“Plants and Insects: the Complex Partnership of Pollinator Frenemies” – A Presentation by Matt Pelikan

On Saturday, February 1, at 3:30pm, join us at the West Tisbury Library for a presentation about pollinators with naturalist Matt Pelikan. This event is presented by the Martha’s Vineyard Community Seed Library. Free and open to the public.

The basics of pollination – insects and other animals assisting plants with sexual reproduction – are familiar to anyone who survived high school biology. But the simple idea of trading food for help transferring pollen has diversified in a multitude of unexpected ways. Matt will introduce the mechanisms that have evolved as flowering plants and insects both try to get what they want in a high-stakes game of theft and cooperation.

About the speaker:
A year-round resident of Oak Bluffs since 1997, Matt Pelikan directs the Martha’s Vineyard Atlas of Life project at BiodiversityWorks. Already a dedicated birder by his teenage years, Matt has expanded his natural history interests to include…well, everything. His recent projects include a checklist of Vineyard grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids, a study of specialized bees at Long Point Wildlife Refuge, and a three-year study of pollinators on eight Vineyard farms.