Fwd: [NATURE-NET] April Boulder Audubon Program: Dr. Diana Tomback: Clark’s Nutcracker—The Bird that Builds Forests

[Scott E. Severs]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sharon Daugherty sharo...@yahoo.com [NATURE-NET] <NATURE-NE...@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Subject: [NATURE-NET] April Boulder Audubon Program: Dr. Diana Tomback: Clark’s Nutcracker—The Bird that Builds Forests
To: Nature Net <natur...@yahoogroups.com>

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Program Meetings are held at Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder, 5001 Pennsylvania Ave. (west off 55th St. between Arapahoe and Baseline). Join us at 7:00 pm for socializing; programs begin at 7:15 pm.

 

Dr. Diana Tomback will be discussing the Clark’s nutcracker and its coevolved, mutualistic interaction with whitebark pine. Beyond the whitebark pine, nutcrackers are keystone species that disperse seeds of several pines in Colorado as well as across the West. All may not be well in the world of the nutcracker. Its iconic relationship with whitebark pine is threatened by an invasive disease, outbreaks of mountain pine beetles, and climate change.

Science Advisory Board member Dr. Diana Tomback is a professor and associate chair with the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Colorado, Denver. She also serves as volunteer director for the non-profit Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation, based in Missoula, MT. Dr. Tomback’s area of expertise includes evolutionary ecology, with application to forest ecology and conservation biology. For her doctoral research, she found that Clark’s nutcracker, a crow-like bird of high mountain forests, is the main seed disperser for whitebark pine. Her research over time has focused on the ecological and evolutionary consequences of seed dispersal by nutcrackers to whitebark pine and other pines. While working on her Ph.D. dissertation, Dr. Tomback was the first to discover the ecologically important commensal relationship between the nutcracker and the whitebark pine.

See our website for more program listings and a plethora of field trips for the spring/summer seasons.

Thanks,

Sharon Daugherty

Boulder Audubon

sharo...@yahoo.com

--
Scott Severs
Longmont
Sent from Gmail Mobile

[Scott E. Severs]

Reminder - Nutcrackers - Tonight - Boulder - Audubon

Scott E. Severs
Longmont, CO