SQÉBC 2019

Illustration and design for the 2019 Société quebecoise pour l’étude biologique du comporterment (SQÉBC) academic conference

This year’s theme was cognitive ecology, a sub-discipline of behavioural biology which seeks to understand cognitive phenomena in a natural context. Here, I took inspiration from ‘Father of Neuroscience’ Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s metaphor for about exploring a neuron forest and applied it literally. In this illustration, roots are axons, branches are dendrites, and trees are pyramidal cells, neurons that are especially important for motor function. The pyramidal cell forest is populated by species studied by the hosts and guest speakers of the conference: from left to right, a rhesus macaque, Trinidadian guppy, raccoon, cowbird, and field cricket.