Avatar hover

Hi there,

When the mouse move hovers over the author avator there is an annoying animation from a circle to a square.

Ideally I would like to hide the auhtor circle/avatar but when I try this the CSS also removes other areas on the page that I want to keep i.e. claim a listing from the sidebar.

So is there a way that either

1. the avatar can be removed wihtout interfering with other parts of the listing

OR

2. The animation could be removed so that I can look at styling the avatar without the annoying hover.

Thanks, http://www.naturephototour.com/