Lectures/Talks
Refurbishing the Bee Hotel: Different Bees, Different Needs
ZoomFree webinar with Dr Linda Birkin and Isobel Sexton report their findings on what does and doesn't work when it comes to creating successful bee hotels. Putting up a bee hotel is a popular - and accessible - wildlife gardening activity, but typical designs are very focused on the needs of a small sub-set of […]
Spiders, Earthworms and Beetles: The Impacts of Cover Crop Frost Tolerance
ZoomFree webinar with Dr Amelia Hood from Reading University presenting the results of a collaborative experiment looking at invertebrate-associated ecosystem benefits from cover crops. Cover crops are used in arable rotations to protect the soil between cash crops (e.g. wheat, barley). Cover crops need to be removed before cash crops can be planted, and this […]
Butterflies Through Time: Climate Change, Conservation & Historic Specimens
ZoomFree webinar with Matthew Hayes discussing how historical specimens and modern-day research allow wildlife of the past to inform conservation of the future. Combining historical specimens and modern-day research allows wildlife of the past to inform conservation of the future. In this talk, Matt Hayes (Cambridge University) discusses research currently being carried out on Wildlife […]
Bees and Heatwaves: Preparing For A Warming World
ZoomFree webinar with Yanet Sepulveda and Isobel Sexton about a project investigating the impacts of extreme weather on bee populations. As heatwaves become more frequent and intense, it is essential to understand how pollinators respond to such extreme conditions. The Buzz Club's Bees and Heatwaves project involves volunteers from all over the UK to help […]
The Noble Jewel-wasp: The Range Expansion of a Brood Parasite
ZoomFree webinar with Aaron Bhambra looking at the potential reasons behind the range expansion of the Noble Jewel-wasp. The Noble Jewel-wasp (Hedychrum nobile) is a recent colonist to Great Britain, recorded for the first time in 1998. This brood parasite has experienced a rapid range expansion throughout England over the past 20 years, following the […]
Hoverfly Lagoons Project: A Journey into the Past, Present and Future
ZoomFree webinar with Dr Ellen Rotheray about the highly successful Hoverfly Lagoons project and introducing aquatic habitats into small spaces. The Hoverfly Lagoons project was invented in 2016 for the University of Sussex’s Buzz Club, a citizen science charity exploring wildlife gardening techniques for insects. The aim was to trial artificial habitat, essentially small water […]
Bees and Beyond: Ecosystem Services at a Garden Scale
ZoomFree webinar with Dr Linda Birkin exploring the importance of gardens for the wider environment in which they are nestled. Gardening success and invertebrate activity are deeply intertwined, for better or worse! Demonstrating that the beneficial side of this relationship vastly outweighs the negative is hugely important for maximising the ecological value of gardens - […]
A World of Wasps: Researching the Ichneumonid Wasps
ZoomFree webinar delving into the understudied world of Ichneumonid wasps. Huge numbers of insects are hosts to parasitoid wasps, and one of the most successful groups of wasps is the Ichneumonoidea, or Darwin Wasps. Despite the ubiquity of Darwin Wasps, they are comparatively neglected by researchers and naturalists. Dr Gavin Broad looks at research on […]
Sow Wild! and Insect Identification
ZoomFree webinar investigating the success of 'mini meadows' and testing the ability of citizen scientists to sample and identify insects. Habitat loss and fragmentation are considered the foremost threats in pollinator decline, and in England and Wales, 97% of wildflower meadows were lost by 1984. Gardens have considerable potential for supporting pollinators, covering large areas […]
Cave Spiders: Behavioural Adaptations in Webs, Foraging and Dispersal
ZoomFree webinar with Dr Thomas Hesselberg exploring behavioural adaptations in cave spiders. Web-building spiders are excellent model organisms to study the behavioural adaptations to novel habitats such as the dark and food-limited subterranean cave habitat. Cave-dwelling orb spiders in the genus Meta show several potential behavioural adaptations in both their webs (which do not have […]