FreeLists / tn-bird / [TN-Bird] Bird (and Environmental) Lectures at UT-Knoxville

[JGIOCOMO@xxxxxxx]

FYI...
This semester UT-Knoxville chose "the Environment" as the campus-wide theme.  
 We (The Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries Department) are hosting speakers 
throughout the semester (see our website 
http://fwf.ag.utk.edu/seminar/TFNRM.htm).  This Thursday we are hosting Robert 
Cooper from University of Georgia who 
will be talking about Gypsy moth management alternatives and effects on 
forest birds (see below for more details).  He will speak at 3:30pm in 
Hollingsworth Auditorium in the Ellington Plant Sciences Building (across the 
street from 
the from the vet school where the KTOS meet).  All seminars are free and open 
to the public.
There are two other speakers who may be of interest to TOS members this week. 
 EO Wilson from Harvard will talk about the Future of Life (see below)  on 
Tuesday at 3:00 pm, AMB, Cox Auditorium (See the environmental semester website 
http://environmentalsemester.utk.edu/).  Finally, Jonathan Weiner, author of 
The Beak of the Finch, will be on campus Monday night, March 14, 2005, 8:00 
p.m., University Center, Shiloh Room (See the environmental semester website 
for 
more details. I am not sure what he will be talking about.)  I compiled some 
details below.

--Jim Giocomo
Knoxville, TN



Jonathan Weiner, Monday, March 14, 2005, 8:00 p.m., University Center, Shiloh 
Room
Jonathan Weiner won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the Los 
Angeles Times Book Prize for Science for The Beak of the Finch, which the 
Washington Post Book World placed â??in the select pantheon of science books 
that 
spark not just the intellect, but the imagination.â?? His latest book, His 
Brotherâ??
s Keeper: A Story from the Edge of Medicine, explores the hopes and fears of 
the new biology.

EO Wilson, Tuesday, March 15th, 3:00 pm, AMB, Cox Auditorium    
Considered by many to be the father of the modern environmental movement, 
Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson has made enormous contributions to the field 
of conservation. In this new presentation, he draws on the ideas of his 
best-selling book, The Future of Life, to make a passionate and eloquent plea 
for a 
new approach to the management and protection of our eco-system. Marshalling 
arguments from science, economics, and ethics, he demonstrates that proper 
stewardship of the earth's bio-diversity is not an option -- it is a necessity, 
and 
a choice we must make if life is going to continue to thrive on the only home 
we have. 

Robert Cooper, Thursday, March 17th, 3:30 pm,  Hollingsworth Auditorium in 
the Ellington Plant Sciences Building 
The gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) was accidentally released in 1869 near 
Boston, MA and has been spreading South and West during the last century. Due 
to 
the damage that gypsy moth populations can have on a forested system through 
defoliation, many different methods have been tried to control outbreaks. It 
was 
the original objective of this project to determine the effects of different 
gypsy moth management techniques on non-target organisms (in our case, birds). 
Both Bacillus thuringiensis var.kurstaki, a larval lepidopteran-specific 
insecticide and Gypchek, a virus specific to gypsy moths were sprayed in 1997 
and 
1998. Our interest is primarily in the secondary effects of eliminating the 
caterpillars within a forested system on avian populations. Much of the 
research 
that has been conducted by graduate students (see below) has focused on 
differences in such parameters as reproductive success, provisioning rates, 
foraging rates, territory rates and survival between the plots treated with 
B.t. and 
those that have not. Concurrent studies are being conducted on the Monongahela 
National Forest in WV and the George Washington National Forest in VA. Both 
West Virginia University and Marshall University are cooperators in this 
long-term study that began in 1994 and will continue through 2002.     











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