Ken McCarty will share insight into the native bee inhabitants of high quality natural communities, including designated Missouri Natural Areas and long-preserved native Ozark ecosystems, documented from his ongoing surveys at several large Missouri State Parks. His survey objective remains to provide a contemporary record of the bee species inhabiting long-enduring park nature preserves, one that includes ecological land type, natural community classification, and floral host information for every bee collected. The data he will summarize in this webinar derives from 17 Ozark and Ozark Border region parks, where the diverse native flora of woodland, glade, forest, fen, and Ozark stream natural communities is intact or has been restored.
The webinar will address aspects of bee species richness, abundance, distribution patterns across landscape and community types, ratios of pollen generalists to specialists, cleptoparasitism, bee species distribution across the growing season, relationships to remnant-dependent plants, and the numbers of bee species that visit some characteristic glade/woodland plants in natural areas. These native Ozark bee communities in our most natural settings are biological references emphasizing how valuable native landscapes are in our nature preserves and across our public lands. They also are critically important to advancing bee and other insect pollinator conservation in Missouri.
The webinar, to be held via Zoom, will include a presentation and a live question and answer session. Please register below at the link. The webinar will be recorded, and sent to all registrants, as well as posted to our YouTube channel.
Cost: Free
Register HereKen McCarty is the Natural Resource Program Director for Missouri State Parks, where he has worked for 37 years. His 42-year professional career has emphasized designated Missouri Natural Areas and native ecosystems. He has focused on preserving, restoring, managing, and monitoring them, along with establishing policies and practices to sustain the natural environments throughout Missouri’s robust state park system, with a particular focus on Ozark woodlands and glades. His career-spanning interest in native flora and natural community ecology includes considerable experience with fire in native systems. More recently, Ken has been exploring the native bee community as yet another fascinating aspect of our natural world.
Photo of an American Bumble Bee probing a foxglove beardtongue blossom in a Lake Ozark State Park flatwoods by Ken McCarty