Chris Anderson is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida. He loves reptiles and amphibians and for his dissertation, Chris is studying the effect of temperature on feeding in chameleons.

Chris just concluded his successful crowdfunding campaign on RocketHub and joins a growing number of scientists turning to RocketHub and crowdfunding to make new projects into a reality. I caught up with Chris to learn more.

I've always found chameleons to be fascinating animals and as a biologist, I'm very interested in how animals exist in their natural surroundings. I started studying how temperature effects chameleon feeding performance for my Ph.D. dissertation research a few years ago because I was interested in observations of chameleons feeding at remarkably low body temperature. This was odd to me because when muscle cools down, it contracts slower and thus makes animals more sluggish as their body temperature drops. We see this typical limitation on muscle contractile ability when we think about a snake or lizard on a cold morning needing to bask before it can move quickly. Chameleons, on the other hand, appeared to be able to project their tongue extremely quickly despite their low body temperature and I wanted to figure out why.

The first portion of my dissertation research discovered that chameleons are able to maintain a high degree of their tongue's projection performance because they utilize an elastic recoil mechanism to power the actual projection of the tongue. Just like a bow-and-arrow, it does not matter how slowly you draw the bow back, or in this case, how slowly the tongue muscle's stretch and load the elastic elements in the tongue, once the bow is released, it recoils at nearly the same rate, regardless of it's temperature, and thus, the tongue launches at high rates despite its cold temperature. The tongue's retraction, on the other hand, occurs much more slowly at lower temperatures because it is powered by muscle contraction alone. This got me wondering if species that live in different habitats in the wild would specialize to their natural environment.

Research has found that between populations of a species living across diverse habitats, individuals from populations inhabiting cooler habitats often perform better at cooler temperatures than individuals from populations inhabiting warmer habitats. Because elastic recoil powered movements, however, appear to be largely liberated from the typical constraints imposed by temperature on muscle contractile properties, I wondered if I would find that tongue projection would not be specialized, or be specialized to a lesser degree to the thermal environment than tongue retraction. So, I decided to pursue answering this question by testing feeding performance at different temperatures in chameleons living along a natural temperature gradient.

What has your experience been as a crowdfunding pioneer in the world of chameleon research - how are your supporters responding?

At first I wasn't sure what to expect but I liked the idea of crowdfunding and thought it was worth a shot, particularly with funding for research projects being as difficult to obtain as it is. I spent a couple days putting a video together on my project, deciding what rewards to offer, and writing up a description, and then posted my project and started to spread the word. 

I started spreading the word by sending the link to family and friends followed closely by posting the link on my personal social networking accounts asking people to take a look and send it on to others they thought might be interested. I then progressed into sharing the link on online forums, social media groups and email listservs dedicated to groups of people who I thought might be interested in my project. This has provided the opportunity for people interested in my project, but not necessarily familiar with RocketHub already, to learn about my project, engage me with questions about it, and contribute to it. As time has progressed, I've periodically reposted or provided updates on the progress of my RocketHub crowdfunding project page and each time it seems that more and more people are finding it and responding, either with encouragement, questions, sharing it with their friends, or contributing.

I'm a little over half way through the time period I put my project up for and I have to say that I'm quite pleased with how it has gone so far and how people are responding to it. I've always wished more research was done on certain topics but realize that the reality is many worthy projects never get off the ground due to a lack of funding availability. The people I've told about my RocketHub crowdfunding project seem to agree and like the idea that they can help some of these projects that they are personally interested in become a reality.

Now that you reached 150% of your goal, any advice for others looking to crowdfund a similar project?

I would definitely recommend that people carefully think about the projects they are putting up. Take the time to come up with a plan of how you are going to promote your crowdfunding project, what audiences you are going to share it with, and how you're going to do it. You can't just post a project up an hope it simply takes off on its own without working on making as many interested people aware of it as possible. The better and more thought out plan you have from the start, I think the more successful you'll be putting up a successful project.

From the perspective of how to present your project on RocketHub, I have to say that taking the time to put a movie together on your project to explain to people as simply as possible what you want to do is critical. People are busy and don't want to waste time on something they aren't interested in. Making a movie explaining your project is a good way to quickly grab someone's interest in a way that is as effortless for them as possible. 

Finally, I recommend people try to be creative with how they share their project with people and what audiences you share it with. Your project can be a perfect opportunity to tell your friends and family about what you've been up to recently. It can be a perfect opportunity to introduce yourself to online communities of people interested in a related topic. Take advantage of the opportunity to share you project with people and ask them to share it with anyone else they think would be interested.

Thanks Chris! We love your project and science at RocketHub and look forward to seeing many more academic projects.

-Vlad