Limelight: Stories about being the voice of science

This week we present two stories about scientists who became the face of the scientific community.

Part 1: When conservation scientist Laura Kehoe writes about a surprising chimp behavior, the media takes it wildly out of context and the situation spirals out of control.

Part 2: When The Colbert Report calls about her research, marine biologist Skylar Bayer finds an unexpected collaborator and friend in the fisherman helping her get scallops.

Laura Kehoe is  a post-doctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia & University of Victoria, where she's busy developing a cost-effective conservation plan for the over 100 species of concern in the Fraser  River estuary, Vancouver. Laura’s research has the overall goal of  finding pathways to balance human resource use with the conservation of biodiversity. To do this, she develops & applies approaches grounded  in spatial statistics, spatial ecology, & conservation decision  science. Laura is the founder of a campaign to regenerate degraded farmland via planting trees.To date, her initiative has planted over  100,000 trees (visit 400trees.org to find out more). This story is about her first job in conservation with the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation in Guinea.    

Skylar Bayer is a marine biologist, a storyteller, and a science  communicator. She completed her Ph.D. in the secret sex lives of  scallops, a subject that landed her on The Colbert Report in 2013. Since  then she has dabbled in a diversity of science communication  activities, all of which you can read about on her website. She's an  alum of the D.C.-based Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship  program. Currently, she is a National Academy of Sciences NRC  post-doctoral Research Associate at the NOAA Milford Laboratory and is  the Secretary of the Ecological Society of America's Communication &  Engagement Section. Her heart, husband, house, two dogs and a grumpy cat all reside in Maine. She also enjoys Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the gentle  art. Follow her on Twitter @drsrbayer. 

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