Cosplaying for science

It’s a blazingly sunny September Saturday afternoon at Riggs Beer Company, a family-friendly brewery located on the edge of Urbana. It’s not surprising to see crowds of families basking in the dog days of summer with their food truck lunches and locally brewed pints of beer. Unexpected, however, are the patrons donning medieval and fantasy garb, accompanied by young children, some in princess dresses and others carrying around foam swords. 

These aspiring adventurers are here on a quest, recruited to take part in a training regimen to combat the incursion of invasive species from the Feywild, a magical plane that exists adjacent to our own that is full of weird and wonderful wildlife. Or, at least, that’s the lore a mix of Illinois graduate and undergraduate students, alumni, and colleagues are presenting, hoping to attract people to a new and unique scientific outreach event.

At the entrance to the training fields, all adventurers are greeted and briefed on their mission by Taranis, a Bladesinger Wizard of the Shield Fern Guild, and Dr. Bruce Bruceson, a master druid and visiting professor from the Sugar and Spice Academy in the Feywilds. These characters are played by the primary organizers of this event: Gabriel Santos, representing Cosplay for Science, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign evolution, ecology and behavior professor Philip Anderson.

My station presents effective ways to detect invasive species, either before they have a chance to establish themselves or after they’ve evaded detection and begun to take up residence in the local ecosystem. With the help of Olivia Baima, an undergraduate and fellow biology and fantasy nerd, we welcome each set of adventurers in full character, accent and all. At our side stands Logan Marlow, a community volunteer decked out in a suit of armor, cape and crown. Our station leads two activities, and an extra pair of hands is crucial to keep things moving smoothly with each new group.

We see one young adventurer heading toward us. She is wearing a bright pink tutu with images of mythical creatures in pink and blue across her top. We jump into character.

“Hail and well met adventurer! Come, your assistance is greatly needed,” I say.

Olivia jumps in: “Have you ever traveled outside of this realm, to another city, state or even country?”

A shy nod.

“Excellent! Was that travel by land, sea or sky?”

“By land.”

The first activity is easy to explain to anyone who has experience with air travel, but even children who have never flown understand the concepts of security and bag checks.

“We represent the Transplanar Security Administration, also known as the TSA, and it’s our job to ensure that no invasive organisms get brought between realms hidden in someone’s baggage,” I say. “As Rangers, we have animal companions like our sniffer dog, Chad, here” — I gesture to a plush corgi on the table — “who lets us know when something is hidden in a bag.”

“Now begins your training,” Olivia says. “We need you to help us find every invasive species hidden away in this bag, and if you’re able to find everything, you’ll be rewarded with candy!”

Our visitor excitedly rifles through the bag. With our guidance, she discovers every invasive species and tosses it on the table. Once she moves on to the next station, we need to work quickly to reset the activity for the next group of guests.

“Intern! Clean this all up and get it ready for the next recruits!” Olivia says.

“Of course, right away,” Logan says. Logan is the backbone of this operation. Among the steady flow of visitors, he swiftly repacks the bag while we distract the audience with our second activity, creating the perfect tag-team operation.

For the second activity at our station, we teach adventurers about environmental DNA, or eDNA, which is another way of detecting invasive species in an ecosystem. To demonstrate this concept to a general audience that includes young children, I created a puzzle with small pieces representing the DNA of known invasive species and longer strands to represent eDNA. Each piece consists of color-coded base pairs in sequence, with corresponding interlocking shapes to correctly match base pairs between DNA segments. Adventurers match the puzzle pieces to identify the presence of an invasive species in the environment. 

The fantasy theme allows us to simplify the concept of complementary DNA base pairs. “A relatively new spell has been developed called Detect Native Anomalies, which allows us to see these DNA patterns,” I say. “Some of them correspond to known invasive species, and some of these patterns were collected at different locations around town.”

“I need your help to figure out which species are in which areas so we can decide how best to deal with them,” I say. “These small pieces should fit together like a jigsaw puzzle somewhere on one of the environment pieces. Both shape and color need to be considered to find the matching pairs.” 

For less experienced adventurers, we share a trick for finding the matches more easily: The puzzles for most of the species have two consecutive base pairs of the same color, so we can say that if their puzzle piece has two pinks next to each other, they need to look for two greens next to each other on the complementary pieces. 

We steadily alternate between the two activities, rewarding each adventurer with a stamp of excellence in their training booklet to signify their mastery of invasive species detection. Adventurers progress to the other stations collecting stamps, and once their booklets are complete with a stamp from every station, the heroes may return to the briefing table to collect their prize, choosing from an assortment of colorful dice.

I look around me at the crowds of people whose attention we’ve captured with our unconventional outreach. Some children are smashing a fake honeysuckle tree with a foam sword, while others are tossing balls at dragons to cast magical barriers. The bards help adventurers reflect on what they’ve learned and how they can bring attention to the importance of protecting our local ecosystems. 

This event has been months in the making, and it was all made possible by our team of dedicated and passionate volunteers. It brings a smile to my face knowing how many people we’ve been able to reach, how much fun they’re having, and that they’ll all walk away having learned something new.