Webinar: The Role of Non-Native Plants in Butterfly Communities

The recording of our September 19, 2023 webinar with Dr. Heather Kharouba, The Role of Non-Native Plants in Butterfly Communities, is now available.

About the Webinar:

Sustaining native pollinator populations and reversing declines in threatened pollinators requires enhancing and maintaining habitats across many land use types. There is increasing evidence that non-native species can play a positive role in the persistence of native species and can contribute to the achievement of conservation goals.

In her research, Dr. Kharouba looks specifically at how much butterflies currently use non-native plants as nectar sources and if non-native plants provide a similar nectar benefit as native wildflowers.

Watch the recording to hear the lessons learned from her lab about the butterflies from two very different semi-urban ecosystems in Canada. Knowledge she and her team hopes will help direct restoration activities like planting native flowers and non-native plant management.

Speaker Bio: Heather Kharouba is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa where she studies global change ecology and insect conservation. Heather earned her PhD at the University of British Columbia before completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California Davis. Her lab’s research focuses on how and why species are responding to global change and what those responses mean for ecological communities, with a particular focus on plant-insect interactions. To learn more about her lab’s research, visit: kharoubalab.weebly.com.