Discovering Flies!

      No Comments on Discovering Flies!

“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 delivered by Dr Marshall during the 2018 ideacity conference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH6EM2j8HZw

 

Tuesday Sept. 24, 2024 at 7pm, at the Orangeville Seniors’ Centre, 26 Bythia St, Orangeville.
Free Admission, Everyone is Welcome, and refreshments are provided (Bring your own mug!)

 

The Wild Turkey — Social Structure & Behaviour

      No Comments on The Wild Turkey — Social Structure & Behaviour

Jenn Baici is an ecologist currently completing her PhD at Trent University in the Bowman Lab where she studies the social structure and behaviour of the Eastern Wild Turkey. Prior to this she studied biocontrol of invasive species at the University of Toronto in the Master of Forest Conservation (MFC) program.

The Wild Turkey — Social Structure & Behaviour

Jenn’s research interests include avian ecology, nesting behaviour, insect ecology, and human-animal conflict mitigation, although she’s nerdy about anything and everything to do with conservation biology. She hopes to apply her skills and knowledge to promote the conservation and preservation of earth’s amazing biodiversity, particularly undervalued and under appreciated species.

Jenn Baici, BSc Hons, MFC (She/Her), PhD Candidate,
Trent University Environmental and Life Sciences

Fiona Reid — MOTHS, the quiet pollinators you need to know

      No Comments on Fiona Reid — MOTHS, the quiet pollinators you need to know

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 Biology at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, Canada. Fiona is also President of Halton/North Peel Naturalist Club in Georgetown, Ontario.

Fiona lives on the Niagara Escarpment in southern Ontario with two children and an assortment of pets. She has always been fascinated with all aspects of nature, although her preference for mammals started early in life.

She studied biology at Cambridge University in England, and went to graduate school at Stony Brook, Long Island. Fiona slipped into scientific illustration work without any formal training, more on a whim than with a great deal of thought.

After illustrating several children’s books and a series of Neotropical mammal books, She decided to embark on writing and illustrating her own book on Central American mammals. This evolved into a crusade to find all the small mammal species and draw them directly from life. The book took much longer to complete than I had originally intended, but did enable me to develop my love and knowledge of obscure furry creatures. She is particularly devoted to bats, rodents and moths, the nocturnal, misunderstood realm.

1 2 3 4 … 24