Department of E.C.H.T., University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy.
Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche-sur-Mer, CNRS UMR 7093, Station Zoologique, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France.
Eur J Protistol. 2020 Oct;76:125729. doi: 10.1016/j.ejop.2020.125729. Epub 2020 Jul 6.
It is rare to meet protistologists who are not passionate about their study subject. The vast majority of people, however, never get the chance to hear about the work of these researchers. Although every researcher working on protists is likely to be aware of this situation, efforts made and tools employed for dissemination of knowledge are rarely documented. Following a proposal by the Italian Society of Protistology, a workshop at the 2019 VIII European Congress of Protistology in Rome, Italy, was dedicated to protistological knowledge dissemination. Through the many interventions, we discovered the diversity of efforts to reveal the protistan world to the general public, including museum exhibitions and activities, public understanding of science events, citizen science projects, specific book publications, the use of protists in teaching at all levels from primary school children to university undergraduate students, and to a global audience via social media. The participation of the workshop delegates in the discussions indicated that presentations on the wonderful world of protists to the public not only increase the visibility and accessibility of protistology research but are also very important for the scientific community. Here we report on some of the key aspects of the presentations given in the dissemination workshop.
很少有研究原生生物的学者不对他们的研究主题充满热情。然而，绝大多数人从未有机会听到这些研究人员的工作。尽管从事原生生物研究的每一位研究人员都可能意识到这种情况，但为传播知识所做的努力和所采用的工具很少有记录。在意大利原生生物学会的提议下，意大利罗马 2019 年第八届欧洲原生生物学家大会的一个研讨会专门讨论了原生生物知识的传播。通过许多干预措施，我们发现了各种努力来向公众揭示原生生物世界，包括博物馆展览和活动、公众对科学的理解活动、公民科学项目、专门的书籍出版物、在从小学生到大学生的各级教学中使用原生生物，以及通过社交媒体向全球受众传播。研讨会代表参与讨论表明，向公众展示原生生物的精彩世界不仅提高了原生生物学研究的可见度和可及性，而且对科学界也非常重要。在这里，我们报告了传播研讨会上所做报告的一些关键方面。
