Australia accounts for just 5% of the world’s land area but has 10% of the global diversity in bees with around 2,500 species. However, an estimated 1,000 of those have not yet been discovered, named or documented.
At the current rate at which we are naming and describing our native bee species, (8sp/year) many species will be extinct by the time they are named and they will be described from specimens in museums and other collections.
In this webinar you will learn how we are addressing this problem and how you can help.
Emeritus Professor Andy Austin has major research interests in the biology, systematics and molecular phylogenetics of parasitic wasps, the evolution of host-parasitoid interactions, and the biodiversity and phylogeography of spiders and groundwater arthropods. A long-standing Professor at the University of Adelaide, he retired in 2021 but maintains an active research program. For his research Andy has been awarded the Verco Medal for Scientific Research by the Royal Society of South Australia, the Inaugural Faculty of Sciences Distinguished Research Excellence Award, a Whitley Award by the Royal Zoological Society (N.S.W.), and the Distinguished Research Award by the Australian Society of Systematics Biologists. He has mentored of 60 honours and PhD students, and described over 560 new species of Australian insects.
Remko Leijs is a research associate at the South Australian Museum working mostly on the taxonomy of Australian native bees. He did his PhD on the evolution of World’s Carpenter bees. He has been working on the taxonomy and systematics of Australian native bees for 25 years and has described close to 150 new species.
Katja Hogendoorn is a researcher of bees and crop pollination at the University of Adelaide. Concerns about bee declines have led her to become active in the area of bee conservation. Her work in taxonomy, species discovery and general bee biology and science communication is motivated by the fact that we only protect threatened bee species if we know of their existence and understand their environmental needs.
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