More than Just the Buzz: A Practical Guide to Restoring Pollinator-Generated Biodiversity with Dr. Robert Gegear

In this talk, Dr. Gegear will discuss how he is using species-level ecological data to vastly improve recommended plant lists aimed at restoring bumblebee and butterfly functional diversity on degraded landscapes. He will also highlight how ‘eco-technology’ can be used to rapidly collect data on the ecological preferences of different pollinator species, thereby optimizing plant selection for imperiled species. His talk will conclude with an overview of how ‘Beecologist’ citizen scientists have used his data-driven conservation approach to successfully restore pollination system functional diversity at spatial scales ranging from home gardens to multi-acre conservation lands. Robert J. Gegear is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at UMass Dartmouth.  He received his PhD from Western University in Canada and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto (Canada) and in the Department of Neurobiology at UMASS Medical School.  His research focuses on…