There is an interesting challenge around, inspired by a comic from xkcd, in which scientists try to explain their research with only the thousand (or better: “ten-hundred”) most common words in the English language. Well, that’s the kind of challenge I can stand behind! It makes for fun reading, but also challenges the scientist to go ‘back to basics’ with what their working on. Here is my attempt about the ‘green living things’ I work with (yes, ‘plants’ is not in the list):

We study green living things moving away from their homes as the world gets warmer and more filled with people. We want to get better at knowing why they are moving and where they are going. Green living things can not walk on their own, but we see that we humans take them with us if we go somewhere. We also change the places where they grow with all the building and working we do, which some green living things like, but many others don’t.

A green living thing living in a warm place