Flamingo video wins audience choice award at The Scientist

The Scientist magazine’s annual video contest has been decided, and the Audience Choice award goes to Cornell graduate student Marita Davison and her colleagues Jamie Herring and Jennifer Moslemi!

The team won for a seven-minute episode about Davison’s work on flamingoes high in the Bolivian Andes. Davison is trying to understand the role flamingoes play in regulating the food web in the shallow Andean lakes they live on. Watch and learn about what flamingoes eat, how they eat it—and some of the difficulties inherent in studying them.

The video transports you into Bolivia’s magnificent high-altitude scenery (click on the “full-screen” button on the lower right of the video player for best viewing). I almost felt the thin air in my own lungs as I watched Marita struggle across an expanse of thick lake mud (praying she doesn’t fall) on her way to her study plots. If you’re not actually doing a Ph.D. in Bolivian lake ecology, this is the next best thing. Congratulations Marita, Jamie, and Jennifer!

Video by Marita Davison, Jamie Herring, and Jennifer Moslemi, Cornell University.