Date:
Location:
Join Harvard DRCLAS, MCZ, and OEB for a panel discussion on how understanding biodiversity can contribute to our ability to use bioinspired designs offering climate change solutions, such as more efficient energy use, harnessing of ecosystem services, management of potential insect pests and invasive species, and identification of zoonotic reserviors that potentially harbor disease.
Join Harvard DRCLAS, MCZ, and OEB for a panel discussion on how understanding biodiversity can contribute to our ability to use bioinspired designs offering climate change solutions, such as more efficient energy use, harnessing of ecosystem services, management of potential insect pests and invasive species, and identification of zoonotic reserviors that potentially harbor disease.
Speakers: & Moderator
Naomi E. Pierce, Professor, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Lepidoptera, Museum of Comparative Zoology; Wendy Valencia-Montoya, Graduate Student, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; Bruno de Medeiros, Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama; Weber Amaral, Professor, Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Quieroz, University de São Paulo; Marcia Castro, Andelot Professor of Demography, Chair of the Department of Global Health and Population, HSPH; Chair, Brazil Studies Program
Scott V. Edwards is the Agassiz Professor of Biology and Curator of Ornithology at Harvard. He studies the evolutionary biology of birds and relatives, combining field, museum and genomics approaches to understand the basis of avian diversity, evolution and behavior. His guiding approaches include population genetics, which provides a quantitative framework for studying speciation, geographic variation and genome evolution; systematics, which acknowledges that the focal species of any study has relatives that are behaviorally and ecologically no less interesting; and natural history, which gives meaning to the genes and genomic patterns we study.
Naomi E. Pierce is the Hessel Professor of Biology and Curator of Lepidoptera at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. She specializes in the ecology and evolution of species interactions, ranging from symbioses between ants and other organisms, to genetic analyses of biochemical signaling pathways underlying interactions between plants, pathogens and insects. Her lab has used molecular phylogenies and genomic techniques to analyze the evolution of social behavior in bees and ants, pollination and phytophagy in insects, and sexual selection, signaling and perception in moths and butterflies. As part of her work in the MCZ, she has been involved in surveying insect biodiversity and natural history on the savannas of Australia, South America and East Africa and in the forests of Southeast Asia.
Wendy Valencia-Montoya is a third year graduate student in Naomi Pierce's lab in OEB at Harvard. Her doctoral thesis investigates the ability of nocturnal pollinators to perceive and use visual and thermal cues from their host plants. She is also looking at sexual selection and the evolution of the visual system of lycaenid butterflies in the Eumaeini— the "birds of paradise" of the butterfly world. Wendy did her undergraduate degree at CES University in Medellín, Colombia, where she carried out a detailed study of "push-pull" pollination in Zamia, a New World genus of cycads. By careful field observations, she identified the specialized weevils that visit these cycads, as well as the unusual thermal biology of the plants that encourages the male weevils to visit first the male plants where they feed on pollen that covers their bodies, and then move to the female plants where they achieve pollination. Wendy carried out a Masters thesis in Cambridge University on a genomic analysis of the hybridization and the potential spread of an invasive African‘mega-pest’ moth species throughout Brazil and the New World. This research showed how hybridization can contribute to the ability to evolve resistance to pesticides and contribute to the success of these invasive species.
Bruno de Medeiros is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, where he is studying the pollination system of palms that have coevolved with specialized insects that both pollinate and harm these plants. He was an undergraduate at the University of São Paulo, where he also did a Masters degree in which he started studying palm pollinators. Bruno did his doctoral thesis in OEB at Harvard in Brian Farrell's laboratory, where he studied the evolution of beetle pollinators using Brazilian biodiversity. He has recently accepted a position as Curator of Pollination Biology at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Weber Amaral is a Professor of Agronomy and Forestry at the University of São Paulo in the Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Quieroz. He obtained his Masters from the University of Sao Paulo (USP), and his doctorate from the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. His research and professional interests are in the areas of biofuels and sustainable use of biodiversity, forest genetic resources, biotechnology and biosafety, sustainable development and public policy. He was the coordinator of the Brazilian Center for Biofuels from 2005 - 2008, and formally Senior Scientist at the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, based in Rome, coordinating the Global Forest Genetic Resources Project. His professional career has included working as a researcher in Plant Genetics and Breeding at Florin Florestamento Integrado SA, working as a consultant on Biodiversity for the Brazilian government, and participating as a member of the International Advisory Group of the Pilot Programme on Tropical Rain Forests (PPG7).
Marcia Castro is Andelot Professor of Demography, and chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, associate faculty of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and faculty member of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Her research focuses on the development and use of multidisciplinary approaches, combining data from different sources, to identify the determinants of malaria transmission in different ecological settings, and to provide evidence for the improvement of current control policies, and the development of new ones. She has more than 20 years of research experience in the Brazilian Amazon, and is assessing the role of extreme weather events on malaria. She has projects on dengue, Zika virus, chikungunya, tuberculosis, congenital syphilis, and infant and child mortality and development. Professor Castro received the 2018 Roger L. Nichols Award for Excellence in Teaching. She earned her doctoral degree in Demography from Princeton University.
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Contact: drclas@fas.harvard.edu