Education and Outreach: March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach

School of Human Evolution and Social Change, the Center for Evolution and Medicine, and the School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, United States
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, United States
Department of Biology, California State University Northridge, United States
Department of Computational Biology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Interdisciplinary Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Biology, Texas A&M University, United States
Department of Human Health and Evolutionary Medicine, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, United States
Illustrator based in Dallas, United States
Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath, United Kingdom
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
National Park Service, United States
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University, United States
Department of Biological Sciences, Colorado Mesa University, United States
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, United States
Department of Visual & Media Arts, Emerson College, United States
BE Creative LLC, United States
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, United States
Department of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, United States
Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, United States
Department of Anthropology, Boston University, United States
Department of Anthropology, Tufts University, United States
Ilustrator based in New England, United States
Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, University of California Riverside, United States
Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, United States
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, United States
Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, United States
Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, United States
Aldo Leopold Foundation, United States
Center for Science and Imagination, Arizona State University, United States
Department of Biological Sciences, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, United States
Department of Clinical Anatomy, College of Osteopathic Medicine, Sam Houston State University, United States
Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, United States
Department of Integrative Anatomical Sciences, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, United States
Department of Mammalogy, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, United States
Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, United States
Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology, the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections, and the Interdisciplinary Program in Ecology and Evolution, Texas A&M University, United States
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, United States
Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, United States
Department of Design, The Ohio State University, United States
Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico
Illustrator based in Atlanta, United States
Illustrator based in San Francisco, United States
Engagement & Learning Services, ASU Library, Arizona State University, United States
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, United States
Human Evolution and Social Change, the Center for Evolution, and Medicine, and the Institute of Human Origins, Arizona State University, United States
Department of Biology, Oregon State University-Cascades, United States
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
School of Life Sciences and the Center for Evolution and Medicine, Arizona State University, United States
Department of Biology, Brown University, United States
Department of Biological Sciences, Dominican University, United States

Feb 22, 2021

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65066

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11 figures, 1 table and 8 additional files

Figures

Figure 1

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Tables

Table 1

Each annual March Mammal Madness tournament featured novel divisions that showcased diverse taxa.

Year	Divisions	Description	Example taxa
2013	Carnivores	Meat-eaters	Lion, Wolverine
	Primates	Primate Order	Orangutan, Uakari
	Browsers and Grazers	Herbivores	Tapir, Moose
	Hodge Podge	Miscellaneous taxa	Wombat, Flying Fox
2014	Marine Mammals	Adapted to marine ecosystems	Narwhal, Harbor Seal
	Social Mammals	Highly social species (battle as a team)	Hyena, African Wild Dogs
	The Who in the What Now	Lesser-known taxa	Dhole, Saiga
	Fossil Mammals	Extinct taxa from the fossil record	Mastodon, Dire Wolf
2015	Mighty Minis	Smol bois	Bumblebee Bat, Tenrec
	Critically Endangered	IUCN red list taxa	Iberian lynx, Tenkile
	Sexy Beasts	Traits strongly influenced by sexual selection	Irish Elk, Elephant Seal
	Mythical Mammals	Creatures from cultural myths and folklore	Minotaur, Yeti
2016	Cold-adapted	Adapted to cold environments/seasons	Snow Leopard, Caribou
	Mighty Giants	Large in size/for their clade	Panda, Giant Armadillo
	Mascot Mammals	Mascots of colleges/universities	(Howard) Bison
	Mammals of the Nouns	Ecosystem niche featured in common name	‘Hyrax of the Rock’
2017	Desert-adapted	Adapted to arid environments	Aardwolf, Saiga
	Coulda Shoulda	Contenders defeated unexpectedly 2013–16	Sabertooth Cat, Lion
	Adjective Mammals	Common name includes adjective	Sac-winged Bat
	Two Animals, One Mammal	Taxa with two-part animal common names	Spider Monkey
2018	Antecessor	Synapsids and their fossil descendants	Dimetrodon, Doedicurus
	Great Adaptations	Unique/exceptional traits	Crabeater Seal, Aye Aye
	Alt-Mammals	OK FINE, WE'LL HAVE NON-MAMMALS	Mantis Shrimp, Secretary Bird
	Urban Jungle	Taxa that thrive in high density human areas	Coyote, Rhesus
2019	Waterfalls	Aquatic adaptations	Aquatic Genet, Manatee
	Tag Team	Inter-species mutualisms (battle as a team)	Banded Mongoose and Warthog
	Jump-Jump	Adaptations for saltation	Jackrabbit, Serval
	CAT-e-GORY	Nomenclature referring to a felid	Sea Lion, Tiger Owl