A little over a year ago, we launched our Belly Button Biodiversity project at the Science Online 2011 meeting, recruiting volunteers to twirl cotton swabs in their belly buttons to collect microbes, all in the name of science!

Marie Claire Shanahan, a science education and communication researcher at the University of Alberta, was one of the nearly 40 volunteers at the conference who allowed us to peer inside their navels.

Since that time we’ve completed DNA analyses on the microbes inhabiting over 150 belly buttons. We’ve learned so much about the diverse microbial communities that call our belly buttons home (more details about those results coming soon!).

Your Wild Life team members, Jiri Hulcr & Nina Rountree, making their Canadian TV debut.

 

Kim Brunhuber, a reporter with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s evening news program The National, recently caught up with Your Wild Life and Marie Claire at the Science Online 2012 meeting. He spoke with project leader Dr. Jiri Hulcr and captured our team members in action, sharing belly button results with conference attendees and enlisting recruits for our next great expedition into the world of human skin microbes, Armpit-pa-looza!

Check out Your Wild Life’s debut on Canadian television here!