Stacy Philpott Seminar to Cover Drivers of Arthropod Diversity in Agroecosystems

Stacy Philpott, professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, will speak on "Social, Local, and Landscape Drivers of Arthropod Diversity, Traits, and Networks in Urban Agroecosystems" at the next seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

She will present her seminar at 12:10 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 21 in 122 Briggs Hall. It also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link:  https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.

"Urban gardens and farms," Philpott writes in her abstract, "provide a large fraction of the global food supply, and can be important green spaces for biodiversity conservation, however, there is still a lack of ecological knowledge to inform conservation and maintenance of ecosystem services in these important agroecosystems. This talk will feature three research questions that are part of a larger research program aimed at addressing how social factors, local garden and landscape management affect species richness and traits, species- and trait-based ecological networks, and the provisioning of ecosystem services across urban agroecosystems in the California central coast. Specifically, the talk will address: (1) How does social context of gardens (e.g., the luxury effect, land tenure) influence plant diversity and traits? (2) How do local and landscape filters influence natural enemy abundance, richness and traits? and (3) How do local and landscape factors influence plant-pollinator networks?"

Fellow of ESA

Philpott serves as the executive director of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz. She holds a doctorate in evolutionary biology (2004) from the University of Michigan,  and a bachelor's degree (1995) in zoology from the University of Washington. She served on the faculty of the University of Toledo, Ohio, for six years before joining the UC Santa Cruz faculty in 2012. She was elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America in 2021.

On her website, Philpott explains: "Urban agroecosystems are increasingly important for biodiversity conservation, fresh food access for people, and improving global agricultural sustainability. Understanding the way that these agroecosystems function is thus paramount to science and society. However, most of our scientific knowledge of agroecosystem ecology is in rural agricultural systems. Our interdisciplinary research team uses urban community gardens as a laboratory for scientific investigations to unravel complex ecological relationships, and as a classroom to teach student scientists and citizens about agroecology."

"Our research in urban agroecosystems," she continues, "takes place in 25 gardens in the California central coast that vary in local management practices and surrounding landscape characteristics. We investigate the ecological interactions and processes in urban gardens that provide ecosystem services like pollination, pest control, and climate regulation and also benefit human well-being. Our vision is to build a scientific understanding of urban garden ecology, to disseminate management information to urban gardeners, and to improve urban agricultural sustainability for people and the environment. Read more about our urban garden research at https://www.urbangardenecology.com/."

For technical issues, seminar coordinator Marshall McMunn may be reached at [email protected].