Plenary Session

Watching Wild Bees in the Anthropocene

with Nick Dorian, ecologist, educator, and naturalist

New England is home to an enchanting diversity of wild bees. In recent years, these important pollinators have vaulted into the spotlight as conservation priorities. Yet, even the most well-intentioned conservation efforts are hampered by large gaps in our understanding of the natural history of wild bees. In this plenary, Dr. Nick Dorian will address the past, present, and future of wild bees in New England. We will examine what past observations can teach us about how bee populations are faring today, and what observations today can teach us about resilience of bees under future environmental change. Looking forward, building natural history knowledge for bees—as well as for other diverse, poorly understood taxa—will require an all-hands-on-deck approach, one that centers, celebrates, and amplifies the expertise of amateurs. Building capacity for this work through identification guides and biodiversity data repositories is important, but is only one half of the equation. The other half is catalyzing a shift in our everyday lives towards repeated attentiveness to the natural world.

Nick Dorian received his Bachelor’s degree and his Ph.D. in Biology from Tufts University, where he studied the population ecology and conservation of wild bees as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Switzer Environmental Fellow. He is the co-author of an online field guide to wild bees (watchingbees.com) and instructor of the Natural History of Wild Bees field seminar at Eagle Hill Institute. Nick co-founded the Tufts Pollinator Initiative (TPI), which built capacity for pollination conservation in the greater Boston area through community education. Nick is also a passionate public speaker, giving talks to numerous community organizations throughout New England, including his TEDx talk titled “We’re Saving the Wrong Bees.” Currently, Nick is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Chicago Botanic Gardens, where he is working to optimize pollinator gardens for biodiversity conservation. In his spare time, he enjoys going on long runs, playing cello, and making tortillas.