Meeting 1177 Minutes

Minutes from the 1177th Meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club

Vice President Zhengyang Wang called the 1177th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club to order at 7:35 pm on Tuesday, November 15th in MCZ 101. Approximately 20 members and guests were in attendance.

Old business:Aubrey Garret, Jason Jong and Kelsey McKenna were approved for membership.

Dr. Elizabeth Crone of Tufts University presented a talk entitled Combining models and data to set guidelines for butterfly conservation.

Conservation managers often need to set general guidelines for habitat management and species recovery. Typical metrics for planning include knowing the minimum area needed to support a population and the rate at which a population will expand through heterogeneous landscapes.

Dr. Crone discussed two projects involving butterfly populations of conservation concern, the Baltimore Checkerspot in Massachusetts, and Fender’s Blue in Oregon. She showed how simplified models can be used to predict outcomes for a given population in habitats of a certain size.

Dr. Crone discussed implications of these two case studies for conservation, and her plans to use the methods she developed for these studies for more general predictions on a wider variety of species.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:55pm for discussion and refreshments.

Respectfully submitted,

Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary