Bee Biogeography and Systematics Talks (BeeBST) is a series of monthly webinars on bee systematics, taxonomy and biogeography. It is aimed at a general audience of people interested in bees and pollinators, and especially with those interested in bee classification and biogeography.

The taxonomy of giant honey bees, biogeography of bumble bees, cleptoparasitic nomandine bees, Anthophorinae, the adaptive radiation of the western honey bee, mining bees, integrating fossil evidence, floral associations in Eucerine bees... and we are just getting started!

• Please see the list below for the most current information and links to register for each event 

Talks will generally be held at 11:00am (EST) on the last Wednesday of each month. We are hoping that many of the talks will be recorded and made available on the , so please subscribe to stay up-to-date!

If you would like to add your name to the list of potential speakers for 2023 or 2024 please contact Laurence Packer at geodiscelis@mail.com

We hope the series will continue indefinitely...

TBD, 2023 @ 11am EST

TBD

TBD - We're taking a break for the summer but hope to return in Fall 2023

Registration links will be posted when talks are scheduled.

January 2023

February 2023

March 2023

April 2023

May 2023

June 2023

January 2022

February 2022

March 2022

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October 2022

November 2022

December 2022

There was no presentation in December 2022.

Support biodiversity with this practical guide to creating habitat gardens for native pollinators in Southern Ontario.

A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators in Southern Ontario

by: Lorraine Johnson & Sheila Colla, Illustrations by: Ann Sanderson

Saving the bees is an environmental cause that resonates deeply with Canadians. While much of the popular focus is on honeybees, an introduced species, many people are largely unaware of the importance of native bees. These pollinators are of crucial importance and are threatened by climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation, and disease and competition from non-native species and modern intensive agriculture.

A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee provides all the information needed for gardeners to take action to support and protect pollinators—by creating habitat in yards and communal spaces, and on balconies and rooftops.

There are approximately 400 species of native bees in Ontario, including bumblebees, sweat bees, mining bees, cuckoo bees, leafcutter bees and cellophane bees. This book introduces and deepens the concept of pollinator gardening—creating gardens that help bees thrive—by exploring specialist relationships. For example, the native-to-Ontario sweat bee Lasioglossum oenotherae specializes in pollen from the native evening primrose plant.

With plant recommendations specific to Southern Ontario, as well as useful garden designs and numerous tips for success, this compact, full-colour guide will enable gardeners to discover the crucial connections between native plants and native pollinators—and learn how to cultivate their own patch of pollinator paradise.

Bees: An Up-close look at Pollinators around the world

by: Sam Droege & Laurence Packer

While we eat, work, and sleep, bees are busy around the world. More than 20,000 species are in constant motion! They pollinate plants of all types and keep our natural world intact. In Bees, you'll find a new way to appreciate these tiny wonders. Sam Droege and Laurence Packer present more than 100 of the most eye-catching bees from around the world as you've never seen them: up-close and with stunning detail. You'll stare into alien-like faces. You'll get lost in mesmerizing colors and patterns, patches and stripes of arresting yellow or blue. Whether you linger on your first close look at the Western Domesticated Honey Bee or excitedly flip straight to the rare Dinagapostemon sicheli, there's no doubt you'll be blown away by the beauty of bees.

Find the book

Measuring Arthropod Biodiversity

A Handbook of Sampling Methods

by: Jean Carlos Santos & Geraldo Wilson Fernandes

Laurence Packer has co-authored a chapter in "Measuring Arthropod Biodiversity". The
chapter is titled "Bees: how and why to sample them", check out the chapter abstract below and
click on the image to find the book:

A review of current capture and collection techniques for bees is presented. Information regarding primary collection techniques (i.e. netting, malaise traps, bowl traps, trap nests, visual surveys) along with issues of variability, bias, and the impacts of observers along with taxonomic impediments are discussed. Notable is the lack of standardization in any of these approaches along with a similar sparsity of statistical evaluation of the methodologies themselves. Practitioners deploy these and several lesser-known techniques, in a great many ways. We are at the beginning of a learning curve on how to develop accurate and precise research and monitoring tools for bee populations, and it is clear that there is much to learn.

Videos

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• The Conversation Canada
• Popular Media
• Videos

Dr. Sandra Rehan is an expert on social insect genomics and pollinator health combining molecular evolution, behavioural ecology, population genetics, and phylogenetics to understand sociobiology, biogeography, and nutritional requirements.

Dr. Sandra Rehan, Principal Investigator, Director

91ÑÇɫ’s Tier 2 Research Chair in Molecular Ecology and Behavioural Genetics
Professor Biology Department, Faculty of Science

Dr. Rehan’s research focuses on bee biodiversity and social evolution. She recently was awarded the prestigious NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship for her research in bee genomics, molecular ecology and behavioural genetics and was inducted as a Fellow in the Linnean Society of London. With a special interest in the origin and maintenance of social behaviour in bees, her lab has three main foci: molecular phylogeny, behavioural ecology, and comparative genomics. Employing these three levels of biological integration to study bees at multiple evolutionary scales, research in the lab ranges from natural history and taxonomy to molecular phylogenetics and biogeography. Dr. Rehan uses comparative genomics to uncover the genetic basis of group formation and transcriptomics to understand the epigenetic modifications involved with social experience. Long term studies of bee biodiversity across landscapes are conducted to determine plant-pollinator associations and the status of wild bee communities. Additional biodiversity survey specimens offer invaluable data to discover cryptic species, study species ranges, adaptation and ecological niches using comparative morphology, population genetic, and geospatial modelling techniques.

Dr. Amro Zayed, Principal Investigator

91ÑÇɫ’s Tier 2 Research Chair in Genomics
Professor, Biology Department, Faculty of Science

Dr. Zayed’s research focuses on the genetics, genomics and behaviour of social insects using the honey bee as a model organism. Using genomics, applied tools are being developed to improve honey bee health and to understand the causes and consequences of population decline in native bees such as bumblebees. Zayed has received over $20 million dollars in research funding since 2009 from a variety of sources including, , , , and the . Awards include the Governor General’s Gold Medal in 2007, the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation’s Early Researcher Award in 2010, the Faculty of Science’s Early Career Researcher Award in 2014, a 91ÑÇÉ« Research Chair in 2015, and 91ÑÇÉ«U’s President Emerging Research Leadership Award in 2017. Dr. Zayed was recently awarded the Entomological Society of Canada’s Gordon C. Hewitt Award for outstanding contributions to the field of entomology.

Dr. Amro Zayed, 91ÑÇÉ«U’s research chair in Genomics and BEEc director, uses genomics to understand why native bees and honey bees are declining, and develops tools to overcome these declines.

Dr. Laurence Packer, a Distinguished Research Professor at 91ÑÇÉ«U, has built and continues to maintain the largest Canadian collection of bees, currently estimated at over 300k specimens from all over the globe!

Dr. Laurence Packer, Principal Investigator

Founding Member, Centre for Bee Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
Distinguished Research Professor, Biology Department, Faculty of Science

Dr. Packer’s research focuses on bee systematics, phylogeny, taxonomy (including DNA barcoding) and biogeography. During the early years, research was primarily sociobiological and now includes published work on topics as diverse as genetics, conservation, behaviour, invasive species, urban ecology, climate change and nest architecture. As a world expert on wild bees, over the past 20 years Dr. Packer has built up a world class research collection – the largest of its kind in Canada, housing over 500 000 specimens from all over the world (>100 countries) and including perhaps 95% of the world's 500 or so bee genera. Leading the campaign to obtain DNA barcodes of the world's bees, Dr. Packer's lab has published over 200 research articles and described over 130 new species (including the 20 000th bee species) as well two new genera of bees. A past member of COSEWIC and twice a member of NSERC's Ecology and Evolution research grant panel, Dr. Packer has obtained funding from a diverse array of sources including , , the , , the  and a private donor. Author of the award-winning book "" Harper Collins and co-author (with Sam Droege) of "" Voyageur Press, which has been translated into Dutch, French and German.

The Packer Lab

Dr. Jane Heffernan, director of 91ÑÇɫ’s Center for Disease Modelling, is applying her modelling skills to help understand how pathogens and pests affect colony health.

CDM Research

Dr. Jane Heffernan, Principal Investigator

Director of the Centre for Disease Modelling (CDM)
Professor, Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Faculty of Science

Dr. Heffernan’s research focuses on understanding the spread and persistence of infectious diseases. The Modelling Infection and Immunity Lab focuses on the development of new biologically motivated models of infectious diseases (deterministic and stochastic) that describe pathogen dynamics in-host (mathematical immunology) and in a population of hosts (mathematical epidemiology). More recently, Dr. Heffernan is focusing on applying mathematics and modelling to studying pollinator health and diseases biology. Dr. Heffernan was recently elected as a Member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. In addition to being a mathematics professor, Dr. Heffernan is the Director of the Centre for Disease Modelling (CDM) and serves on the Boards of Directors of the  (SMB) and the  (CAIMS).

Dr. Gordon Fitch, Principal Investigator

Assistant Professor, Biology Department, Faculty of Science

Dr. Fitch’s research focus is on the effects of environmental stressors on wild bee populations and foraging behaviour, and how this influences pollination and plant reproduction. He uses eco-evolutionary approaches to study how disease, pollutants, and land use/land management shape plant-bee interactions in anthropogenic landscapes, particularly cities and farms. A key focus of his lab is using an understanding of ecological complexity to promote win-win approaches to the design and management of human-dominated landscapes, simultaneously benefiting biodiversity and human wellbeing. To do this, the lab maintains collaborations with social scientists, community-based organizations, and government agencies at the municipal and national levels. Dr. Fitch has received funding from NSERC, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and the US National Science Foundation, among others.

A pollination ecologist, Dr. Gordon Fitch studies how disease, pollution, and urbanization shape the ways bees interact with plants, and what that means for the health and reproduction of both bees and plants.

Check out resources for students at the