Here is the poster we presented at SICB Portland last week on the biomechanics of peacock displays (click to enlarge):

SICB poster

I think it turned out pretty well, although I’m not sure it could stand alone without an interpreter.

We had a constant stream of awesome visitors. My coauthor Suzanne brought feathers and a model peacock to demonstrate what we were talking about – brilliant! We also had a touchscreen mounted to the left of the poster to display the supplemental videos, but to my surprise we didn’t use it much. It was too slow to load for every new visitor, although it did come in handy for people who wanted an in-depth look. I realize now that videos should really be integrated spatially with the poster content. This could be done if whole display was a touchscreen, for example.

One of the highlights of the meeting was seeing how folks in Stacey Combes’ lab are tracking the movements of individual bees by gluing tiny QR codes onto the bees’ backs (the codes are automatically recognized on video of the bees entering and exiting their hives by tracking software). Another highlight was Ken Dial’s talk about the influence of predation on the development of flight in nestling birds. Portland had lots of good food and drink and exciting views of 1000s of crows roosting late at night downtown.

Thanks to Owen, Suzanne, Jim and Bob for such a fun project!

From January 10, 2016