Tomorrow evening (May 10th, 2016) the Linnaean Society of New York 2015-16 Speaker Program will feature the final two presentations of the season. The evening programs are sure to be interesting and entertaining.
At 6:00 PM, Bridget Stutchbury, who teaches at York University in Toronto, will present Frequent Fliers: New Discoveries in Bird Migration. Each fall billions of songbirds leave North America on an epic journey to their wintering grounds in Central and South America. Dozens of these migratory bird species have experienced serious, long-term population declines that are driven in part by the threats they face on migration and while in the tropics. Only recently has it become possible, using geolocators, to track the entire migration of individual songbirds to find out how they accomplish their amazing round-trips and to map the critical habitats they use during migration and while on their wintering grounds. Following the brief business meeting at 7:30 PM, Thomas Seeley will present Collective Intelligence in Bees: How a Swarm Chooses Its Home. With the right organization a group can overcome the cognitive limitations of its members and achieve a high collective intelligence. To understand how to endow groups with collective IQ, it is useful to examine natural systems that have evolved this ability. An excellent example is a swarm of honey bees solving the life-or-death problem of choosing a new home. A bee swarm accomplishes this through a process that was discovered in Germany in the 1940s, and that has been analyzed more deeply in recent years. It includes collective fact-finding, open sharing of information, vigorous debating, and fair voting by the 300-500 bees in a swarm that function as nest-site scouts. Thomas Seeley's research at Cornell University focuses on collective intelligence in animal groups. He is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Distinguished Scientist Award and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Both presentations are free and will be held in the Linder Theater on the first floor of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Enter at West 77th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. All welcome! Complete details of these exciting presentations and the rest of the 2015-2016 program can be found here: http://linnaeannewyork.org/calendar-programs-trips/programs2015-2016.html Richard Fried The Linnaean Society of New York -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
