Somerville Garden Club

Floodlights and Fireflies: Environmental Sustainability Starts in your Front Yard

Insect populations around the world are declining rapidly. But why? While habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change all have something to do with it, Dr. Avalon Owens shows in this talk that light pollution is another important — but too often overlooked — bringer of the insect apocalypse. Light pollution interferes with the development, movement, foraging, courtship, and reproduction of diverse insect species, including many that we know and love to see in our gardens. Fortunately, light pollution can be cheaply, easily, and instantly eliminated. Doing so will help ensure that we live in harmony with our insect friends and neighbors for generations to come.

Avalon received her Ph.D. in Biology from Tufts University in spring 2022, where she studied how artificial light affects firefly courtship and reproduction. She also holds a B.A. in Integrative Biology from Harvard University and an M.S. in Entomology from National Taiwan University. Her research group at the Rowland Institute at Harvard studies how organisms and ecosystems cope with anthropogenic light pollution, with a current focus on the ecological costs and evolutionary consequences of moth flight-to-light behavior.

In-person meetings are held the at the Tufts Administration Building, (TAB), 167 Holland Street, second floor, wheelchair accessible. Parking is available for a small fee, and the building is a ten-minute walk from the Davis Square MBTA stop.

All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. 7-9pm. The SGC has been informed that the entry doors to the TAB will be locked at 8pm, effective immediately, including on our meeting days. Please arrange your arrival times accordingly.

More than just the buzz: A practical guide to native pollination system conservation (and why it matters)

Over the past two decades, human activity has significantly degraded the integrity of plant-pollinator or ‘pollination’ systems across New England, with many of our historically abundant native flowing plant and pollinator species becoming locally extinct and others soon to follow if we do not take immediate conservation action. The loss of species from plant-pollinator systems poses a significant threat to natural ecosystem functioning and services supporting human health and well-being due to the fundamental role that ‘pollination products’play in supporting wildlife diversity across trophic levels. Yet, the factors driving pollination system degradation remain unclear, impeding the development of effective conservation strategies. In this talk, I will discuss how ecological data collected by my research lab and Beecology Citizen Science Project are being used to gain insight into the causes of species loss from bee and butterfly pollination systems native to NewEngland. I will also highlight the ‘eco-technology’ that has been developed to aid Beecologists in the collection of species interaction data, including the launch of a new version of the web app with automated butterfly and plant ID functions powered by iNaturalist in Spring 2022. My talk will conclude with an overview of how citizen-scientists have been using Beecology data to significantly advance native biodiversity restoration efforts in Massachusetts over the past 3 years.

Robert J. Gegear is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at UMassDartmouth. He received his PhD from Western University in Canada and was aPostdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at theUniversity of Toronto (Canada) and in the Department of Neurobiology at UMASSMedical School. His research integrates concepts and methodologies fromevolutionary ecology, psychology, neurobiology, molecular biology, and computerscience to gain insight into the functioning and conservation of plant-pollinatorsystems.

In-person meetings are held the at the Tufts Administration Building, (TAB), 167 Holland Street, second floor, wheelchair accessible. Parking is available for a small fee, and the building is a ten-minute walk from the Davis Square MBTA stop.

All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. 7-9pm. The SGC has been informed that the entry doors to the TAB will be locked at 8pm, effective immediately, including on our meeting days. Please arrange your arrival times accordingly.