Meeting 1171 Minutes
Minutes from the 1171st Meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club
President Shayla Salzman called the 1171st meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club to order at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, January 12th in MCZ 101, 26 Oxford St. Approximately 25(?) members and guests were in attendance.
New business: The CEC group photo show at Habitat in Belmont is set for March. Deadline for submissions is February 15th. An opening will be held the weekend of March 5/6, details to come.
Maria Lubertazzi presented some of the work done by her RISD students
Dr. Susan D Finkbeiner, currently a postdoc at Boston University, presented a talk entitled “Deconstructing visual signals in social butterflies”.
Dr. Finkbeiner’s work examines the questions surrounding passion-vine butterflies’ practice of roosting in groups at night. Compared with most butterflies, Heliconius butterflies are long lived with a comparatively large memory capacity enabling them to develop this complex behavior. What benefits does this unusual behavior impart? Dr. Finkbeiner’s studies employ varying numbers of decoy butterflies to determine optimal roost sizes for avoiding predation and possibly other benefits.
She also discussed visual signals communicated by the butterflies, investigating the contributions of color and pattern signals in butterfly wings and their relative importance for predator avoidance and mate recognition.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:55 for discussion and refreshments.
Respectfully submitted,
Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary
