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- Exploring “The Lives of Bees” w/ Prof. of Entomology Christina GrozingerNeeds location
Exploring “The Lives of Bees”
There are over 20,000 bee species in the world, and they live complex lives that are closely integrated with their local habitat. Most bees are hard-working single mothers, but some bee species live in family groups with their sisters which creates its own opportunities and challenges. Here, we will discuss highlights from “The Lives of Bees: A Natural History of Our Planet’s Bee Life”. We will discuss how bees choose, design and build their homes, how they find, collect and store food, how they find and select mates, how they care for – and manipulate – their offspring, how they defend themselves and their nests. We will discuss how bees’ behavior has led to the diversity of flowering plants we see in the world around us, and how plants manipulate bees to ensure their own reproduction. Finally, we will discuss how people have managed and benefited from bees, how anthropogenic change is now drastically changing the environment and leading to declines in many bee species across the world, and what we can do to support bees, from a local to a continental scale.MEET CHRISTINA:
Penn State University, Department of Entomology, Center for Pollinator Research, Technology for Living System CenterChristina Grozinger is the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and the Director for the Center for Pollinator Research and Technology for Living Systems Center at Penn State. She is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and received the 2021 National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences and 2022 Penn State President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration. Christina received her bachelor's degree in chemistry and biology at McGill University, and her master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. The Penn State Center for Pollinator Research includes members from 9 Colleges across Penn State, and uses an integrative approach – from genes to spatial ecology to artificial intelligence – to support the health of bee populations.