The Wild and Wonderful World of Bees, Laurence Packer

NANPS Spring Speaker Series 2020

The Wild and Wonderful World of Bees by Dr. Laurence Packer

Date: Wednesday March 4, 2020, 7- 8:30 pm
Location: Multi-faith Centre (Koffler Building) University of Toronto, Toronto Ontario.

Laurence Packer is a Professor of Biology at York University where he has worked since 1988. He teaches Entomology and Biodiversity courses. His research is on bees. He and his students have published over 200 research papers on various topics including sociobiology, conservation, genetics, phylogenetics, biogeography and taxonomy, mostly of bees. His book “Keeping the bees” was published by HarperCollins and “Bees: a close-up look at pollinators around the world” with Sam Droege was published by Voyageur Press. He and his team have described over 170 new species of bees. The collection that he has started at York University now includes several hundred thousand specimens with examples from well over 100 countries and hundreds of new species awaiting description. He has been a member of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Evaluation Group for Ecology and Evolution (twice). His research has been funded by the latter organization as well as National Geographic, Genome Canada, the Weston Foundation, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and by private donations.

Below is a video of the talk.