Media
Some summaries of my work
There have been so many amazing illustrations, videos, cartoons and articles about my work. I have shared a few of these here, but there are many more out there that have translated the science to different audiences in wonderful ways.
Videos & photographs
Here is a video abstract produced for Current Biology summarising how electric fields elicit ballooning in spiders.
The video was produced by Palaeocast Productions with videography from Michael Hutchinson and narrated by me.
Video on the University of Bristol YouTube channel.
This is a video produced by National Geographic that was published alongside Mesa Schumacher’s wonderful illustration for their magazine in April 2019. It animates and describes spider ballooning behviour and the conditions where spiders decide it’s time to fly.
Video on the National Geographic YouTube channel.
Michael Hutchinson lent his photography and videography skills to produce some beautiful shots of ballooning spiders and their gossamer silk. He now has an archive of footage and photos of this behaviour. If you would like to use any of his images he can be contacted via his website for permissions.
Here is a summary produced by BBC Earth explaining ballooning behaviour and how atmospheric electrostatics can play a role in getting spiders airborne.
Video on the BBC Earth YouTube channel
podcasts
In 2018 my colleague Greg Sutton and I were interviewed on the NPR Science Friday Podcast speaking about bumblebees and their ability to detect atmospheric electric fields using their body hairs. This was from work published in PNAS in 2016.
news articles
In 2016 The Independent wrote about work I produced with colleagues that investigated how bumblebees can detect electric fields using thier body hairs. Ed Yong wrote a piece in The Atlantic about electrostatic ballooning in 2018. Around the same time. there were also articles about ballooning spider in The Guardian, New Scientist, Discover Magazine, NPR and many more from a wide range of news outlets.