We welcome Jenn Baici back to update us on her studies of real interest — controlling invasive plant species. Last year, Jenn told us about her research on Wild Turkeys in which she creatively combined an amazing variety of research tools. We all know about Garlic Mustard, and about Phragmites, and about Dog-Strangling Vine. Her present work is at University of Toronto on these and other Invasive Plants in which she is again combining a remarkable array of research tools to develop new approaches to controlling invasive plants. (Note that we’ve been taking a strong focus on HOW ecologists do their work, not only on what their work shows us.)
“It’s easy to forget that human beings form a tiny two-legged minority in an overwhelmingly six-legged world.” Dr. Stephen Marshall. Dr. Marshall will be amazing us with the fascinating world of flies, insects that we tend to abhor and swat. Marshall is a University of Guelph Professor Emeritus, researching the distribution and biology of insects. Stephen Marshall is passionate about bugs. He studies biodiversity and insect species, helps with the naming, describing and classifying newly discovered six-legged creatures. He himself has discovered hundreds of species, several new genera and two new subfamilies over the decades just a fraction of the estimated one to two million species of insects that live on our planet. Dr Marshall is the author of Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity which is considered the best resource anyone looking to identify North American insects could possibly invest in. Here’s an entertaining and informative talk on insect biodiversity… Read more »
Fiona Reid will be telling us about moths that pollinate on Tuesday evening, April 30th at 7:00 P.M. at our usual location in the Seniors Centre on Bythia Street in Orangeville. Fiona Reid has been leading nature tours since 1986, showing ecotourists the mammals and other wildlife of diverse lands from Brazil to Indonesia, and Alaska to Venezuela. An accomplished writer and artist, Fiona is the author and illustrator of A Peterson Field Guide to Mammals of North America. She has written and/or illustrated numerous other guides, including A Field Guide to the Mammals of Central America and Southeast Mexico, Bats of Trinidad and Tobago, The Wildlife of Costa Rica, a Field Guide, The Golden Guide to Bats of the World, Bats of Papua New Guinea, Mammals of the Neotropics (volumes 1-3), and several children’s books. She is a Departmental Associate in Mammalogy at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation… Read more »
