Sydney Currier

Sydney holds a BAS and MSc from the University of Windsor. Currently, she is happily merging her love of art and science as a member of the Canadian Science Publishing marketing team.

Visualizing science is all about the moment

July 14, 2021 | 5 minute read

Q&A with Peter Soroye

I created my first piece of scientific art as an undergraduate for a course called BioArt. Atop the stage of a microscope, I made a butterfly using bird feathers, and the fins and ear bones (otoliths) of fish. Because the fins had been preserved in a salty solution called RNAlater, when dry, they sparkled. I took a photo of my masterpiece, in all its grainy and out-of-focus glory, to mark the moment I discovered I could merge my two loves: art and science.

While interviewing Peter Soroye this memory came flooding back as I listened to him speak about communicating science in creative ways.

Courtesy of Peter Soroye

 

Peter is a PhD student at the University of Ottawa studying how climate change and habitat loss affect pollinators, especially bumblebees and butterflies. In a short conversation, his passion for conservation biology and the natural world is palpable.

Peter will be selecting the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Visualizing Science Contest.

Your work focuses on how climate change and habitat loss affect pollinators. What are the different ways you visualize relationships between the environment and pollinators?

As a pretty visual person myself, finding ways to visualize relationships well is really important for me in both the technical parts of research and the communication parts.

On the technical side, one of the things I love to use are maps. As a macroecologist, I’m often studying big-picture trends and patterns across the scale of continents, and it’s easy for all this to become a little abstract. I use maps to bring some reality back to these patterns, which helps me see where things are going well and where they’re going poorly. Putting names to these places helps bring it back to the biology and helps me figure out why things might be happening in these places. So, I love maps! Even recreationally, I love paging through National Geographic magazines and geeking out over their maps and the ways they use them to transmit information.

On the communication side of things, I like to think about the story of the places and organisms I study, to help me understand and illustrate their relationship with the environment. My PhD work has been focused mostly on bumblebees, so I’m lucky to spend a lot of time thinking of how adorable, thick, and fluffy these little creatures are. I think being able to describe these animals in way that people want to relate to them, helps to put people in [an animal’s] shoes and imagine how things like climate change and habitat loss are affecting them.

How do you incorporate creativity in your science communication efforts?

I really enjoy talking about science with people who are outside the traditional scientific community (i.e. not grad students or ex-grad students!), especially because I think it forces you to talk about science without using jargon or the conventional language you might use in conversation with colleagues or at conferences. I’ve had a lot of amazing experiences talking to friends and others who are interested in science and conservation, but not to the extent that they want to do research or follow the literature on it, and it’s always fun talking about my research or related science with them.

Even when I’m teaching science, I generally try to stay away from unnecessary scientific jargon, and I sometimes try to relate my research or scientific concepts to current cultural events. Once I guest lectured for an ecology course on co-existence and competition, and I compared this to Cardi B and Nicki Minaj beefing in a rap battle (and for the record I’m huge fans of both but Nicki would take that for sure). I think making analogies and metaphors like that when teaching can bring relevance to things and help people connect with the content, and from the feedback I got from that ecology lecture, that example really helped the concept click for some of the students. Forcing myself to communicate in more unconventional and creative ways also means I need to understand different parts of the material a lot better, which is helpful whether I’m teaching or talking about my own research.

I also really love incorporating creativity by adding in photographs and videos. I love nature photography as a personal outlet and a way to share the dope things I see and the dope places I am able to go to. And I think an eye-catching photograph, whether it’s a cheetah in South Africa or a black-capped chickadee from my apartment balcony, can pique peoples’ interest in the story of these animals, and the science behind them.

Cheetah in Kruger National Park, South Africa | Peter Soroye

What do you think is the most important thing someone should consider when taking a photo of wildlife?

I’ll start by saying I’m no expert, I’m still very much an amateur wildlife photographer with much to learn! There are a lot of great guides and models for photography that I use as resources, and Instagram is such a great place for following real professionals to pick up inspiration and techniques. One of the most important things for me that I think of when taking a photo is trying to capture a moment or a story in each image. My favourite photos are the ones where you feel like you can tell a little bit about the character of the animal, whether it’s a bird tilting its head with an inquisitive look, or an insect contemplating a leap off a leaf. Photos like this always put me into the shoes of the organisms and the scene, and I love that feeling.

Ultimately though, I think the best wildlife photo you can take is the one that you love! I have a lot of blurry, out-of-focus, phone camera pictures from years ago that are objectively terrible, but that I love because I can remember the exact moment of taking them and how excited I was to be in that moment. To be honest I still take plenty of blurry, out-of-focus photos because I get too excited seeing a cool bird or gorgeous butterfly, but I’ll never be mad about that because enjoying those short moments with wildlife is still (and hopefully always will be!) the best part about wildlife photography for me.

Small red insect considers a leap into the unknown, North Bay, Ontario | Peter Soroye

The Visualizing Science Contest celebrates research moments, created and captured in visual forms.

Header image: Bombus ternarius on Manitoulin Island, Peter Soroye

Disclaimers: Some of the questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Canadian Science Publishing.

Updated August 18, 2021

Sydney Currier

Sydney holds a BAS and MSc from the University of Windsor. Currently, she is happily merging her love of art and science as a member of the Canadian Science Publishing marketing team.