Kevin McLean

(He/Him)

Multimedia Managing Producer, Science Magazine

Woodland, California US

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After a long, slow breakup with scientific research I now get to tell science stories.

About

As a former scientist I love highlighting the voices of researchers. I have a PhD in wildlife ecology and in a former life I climbed lots of trees.

Featured Work

Slow motion tongues offer a snapshot of evolution

An early interest in reptile feeding behavior led evolutionary biologist Kurt Schwenk to study the tongues of lizards. Like Charles Darwin’s finches, the various forms and functions of lizard tongues help piece together the story how the diversity of reptiles and amphibians evolved. In this video he explains how his high-speed cameras not only capture every flick, shot, and blob, but have also proved useful in studying a variety of other fast-moving organisms and behaviors.

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Honey bees perfect their waggle dances by learning from elders

The waggle dance performed by honey bees is a complex behavior that communicates directional information. In a recent paper, researchers demonstrated that younger bees learn critical parts of this dance from older, more experienced bees. Bees that learn without the benefit of teachers have errors in their dance, and while some of which can improve with practice, errors relating to distance encoding remain for their entire lives. Bees, like many other social animals, appear to benefit from social learning.

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