2015 Jane and Whitney Harris Lecture – Amphibian Population Declines: Invasive Diseases and Consequences for Global Salamander Biodiversity

Missouri Botanical Garden Shoenberg Auditorium, 4344 Shaw Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110

Free and Open to the Public. R.S.V.P. to cindy_vantine@umsl.edu.

The Jane and Whitney Harris Lecture was established to bring experts in the fields of ecology, evolution, and conservation to Saint Louis. This year we are very excited to welcome Dr. Karen Lips, Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Karen Lips is an amphibian ecologist who studies the effects of global change on amphibian populations. Her lab primarily studies disease ecology and how pathogenic chytrid fungi affect amphibian species, populations, and their ecosystems. More recently, Dr. Lips and her team have begun to work in the Appalachians on disease and climate change as drivers of distributional changes and declines in salamander biodiversity and abundance. In addition to the scientific aspects of disease and climate change, Dr. Lips is interested in using social media to communicate science, and has become involved with policy issues related to wildlife disease including how they relate to trade.

This event is co-sponsored by the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Saint Louis Zoo, and The Academy of Science – St. Louis.