Flying start to science fame
RECITING Dr Seuss and imitating bird calls has led to national recognition for a Deakin behavioural ecologist.
Onstage at the national finals of FameLab earlier this month, Andrew Katsis, a PhD student with Deakin University’s Centre for Integrative Ecology had only one prop — a replica of the tiny egg of the zebra finch — and three minutes to impress the audience with his research.
And impress he did, being declared the runner-up of Fame Lab Australia 2017 for his presentation on how zebra finch parents communicate with their unhatched embryos.
FameLab is one of the biggest science communication competitions in the world, run annually in Australia and over 30 countries around the world. International finals are held in the UK, where the competition was first launched in 2005.
According to organisers The British Council, the contest aims to help early-career researchers build valuable skills in communicating their work to a non-scientific audience.
While contestants are encouraged to use props, slide presentations and scientific jargon are not allowed.
Mr Katsis’ finals success was even sweeter, considering his research kept him so busy he nearly didn’t submit his initial entry video on time.
“I was in the middle of my experiments when entries were due, so I ended up recording my submission in the bird aviary just as the sun went down on the last day,” he said.
Mr Katsis explained that his research focuses on pre-natal learning in zebra finches, a small Australian songbird found across most of the Australian mainland.
Previous work by his PhD supervisors Deakin’s Professor Kate Buchanan and Dr Mylene Mariette revealed that zebra finches use a specific call during incubation to warn their embryos about the heat they will face upon hatching.
Mr Katsis is investigating how hearing this incubation call affects chicks’ development once hatched.
“We know that the chicks alter their development after hearing the call while still in the egg, but we don’t yet understand what mechanism drives that change,” he said.
“My work is exploring the effects of prenatal sound on nestling begging behaviour and cognition. Understanding these adaptations can help us predict how birds might respond to climate change and rising temperatures, even if this particular behaviour isn’t necessarily climate change related.”
While studying birds, Mr Katsis has also developed a love of science communication. He writes a blog at andrewkatsis. wordpress. com and is Life Science editor for online science magazine Lateral.
“FameLab gave me a platform to tell people about my research and how amazing zebra finches are. That was really appealing,” he said.
An early encounter with emu chicks on his parents’ farm sparked Mr Katsis’ love of birds as a child, a passion cemented by David Attenborough’s The Life of Birds television series.
Watch Andrew’s FameLab performance at: https:// www.australiascience.tv/vod/ famelab-2017-national-finalpart-1/