Save Our Bees
Keng-Lou James Hung will present a timely program on “Ecological Importance and Conservation of Native Bees in Southern California," room 104.
This presentation will focus on the diversity, natural history, and conservation of native bee species in San Diego.
Recent research estimates that over 85% of all terrestrial plant species are pollinated at least in part by animals. As pollination is a crucial process in the life cycle of plants, global declines in pollinator diversity have elicited considerable attention. Native bees are the most important pollinators in temperate ecosystems and are known to decline in the face of disturbances such as habitat loss and degradation. In recent decades, widespread development in Southern California has threatened the rich plant and pollinator communities in this biodiversity hotspot. However, despite growing conservation concerns for both native plants and native bees, little is currently known regarding how disturbances to bee communities affect the reproduction of native plants in non-managed ecosystems.
California harbors one of the richest bee communities on earth, with an estimated 2,000 native bee species, and potentially 600 of these in San Diego. Representing a wide range of sizes, nesting strategies, foraging patterns, and social behaviors, these native bee species now occur in habitats fragmented by urbanization and they coexist with the introduced super-generalist honey bee, which dominates many ecosystems. This presentation will focus on the diversity, natural history, and conservation of native bee species in San Diego, as well as discuss ongoing research to evaluate the state of pollination services in fragmented coastal sage scrub habitats in our area.
Keng-Lou James Hung is primarily an insect ecologist, but has developed a passion for the ecology and conservation of native plants through his recent work on plant-pollinator interactions. James studied bee ecology during his undergraduate at Dartmouth College and now continues this research as a PhD student at UC San Diego.