ALBANY NY – The Albany Pine Bush Discovery Center will be hosting one of the world’s premier ant experts as part of an ongoing Science Lecture Series. Dr. Aaron M. Ellison is the Senior Research Fellow in Ecology at the Harvard Forest, and an Adjunct Research Professor in the departments of Biology and Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. On June 19th at 6:00pm he will present “The ants of the Northeast: to know them is to love them” at the Albany Pine Bush Discovery Center on 195 New Karner Road in Albany. In addition, Graduate Student Grace Barber will be leading a field visit and ant specimen collection along the trails of the Albany Pine Bush Preserve from 4:00pm – 5:30pm that same day.
According to Dr. Ellison, “Ants are the little things that run around your kitchen and backyard while they are running the world. Ants are everywhere, they are beautiful, and they are important to us in many ways. Without ants, plants would not grow as well as they do; ants turn over soil, disperse seeds, and even farm fungus and tend micro-livestock. Ants also have a lot to teach us about the evolution of behavior and sociality.” Join Dr. Aaron Ellison, Senior Ecologist at Harvard University’s Harvard Forest and the lead author of the new Field Guide to the Ants of New England for a lecture and discussion about the diversity of ants in the Northeast’s forests, fields, gardens, and homes, and learn more about how important ants are to us and to the world around us.
Dr. Ellison received his B.A. in East Asian Philosophy from Yale University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in Evolutionary Ecology from Brown University in 1986. After post-doctoral positions at Cornell and with the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica, Aaron taught at Swarthmore College before moving to Mount Holyoke College in 1990, where as an Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor, and then as Associate Dean for Science, he taught biology, environmental studies, and statistics until 2001. In 1992, Aaron received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Faculty Fellow award for “demonstrated excellence and continued promise both in scientific and engineering research and in teaching future generations of students to extend and apply human knowledge.” Following a sabbatical year at Harvard in 2001-2002, Aaron assumed his current position at the Harvard Forest – Harvard’s 1500-hectare outdoor classroom and laboratory for ecological research. There, he studies food web dynamics and community ecology of wetlands and forests, evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants, the response of plants and ants to global climate change, and the application of Bayesian statistical inference to ecological research and environmental decision-making. He has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific papers, dozens of book reviews and software reviews, and the books A Primer of Ecological Statistics and A Field Guide to the Ants of New England. Aaron is the Editor-in-Chief of Ecological Monographs, and in 2012 he was elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America. Signed copies of the Field Guide will be available for purchase. A book signing and refreshments will follow the lecture.
This adult lecture is FREE and will be held rain or shine at the Albany Pine Bush Discovery Center at 195 New Karner Road, Albany. Visit AlbanyPineBush.org for more details and to pre-register for the field visit or the presentation (strongly recommended), and click on Events Calendar or call 518-456-0655.