’s hard to track over the course of the month unless you are very invested. In our own lab group, I did my best to provide updates, but by the end, none of our lab’s undergraduates kept up and tabulated their brackets. Nonetheless, I think it’s a great resource for elementary school teachers, who can take advantage of the early brackets and associated information to build their own lesson plans around the mammalian competitors. This year, it received a large amount of media attention, including articles in Gizmodo, NPR, and other outlets, and the media interest indicate it’s become an incredibly successful outreach effort. The lessons I’ve learned from March Mammal Madness are that 1) public engagement can and should be fun, and 2) building a recurring, large-scale public engagement project requires a lot of initial investment, but requires a larger team to be sustainable.

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The Science of Sex Differences: It's Complicated (and Biased).

UPDATE: An updated version of this  was published at This View of Life. Head over there to read it!

There's a lot of discussion about the problematic Google manifesto, and one of the issues that's brought up is the science of sex differences. Part of the problem is that it's easy to cherry-pick evidence to support your own biases. Based on research on young chimpanzees, I could claim that humans have an evolutionary basis for females to be tool-oriented and males to be more socially-oriented. But it's actually quite harder to truly understand human sex differences because we still don't have the data to fully understand them. 

If you only know a little bit about human biology, it might sound simple. XX or XY? Ovaries or testicles? Estrogen or testosterone? But in reality, there's a wider range of developmental possibilities.  Development of sex-typical traits isn't just determined by the sex chromosomes, but is guided by multiple pathways that start in the womb, and continue through adulthood. For example, individuals with androgen insensitivy syndrome (AIS) may be XY, and produce androgens such as testosterone, but may develop female-appearing or intersex genitalia due to lack of functioning androgen receptors. Furthermore, the actions of any given hormone is interdependent on many other hormones, proteins that bind to them, and enzymes. For example, testosterone plays a role in male sex drive, but only because its converted to estradiol in the brain. Hormones can also have somewhat paradoxical effects. For example, administering oxytocin, a hormone associated with social bonding, in experimental settings can make people more trusting, but it can also make them more xenophobic. But most importantly, hormones are calibrated to developmental environment and daily experiences, which means which we can't attribute anything we measure in adult humans to "just" biology or genetics.

So, biology is complicated. BUT, measuring biology is equally as complicated, and very susceptible to biases. The impact of these biases in shaping scientific  research was explained by Stephen Jay Gould in the Mismeasure of Man, and others (such as Marlene Zuk, Holly Dunsworth, and Ambika Kamath) have added to that. But we are still far from overcoming those biases. Biomedical research has only recently begun to require including female rodent models. Most of our understand of mammal biology and neuroscience comes from rodents, but its still largely biased toward understanding male rats. And most of understanding of human psychology and neuroscience is biased toward Western, Industrialized, Educated, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) populations. That means a lot of the science of sex differences is based on the norms of a limited set of cultures. Furthermore, the research process often requires weeding out 'outliers.' Imagine that you are researcher studying sex differences in personality in a population of university students. Are you going to include students who are intersex or trans? Probably not. Are you going include students who are gay or bi? Probably not. To get the nice, neat data you are looking for, your selection criteria requires omitting a lot of the variation that could obscure your results. And even the variation you do see at that stage is going to be shaped by the common cultural enviroment your participants were raised in.

There's an extensive body of literature on sex differences in children, but many of these are attributed to socialization. It's impossible to separate the impact of biological sex from the influence of gender socialization that begins from birth. There's a reason baby clothes are so strongly gendered--it gives people cues that impact how people respond to "girl" or "boy" babies. This makes it very hard for us to separate out out the impact of biological sex versus the impact of cultural socialization in shaping sex-typical behavior.

But one area in which we have growing evidence is in the impact of perceptions of gender (and ethnicity) in evaluating students and potential job candidates. Research indicates that simply switching a name can influence how someone is perceived. For example, candidates for a lab manager position with a female name are rated as less competent, and offered lower salaries, despite equal resumes. And manipulating the gender or ethnictiy of a name can influence the likelihood of getting a response from prospective supervisors. There's also research showing that class indicators help men receive positions, but decrease opportunities for women.

Add to that hostile or unsafe environments and harassment, and we can see evidence of cultural barriers to women's participation and advancement in some areas of science and technology. So why are these discounted? Quite simply, it all comes back to those biases. We all have cognitive biases, and they are shaped by our cultural environment. In the study examining candidates for lab managers, female scientists were just as biased as male scientists in evaluating female-named candidates. We can take steps in critically examining our biases and take steps to account for them in our research and hiring practices. But nonetheless, part of "overcoming" those biases is realizing that we can never completely overcome biases, and instead recognize how they shape the science that we do and the we way we evaluate the competency of the people around us.

To examine your own biases, check out Harvard's Project Implicit. For further reading on the role of hormones in development, I recommend Randy Nelson's An Introduction to Behavioral Endocrinology. For more background in biases in studying human traits, I recommend Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man.

Smart Sakis: A Spoonful of Termite Mound helps the Bitter Seeds Go Down

Captive Sakis at the Como Zoo

One of my academic siblings, Dara Adams, just published some interesting new research from Saki monkeys in Peru!

New Scientist has a nice summary, as well as accompany video, see feel free to check that out!

Saki monkeys are a Neotropical primate found in Amazonia. They are seed predators, which means that rather than ingesting seeds and passing them whole (like spider monkeys), their teeth and digestive system destroy the seeds they eat. This is a good way to get maximum nutrition from those seeds, but the seeds contain high levels of secondary compounds like tannins. Tannins are the bitter, astringent compounds that give coffee, tea, and wine their unique flavors, but high levels of tannins (much higher than we consume), can be toxic.  Other Amazonian seed predators, like parrots, eat soil with clay and high cation exchange capacity, both of which neutralize the toxic effects. Seeds eaten by parrots in the same region have tannin levels toxic to most verterbrates. If the Sakis are eating the same seeds, how do they cope with those levels of toxins?

Sakis eat termite mounds, which contains soil, clay, and nutrients. Adams and colleagues tested between two hypotheses: 1) Sakis eat the termite mounds because they provide nutritious minerals (like vitamins), or 2) to help counteract the potentially toxic effects of secondary compounds (like a detox supplement). If the soil they ate from termite mounds contained more micronutrients, that would support the vitamin hypothesis. If the soils contained that have more clay and and cation exchange properties, that would support the detox hypothesis.

They observed how long the monkeys ate termite mounds, which age/sex classes at the termite mounds, if there were termites present. They also collected samples from termite mounds that the Saki fed at, and compared to control soil samples and unvisited termite mounds.

About 2/3 of the termite mounds contained termites, and Sakis did eat termites at the active mounds. However, they fed from both active and inactive termite mounds, all age/sex classes fed on the mounds. Termite mounds did have higher levels of some minerals than topsoil, and those levels were similar in the both the Saki-eaten mounds and univisited mounds. The eaten- and uneaten-termite mounds did not differ in in clay content, but the termite mounds that were eaten had twice the cation exchange capacity. Adams and colleagues conclude that the Sakis are eating the termite mounds primarly because it helps counteract the effect of the tannins, supporting the detox hypothesis.

So basically, Sakis are wisely self-medicating with termite mounds to counteract the effects of their potentially toxic diet!

An important caveat: Adams and colleagues do not use terms like the "vitamin" or "detox" hypothesis--I use these terms only to simply the function of termite-mound eating. Also, humans are not seed predators, so we do not have the same need for detoxing. Most talk of "toxins" in human diets is pseudoscience, and unless you're eating some strange things that are not suitable for human consumption, you should have no need for detoxing!

Who Tells your Story?

Recently, there's been a lot of twitter discussion on the negative experiences of women in academia, and follow-up discussions on the experiences of POC and WOC in science.

These discussions dovetail with my current research, as well as recent research published by members of my lab.

Women in science experience bias, discrimination, and harassment, and these experiences are intensified for women of color.  Many of us know this personally or anecdotally. But we're at the stage where more of those experiences are being shared openly, and some personal and anecdotal information (which is so easily dismissed or denied by others who haven't experienced it) is being codified in peer-reviewed data.

But I have mixed emotions as I read others responses, and grapple with my own analysis of qualitative data on women of color's experiences. It's INCREDIBLY important that people contribute to these discussions. But in response to the concern that people might not want to share openly, there was an anonymous survey posted, so that those responses could be shared on Twitter. And something about that made me uncomfortable.

Often, we can only share those stories anonymously, because of the discomfort of bringing attention to our own experiences, or the fear of negative reprisals. BUT, I worry that when we report those eexperiences anonymously to others, we give away the power to tell our own stories. Storytelling has power, and those stories have power regardless of who's telling them. But I'm reluctant to tell my own stories in an anonymous way, because I don't want to give away agency over my own story.

This puts pressure on me to consider the way I report the qualitative data I've gathered from participants. Other people have entrusted me with their stories. How do I report on the emerging themes from those accounts while giving them full agency over their own experiences? This is a question I'm going to have to keep thinking about as I move forward in analysis and writing.

 But for my own stories I'm not ready to share many of my experiences openly on Twitter, nor do I want them to give them away to be told anonymously. I want to maintain agency over my own story, so that I can tell it on my own terms.

I highly recommend reading Ambika Kamath's perspective, I Have Forgotten. Also, in case you were under the impression that only underrepresented minorities experience discrimination in science, read RajLab's Anti-Asian Bias in Science.

Is that "cute" animal picture a depiction of abuse?

Behind the chimp-proof glass is former entertainment chimp Kendall (now in a social group at the North Carolina Zoo)

Cute animal pictures are the best part of social media.  But as a primatologist, there's also "cute" pictures that make me cringe. Every birthday there's at least one picture posted to my wall of an entertainment chimp fear-grimacing. And frequently, I have to be the killjoy explaining to someone why the picture or video they're sharing is problematic.

This happens too often. Today, the picture drawing my ire was an entertainment chimp illustrating a news story on the Science magazine website (though they quickly changed it when we raised concerns on Twitter- thanks @NewsfromScience for being responsive!). 

No one wants to be the killjoy ruining the fun. But if you understand the context behind the picture, it stops being a cute picture, and becomes a disturbing depiction of abuse and suffering. 

Several studies demonstrate that pictures of primates increase the belief that they are desirable as pets, or aren't endangered. And viral videos can increase demand for the illegal pet trade. 

So how do you tell the difference? Sometimes it's hard, but other times it's very simple. These guidelines are focused on primates, but apply to many wild animals as well.

1) Does the picture depict a primate dressed in human clothes, wearing makeup, playing with phones, or otherwise depicting unnatural behavior?

DON'T SHARE. These are tell-tale signs that the animal is in the entertainment industry, or a pet. In both these situations, animals are taken from their mothers at an early age, deprived of typical socialization, and often abused and mistreated. Occasionally there are exceptions (photoshop or monkeys grabbing phones from tourists), but these pictures can promote the idea that they are desirable pets.

2) Is the primate in an unnatural-looking setting?

PROCEED WITH CAUTION. Sometimes these are pictures of pets, or animals housed in a roadside zoo or pseudo-sanctuary. However, in other cases it might be animals in an unnatural-looking but enriching enclosure at an accredited zoo. For example, the bonobos at the Columbus Zoo have a very unnatural looking indoor enclosure, but they have a lot of fun climbing structures and varied enrichment.

Juvenile bonobo at the Columbus Zoo (where the enclosure is unnatural but enriching!)

3) Does the picture show an unnatural pairing (for example, a monkey and dog pair) that probably doesn't occur in the wild?

PROCEED WITH CAUTION. Some of these pictures may be unlikely friendships that occur in the wild, or in humane captive environments (such as zoos or accredited sanctuaries). However, exploitative roadside zoos and pseudo-sanctuaries put unlikely pairings together because it generates attention. See if you can figure out where it was taken before you share.

4) Does the picture depict a "wild" primate sitting on someone's shoulders?

DON'T SHARE. And more importantly, don't put yourself in this situation! These may be wild animals that are fed to encourage tourist interaction, or they may be captured animals that are abused and displayed for tourists. It's dangerous for both the animals and, and the humans, because primates can cause serious injuries and diseases can easily be transmitted between humans and primates (and Herpes B, which causes benign cold sores in macaques, is lethal to humans). 

5) Is the picture a gorilla splashing around in a giant kiddie pool at an accredited zoo?

SHARE AWAY! Provided it is a picture from an accredited zoo (context is everything), this is one of those situations in which the unnnatural setting provides a captive animal with a lot of fun enrichment!

Still have questions? That's okay, there's often a lot of gray area or lack of context. If you're not sure, but think it MIGHT be exploitative... err on the side on the side of caution and avoid the "share" button. And if you're not sure, feel free to ask a primatologist (if you tweet me @MARspidermonkey, I"ll give you my assessment)!

10 Reasons Spider Monkeys could be the #2017MMM Champions

Most of the winners of March Mammal Madness tend to be large-bodied, terrestrial mammals, so it might be easy to overlook a twenty-pound, arboreal frugivore. But don't let their small size, endangered status*, or predominantly vegetarian** diet fool you! They are fierce competitors!

So, here are 10 reasons why spider monkeys are awesome and have a real shot at being the #2017MMM champions.

Adult Female Margarita at Brookfield Zoo.

1. They are smarty-pants! They are highly encephalized, with very large brains for their body size. 

2. We've observed them using tools, and they have a number of social traditions.

3. They have self-control. On inhibition tasks, they perform comparably to chimpanzees and orangutans (and better than capuchins and macaques)!

4. They are speedy and FLY through the trees. I'm pretty sure that they only way I was able to follow spider monkeys is that they let me tag along.

5. They are ferocious killers. Seriously. Male coalitions engage in territorial raids and lethal aggression, and there are observations of infanticide as well.

6. Their prehensile tail assists in semi-brachiation, but can also be used as an extra hand. I used to know a captive spider monkey who would use her tail to check my pockets for hidden snacks. Their tail even has "fingerprints" (aka, dermatoglyphics) to help them grip!

Look at that those tail "fingerprints!"

7. Although they are highly arboreal and dependent on tropical forest, they can travel on the ground. When males engage in raids, they walk silently, single-file on the ground (just the way chimpanzees do on raids)!

8. Although there is limited evidence for this, reports from a re-introduced population in Barro Colorado Island suggest that they may swim short distances between islands!

9. They tend to be lefties, just like me! In humans, unexpected left-handeness can provide a strategic advantage in sports and competition.

10. They are so darn cute. Yes, I know that MMM is about combat, not a #cuteoff, but since animals use a variety of tactics to win these battles, surely charming the opposition is a legitimate strategy?

Infant male Judah (ca 2010). Isn't he the cutest?!

*Most Ateles species are endangered, but they range from vulnerable to critically endangered.

**Spider monkeys are predominantly frugivores, but in addition to fruit they do eat leaves, flowers, and insects. Most of the insects they consume, like fig wasps, are within the fruit they eat.

Science, Politics, and Remaining Sane in a Dystopian Wonderland

Right now, we're at a risk of entering a stage in US politics where the administration is explicitly anti-science, and anti-education. At this point, debates about whether or not scientists should engage in political activism are largely irrelevant, because science, education, and pretty much everything anthropologists do will be under attack.

The issue I struggle with is figuring out how to stay motivated, engaged, and actually make a difference. It's hard to stay sane when we're experience nationwide gaslighting. Since November 9, I've felt like we collectively fell down a rabbit hole and emerged in a ugly dystopian Wonderland where up is down and nothing makes sense anymore. As someone who values facts, evidence, and reason, it's a struggle to remind myself that I am still sane, when it seems like the world around us has decided to dispense with facts and reason.

But despite that, WE CAN'T GIVE UP. Nearly everything I care about is under threat, and we  have to fight to protect it. Here some of the ways of the Trumperdink* administration threatens the work I do:

*Many thanks to Cary Elwes for the appropriate nickname

• Under a Trumperdink administration, environmental protections will be dismantled, climate research will defunded and banned (and climate scientists may face persecution), and destructive resource extraction will increase. This will intensify the rate of global warming and ongoing mass extinction--and that's going to determinentally effect spider monkeys and bonobos and all the other primates I love.
• Under a Trumperdink administration, public education, both at the K-12 and universities levels, are going to be under assault. Betsey DeVos is anti-public education, and anti-teaching evolution. Teaching evolution is going to be under assault, so biology teachers, biologists, and anthropologists are going to face more obstacles to our teaching and our research.
• Women, ethnic and religious minorities, gay, transgendered, and disabled people are already facing increased risks of harassment and violence. As a women of color, I'm increasingly scared for my own safety. Since my newest research project is looking at stress and resilience in female scientists of color, this is obviously going to have an impact on our research participants, and they research itself.
• The biggest sources of scientific funding come from the government (NSF, NIH, NASA), and in an explicitly anti-science political climate, they are going to face even more cuts. 
• Public universities have been facing systematic budget cuts because states refuse to adequately fund them. The combination of lack funding sources, and lack of resources to hire teaching faculty, means the job market for scientists and academics is going to get even worse. It's already been difficult and grim. Right now, my future is very uncertain. And I fear the jobs in science and academia will dry up entirely, and staying in science will require competing for the few international jobs available. 

Add that to the fact that I am terribly afraid that we are heading down a dark road may lead to erosion of  our rights, and potentially genocide or nuclear war. I am afraid, it's been hard to focus on my work, and I feel divided between my desire to stay informed and remain politically active, and my need to stay sane and preserve my emotional energy for the upcoming years.

One of my biggest fears is that I'll give in to hopelessness and apathy, and that will pave the way for much worse. My biggest fear, beyond the fear of mass deportations, internment camps, genocide, or nuclear war, is that when it comes down to standing up for other people's rights, and protecting myself, is that I will choose the cowardly option. 

So for now, I'm going to focus on preventing us from reaching that point. I'm going to join the people who are standing up, speaking out, and mobilizing to protect us. I've been calling my representatives again and again, and we saw last week that this works. I'm starting to become involved in local grassroots political activism, and need to learn more about government at the local level. The past semester, in the 21st Century Scientists working group, we've been talking a lot about how to communicate science across political and tribal identities. I'm still struggling with finds ways to put this into practice, but a common theme we've been discussing is the importance of storytelling and establishing common emotional ground. I hope I can find ways to adequately put this into practice. 

Another way that I've finding hope and establishing sanity is reading quality journalism (like Teen Vogue!), and occasionally detaching from social media to read fiction.  I've been processing the current political situation is to think about so many of my favorite books, both fiction and non-fiction, that dealt with individuals facing oppressive regimes. 

Here are few really important pieces I've read online. I suggest that if you haven't, you should book mark some of these to read, and re-read, to keep yourself sane and motivated.

• Sarah Kendzior's We're Heading into Dark Times: How to Your Own Light In the Age of Trump
• Lauren Duca's Donald Trump is Gaslighting America
• Catheryyne Valente's The Beast's Who Fought for Fairyland
• Emma Maris's Is Donald Trump pushing more scientists toward political activism?
• Michael Miner's Jamie Kalvan: The Man with the Lantern

I've heard so many friends say that they're losing hope, or that they are coping with the political situation by disengaging with news and social media. Please stay engaged, and stay hopeful. Here's one reason to stay hopeful: the 115th Congress is the most diverse we have ever had. We still have a long way to go, but let's do our work to support them.

The women representing us (Shared from Rep. Cheri Bustos on Twitter)