Bug Banter with the Xerces Society

Photography is a powerful tool to tell stories and change perspectives. This is especially true when it comes to insects and invertebrates—animals that are often overlooked and misunderstood. How can we use photography to share the story of these creatures we love and inspire others to save them?To share his experience and photography tips is Clay Bolt. Clay is the Manager of Pollinator Conservation and Great Plains Communications for the World Wildlife Fund. He is also an award-winning conservation and natural history photographer. Clay focuses on native bees and other overlooked species. His work has been featured in National Geographic, The New York Times, and National Wildlife Magazine. He is a Senior Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers, a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a past president of the North American Nature Photography Association, and a multi-time honoree in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. Between 2015 and 2017, Clay played a notable role in the successful campaign to protect the rusty-patched bumble bee under the Endangered Species Act—the first native North American bee to receive federal protection. In 2019, Clay was part of the team that successfully went in search of the world’s largest bee, Wallace’s giant bee, which had only been recorded by a western scientist once since it was first described by Alfred Russell Wallace in 1858.---Cover photo: © Clay BoltThank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

In almost every episode, we’ve talked about what people can do to help invertebrates, whether that’s planting habitat, reducing pesticide risk, or simply paying closer attention to the living world around us. The success of conservation requires various involvement from community members, volunteers, and professionals. In this episode, we’ll be talking about what it can look like to make conservation part of your work life. We’ve invited several Xerces staff members to talk about how they got here, what they’ve learned, and what advice they might give to people interested in pursuing a career in conservation. ---Photo: Michele Blackburn/Xerces SocietyThank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

On Bug Banter we talk a lot about what people can do to help invertebrates and nothing is more inspiring than hearing one person's successful journey to creating a wildlife haven in their own backyard.Joining us to share his experience and tell us about his incredible space is Elliott Gordon. Elliott has been a Xerces Ambassador since 2022, based in New Mexico. At his home in suburban Albuquerque, he stewards a high-quality, pesticide-free landscape of diverse native and xeric plants and tries to document all of the wildlife that it supports. He is a member of the brand-new New Mexico rare arthropod technical council, formed to identify species of conservation concern in the state. He also volunteers for the New Mexico backyard refuge program, New Mexico butterfly monitoring network, Pollinators in the Neighborhood (which helps support Albuquerque’s Bee City USA initiatives), and the University of New Mexico’s museum of southwestern biology as a beetle researcher.---Cover Photo: Elliott GordonThank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Seed collecting is a hands-on way to learn and care for native plants, plant communities, and the insects that live among them. So who can collect seeds and how do you do it? How do you store the seeds and when is the best time to plant them?To answer these questions and take a deep dive into seed collection is Eric Lee-Mäder and Stephanie Frischie.Eric has a background in conservation, commercial horticulture, and the nursery industry. Eric was previously the co-director of the Pollinator Conservation team at Xerces focused on large-scale habitat restoration for bees on farms across the U.S. and Canada, and helped develop seed production for native plants important to pollinators. Eric now works full time co-running his family business, Northwest Meadowscapes Conservation Seed Company.Stephanie is an Agronomist and Native Plant Materials Specialist at Xerces. Stephanie brings technical expertise on native plant materials, native plants, and plant-insect interactions to her work across conservation agronomy; plant ecology; ecological restoration; and native seed production, use, policy, research, and quality — all to improve the supply and growth of important plant species for restoration of insect habitat.---Photo: Eric Lee-Mäder/Xerces SocietyThank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

The rusty patched bumble bee is a gorgeous bee, richly colored in yellow and black with a distinctive rusty brown marking on its back. It holds a special place in history: In January 2017, it became the first bee in the continental U.S. to be listed under the Endangered Species Act, and in May of this year, 1.5 million acres of land were designated as critical habitat, the largest area of critical habitat ever declared for an insect. To tell us the story of how this bumble bee went from unknown to icon are two people who played a central role in the years-long effort, Sarina Jepsen and Rich Hatfield. Sarina is the Endangered Species Program Director here at Xerces, and has worked on the protection of many different invertebrate species, including bees, butterflies, tiger beetles, fireflies, and freshwater mussels. Sarina co-founded the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission’s Bumblebee Specialist Group, an international network of scientists who aim to evaluate the extinction risk of bumble bees worldwide.Rich also works at Xerces, where he is a Senior Conservation Biologist on our Endangered Species team and Bumble Bee Conservation Lead, which means he manages all aspects of the Xerces Society’s work on bumble bees. This includes coordinating the Bumble Bee community science projects, including the Bumble Bee Atlas. Rich is also working to understand the threats to bumble bees and actions we can take to protect them, and advocating for their protection. ---Photo: Rich Hatfield / Xerces SocietyThank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

In a previous episode we highlighted the State of the Butterflies report, which found that we are losing butterflies at a rate of 1.3% per year in the contiguous US: more than one-fifth of our butterflies disappeared between 2000 and 2020. Perhaps more alarming, over 40% of assessed species fell in numbers by 50% or more—and two dozen species suffered more than 90% losses. So what can we do to help butterflies? To give us guidance are butterfly experts, Ray Moranz and Kevin Burls, both of whom you may remember from previous episodes. Ray is a Xerces Pollinator Conservation Specialist and NRCS Partner Biologist based in Oklahoma. He works to conserve pollinators on rangelands in the central U.S. and conducts research on monarch butterfly migration and overwintering in the southeastern  U.S. Kevin is a Xerces Society Endangered Species Conservation Biologist based in northern Nevada. His work focuses on protecting the hundreds of butterfly species that inhabit deserts, forests, and grasslands across the western United States. *Correction: when referencing the book Attracting Beneficial Insects, the correct title is Farming with Native Beneficial Insects: Ecological Pest Control Solutions.** Correction: When referencing the tool Monarch Plant Finder, the correct name for the tool is Plants for Monarchs. --- Photo: Xerces Society/Nancy Lee AdamsonThank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

From chasing bumble bees in Alaska to understanding native bee populations nationwide, this scientist is on a mission to better understand these important insects. In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Hollis Woodard. Hollis is a Professor of Entomology at the University of California, Riverside and PI — the Principal Investigator, i.e., the person leading the project — of the US National Native Bee Monitoring Research Coordination Network. She received a PhD in Biology in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she studied the molecular basis of social evolution in bees. She is broadly interested in native bee ecology, evolution, social behavior, and conservation, and has worked with laboratory-reared bees and the wild bees of Alaska, California, Maine, and Vermont — and is a collaborator with Xerces on the State of the Bees project.----Photo: (c) beaucheminalex (CC BY-NC)Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Florida may not be the first state that comes to mind when talking about monarch butterflies. Maybe that’s because much of the conversation about monarchs focuses on their migration and the condition of the overwintering sites in Mexico and California, and so it kind of bypasses the Sunshine State. However, there are reports that monarchs can be seen in Florida all year, and today, we are going to give them their time in the spotlight. We are going to take a journey with monarchs that travel through Florida and explore new exciting technologies to track their migration.Who better to tell this story than monarch expert and Bug Banter regular, Ray Moranz. Ray is a Xerces Pollinator Conservation Specialist and NRCS Partner Biologist based in Oklahoma, where he works to conserve pollinators on rangelands in the central U.S. However, he has been studying monarchs for even longer and is probably seldom happier than when he is pursuing an orange-and-black butterfly across the Florida landscape.--Cover photo: Dean Jue (c)Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Do you know what insects are in your pollinator garden or in your community? How do you find them, identify them, and continue to support them? Well, if you want the answers to these questions, you came to the right place!To help us explore this topic and give us their best tips, are Jennifer Hopwood and Aaron Anderson. Jennifer is a Senior Pollinator Conservation Specialist with Xerces, providing resources and training for pollinator and beneficial insect habitat management and restoration in a variety of landscapes. Aaron is a Pesticide Program Specialist at Xerces and works with communities across the country, as well as Xerces staff, to reduce pesticide use in residential landscapes, including promoting non-pesticide approaches to landscape care and pollinator-friendly gardening practices. Neither of these guests are strangers to Bug Banter.---Photo: Sara Morris CC BY-NC 2.0Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Millipedes. Do they really have a thousand feet? To answer this and many other much more sensible questions, we are joined today by two people who know way more about these largely overlooked animals than I do, Drs Ben Jantzen and Jackson Means.Ben is the founder and President of the Virginia Institute for Invertebrates. With a background in biophysics, especially insect flight, he is presently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Tech. Jackson is an Assistant Curator of Recent Invertebrates at the Virginia Museum of Natural History and a myriapodologist (i.e., a scientist that studies millipedes, centipedes, and relatives). His research focuses on the discovery and description of new species, primarily in the mountains and foothills of Appalachia....Photo: Peter Pearsall/USFWSThank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.