Wed, April 3 - Coordination, introductions, and announcements. Collection tour.
Wed, April 10 - Guest speaker Dr. Kathy Ann Miller - Curator of Algae, UC Berkeley Jepson Herbarium: Seaweed collection in U.S. herbaria: Past, present and future.
Wed, April 17 - Charlie Braman - Riparian Invasion Research Lab - UCSB: Living on the edge: Ants on the dunes of Georgia's barrier islands.
Wed, April 24 - Guest speaker LOVID - Visiting Artists Residency, RE Touch Lab/MAT and CCBER: A discussion about the anthropocene, art and natural history collections.
Wed, May 1 - No meeing
Wed, May 8 - Guest speaker Dr. Ben Faber - Cooperative Extension Ventura County: The Sex Lives of Avocados
Wed, May 15 - Tacy Kennedy (M.A.), Anthropology Collections Manager, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
Wed, May 22 - Guest Speaker Jessica Bolis, Erin Crandall - The National Ecological Observatory Network: NEON – a nationwide, long-term dataset
Wed, May 29 - We will have an undergraduate research colloquium with three short talks from UCSB undergraduates who research different topics. Sierra Yarnes - Coccinellidae mandible morphometrics; Jacob Little - North Campus Open Space detritivore project and Charlie Thrift & Taylor Curtis - Biodiversity of bees at UC California (UCSBees!) project. Many of these undergraduate student research projects are supported by the Coastal Fund.
*for more information, please contact Katja Seltmann (seltmann@ccber.ucsb.edu)
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Wed, April 10 - Guest speaker Dr. Kathy Ann Miller - Curator of Algae, UC Berkeley Jepson Herbarium: Seaweed collection in U.S. herbaria: Past, present and future.
Dr. Kathy Ann Miller is the Curator of Algae at the UC Berkeley Jepson Herbarium. The California seaweed flora is her main research focus, with a strong empahsis on the California Channel Islands. She is currently updating the pivitol book, Abbott & Hollenberg's Marine Algae of California (1976), in the current California Seaweed eFlora project and works with many collaborators who monitor the California coast, especially in this changing world (including: MARINe, LiMPETS, REEF Check California). Dr. Miller is visiting UCSB-CCBER to teach a 3-Day seaweed identification workshop at Rancho Marino UC Natural Reserve and Camp Ocean Pines in Cambria, CA.
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Wed, April 17 - Charlie Braman - Riparian Invasion Research Lab - UCSB: Living on the edge: Ants on the dunes of Georgia's barrier islands.
During the summers of 2016 and 2017, surveys on three of Georgia’s barrier islands assessed dune scavenging ant assemblages in an effort to better document the extent of Red Imported Fire Ant (RIFA) Solenopsis invicta foraging activity, an invasive species on the IUCN 100 worst invaders list. Coastal primary dunes serve as nesting habitat for multiple threatened and endangered species, including the Loggerhead sea turtle Caretta caretta. ollaborators from 13 sea turtle monitoring projects collected ants encountered while monitoring Loggerhead nests to identify which ant species (including RIFA) potentially depredate or scavenge sea turtle eggs and hatchlings. Genetic analysis of collected RIFA determined whether extant populations were single queen or multi-queen variants, as populations of predominantly polygyne colonies are more susceptible to pathogens. Overall roughly 500,000 ants representing 29 species were collected. The documented species distributions and foraging activity have implications for future island biocontrol as well as better management practices when protecting vulnerable dune nesting species.
Wed, April 24 - Guest speaker LOVID - Visiting Artists Residency, RE Touch Lab/MAT and CCBER: A discussion about the anthropocene, art and natural history collections.
LoVid's interdisciplinary works explore the often invisible or intangible aspects of contemporary society, such as communication systems and biological signals. We are particularly interested in the ways technology seeps into the evolution of human culture. They are at UCSB for a one week research residency to explore topics around the anthropocene, observation and human impacts. Their visit is part of a collaboration between the UCSB Media Arts and Technology RE Touch Lab and the UCSB Natural History Museum.
LOVID's practice includes performances, participatory public art, handmade technologies, textiles, prints, App-art, experimental video, and immersive installations. We focus on the juxtaposition of media with physical objects, geographic spaces, and the human touch. They are interested in bridging between handmade engineering and traditional art or craft forms by using a DIY philosophy and aesthetic. This allows us to reflect on the role of handmade production and the physical gesture of art making in a time increasingly dominated by machines and virtual experiences. As a complementary part of their practice, they also apply machine-based and digital fabrication techniques that highlight our view of the critical importance of human/machine interaction in the digital age. Their diverse practice invokes processes and ideas from art, science, and technology, to question perceptions of time, place, and the self in the networked era.
Wed, May 8 - Guest speaker Dr. Ben Faber - Cooperative Extension Ventura County: The Sex Lives of Avacados
Ben Faber is the soils/water/subtropical crops advisor for Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. His primary crop involvements are avocado and citrus, but other subtropical and deciduous crops are also covered, such as litchi, longan, blueberries, cherimoya and passion fruit. He is currently evaluating various subtropical tree varieties for their economic viability in coastal environments. He also studies soil and water quality issues, such as erosion management, salinity management, orchard floor management, irrigation scheduling and fertility management. For his talk at the museum meeting, Dr. Faber will present little known facts about the pollinaton of one of California's favorite fruits and introduce the function and services of the Coorperative Extension.
Wed, May 22 - Guest Speaker Jessica Bolis, Erin Crandall - The National Ecological Observatory Network: NEON – a nationwide, long-term dataset
The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a 30 year, National Science Foundation-funded project to collect and provide open access to data that characterize and quantify complex, rapidly changing ecological processes across the US. Visitors from the CA field office will give an overview of the project, discuss the scientific design including sampling protocols from each subsystem, and provide an introduction to accessing and working with NEON data.
Date:
Sunday, March 31, 2019 - 14:30