Review of North American Symposium on Bat Research, Sacramento, CA, Oct. 19-22, 2005: An engineer’s perspective

Mark D. Skowronski

Computational Neuro-Engineering Lab

Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

October 25, 2005

Overview

• Scope of talks/posters

• Presentation styles

• Conclusions

Scope of presentations• Raw numbers:

– 19 student competition talks– 11 student competition posters– 44 posters– 82 presentations (38 by students, not judged)– 354 attendees

• Presentation format– Competition talks in single session– Posters up for first 3 days of symposium

• 3 hours on second day for questions• 30 minutes on third day for questions

– All other talks in 2 concurrent session tracks

Scope of presentations• Topics:

– Ecology: bats and their environment– Systematics: taxonomy of bats, DNA methods– Physiology: function of anatomic parts– Behavior: what bats do– Conservation: maintaining bats– Evolution: lineage of bats– Anatomy: body parts of bats– Echolocation: characteristics/variation of calls– Zoogeography: geo. distribution of bats, cause

Presentation methods• Brief mention of title slide• No “Table of Contents” slide: hit the ground running• Lots of pictures, even if not directly related to a

particular slide: bat pictures, field work pictures, joke pictures

• Lots of movies, some from thermal cameras• Many start with expected results, which usually don’t

match observed results.• Little experimentation, mostly observational studies.• Many presentation read verbatim or from note cards.

Presentation methods, con’t• Many talks w/o conclusions (mostly students): look what I

did.• Student presentations generally better than professor

presentations (more prep time?)• Study methods (order of popularity):

– Observations from pictures, video, netting– Radio tags: collars, PIT subcutaneous tags– Organic chemistry, DNA analysis– Echolocation recordings: Avisoft, Pettersson– Trained bats: mazes, swimming, running, bite force,

conditioned responses– Doppler radar

What worked• Hypothesis-driven talks, even if the

hypotheses were wrong.

• Videos, many short ones.

• Rapid-fire slides (80 in 15 minutes!)

• Photos, when related to slide.

• Stopping early enough for questions.

What didn’t work• Look-what-I-did talks, no motivations or interesting

goals.• When the introduction takes up half the talk…..poor

results will follow.• Background sounds--too noisy.• Misc. pictures not related to slides.• Slide projector remote control/laser pointer• Laptop not on speaker podium

– Poor control over slides– Turn away from mic to see screen, can’t hear

• Too many inside jokes, not funny.

Conclusions• Talks generally better than those at other

conferences--heavy student presence.• Projector remote control a nightmare.• Hypothesis-driven talks most interesting.• Very friendly crowd, too bad they only meet

annually.• Thirty-fifth NASBR, changing of old guard.