Words matter: how we engage others to care about invasive species with Emily Steele and Phil Anderson

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:07

Welcome to another episode of the everyday environment podcast where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Amy Lefringhouse,

Erin Garrett: 00:16

and I'm your cohost, Erin Garrett.

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:19

And today we are here with our friend, Emily Steele. She is the media communications manager for Illinois Extension, and we're so happy that you're here. She's gonna talk to us a little bit about communicating about invasive species. So welcome, Emily. We're so happy to have you.

Emily Steele: 00:37

Oh, I'm so glad to finally be here. I have been part of this team, it feels like, from the start, and I'm so glad to to be able to speak today about invasive species.

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:48

We know that you've done a ton of work on invasive species and a ton of work on invasive species communications. You've been behind the scenes and really integral in helping us with this in everyday environment series, our podcasts, and our blogs. You're a huge part of our team. And now you're on as a guest. So tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself, about what you do, and your background and everything.

Emily Steele: 01:15

Yeah. Sure. So like you said, I'm part of the Illinois Extension State Marketing and Communications team, and I work specifically with our natural resources, environment, and energy staff across the state doing all their great work. And my background is actually journalism, and then I went and got my Master's in natural resources and environmental sciences because I wanted to do science communications. Because one of the big things we know in the science world is that there's all this amazing research happening, but sometimes it doesn't get to the public.

Emily Steele: 01:45

It kinda, like, lives in academia. And that's the big thing about Extension. We are that connection point between research and universities and the people in the world that are actually putting it into practice. So that's something that I'm I'm really passionate about. And, when it came time to figuring out what I wanted to do for my Master's project, my capstone project, I was having a hard time narrowing down topics.

Emily Steele: 02:11

And then I read some research that Extension forester Chris Evans had done about garlic mustard. And that is an invasive species that can be really widespread and problematic in forested areas, and it was the perfect meeting of two ideas. Right? It's a problem that anyone can address, and there's a lot of research about how you manage it, and there was a disconnect between people getting all that information. So I created some videos and tutorials and how to identify the plant, how to manage it, a website. And I learned a lot in the process of doing that about invasive species as well as, like, how we talk about them and and how that matters and encouraging people to to manage invasive species.

Amy Lefringhouse: 02:54

You're so good at that too, Emily. You you really do a good job bridging the technical with in bringing it down to a level that the public can understand and utilize, you know, when when they're trying to look for solutions to their problems. And during this episode, we also have another guest. We're doing something brand new during this episode where we're having two people come on. And we do also have Phil Anderson, and he's with University of Illinois.

Amy Lefringhouse: 03:25

And he's gonna talk to us a little bit about an example of a really creative example of how he has communicated during an education event about invasive species. So we'll welcome him later on in this episode.

Emily Steele: 03:40

I'm so excited that you're talking to him because he does fantastic work. I actually mentioned his project and his lab in my blog. So if you haven't read the blog, that's my shameless plug to go read the blog about this podcast.

Erin Garrett: 03:52

You mentioned your capstone project and how we focused on garlic mustard. And let me tell you, if you go to our website and look up garlic mustard, you'll be blown away by the amount of resources and information that is there. It is amazing. So we're definitely gonna link that in the show notes for folks to check out. But if that's an invasive that you're currently trying to manage, we've got the resources to help with that.

Amy Lefringhouse: 04:16

Definitely a full suite of resources there.

Emily Steele: 04:19

That's the goal.

Erin Garrett: 04:21

Well, speaking of garlic mustard, we've chatted before, Emily, and you've shared a little about a story, maybe where some communications about an invasive garlic mustard kind of went unexpectedly, not the way you thought. You wanna share that story with with our listeners, and we can we can chat a little bit about, you know, maybe why that happened.

Emily Steele: 04:40

Yeah. Yeah. It was a friend of mine I was talking to after I finished my Master's project, and I was telling him all about garlic mustard, and I was so passionate as people in the environmental world are. Right? We get on a topic, and we're like, let me info dump on you. And then I get to the end, and I'm like, ah, so excited. Hopefully, he gets it now, and he goes, garlic mustard. I bet that's pretty tasty. And I go, oh, no. Oh, no.

Emily Steele: 05:05

Is that the takeaway? So it was very humbling, and it was a reminder that communication is a two way thing. Right? Like, even though I think I'm explaining something thoroughly, maybe someone doesn't get it. And it got me thinking about what the connection point is with people when it comes to understanding the impact that invasive species have.

Emily Steele: 05:25

And, honestly, a lot of the times, people aren't going to take action until they actually see the impact, which is oftentimes too late when it comes to invasive species, right? Because they take over very quickly in an area, and it's way easier to prevent an invasion of garlic mustard if there's only a few plants as opposed to, oh, it's taken over an acre of your forest. And so that got me thinking a lot about, like, how we talk about it and why that matters. And it wasn't until a few years later, and he knew I worked on invasive species that he came to me. He's like, hey. We've got this tree in our yard. I think it's called tree of heaven. And I was like, oh, no. Here we go. But suddenly, it was that firsthand experience with tree of heaven, which is another invasive tree. It's really difficult to get rid of for many reasons. We talk about it on our invasive species website as well. But yeah, it's not really until people get that firsthand experience that they suddenly understand the impact, but that sometimes is too late.

Erin Garrett: 06:21

Yeah, but that's a good point too, in that a lot of the work that we do in Extension is just getting people to have that first moment of awareness. Right? And so a lot of the times, like you mentioned, like, we're so ingrained in the world of invasives that we're like, everyone knows what they are. Everyone knows that it's a problem, and it's really overwhelming. We have to step back and be like, actually, no. Like, there's a lot of people that have no idea what we're talking about. And the way that we go about having that first piece, that first introduction, like you talked about, is like really integral. Right? To like, the success of them being, I don't wanna say excited, because I'm not really excited about invasives but like intrigued and like interested in maybe doing something about it.

Amy Lefringhouse: 07:07

I also think the names of invasive species that we've attached to them sometimes can make people go down a different path. Tree of heaven, garlic mustard, you know, those are things that are, you know, very, I don't wanna say tangible, but, you know, intriguing, I guess, to people, and they might get stuck on that part, just the name that you're talking about, and then, you know, can't kind of see past just that part. So I don't know, again, just the importance of how we're communicating and how we're making that, like you said, first impression on people and getting them getting them interested, intrigued.

Emily Steele: 07:49

Yeah. Common names are sometimes, they don't do us any favors. And I talk about this in a little bit at the blog, but there's some initiatives where organizations are working to change the common names of certain invasive species for whatever reason to better reflect that plant, its country of origins. Maybe there was a derogatory term used in naming that plant somewhere along the lines, and now we know better, so we're doing better, and we're renaming those plants.

Erin Garrett: 08:15

Yeah. Exactly. There's definitely a lot of changes on that front, which is really great to see. But I've also heard people, it comes to spotted lanternfly, which we'll talk about a few times on this season, they're like, oh, it's so pretty. Mhmm. And I'm like, yes. It is. It's beautiful. But we don't want it here. Mhmm. Or, yeah, tree of heaven. That sounds great. Like, we we want that. Right? But, you know, that's the first step. You got you got a little interest. So how can we build on that? Right?

Amy Lefringhouse: 08:43

Mhmm. Once maybe we've got people interested and we're we're talking to people about how what they can do on their own properties or how they can take action sometimes can be, you know, challenging. So what strategies do you see that actually work when we're trying to motivate the public to manage invasive species in their own spaces, whether it be garlic mustard like we were talking about, or maybe others like bush honeysuckle?

Emily Steele: 09:13

That is such a good question and an important one when we're talking about invasive species because invasive species, by their nature, they thrive in a lot of places. In Illinois, in particular, we know that 98% of the land is privately owned. So for people to take care of invasive species, we have to encourage private landowners to manage those invasive species and to take action. And sometimes even public landowners because everyone's busy. Right?

Emily Steele: 09:43

There are so many things that are taking everyone's time. And so we have to look at invasive species through the lens of human behavior because they are actually an introduced problem. Right? They are species that have been introduced to an area by people either intentionally or unintentionally, and so it's kind of our responsibility to deal with them now. And as with all wild things, like, plants don't acknowledge property lines.

Emily Steele: 10:10

Right? Like, they're gonna jump from your neighbor's property to your property and from your property to a natural area where they can do a lot of damage. So I think it's one of those things where we have to do a lot of work in understanding how people think about the environment. We talk a lot about attitudes and values when it comes to people and how they care about the environment. And this is where we kinda get the merger of psychology and marketing techniques that kinda come together because marketers are so good about influencing behavior.

Emily Steele: 10:45

Think about, like, commercials you see. And so there are tactics we can take from the marketing side and then the psychology side of understanding human behavior and merge them together in a way that we can use when we talk about invasive species. So one big thing mark marketers like to do is called a value appeal or an emotional appeal. If you can get someone to feel something, and it can be a positive emotion or a negative emotion, if you can get them to laugh or be angry or smile, you resonate with them. Your message connects with that person.

Emily Steele: 11:18

And so when it comes to invasive species, what we want to do is kind of think about the impacts that those invasive species have. And I think a lot of times we struggle with that. We just come in and we say, oh, bush honeysuckle's bad. Remove it. But people need to understand why, and some of that's understanding that, well, if you don't remove bush honeysuckle, your property that you're planning on passing on to maybe your kids and your grandkids, there won't be a forest there in the future if you don't remove that bush honeysuckle now because those young trees won't come up.

Emily Steele: 11:50

So just thinking about why people care about the land that they manage. Maybe they're managing it. Maybe they're harvesting it for timber. Maybe they're hunting on it. Maybe they're they're fishing on the pond that's on their property. Right? So talking about all the ways that they care about that property and then using those as a segue to encourage them to take action on that.

Erin Garrett: 12:14

Yeah. That's a really great point too. And then just you already kind of listed out. There's a lot of different motivations that people could have. Right? And so taking the time to pick through and see how an invasive could impact however someone is interacting with their land. Right? And, like, there's so many different implications for having that invasive that could resonate with lots of different groups of people. It could be viewing wildlife, it could be hunting, like you said, it could be, you know, the value the actual physical value, monetary value of your property, right, moving forward, and different appeals will work with different people, which, of course, makes it really hard to do general messaging, but we know that, you know, you have to appeal to different people in different ways.

Emily Steele: 13:03

Yeah. This is where, like, it's helpful to have one on one conversations. So, like, if I'm talking to my neighbor about it, and I've got a lot of bush honeysuckle on in the trees behind my yard, and I took them out of my space, and I chatted with my neighbors who I'm really friendly with, and I was like, hey. Like, I noticed you've got a lot of bird feeders out, and there's all this bush honeysuckle back here. It's invasive. These birds are actually spreading the seeds everywhere, and they're not able to get the use out of the forest. Do you mind if I go in there and cut it out for you? And their their lot's fairly small, so it's not like a huge endeavor for me to do that. So I I preface that saying this won't work for everyone, but they were like, yeah. Sure. No problem. And so that actually helps me in the long term. Right? But you just gotta gotta be friendly with your neighbors, and that doesn't obviously work in every scenario, but it's it's that one on one approach.

Erin Garrett: 13:50

Yeah. That makes me think of my example, which is a little bit different, but we have we live next door to an apartment building, and so trying to find the owners of the apartment building is really challenging, but we finally did because there is this crepe myrtle tree, right? I'm like far down in the South. There's a crepe myrtle tree which I'm not concerned about, but it's completely covered with tons of invasives. Like, I can't even count.

Erin Garrett: 14:15

We've got privet, honeysuckle and they just mow around it and it's this big terrible eyesore. So we took that approach and we said hey this doesn't really like we don't find that this looks that great and there's a crepe myrtle tree under here do you mind if we clean it out for you and like remove all of this like weedy material? And they were like, yeah, that's fine, go for it. And so I went check, that's the first step, we'll get to maybe the Nandina that's planted in front of the building next, we'll move on to that one, but like I got the first step in the door, right, and and have that conversation, and that was just like, hey, this really doesn't look that great, do you mind if we do something about it? And they were like, yep. So we didn't even have to get to like, the invasive step either.

Erin Garrett: 14:57

So there are lots of different ways, right, or different motivations that people have, things they care about, things they don't care about. Like, I don't care if you clean that up, that's fine, it doesn't matter to me, right? But then it helps me get rid of all the invasives that are right around my property, which is one of my goals.

Emily Steele: 15:12

Well, and it it kinda goes to show there's this term called green blindness where people look at nature or trees or a prairie, and they're just like, yeah. That's a tree. They can't identify that tree, but I'm a big bike rider, and come spring, I'm ready to be out there. And one of the first things that leafs out in the spring is bush honeysuckle. So I'll be riding on our local bike trail, and everyone's like, oh my gosh. It's so green. It's so nice. And I'm like, I'm gonna be the fun killer. I'm gonna tell you what that is. And but that's but once you know it, that's all you can see.

Erin Garrett: 15:43

Mhmm.

Amy Lefringhouse: 15:44

And I wonder about that too, Emily, from a communication side of things, like emerald ash borer is very you know, you can see the impact of, you know, lots of us in our communities, in our towns, and maybe even in our yards, you know, those big beautiful ash trees that you've depended on for a long time in your yard, and and now they've had to have been cut down. How often, you know, do communicators use some kind of like, I don't wanna say poster child, but something like that where you're like, okay, know, emerald ash borer had a, you know, very negative impact, you know, using that as kind of an example for, that's why we need to kind of pay attention to something else before it gets so far along, like something like emerald ash borer, you know?

Emily Steele: 16:36

Yeah. I could see that being an effective example because unfortunately, there are a lot of invasive species. Like, emerald ash borer was a great example. I remember that taking over the news. I grew up in the Chicago area. I remember that being all over the news growing up. And then we've got the suite of Asian carp now, big head carp and grass carp and things like that that we're dealing with that are in Illinois rivers. And so, yeah, I think there is a valid case to make when you, like you said, a poster child. But I think there could be a danger there too of like because they're all so different. Their impacts are so different.

Erin Garrett: 17:12

It's easy to get overwhelmed for sure. And I know like when I was first starting out in the field of invasives, I was like, let's just put some effort in. We can like hand pull all these and make a difference. Like, come on. Why are we not like doing that? And it's like, okay. Well, problems are beyond that scope, Erin. Like, you need to calm down a little bit. That's not practical. But it is also, like, not everything is the most destructive, worst thing that we can have.

Erin Garrett: 17:41

Even among invasives, we, you know, have already chatted a little bit about what an invasive is on this season, and, know, not everything that's non native is invasive. That's the first line. That's the distinction. Right? Is that there is ecological economic harm caused by invasives, but not all invasives are the same in the amount of harm that they cause or even across the state where they're like the biggest problem.

Erin Garrett: 18:05

So you definitely do have to like prioritize and think about each invasive in each situation. It's really like there's no easy answer. But what you said does point out too that like our words matter, of course. And a lot of the times, a lot of the language that we used to talk about invasives in the past and still now is really like fear based language. Right? I'm sure we can all think of examples of when that's backfired and not gone according to plan. Whereas if we focus on more positive specific, species specific, or location specific messages, those can help inspire action. Thinking on that realm, what approaches do you suggest we use when communicating about invasives that have more of that, like, positive spin?

Emily Steele: 18:55

Yeah. I think this is something we've all been thinking about, and you do see it in the news. Like, if you, I don't know, just do a quick online search for spotted lanternfly, a lot of the articles that pop up are the war on the spotted lanternfly or or things like that, this militaristic language. And I think that was a tactic. I think that maybe even and this is me speculating.

Emily Steele: 19:20

I don't have anything to, like, point this to, but maybe that's our own fear coming out. We're scared of how these invasive species are affecting our natural areas. And so to encourage people to act, we're, like, using words like destroy and, like, war on and things like that. I mean, even as we were just talking about it, it's easy to get very overwhelmed when thinking about invasive species because each one can have a different detrimental impact. And, like, I can look out my window right now and see at least two, and it's we're recording this in December.

Emily Steele: 19:53

But I think or and and this is a tactic in a lot of environmental communications and the work that we do here at extension that there has to be hope in the work that we do and how we talk about it. And there's a lot of research out there that shows, and I I linked to a study in the blog that talked about this, but, like, conservation efforts are making an impact. Right? They're improving biodiversity, which is what we want. When a forest or another ecosystem has rich biodiversity, it's more resilient when changes happen, or it slows the declines of this biodiversity.

Emily Steele: 20:26

And when you target your efforts, so when you focus your time and effort so we have the Master Naturalist program within Extension, and there are some volunteers. Their bread and butter, what they love to do is just invasive species removal days, and those have an impact. They allow the the ecosystem to to fight back when you are able to remove and manage those invasive species. So just have hope that your work is actually making an impact. I think and we touched on this a little bit, like, recognizing that there is not a one size fits approach when we're talking about invasive species.

Emily Steele: 20:59

Every species is different. Every community is different. Every site is gonna be different. So, like, you gotta do a little work to think about, like, where you are, what people care about in that area, and just kinda dial in because we only have so much time and effort and money to invest in things like this. So let's try and use some strategies that are hopefully gonna make an impact.

Emily Steele: 21:23

I think another thing when we're talking about hope when it comes to invasive species is that there's this term in the industry called early detection and rapid response. Right? That we unfortunately have enough experience with invasive species that we know once they take hold, it's it takes a lot of time and effort to remove them. But if we get out in front of it, we're able to slow that invasion down a little bit. So we could see this approach being used right now in the Chicago area. Right? Spotted lanternfly was first discovered there September 2023, and there was this big awareness campaign. News media were pulled in. Extension's part of it. A lot of different agencies are.

Emily Steele: 22:03

And we kinda have an advantage in spotted lanternfly because they started on the east coast, and they've been slowly moving into the midwest. We've seen what strategies work, and we've seen the news stories of videos on the east coast where there's just swarms of spotted lanternflies, and people are going around, like, maybe stomping on them or things like that. And so now we've got this great built in citizen response reporting system where people see a spotted lanternfly, take a picture of it with their phone. Thank goodness for smartphones. Everyone's got a camera on them now.

Emily Steele: 22:34

They could even, like, pinpoint where exactly they are in a Google map and then report that. There have been so many sightings reported to I think it's IDNR who's monitoring it in Illinois. I can't remember off the top of my head. But there have been so many reports that are then followed up by scientists who go out, inspect the site, and are able to say, no. That was just kind of a one off insect that got here in someone's car or something like that, or no, this is actually a small population that we want to remove. So have hope that new invasions can be removed.

Emily Steele: 23:05

Another thing when we're talking about invasives is be specific and be accurate. Right? Like, you have to provide trustworthy information. We live in the age of AI where there's a lot of generated videos and images out there. We live in an age where there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. So, like, just make sure that when you're sharing information and we're great about this at Extension. Right? We are a research based institution. If you get information from us, you're gonna trust it. So just kinda lean into that.

Emily Steele: 23:36

We talked earlier about emotional appeals. People will care about invasives if they affect things they care about. Right? Like, do you like hunting, bird watching, mountain biking?

Emily Steele: 23:46

Do you like forging for morels in the spring and other mushrooms? Do you like just going out and sitting in a beautiful space, right, thinking about the ways people engage with the environment and talking about them through that lens? And then talking about the impact if we don't act. Right? If you don't remove that invasive species, what's gonna happen?

Emily Steele: 24:05

That tree's gonna die. The understory native wildflowers aren't gonna come up in the spring because they're not getting light because the light's being blocked out. So really kinda drilling down and thinking about the impacts and the consequences that'll happen.

Erin Garrett: 24:20

When you shared the example of all the green and everyone being really excited to see all the green in the forest in the spring, I wanted to say, but there could be a different kind of green if you had all the spring ephemerals that were able to come up if we didn't have all of that early springtime shade. Right? That was making it where they couldn't thrive in that environment too. So we could still have the green. It's just a different kind of green and the green that we want.

Emily Steele: 24:44

Well, and that's a good point too because there's a bit of separation sometimes between people and the environment. We think of the environment as separate from us, not that we are part of the environment. And so a lot of people will see a forest and look at it and have that green blindness, and they don't understand why it's cool that you've got oh gosh. What are those early forest bloomers? They they're like umbrella leaves.

Erin Garrett: 25:07

Mayapples.

Emily Steele: 25:08

Mayapples. Yeah. I get so excited when I see a mayapple. But there are a lot of people who don't have that experience.

Emily Steele: 25:14

Right? They don't already have that connection with the landscape. So the work that we do in extension with younger generations as well, connecting them with green spaces and being like, hey. This is really cool when you can identify a plant, or this is really cool when you can just have an experience out in nature. And let's not underestimate those as well because when people care about nature, they take care of it.

Emily Steele: 25:38

Oh, that feels like that should be on a throw pillow somewhere.

Amy Lefringhouse: 25:40

I know. I was just that reminded me. I started to read John Muir's book, Our National Parks, and he talks a lot about when people love something, they will take care of something. When people are in nature, when they experience nature, they will, you know, take care of that. So, yeah, see Emily, you're like a new age John Muir.

Erin Garrett: 26:04

I love it. That quote came up in a meeting, I was just in earlier this week, watch out, it's probably gonna be the podcast title.

Amy Lefringhouse: 26:12

That's great. Well, think, Emily, I think one of the things that hits me most, and I think what we're trying to do this season is just keep the hope, you know, invasive species can be overwhelming and really tough kind of subject to continue to talk about over and over again. But keeping those positive messages, sharing I know when I talk to folks, get when they get really overwhelmed, it's nice for them to hear about others that have had success, you know, good success stories where other landowners have been able to do this, to be able been able to, you know, work on and kind of fight back whatever invasive species they're working on. So those messages of hope and positivity, I think you're I I think that's one of my big takeaways from, you know, all of the strategies that you lined out there for us.

Emily Steele: 27:12

underestimate, like, a success story being an opportunity for catalyst for change. Right? If you your neighbor's able to remove it from their property, tell people about that, and then show them, like, before after pictures. Right? Like, this is what it looked like here. This is what it looks like now, and then this is what it's supposed to look like, and this is why this is important. That's why I'm always telling people when they're out doing programming or on invasive removal days, get photos. Right? Happy people. They've removed, like it's honestly impressive how much garlic mustard is actually a really easy plant to remove in the spring. So on garlic mustard removal days, you get volunteers with tons of bags. If you go out and participate in something like that, I guarantee you'll leave feeling good about what you did.

Amy Lefringhouse: 27:57

Absolutely. And being able to, you know, take care of it on your own property or your family's property, your friend's property as well. Yeah. It takes away that, like, anxiety about where do I even start? You you now you know. Now you've been a part of it.

Amy Lefringhouse: 28:11

Well, think, Emily, if you don't have anything else to share with us, I think this is a good time to wrap up this part, but we're going to transition and talk to Phil, and he's going to we talked about kinda like success stories or different ways in communicating. Phil Anderson has had a really great example, a real creative example. So we want to welcome Dr. Anderson.

Phil Anderson: 28:34

Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Amy Lefringhouse: 28:36

I read your bio. I looked you up, read your bio, Googled you. It looks like your research in your lab at U of I focuses on evolutionary biomechanics. Probably something that we could talk a whole separate podcast episode about. But recently, you have been using cosplay or and you can tell us more what cosplay is. But you've been using cosplay to communicate and educate about invasive species and to communicate science in general. So that's not something that, you know, typically we associate with science. So tell us how this really cool creative project came about.

Phil Anderson: 29:21

The way it came about, and I I wish I could sit here and be like, hey, this was my idea. I originated this. I did not. This came about because I became involved with a group. It's a nationwide group at this point based originally out of southern California called Cosplay for Science.

Phil Anderson: 29:38

And they were founded back in 2017. Okay. And then it took them a while to sort of spread outside of that region. I became aware of them at the scientific conference I normally go to, Society of Integrative Comparative Biology, every January. Somebody, a professor from Middlebury College, was doing a presentation on a project he does in his entomology course where the students put on a Poke pop up museum.

Phil Anderson: 30:06

Okay. It's like a science fair, but all the students dress up as Pokemon trainers. And kids from the community come, and they learn about entomology sort of through talking about Pokemon. Because it turns out the guy who writes Pokemon is a huge bug nerd.

Erin Garrett: 30:20

Mhmm.

Phil Anderson: 30:21

And a lot of the Pokemon are not just based on caterpillars. They're based on a specific species of caterpillar.

Erin Garrett: 30:28

Mhmm.

Phil Anderson: 30:28

So they teach things about, you know, all sorts of insect physiology and evolution through this medium. And I thought this was amazing. I've been, you know, for ten years at Illinois trying to look for something I could do for science outreach that I enjoyed. And so I talked to them afterwards and said, I don't know a lot about Pokemon, but I'm a big tabletop role playing game nerd, a big Dungeons and Dragons nerd. And if you look at there's a book for Dungeons and Dragons called the Monster Manual, which has got all the creatures that the game the guy running the game can use.

Phil Anderson: 31:03

A lot of times, they'll put in little things about the ecology or the life history of these fantasy creatures. And if you read that, you'd swear someone on the writing staff has a biology background. Because they pull things in from biology. So that's what's what got me thinking about it. And in in a more general sense, the purpose of cosplay for science has been, if you do traditional scientific outreach in places like museums or libraries, you can get a good crowd. Mhmm. It's gonna be people from the general public who are already engaged in science. Like who are already have buy in to science as being interesting.

Amy Lefringhouse: 31:43

Mhmm.

Phil Anderson: 31:44

So how do you get a hold of all the people in general public who don't feel that way? In particular, and you know, we all know this as scientists, we're often viewed as being kind of ivory tower, snobbish to an extent, sometimes out of touch with sort of normal normal people. But when you dress up in a costume from something like Marvel comic movies that people already love, they see you as a fan. They see you as much more approachable Mhmm. Because you're enjoying something that they enjoy.

Phil Anderson: 32:18

And so it's a way of kinda breaking down those barriers. And I should say this so cosplay is a portmanteau of costume play. If you've ever seen sort of photos or videos from like the New York Comic Con or San Diego Comic Con Mhmm. And you see the people dressed up as Iron Man or dressed up as Captain America, that that's cosplay.

Erin Garrett: 32:39

I love the inspiration. I'm really excited about that because, like, my stepson's really into D and D and he's really into Pokemon. So I'm like, all these ideas are like so cool. You're right, finding that different way to engage with people and kinda meeting them where they're at. Right?

Erin Garrett: 32:53

Like, that's kind of how we've changed everyday environment, especially with our, like, social media presence to have more videos to, you know, reach the people that aren't necessarily interested in the science or interested in natural resources, but we might be able to reach them in a fun way, right, with an informative video. So definitely really cool to see different examples of that, and this one just sounds really, really interesting. Can you tell us what does this look like in practice? Like, does an event look like?

Phil Anderson: 33:19

Cosplay for science in general does a lot of different types of events. So but really the first stuff they did, I mentioned New York Comic Con, San Diego Comic Con, they go to those conventions. Mhmm. And they will set up a booth. Well, where they will have like fossils or, you know, other visual aids and but they'll dress in costumes.

Phil Anderson: 33:39

So one of the first times they did it, they brought a bunch of fossils to an anime convention and dressed up as the characters from Jurassic Park. And the idea is you tell a narrative.

Erin Garrett: 33:49

Mhmm.

Phil Anderson: 33:50

So a big thing about this is that it's not just sort of scientists in Halloween costumes. You actually sort of tell a narrative through the costumes, through your role play. So for that, they pretended to be, no, we are here from, as researchers from the island of Isla Nublar, and we are teaching people about the kinds of dinosaurs we have brought back to life on the island. And that sort of thing. So for us, what we did was we came up with, well the first thing we did was decide we have to have what is the scientific message we want to relay, and then how are we gonna do it?

Phil Anderson: 34:29

What's the theme or the narrative? So we and I've you've told me that this is sort of the theme of your season here is invasive species, and we decided to do invasive species as our first event because we figured it it's gonna be a hot topic for people in central Illinois. And we came up with an interesting narrative for it, which was there has been an invasion of magical creatures from a place called the Feywild. Which is a a realm known in Dungeons and Dragons, which is where things like pixies and dryads and satyrs and that sort of thing come from. So there's been invasion of magical creatures and they mess up the local ecology because they do.

Phil Anderson: 35:08

And we have a lot of examples of this. So you've got these giant owlbear predators that have nothing to keep them in check. And they're ravenous, so they act like a super predator introduced to a system that can start depleting resources. Some of them are a little more whimsical, like my favorite is the fairy dragon. Fairy dragon's the small little dragon with butterfly like wings, but they're intelligent and they're very vain. So we said they have to have the prettiest wings around so they wipe out all the butterflies in any area they come to.

Amy Lefringhouse: 35:41

Mhmm. Okay.

Phil Anderson: 35:42

And then you can think about what the knock on effect of that is. Mhmm. So this was our premise and so what we did is we did it, we ran a half day event where we said, we put out ads saying, we need adventurers. We need adventurers to come and get training for how you deal with these magical invasive creatures. And we had a series of activities, we had about seven activities that were all sort of teaching an aspect of invasion biology.

Phil Anderson: 36:09

So we had one that was about how you detect whether you have invasive species. Okay. And this was teaching essentially about environmental DNA. Mhmm. The use of environmental DNA.

Phil Anderson: 36:22

But what we did is said this was a new spell for a type of D and D character called a Paladin. Paladins have a lot of spells like detect evil, detect undead, detect various things. So we said this was a new spell, detect natural anomaly or DNA. Mhmm. And so the activity involved a matching puzzle with runes that was essentially the parts of DNA, the ATGC, and then they'd have to match it, and then it would give them a clue for a scavenger hunt to go find these hidden magical creatures that were in the area.

Phil Anderson: 36:57

A lot of it is the idea of using the theme to teach a concept. Often as opposed to necessarily teaching facts, but just sort of teaching here's how we, here's how scientists actually deal with this stuff. You know, what do they have to do? They have to gain this data, this eDNA, to identify if there are invasives in the area. Mhmm.

Phil Anderson: 37:17

See, another good example is we have a, had a debate set up about biological control agents. So the idea of bringing in another introduced creature to control the invasive. Well these are all Dungeons and Dragons monsters. So we had about 10 of these things laid out and we had the visitors debate with the host characters about, well, can we use this creature called an Umber Hulk to control this invasive Kuthrik? And, of course, the the kind of funny thing is Umber Hulks are these giant monstrous creatures that have all these terrible abilities, but they would get rid of the Kuthrik for you.

Phil Anderson: 37:57

Mhmm. Probably. Mhmm. But do you want to bring them in? And so getting people to actually think in the same way scientists think about this stuff.

Amy Lefringhouse: 38:05

Right. You know, scientists are learning new things and exploring new things that they've never maybe heard of before or phenomenon or, know, things happening out there in the natural world that they've never heard about and that's the same way these participants, right, are coming in and, like, learning new things about all the different little creatures and actually having to to apply that knowledge that they're learning into these different scenarios, that's really, really a cool way to get folks to think, the general public. So did you think that the general public what was their reaction to your first event? And do you think it was you were able to explain science in that way?

Phil Anderson: 38:47

So I think one of the trickiest things about any scientific outreach is the evaluation. What I can tell you from our direct experience was the people who came in the door stayed for an hour or more. Mhmm. So they were engaged. We had people, you know, who spent time in every activity and definitely absorbed it. In terms of what they're taking away, so one of the people in cosplay for science is Lisa Lundgren. She's a professor at Utah State University. But she studies basically science education and impact. So she develops evaluations that we use for our events.

Amy Lefringhouse: 39:28

Okay.

Phil Anderson: 39:29

And she has the data and she's still working that data up from last year's events, but so some of the things we did were, we had the visitors at the end vote on which sort of activity they thought was the most useful. So we sort of got some immediate feedback about, okay, what activities are working? Because we ran the event twice. Mhmm. Okay.

Phil Anderson: 39:48

So that was a big help to kind of shift from the first to the second time

Erin Garrett: 39:52

Mhmm.

Phil Anderson: 39:52

To get that immediate feedback. We then also asked two very basic questions. What is an invasive species, and why are invasive species a problem?

Amy Lefringhouse: 40:02

Mhmm.

Phil Anderson: 40:03

And we just kept it at that, and they could write on sticky notes and put them up on a board. The idea being is they've been doing these activities for an hour or more. You don't wanna give them a survey with 20 questions on it. Right? They won't do it, first of all. They won't do it.

Phil Anderson: 40:21

And so we got feedback and, you know so so we set the bar, okay. We want them to understand what an invasive species is and why it's something that has to actually be, you know, worried about. And with the responses we got, I mean, just looking at them sort of a qualitative sense, were good. Visitors, some of them kids, we had visitors of all ages, seem to come away with the impression we want we would want them to have, which is understanding what makes an invasive species invasive and why it could be problem there's a number of reasons it could be problematic. Different people would remember different things, but they're all coming away with that basic idea.

Erin Garrett: 40:59

As someone who teaches about invasives, a lot of the times we just, I'm gonna say it, we get caught in the weeds about like the specific, you gotta know how to identify the specific invasives and how to report them and we like miss the whole general public that still don't even know what invasives are, right? And so this type of education is really just focused on the most basic element of it to, like, raise that initial awareness to then later if they hear on the news or something about, like, an invasive alert. They're like, oh, I know what that is. Now I'm gonna learn about this specific one. Right? But it's not necessarily the most important thing to the the general public, like, all the specific ones, but just the concept and understanding that so then they can understand it as it comes up later in their life.

Amy Lefringhouse: 41:44

We've been I think Erin's been exploring a lot with using props and just different, like, visual things in her programming and in her education. And this is, you know, one way of, yeah, really using physical, you know, appearance and costumes and just creativity and kinda merging that with science, which sometimes are, you know, set far apart, but this kinda brings both those together. And it also allows for sounds like it allows for cool create creativity with your students.

Phil Anderson: 42:20

Yeah. I mean, one of the other activities we had was so each activity was keyed in. The volunteers were a particular type of D and D character. So the detect invasives were made up of rangers. You know, rangers and paladins because of how they work in the game. But we had one group that was the fighters and the barbarians, was about sometimes you just have to remove the invasive physically.

Amy Lefringhouse: 42:46

Right.

Phil Anderson: 42:47

And so for that, we actually got, we were loaned a couple of these devices called extractigators.

Amy Lefringhouse: 42:53

Oh yeah.

Phil Anderson: 42:54

Which was used to pull up honeysuckle by the roots and things, and so we go, we got a big inflatable d20, dice, and had the kids roll it, and the higher number they got, the better piece of equipment they got to use to try to uproot our sort of Nice. Pre planted pseudo honeysuckle. And so some of them got to use the extractigator if they rolled really high and things like that. So yeah, just the idea of the props and really making it hands on. Yeah.

Phil Anderson: 43:23

That'd be some of the activities very hands on just because that goes a long way, especially with the younger visitors.

Amy Lefringhouse: 43:30

Yeah. Sure.

Erin Garrett: 43:32

Phil, do you have any upcoming events that folks, our listeners, if they're in the area, might be able to attend?

Phil Anderson: 43:40

Yeah. So this sort of, and what I say here always about academic year because that's how my volunteers are mostly graduate and undergraduate students. So last year we did the Invasion of the Feywild activity. This year in the fall we did the first round of what we're calling Multiplayer Dragon Expo.

Erin Garrett: 44:00

Okay.

Phil Anderson: 44:00

Which is basically it's just a lot of different topics in biology, but taught through the sort of narrative of dragon anatomy and physiology from many different sort of IPs. So not just Dungeons and Dragons, but How to Train Your Dragon, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, sort of anywhere where you dragons are pretty ubiquitous. So we figured it was a good one. So we are running that again on April 4 at the Anita Purvis Nature Center in Urbana, Illinois that afternoon from one to five or noon to four. There will be posters and postings made on social media.

Phil Anderson: 44:41

Same idea. It's gonna be a series of activities. Everyone is welcome to come. I wanna get as many people as possible. Feel free to come in costume. It's always fun when we get kids and not just the kids to show up in costume for these. The weekend before that, if there's anyone who will be there, we will have we will be at a booth with C Grant at c two e two, which is the big comic convention up in Chicago.

Amy Lefringhouse: 45:07

Oh, wow.

Phil Anderson: 45:08

So what we do, we will be helping them with a booth there, so there'll be a small contingent of us there. That's our first our first time for the midwest group going in, the first time trying to do it at that convention. I will say if anyone is interested, we are trying to continue to grow. My lab at Illinois is sort of been made the, for the moment, the hub for sort of Midwest cosplay for science. And I'm happy if anyone's interested in either learning more about it or putting something on with your group that I can help with, just feel free to reach out. I can give my email if that's

Erin Garrett: 45:41

Yeah. We'll throw it in the show notes so people can reach out. But, yeah, that would be great.

Phil Anderson: 45:46

Absolutely. Amazing.

Amy Lefringhouse: 45:47

Well, we really thank you. We hope that this is, you know, inspiring for our listeners that might volunteer in their own communities that have education events at at different facilities and places and parks and schools and everywhere around the state. Hopefully, this inspires, just kind of a different take and a different look on, science education. And even in I mean, we're we're talking about invasive species all all season, but invasive species education too. Thank you, Dr. Anderson, for being with us during, this season. We really appreciate your time.

Phil Anderson: 46:23

Thank you so much for having me. It's been fun.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:25

Just like every episode, we are going to finish today with an everyday observation where we highlight the mundane and the normal of our environment that is actually really interesting. So Erin, I'll have you start us off like normal, the cohost kicking it off.

Erin Garrett: 46:44

Alright. Well, I am gonna share a bird observation, but I'm not gonna tell you what type of bird it was because I'm not a birder, so I don't actually know. But outside my home office, I have pollinator gardens. Right? I've talked about them a lot on the podcast, and I have a big patch of New England aster that is right outside that window.

Erin Garrett: 47:06

And through the winter now for two years in a row, it's they're completely covered in seeds. Right? And we always say that birds will visit your native plants and eat the seeds. But you know, do they? Have we seen it happen? So I've just been pleasantly surprised. I think they're finches or sparrows. That's about as much as I can tell you. But I I'll be sitting in my office, and then I see the whole, like, plant move. Right?

Erin Garrett: 47:31

And I look, and there are birds that are there, and they're sitting, and they're sifting through, and looking, and getting out seeds. I can tell what they're they're actually doing it, and they're getting some food out of those native plants. So it's just kind of exciting to see it in practice. Right? We say, oh, yeah. We leave the seeds, and the birds will come and eat it. But to actually observe it is oh, it's just a fun treat whenever I see them come into my yard. So

Amy Lefringhouse: 47:53

I'm waiting. I have I planted chokeberry in my yard. And so I'm waiting to see what happens with the birds because this is the first, you know, year it's gonna produce berries. So I'm waiting to see if that if that happens as well because I did plant those kind of to attract birds or, you know, have, you know, have cover for the birds so they can kinda go back and forth and back and forth, but also it's a food source too. Crossing my fingers.

Erin Garrett: 48:23

Stay tuned, listeners. Maybe next year, Amy will update us.

Amy Lefringhouse: 48:30

Emily, what do you have to share with us?

Emily Steele: 48:32

A little along the lines of the Erin's because I love that story because I too have a lot of native plants on my property, and, like, I've been noticing the birds a lot lately, and that's exciting to see. So we're recording this in winter, and we had our first big snowfall the weekend after Thanksgiving. And it it was I'm in Decatur in central Illinois, and we got about eight to nine inches, and it was a lot. And then we had a few a little more snow a few days later. And one of the things I love about when it snows is that all the things that animals are doing are visible to you.

Emily Steele: 49:06

Was a deer walking through your backyard? Did you have a rabbit in your garden? Were there birds hopping around in your driveway, like, looking for seed or something like that? So every time it snows, I get so excited to go out and look at tracks because suddenly it's just, like, secret little world that you get an insight into. And you're like, oh, oh, oh, there's a feral cat.

Emily Steele: 49:27

There's like, I see its little paw prints going across my driveway, and suddenly I'm concerned about this cat in the cold and the snow, or I recognize that there's a a lot of deer moving through my backyard that I didn't realize. It's such a fun way to look at nature, and I think sometimes in winter, we're, like, we're so hunkered down, and we're, oh, we can't go outside. It's cold. But, like, don't know. I like putting on a jacket and going out and just I don't even my backyard is plenty of space to see what's going on, and there's a lot going on out there.

Amy Lefringhouse: 49:53

I love that. I love that. I was just at the Ag Center where I teach, and I saw coyote tracks going across the way, you know, and you just don't know that they're that close or they're around like that until the snow comes, and I'm like, do they know that they're leaving tracks and we can follow You know, you I don't know. I'm just, like, thinking to myself, like, oh gosh. Look at that cool path that they're making and you can in some kind of so, you can see, you know, like, the full track and really study it too. So that's really cool.

Amy Lefringhouse: 50:27

Alright, Phil. What's your everyday observation?

Phil Anderson: 50:31

So mine isn't something that we've seen, but for the last couple nights, my wife and I, we're fairly certain at this point that we must have an owl in one of our trees outside because late at night we've been hearing, we've been hearing the hoo, the hoo hoo noises and I don't know what else makes that in this area. So we've had raptors, I mean we had raptors in the backyard before. I'm not I don't live particularly far out of town, but we've we had at least one hawk that landed in our yard once. Mhmm. And they thought it was feeding on something, but it turned out it was just regurgitating its previous meal. So it went out and found some fur and bones in the yard afterwards. But yeah. So pretty cool.

Erin Garrett: 51:18

Awesome. I love that. I feel like owls make so many different sounds that you wouldn't expect as an owl. I know when I lived in an apartment years ago, it sounded like a turkey dying in the middle of the night. It was like a terrible sound. And I looked it up, and it was a barred owl, and they just make so many weirding sounds. But I was like, what? Like, something something not good is happening outside. And then I was like, nope. It's it's just an owl.

Erin Garrett: 51:47

But that's really cool. It's always special to have him, you know, nearby. And I always love when you hear something, but you aren't able to see it and, like, try to figure out what it is. It's always fun.

Amy Lefringhouse: 51:56

Yeah. Those wildlife signs that are left behind. We found some pellets in our barn. You know, we didn't ever see what kind of owl or where the owl was, but we did we were able and, of course, we, you know, dissected them and and checked out what what was in there with our kids. So yeah. Really neat. Well, thank you for sharing that.

Erin Garrett: 52:19

Alright Amy. Let's wrap it up. What is your everyday observation?

Amy Lefringhouse: 52:24

Well, I'm gonna talk a little bit about birds as well. I drove into my driveway today actually, and I have a tiny little short driveway, I mean like one car length, like that's how long it is, and then right next to my driveway is a redbud tree that kind of like arches over top of my driveway and kind of like goes out and kind of hides the entrance into my garage. So I'm like turning in to off of the street and into my driveway and right there was and I live in the middle of a town, a middle of a town over here in western Illinois, and there was Cooper's Hawk just sitting right there on the branch over top of my my driveway, and I just wasn't expecting it. I was like, driving home, and there it was, right there. And I I tried to get my phone out as fast as possible to take a picture, but it, you know, flew off real quick.

Amy Lefringhouse: 53:24

But, anyway, that is that was my really cool everyday observation. Again, like, the wildlife that's around us, like you were saying, Emily, there's, like, you know, all kinds of things happening in your backyard even in when you're in the middle of town. I just didn't realize they would be, you know, that close to my house. So that was pretty neat.

Erin Garrett: 53:43

I love it. That's amazing.

Emily Steele: 53:44

So fun.

Amy Lefringhouse: 53:46

Well, thank you all for being here today. This has been another episode on the Everyday Environment podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with our own Chris Evans where he's gonna lay down the law on invasive species.

Emily Steele: 54:03

This podcast is University of Illinois Extension production, hosted and edited by Abigail Garofalo, Erin Garrett, and Amy Lefringhouse. Marketing and communications are by Emily Steele.

Matt Wiley: 54:16

University of Illinois Extension.