I recently attended the DISCCRS symposium for recent PhDs of a wide variety of disciplines whose work (past or present) deals with climate change. The week-long meeting was phenomenal, seeding me with thoughts, ideas, and basically making me feel quite good about the work I’m doing (if also very pessimistic about how society is dealing with Climate Change). Perhaps one of the most interesting exercises of the whole thing was something we had to do as a sort of getting-to-know-you. We had to present our dissertation in 7 minutes.
That’s right. 6 years of blood, sweat, and tears in 7 minutes. Oh, and for a totally non-specialist audience.
I thought this was an amazing challenge. Granted, I only ended up really presenting on 3 of my chapters (see papers below). But I really liked the results.
Apologies for the sound quality – the acoustics of the room were pretty bad. Props to The Urban Matador for some sound editing. And malaprops to me for not annunciating or projecting as much as I usually do. Bad scientist. Bad! Bad!
Also, please note that this is with a particular emphasis on how our work relates to climate change.
Byrnes, J., Reynolds, P., & Stachowicz, J. (2007). Invasions and Extinctions Reshape Coastal Marine Food Webs PLoS ONE, 2 (3) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000295
Byrnes, J., Stachowicz, J., Hultgren, K., Randall Hughes, A., Olyarnik, S., & Thornber, C. (2005). Predator diversity strengthens trophic cascades in kelp forests by modifying herbivore behaviour Ecology Letters, 9 (1), 61-71 DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00842.x
Byrnes, J., & Stachowicz, J. (2009). The consequences of consumer diversity loss: different answers from different experimental designs Ecology, 90 (10), 2879-2888 DOI: 10.1890/08-1073.1