The University of Connecticut Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) is featuring two National Academy of Science members this Thursday for a lecture on natural history. The lecture is from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in room 131 of the Biology/Physics Building.
The public event is cohosted by the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History (CSMNH) which is “dedicated to engaging with our community members to address some of the most pressing challenges we face in the 21st century,” including biodiversity loss, climate change and environmental pollution, according to the CSMNH website.
Pam and Doug Soltis, the presenters from NAS, are both distinguished professors at the University of Florida with roles as principal investigators at the Soltis Lab, according to the Florida Museum website. The lecture is expected to be the highlight of the event, according to the UConn event calendar.
The Biodiversity Bonanza event is free for both UConn students and local community members to attend, but an RSVP for the reception portion is preferred, according to the event’s webpage.
The Bonanza begins with two batches of collection tours. The first tour takes place at 2 p.m. and the second one begins at 2:30 p.m. Both the tours will meet near the giant ant model in the Biology/Physics Building before traveling through the UConn Botanical Conservatory greenhouses, according to the program details.
Attendees will have 30 minutes after the second tour to settle in for the Soltis’ lecture, also in the Biology/Physics Building. The talk, titled “Natural History Collections for 21st Century Research,” is part of a larger initiative by EEB to hold weekly seminars, according to the department’s website.
The last part of the event is a natural history display and reception, starting at 4:30 p.m. The display takes place in the Gant Science Complex Light Court and ends at 6:30.
Exhibits of the reception include giant butterflies, miniature orchids, a passenger pigeon, the skull of a hippopotamus, carnivorous plants, the skeleton of a platypus and a Henry David Thoreau herbarium specimen, according to the program details.
Among those showcases is a traveling exhibit entitled “Legacy of a Lifetime of Collection: The Carl & Marian Rettenmeyer Story.” Carl Rettenmeyer was a biology professor at UConn from 1971 to 1996, where he found that over 300 species may be dependent on ants to survive during his project named the Army Ant Guest Collection (AAGC), according to his biography.
Anna Lindemann is a co-director of AntU, which preserves the AAGC and shares its findings to a range of academic disciplines, according to her UConn page. Lindemann explains how the interactive exhibit honors the field research the Rettenmeyers conducted and stresses ants’ role in biodiversity with her paper, “The Legacy of a Lifetime of Collecting.”
“Through experiences designed for touch-interactive screens, visitors observe army ant swarm raids in the jungle, notate field card observations, examine microscope slides in the collection, study pinned specimens in Cornell drawers, and explore the life story of Carl and Marian Rettenmeyer through an interactive timeline,” Lindemann wrote in the paper.
Space is still available in the reception for more posters regarding natural history or biodiversity, according to the event webpage. Students interested in presenting, whose research focuses on these areas or who generate data for UConn’s biodiversity research collections, can sign up via Google Form or contact jill.wegrzyn@uconn.edu with questions.