**This program has been cancelled.**

Join us during Pollinator Week to learn more about the mysterious and diverse world of moths! They’re our (mostly) nocturnal neighbors that remain largely unseen but play a very important role in our gardens, while supporting populations of native bird and bat species across the Northeast. Moth diversity has long been considered an indicator of habitat quality and emphasizes the importance of using various native plant, shrub and tree species in our cultivated landscapes and embracing habitat heterogeneity when making land use decisions.

This webinar is part of the year-long Exploring Connections to and Stewardship of the Natural World talks. This series is supported by a grant through the NH Humanities Council and aims to provide a public and personal space for the examination of environmental ethics, fostering a deeper understanding of, appreciation for, and care of, our natural world. Programs are free to the public, and streamed via Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook Live.

For more information and to see the entire slate of talks, visit our series webpage.

Speaker Bio:

Sarah Shearer is a graduate student at Antioch University New England (Keene, NH). Sarah is a MS candidate in the Environmental Studies program with a concentration in Conservation Biology. Endlessly curious with a special affinity for some of the smaller or less-recognized creatures on this planet, Sarah has primarily focused on studying moths during her time at AUNE. Her other interests besides invertebrates include landscape-scale conservation, ecological inventories and successive biology. Sarah’s thesis topic is Moth Diversity in Managed Inland Pine Barrens and Heathlands of Massachusetts. She conducted her pilot study during Fall 2019 and her formal research from May to October 2020 with support from the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program (NHESP). Throughout the span of this project, Sarah has become well-acquainted with various field collection and species identification techniques, museum specimen preparation and iNaturalist™. Some of Sarah’s previous experience includes the identification of shellfish and gastropods for a study informing the restoration of salt marshes managed by Cape Cod National Seashore. Sarah has also worked on the identification of ant species for Harvard Forest’s “Warm Ants” project and as a Migratory Fish Count Technician, monitoring the seasonal migration of fish in the Connecticut River for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.