Rehoboth Land Trust Annual Meeting with Dr. R. GeGear

The Rehoboth Land Trust's Annual Meeting will begin with a few minutes of business and then speaker, Dr. Robert GeGear will be presenting. Dr. GeGear, a Professor of Biology at UMass Dartmouth, has developed a citizen scientist project in which you can participate by taking photos of bumblebees and butterflies on plants. These can help his team develop strategies for restoring native plant-pollination systems.

Over the past two decades, human activity has significantly degraded the integrity of pollination systems across New England. Many of our historically abundant native flowering plant and pollinator species are now locally extinct and others soon to follow if we do not take immediate conservation action. The loss of plant-pollinator systems poses a significant threat to the diversity and functioning of natural ecosystems due to the fundamental role that ‘pollination products’ play in supporting wildlife throughout the food web. However, we currently lack the ecological data needed to develop effective conservation and restoration strategies for pollination systems at risk.

In this presentation, Dr. Robert GeGear will discuss how his award-winning Beecology citizen science project at UMASS Dartmouth is utilizing conservation-focused community members throughout New England to crowdsource the collection and the implementation of research data to restore imperiled bumblebee and butterfly pollination systems. He will also highlight the Beecology ‘eco-technology’ that was developed with Worcester Polytechnic Institute, (WPI), collaborators to aid in the collection, storage, visualization, and communication of species-level ecological data on plant-pollinator systems. His talk will conclude with examples of how Beecology has significantly advanced bumblebee pollination system conservation efforts over the past 2 years and how you can become involved!

Contact Carol Entin if you have questions. carolentin@comcast.net  or 508-415-6065