The Jane and Whitney Harris Lecture will address the question, “What is the future of Rocky Mountain wildflowers and their pollinators?”  Guest speaker David Inouye, professor of biology and associate director of the graduate program in sustainable development and conservation biology at the University of Maryland in College Park, will discuss the main issues at the heart of this question.

The lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m. April 8 at the Shoenberg Auditorium at the Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Blvd. in St. Loius. The event is free and open to the public.

Inouye has conducted field research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colo., since 1971. There, he studied resource partitioning by bumble bees, territoriality in hummingbirds, ant-plant mutualisms and pollination biology. Most recently he has focused on the effects climate change has on the phenology (timing) and abundance of flowering in plots he established in 1973.

The National Science Foundation will fund this work for another five years.  Other projects include work on the population biology of individually tagged plants that he has followed since 1973, and how they are affected by climate change and an increasing frequency of late spring frosts.  Inouye is co-author of a book about techniques for pollination biologists, enjoys photographing wildflowers and pollinators, and has been a speaker and tour leader for the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival for many summers.

The lecture is co-sponsored by the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden. Call 314-516-5219 for more information.