Periodically, lab members try our hands at transforming our “elevator pitches” into explanations using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language. (See this XKCD comic for an elegant example!). Feeling inspired? You can try it for yourself here!

Winter 2026 Edition:

During long warm water days, small water trees grow fast. Warm water and strong sun make food easy to find, so more life appears and fills the water. Near land, water changes quickly because upper water warms fast and stays warm. Because of this, small water trees appear early in the year, different to normal years where normal years follow a slower and more usual pattern. — Aakriti Vijay, Technician, Phytoplankton ecology

I look at tiny living things to find out what they do when the places they live change. I draw living things with numbers to learn how and why they change, especially when change is fast and there are many other living things to consider. Using numbers helps to hide noise from any one situation in order to show bigger truth. I have worked with wet and dry things, and both with things that eat and that grow from the sun. — Bethany Stevens, Postdoctoral Fellow, Mathematical community ecology in a changing climate

I love to write in numbers to explain how life works. If we write with numbers in especially pretty ways, the numbers can help us to learn how different living things spend time with each other. Living things need each other to stay living because they sometimes need help learning how to make food. There are a few ways that living things can get food through others, such as making friends and sharing food, taking food-making parts by force, and learning how to make food by getting life letters from someone else. This changes where food (and the living things that eat the food) is found all over the world in both wet and dry places. Writing in numbers can help us see what is the same about these different ways of getting food, to figure out why living things have learned to do it this way, and to guess what these living things will do many years from now. — Holly Moeller, PI, Acquired metabolism

Trees can make money using the sun, but they must sometimes work with under ground things to get a type of money they do not have. So, how do trees decide what is the best way to spend their money? Do they spend it on under ground things, or do they spend it on themselves? Also, how do under ground things decide if they should give or not give their money to the trees? And how does the surrounding world change the way they live with each other? — Clarissa Frederica, Postdoctoral Scholar, Plant-associate resource exchange economics

I study how living things can take stuff from the things they eat and use that stuff to make their own food. I study how some living things pick which things to take stuff from. When do living things decide to break down the things they ate after eating it? — Amelie L’Etoile-Goga, Undergraduate Researcher, Prey choice in Mesodinium

In the not deep part of big water live animals that look like rocks. These rock animals are really important because they build cities where their friends (and some not friends) all live together. But these rock animals are in trouble because of lots of bad stuff, especially hot water that keeps getting hotter. Good people want to save the rock animals but this is hard because the rock animals keep dying. I use computers and lots of numbers to try to help people understand how to save the rock animals so they can keep building cities in the big water and be happy with all their friends. — Raine Detmer, Postdoctoral Scholar, Restoring coral reef ecosystems

Small group animal with hard outside and sun power inside sometimes gets sad and sun power leaves. Small group animal then turns white and dies and big sun power with leaves grows into group animal’s space. Moving animal with teeth can eat big sun power’s leaves and small group animal can grow back. I study how small group animal city plan before death can keep big sun power out and allow moving animal with teeth inside to eat. — Scott Miller, Postdoctoral Scholar, Resilience and recovery in coral reefs

trees form relationships with other life forms. one life form that trees can do that with are under ground. these relationships are confusing sometimes because no one knows who starts the relationship and how it is kept up and going. to try and clear some confusing parts to this relationship, i have trees growing in a green house with these under ground life forms under different setting, where how good and bad the trees will do can tell me something about the relationship. — Jazmín Sedano, Masters Student, Tree-ectomycorrhizal associations along environmental gradients

I study small guys in the big blue waters. These small guys can make their own food from big fire in sky and eat other small guys (wow). I use lines on the computer to say how these guys will change the big blue waters they live in. Because we don’t know in the real world how these little guys live in the big blue waters, these lines on the computer help tell us how the little guys change the big blue waters in dead ways (moving the important breathing things, small rocks, and so on) and how they act with the normal little guys (the not cool ones that only make food from big fire or only eat other things, but not both). These lines on the computer will also tell us how the little guys will change in the not present/past (the other one I can’t say). — Samantha Jerry, Ph.D. Student, Biogeochemical impacts of mixotrophy

A tiny being with many legs eats a tinier being with few legs. The many-legged being keeps the brain and green spots of the eaten few-legged friend. Sad for few-legged friend but very happy for many-legged friend. Many-legged friend needs the few-legged friend’s brain and green spots to live. We want to look at the many-legged friend but they are too tiny to see and the few-legged friend’s brain and green spots are even tinier! We make the many-legged friend still and put them in a box of stick. Water makes the box of stick and many-legged friend grow. We can now see the many-legged friend and the tiny few-legged friend’s brain and green spots — very cool! — Marcus Varni, Ph.D. Student, Kleptoplasty in Mesodinium

Fall 2021 Edition:

Living things look different because of where they are or what they eat or what eats them. But sometimes we don’t actually know what about them makes them live in some places, or eat different things, or what makes them good to eat. If we look at how they grow, maybe we can understand why. — An Bui, Ph.D. student, Trait-based approaches to understanding macroalgal distributions

Trees team up with things in the ground that help them get food they can’t get themselves. Some ground things are better at helping trees get food when the ground is wet, and others are better at getting food when the ground is dry. If you put trees with the things that are used to wet ground and other trees with the things that are used to dry ground and make them all dry, then we think the ones that are used to dry ground will help the trees more than the ones that are used to wet ground. –– Ronja Keeley, Undergraduate Researcher, How ectomycorrhizae help trees tolerate stressful environments

How do living things make a living? They need to eat and drink and sometimes use the light from the sun to make food and drink! But what if they don’t have the right plans to make food and drink? Well, then they can go over to other living things and (1) make friends to get food from them, (2) take food from them by force, or (3) get the plans to make the food from them (This is kind of mean, but at least then they can make their own food!). We study how living things make, take, and plan their food by trying to make them grow in different ways. We have a lot of fun doing this, because we get to play with living things, use numbers, use computers, and be friends with each other. — Holly Moeller, Assistant Professor, Acquired metabolism

Every drop of huge water has lots of small living things in it that are too small to be seen with your eye. The little water guys are important because they are food for all the big water animals and because they make half the breathing air and turn over the life stuff. The small guys are like a tiny group of joined things. I use numbers and pain to study how the tiny water guys help or hurt each other. When the water gets hot, the tiny water things might change and some tiny guys will do good but others will do bad. We have to know this so we can see what the huge water will look like in so many tomorrows. — Kevin Archibald, Postdoctoral Scholar, Responses of plankton to climate change

Do you ever wonder why trees like to have friends? Maybe they help each other! 
My studies focus on how trees next to one another change which ground animals are on the trees bottom sides. By this, I mean to ask if a tree next to their sister tree will have different ground animals from a tree next to another tree who is not in the family. How might this change bigger groups of trees you ask? What about baby trees and where they grow? All great questions! 
You see, ground animals give the trees tree food and trees give ground animals ground animal food. They help each other! — Gabe Runte, Ph.D. Student, Effects of neighbouring trees on one another’s fungal communities

I study tiny things that live on animals and trees. Sometimes the tiny things help the animals and trees, and sometimes they hurt them. I am interested in some tiny things that change between helping and hurting, as different things happen around their animal or tree. The animal or tree then has a problem: does it want to keep the tiny things, or try to lose them? I study how the number of tiny things changes over a short bit of time, and how animals and trees change their relationship to these tiny things over a very long time. — Alexandra Brown, Postdoctoral Scholar, Context-dependent symbiosis

I study how green things work together with living ground. Green things have sun power but need other food; living ground has other food but needs sun power. By sharing, they make friends. Different living grounds have different foods to give, and can also sometimes give water. Some can fight off other, bad living grounds. However, other living grounds can be bad at giving food, or take too much sun power. Green things must avoid them. Also, not all green things can work with all living grounds. And some living grounds can only make friends with some green things. What controls this? How does it change which green things you find outside, and where they are? I want to find out. — Laura Bogar, Postdoctoral Fellow, Tree-ectomycorrhizal mutualisms

I study living things that make food from sun and also from eating other things. I wondered what would happen if it gets hotter or colder in the water where they live?  An idea some people have had is that they will eat more and this could be bad for the air and also the whole world. But if they change to use more sun, maybe it won’t be so bad. I looked at what they ate and how much sun they used for a few years to see if they changed. Some grew better after being hot or cold for a while. So it maybe won’t be as bad as expected. — Michelle Lepori-Bui, Masters Student, Evolutionary responses of mixotrophs to climate change

I use a computer to track the number of animals or other living things over time and how these numbers are changed by other living things (like living things that are food for the animal or that eat the animal) and things that aren’t living. I look at living things that live in water near land. — Raine Detmer, Ph.D. Student, Modeling community ecology of coastal ecosystems

I work on things that share or take things that they can’t make. In this case light food is made inside small cells that can not make light food by themselves. Making light food is hard: it is easier to take the light food things. But how they are able to take the light food things is not well known yet. — Chris Paight, Postdoctoral Scholar, Kleptoplasty and the evolution of acquired photosynthesis

I am showing the world in numbers. One work is showing what change of world (hot) does to animals and greens. Another work is showing how to control problems when growing green food and red food. — Ferdinand Pfab, Postdoctoral Scholar, Mathematical models of corals, pests, and plankton

I am working with tiny tiny living things that use different things for living which can change with the way they are living. I am seeing how they respond to these different things (light, no light, hot, not hot) and see how they grow or change to using all or some of a thing for living and growing. I am interested in seeing the changes inside of the tiny living things over time.  — Ryan Marczak, Technician, Evolutionary responses of mixotrophs to climate change

I use numbers and stuff to show how living water rocks live and die. When the living water rocks die that is very bad. When the water gets hot or bright the living rocks kick out their friends and become sad and maybe die. Some living water rocks don’t kick their friends out as much. Numbers and stuff can give help in understanding why. — Ethan Baxter, Undergraduate Researcher, Mathematical modeling of coral-algal symbiosis

We will be studying the relationships between different living things through roads of putting together said living things. — Tobenna Nwosu, Undergraduate Researcher, Tree-ectomycorrhizal mutualisms