This weekend we were delighted to present our research at the annual Swansea Science Festival. It was a great opportunity to talk about microbes, sponges and microbial communities to kids, parents and attendees of all ages. We even had some visitors from the Star Wars world who wanted to know more about microbiomes!

Our stand was full of engaging activities from soft toys that looked like microbes and kids could sort into handcrafted sponges to build-your-own microbiome crafts for children!.

 

We also had microscopes with an assortment of slides that everybody could use to have a look at the microscopic structures of plant, animals, and even bacteria, our invisible friends that do so much for our survival and the wellbeing of our planet.

For those more interested in the science behind it all we also had informative flyers to take home detailing how we go from thinking about microbes and marine sponges to abstracting those associations into concepts of evolution, metacommunities and symbioses. We then built up all the way to a 3rd tier of complexity linking those concepts to mathematical equations and models that help us reason about these complex, yet fundamental ecosystems that persist all around us and without which life on Earth would not be possible.

   

At the end of the day we got a wall full of handcrafted microbiomes from all the kids that visited our exhibit. All in all it was great fun!

The Leverhulme Trust supported our stand at the Science Festival through Research Project Grant RPG-2022-114 to ML.

Thanks to Gui, Jooyoung and Olivia for all your help. And thanks to the organisers, and Delyth in particular, for a great festival.