This week Team Shrub is doing our first social media takeover.  We’ll be hosting Real Scientists on Twitter!

To read about our three primary tweeters this week, check out the Real Scientists blog post.

Here are some quotes from the post:

Real Scientists is diving into the fascinating world of northern ecosystems with Team Shrub! That’s right — we have THREE scientists on deck this week! Team Shrub (@TeamShrub) is the lab of Dr Isla Myers-Smith (@IslaHMS), Chancellor’s Fellow in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. She’s joined by PhD students Gergana Daskalova (@gndaskalova) and Elise Gallois (@e_gallois).

A bit about the three of us from the post:

Welcome to Real Scientists! How did you get started in science?

Isla Myers-Smith: My parents were ecologists, so you could argue that ecology is the family business. My parents have always been my most important scientific mentors. Even though my own career has led me in new directions, whether it was counting tent caterpillars or finding sparrow nests, my parents provided the foundation and inspiration for my own scientific career.

My love of the Arctic was first inspired by a family trip to the Yukon and time spent on the tundra when I lived in Alaska. There is something magical about the lands beyond the treeline that has always captured my imagination. Being up North and watching sometimes dramatic change play out before my eyes has captured my scientific curiosity. In my research, I want to figure out how tundra ecosystems are changing as the climate warms so that we can better predict the future of our planet.

What does your work involve, and where does it take you?

Gergana Daskalova: Way back in sixth grade, a friend of mine said she saw a woodpecker over the weekend. I got intrigued and read a bit about woodpeckers, went to visit my grandpa in the countryside hoping to spot one, and then kept returning to the village for the birds, the nature and the garden. In ninth grade looking through a guide of uni degrees, I stopped at E — for Ecology — and didn’t look any further.

I am a global change ecologist — my work focuses on how the variety of life on Earth — the planet’s biodiversity — is being altered by land-use change, climate change, land abandonment and other types of environmental shifts. In my work, I harness the power of the recorded observations of hundreds of scientists and volunteers to find the answer to the question — how does global change influence biodiversity? From forest cover change around the world to climate warming in the Arctic and more, I am studying how the world’s ecosystems and the millions of species they support are changing over time.

What keeps you motivated and what do you want the public to know about your work?

Elise Gallois: The Arctic is warming at a much faster rate than the global average, and this warming is triggering potentially huge landscape changes including widespread accelerated plant growth. While this sounds like a ‘good news story’, these changes have the potential to further alter the climate system even more as a greener Arctic will absorb more of the sun’s heat. I think the public should care about these processes because what happens in the Arctic does not necessarily stay in the Arctic, and also because the tundra ecosystem is really cool and misunderstood!

I love writing and performing stand up comedy! I’ve recently started performing ‘science comedy’ — stand up sets about my research. I believe that communication is a core skill for all scientists, and that where possible, scientists have a duty to disseminate their research to multiple audiences in order to educate, inform decision making, and inspire change — especially within fields as pressing and as pervasive as climate warming and global ecosystem change. As such, I dedicate time to pursuing different forms and media of outreach.

This week on Real Scientists, we’ll tell you a bit about our research about how ecosystems and different plants and animals respond to global change in the Arctic and all around the world. We’ll share with you some of our scientific findings, fieldwork adventures, the joys of analysing data, our collaborative approach to science, our lives as scientists and maybe a bit about being a scientist under lockdown.

The plan is: Today – Intro to the team, Monday – The greening Arctic, Tuesday – Global biodiversity change, Wednesday – Diversity in data science, Thursday – Scientific storytelling, Friday – Fieldwork adventures and Saturday – Ecology in a changing world.

Let us know if you have any questions or topics you want us to cover this week! Looking forward to sharing our science.

Here’s hoping our social media take over is a success!

by Isla, Gergana and Elise