Boston Flora

Tag: Lynn Adler

  • Saturday, September 14, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm – Floral Traits Mediating Pathogen Dynamics in Pollinators

    On Saturday, September 14, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts will host the New England Botanical Club for a day-long meeting with options including a field trip to the Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area with Pete Grima (10 – 2), a fungal walk with Dianna Smith at the Smith College MacLeish Field Station (12 – 3), and a lecture by Dr. Lynn S. Adler, Biology Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on Floral Traits Mediating Pathogen Dynamics in Pollinators.

    The Montague Plains cover several power line corridors on the Montague sand plain and adjacent Will’s Hill, where the focus will be on the amazing asters, gorgeous goldenrods. lingering legumes, and genteel fringed gentians that will be in their prime. There may be orchids, too. This is an easy walk of 1.5 miles with 200 foot elevation gain. Be prepared for ticks and open, sunny conditions.

    The Fungi Walk will introduce you to the fascinating world of the fungi kingdom during our three-hour guided walk starting at noon at the Smith College MacLeish Field Station on Poplar Hill Rd in Whately, MA. In addition to helping attendees learn to identify particular morphological groups of fungi, Dianna will provide essential information about their lifestyles and functions in forest and garden ecology; their evolutionary history; habitat preferences; edibility; toxicity; and potential medicinal uses. By the time you complete this walk, you will know more about these curious representatives of the mostly hidden kingdom of fungi than 99.9% of the world’s population.

    Register at http://www.rhodora.org/meetings/upcomingmeetings.html

    figwort on Montague Sand Plain

  • Tuesday, December 8, 7:30 pm – Role of Floral Traits in Mediating Disease Transmission

    The next meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club will be held on Tuesday, December 8 at 7:30 PM in in room 101 of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge. Lynn S. Adler, Professor of Biology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst,  will present a talk entitled Role of Floral Traits in Mediating Disease Transmission.

    All are welcome to join us at 5:45 at the West Side Lounge for an informal pre-meeting dinner. Please note the change in location from past dinners!

    Lynn’s work addresses how floral traits can affect bee pathogen loads and disease transmission. Although many researchers now study bee pathogens due to concerns about pollinator decline, we still know remarkably little about the role of plants in mediating bee diseases. In this talk she will demonstrate how nectar chemistry and pollen can affect bee gut pathogen loads, how transmission varies across plant species and consequences of plant variation for colony-level bee disease loads. The meeting is free and open to the public.  Image from www.nationofchange.org.

  • Tuesday, March 13, 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm – Pretty and Poisonous: The Role of Plant Defenses in Flowers

    Lynn Adler, Associate Professor of Entomology at UMass Amherst, will be the featured speaker on Tuesday, March 13 at the Cambridge Entomological Club.  She will present a lecture entitled Pretty and Poisonous: The Role of Plant Defenses in Flowers.  CEC meetings are held the second Tuesday of the month from October through May. The evening schedule typically includes an informal dinner (6:15 to 7:15 PM) followed by our formal meeting (7:30 – 9:00 PM) in MCZ 101, 26 Oxford Street, Harvard University. The latter begins with club business and is followed by a 50 minute entomology related presentation. Membership is open to amateur and professional entomologists.  For more information, email CEC President Jessica Walden-Gray at jessisoutside@gmail.com.