Feature Friday: Nailing Ecology

Whoever said field work can’t be glamorous has clearly never met Taylor!

Taylor is another of our former students, who took SCIE90013 Communication for Research Scientists in her Master of Biosciences. Her research was on the effects of fire and vegetation structure on skink populations throughout Western Victoria. She collected genetic information from the skinks, which meant handling lots of the little folk! She’s currently working her thesis for publication, and hoping to publish the genetic data soon. But something about her pictures always stood out in presentations…

“Well, I was always into doing my nails, and not even field work was gonna stop that 😂 So all of my pics from my research ended up having my nails done in them. I used them in a presentation during the SciComm classes and Jen commented on how refreshing it was to see in ecology, so I decided to try and feature them more in presentations!”

In her posts on @nailing_ecology, she features photos of gorgeous wild life with a fun fact or two about the critter, always held by a colourfully manicured hand.

“I decided to start the Instagram after I went to the Victorian Biodiversity Conference and so many people commented on my nails, I also had some friends who contacted me and said other people mentioned it to them! It was super cool to see how much people enjoyed something I’d just always been doing I guess and I saw it as an opportunity to celebrate femininity in science in a new way!” – Taylor

So you can be a scientist AND still live your best glam life! Check out @nailing_ecology for more!

– Written by Rosie Arnold