March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach

Abstract

March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach - gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products - to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping "play-by-play" narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.

Keywords: animal behavior; animal ecology; ecology; education; genetics; genomics; human; informal learning; outreach; performance science; science communication.

Figure 1.. The tournament outcome bracket for March Mammal Madness in 2018.

Players initially begin with a “blank” bracket listing just the first-round match-ups and predict sequential match outcomes from their pre-existing knowledge, targeted research, and/or guessing. In the 2018 tournament the four divisions were the ‘Antecessors’ (fossil species that “came before” today’s living mammals, stretching back to the synapsids), ‘Great Adaptations’ (mammals that have exceptional and rare traits), and ‘Urban Jungle’ (mammals that survive, and sometimes thrive, in suburbs and cities). The last division, ‘When the Kat's Away’, was a colloquial allusion to entomologist Chris Anderson and ichthyologist Josh Drew inserting a division of non-mammal combatants for the launch of the tournament when mammalogist Katie Hinde was out of the country. In the Final Four, elephant-relative Amebelodon emerged victorious from the Antecessors and defeated #AltMammal Orinoco crocodile, but was wounded during the encounter. Coyote may have been king of the Urban Jungle but was no match for the pygmy hippopotamus (from Great Adaptations). In the ultimate showdown, Amebelodon’s larger size and weaponry could not overcome his previously-sustained injuries, and he was displaced by surprise 2018 Champion pygmy hippopotamus.

Figure 2.. How the combatants featured in March Mammal Madness compare with mammals in general.

Proportion of extant species by order across the mammalian class, stacked according to the species count of the order (with the largest order at the bottom; left), and as combatants in March Mammal Madness (right). Some orders (such as Rodentia) have been under-represented in MMM (reds), some are over-represented (such as Carnivora; blues), and others have been proportionately represented (yellows).

Figure 3.. Battles in the advanced rounds of the tournament take place in one of four randomly selected ecosystems.

The four ecosystems or habitats that might be used in the advanced rounds of the tournament (that is, in the four Elite Trait battles, the two Final Roar battles and the Championship battle) are announced during the pre-season, with the ecosystem to be used being revealed in “real time” during the play-by-play narration. Colors are largely indexical to represent predominant hue(s) within the ecosystem. Generally, greens represent forest, blues represent aquatic systems, ochres represent scrublands and sandy deserts, and gray represent urban spaces.

Figure 4.. How battles end in March Mammal Madness.

Most battles conclude with a fatal or debilitating encounter between the two combatants (also known as a technical knock out or TKO). Withdrawals from the encounter are also common, as are third-party interventions (Deus ex Machina) that cause one combatant to advance in the tournament.

Figure 5.. Artistic representations of some previous tournament combatants.

(A) Cheetah by Charon Henning [http://www.charonhenning.com/]; (B) Tag Team Mutualists, the warthog and the mongoose, by Mary Casillas [marycasillas.wix.com/paintings]; (C) Thylacine by Olivia Pellicer [opellisms.com]; (D) Red squirrel by Charon Henning; (E) Honey badger by Charon Henning; (F) Moose by Valeria Pellicer [http://www.vpellicerart.com/]; (G) Spotted hyena by Charon Henning; (H) Coyote by Mary Cassilas; (I) Andrewsarchus mongoliensis by Charon Henning.

Figure 6.. The scientific literature within March Mammal Madness.

(A) During the tournament, hundreds of citations from the scholarly literature are embedded in play-by-play battle tweets from the scientist-narrators and introductory and RIP tweets from the genetics team. (B) The top 25 journals cited in the battle narrations. (C) Most of the papers cited in the battle narrations were published after 2000.

Figure 7.. Timeline of development and new elements in March Mammal Madness.

When MMM started in 2013, a single scientist-narrator designed the bracket and reported battle outcomes, but was joined by a team of scientist-narrators in 2014. In 2015, the team expanded to include artists, museum staff, and a dedicated MMMletsgo Twitter account. An academic publisher curated a special MMM collection issue for the first time in 2017. In recent years, we have expanded the teaching materials for K-12 Educators.

Figure 8.. MMM promoted National No One Eats Alone Day in 2019.

“Today is National No One Eats Alone Day to promote inclusion and acceptance in schools! https://nooneeatsalone.org Did you know that sometimes Coyotes and Badgers hunt together? Coyote and Badger agree: #NoOneEatsAlone art by @Opellisms #2019MMM #TagTeam” —@Mammals_Suck.

Figure 9.. Increasing engagement on social media.

(A) The number of pageviews for MMM blog posts increased over time, as did engagement on twitter (B), as measured by the number of tweets using the MMM hashtag (solid blue line) and the number of timeline deliveries (dashed grey line).

Figure 10.. Pageviews of the ASU LibGuide before and during the MMM tournament.

Daily page views for the MMM ASU LibGuide were greatest during the pre-tournament research period, but active traffic was sustained during the tournament as seen for 2017, 2018 and 2019; for each year, day 0 is the day the tournament bracket was released.

Figure 11.. Interest in MMM by schools across the United States in 2018.

(A) The proportion of the total public school K-12 student population in six geographic regions (left) and the proportion of MMM students in these regions (right); the two distributions are largely similar, but involvement in MMM is proportionately lower in the South Central region and higher in the Great Lakes region. (B). MMM was under-represented among urban communities and over-represented among suburban communities.