Join us for the second lecture in our Winter Speaker Series.
Insects are the foundation of our ecosystems, including the pollinators crucial for food crops and flowering plants—and their numbers are dropping quickly.
Join Dr. Avalon Owens from Harvard to explore an overlooked cause of the "insect apocalypse:" light pollution. Dr. Owens will explain the profound ways in which artificial light disrupts the lives of diverse insect species, from confusing their development to interfering with their ability to find food and mates.
Best of all, learn why eliminating light pollution is arguably the cheapest, easiest, and fastest way to protect our insect neighbors. Come find out how simple changes to your lighting can make a huge, immediate difference for the beneficial insects in your garden. Following the presentation, join us on the Studio lawn to observe the Moon, Jupiter, and other celestial objects through telescopes.
About the Owens Laboratory
The Owens laboratory studies how organisms and ecosystems cope with anthropogenic light pollution. We are particularly interested in the ecological costs and evolutionary history of flight-to-light behavior (positive phototaxis), most famously exhibited by moths and other insects. We use a range of methods spanning the fields of spectroscopy, stereophotogrammetry, remote sensing, computer vision, entomological collections, pest management, animal behavior, and conservation genomics to improve our understanding of both positively phototactic insects and the increasingly bright light environments in which they live.
