Another season of Suds & Science has come and gone, and what a season it was! If you're one of the ~350 folks who attended between November (2018) and May (2019), then you learned (and heard some great stories) about extinct Hawaiian birds, stone tool use by early humans, giraffe conservation in Uganda, salt marsh restoration, monarch migration, and ornithology in Cuba. Suds & Science isn't a lecture--it's a community gathering at the Norwich Inn where you meet other fans of science, enjoy local craft beer, and engage with experts in their field. Hosted by VCE biologist Jason Hill, there's no PowerPoint slides...just compelling personal narratives from scientists. We'll be back at the Norwich Inn for the 2019-2020 season, and I need your help lining up dynamic and engaging botanists, anthropologists, public health specialists — scientists! — to tell us a story. So contact Jason Hill if you’ve got a story to tell.
The Vermont Center for Ecostudies' Suds & Science is a free event and meant for all ages, and all talks are recorded by our friends at CATV.
2018-2019 Schedule (all talks from 7-8 pm)
November 6, 2018 at the Norwich Inn: Jason Hill [Vermont Center for Ecostudies], An eyewitness account to extinction: the last flight of the Po'ouli. (No video available, sadly, due to election night)
January 8, 2019 at the Norwich Inn: Nathaniel Kitchel [Dartmouth College], Stone tools: exploring the lives of New England's first human inhabitants. Video here
February 5, at the Norwich Inn: Rachel Thiet [Antioch University New England], Shellfish, crabs, and other seafloor creatures: ongoing restoration outcomes at a Cape Cod salt marsh. Video here
March 5, at the Norwich Inn: Elizabeth Howard [Journey North], Monarch butterfly migration and the power of citizen science. Video here
April 2, at the Norwich Inn: Chris Rimmer [Vermont Center for Ecostudies], Searching the shadows: seeking an elusive Northeast songbird in Cuba. Video here
May 7, at the Norwich Inn: Michael B. Brown [Dartmouth College], A Tall Order: Studying Giraffe Ecology and Conservation in the Savannas of Uganda. Video here
Selected Past Talks to Watch
Backyard crickets and tropical katydids: The amazing world of insect sound and vibration
November 07, 2017The ability to detect, process, and react to cues in the environment underlies nearly every aspect of an animal’s life, from finding mates and food to avoiding predators. Therefore, to understand organisms, we must understand how they recognize stimuli to make decisions and how the process of recognition evolves, diverges, and interacts with ecological context. Dr. Laurel Symes, Dartmouth College. Watch here »
Don’t stress! Evolutionary explanations for why stress affects our health
January 09, 2018What are the evolutionary origins of stress, and how do environmental experiences shape patterns of human biology and health? The answers to these questions may provide insight into how poverty, trauma, and ethnic discrimination affect health. Dr. Zaneta Thayer, Dartmouth College. Watch here »
How warmer soils can affect climate change: From the Arctic to your backyard
February 06, 2018What do dog sledding and being stalked by a polar bear have to do with the terrestrial carbon cycle? Come find out, with a Whistling Pig Red Ale in hand, while casually learning about the interactions among plants, soils, and atmospheric CO2. Dr. Caitlin Hicks Pries, Dartmouth College. Watch a video of the presentation. »
The Social History of Invasive Beavers in the Fuegian Archipelago, Chile
May 01, 2018The year: 1946. An Argentinian Navy vessel introduced 50 North American beavers to the southern tip of South America. The intention: to create fur trading opportunities. The result: 60 years later there are >100,000 beaver, and they have fundamentally changed the ecosystem. Dr. Laura Ogden, Dartmouth College. Watch a video of the presentation. »
Bugs, aliens, and New England’s forests
March 07, 2017Dr. Aaron Weed, ecologist and Northeast Temperate Network Program Manager for the National Park Service, discussed his recent work on the biology and ecology of forest pests, how they impact individual trees to entire forests, and what this means for our local forests and the services we derive in a changing climate. Watch a video of the presentation. »
Introducing Homo naledi
November 01, 2016Suds & Science returned to the Norwich Inn on Tuesday, November 1st at 7pm. Paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, introduced us to Homo naledi - a new human ancestor from the cradle of humankind in South Africa. Jeremy has studied wild chimpanzees in Western Uganda, early human fossils in Museums throughout eastern and South Africa, and his anatomical expertise-- the human foot and ankle-- has contributed to our understanding of the origins and evolution of upright walking in the human lineage. Watch it here! »
Sex, Drugs and Bees: plant chemistry and pollinators
September 09, 2015Many plants rely on flower visits by pollinators such as bees in order to reproduce. When bees consume nectar and pollen, they must cope with naturally occurring plant secondary chemicals, substances usually associated with plants' defense against herbivores. Why would plants expose their pollinators to these chemicals? How do they affect bee health? And what are the consequences of plant chemistry for pollination of wild and cultivated plants? Leif's talk will draw on his research in Vermont exploring effects of plant chemicals on bumble bee--parasite interactions and bee foraging behavior. He'll also address the importance of wild bees to agriculture and ongoing efforts to halt their decline. Dr. Leif Richardson is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. He previously completed a PhD at Dartmouth College and served as State Lands Ecologist with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. He contributed to the Vermont Center for Ecostudies Bumble Bee Atlas project. He lives in Montpelier. Watch it here »
Presettlement Forests of New England
May 05, 2015Charlie Cogbill has spent a large part of his career studying a forest that no longer exists: the pre-settlement forest in New England and New York. His primary research tools are archives, located in town halls and other repositories, of land surveys made during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of these archives contain “lotting” surveys – the survey by which the proprietors of a new town divided the town into lots, which were then sold or granted to the earliest settlers. At each lot corner, the surveyors tended to place a monument, often a post or stake or a pile of stones. They also routinely made mention of a nearby “witness tree.” Through statistical analysis and a reliance on his background in field ecology, he has been able to paint a detailed and localized picture of what the forests of New England and New York looked like back when those forests were being settled by Europeans. Watch it here »
Revisiting Loons
April 07, 2015VCE loon biologist, Eric Hanson, just got back from a regional meeting of loon biologists and managers, Eric will share new research on migration, translocation experiments, red-throated loons, social chaos, and lead toxicity. Where the stories will go from there is anyone’s guess, but it is sure to be an entertaining evening full of lively discussion. Watch Eric's lecture »
What's With Whip-poor-wills?
November 04, 2014VCE biologist Sara Zahendra reports on Vermont's most enchanting goatsucker. Once a common companion on moonlit nights, the Eastern Whip-poor-will has declined over the last several decades and was recently listed as threatened in Vermont. Sara will describe VCE's "whip" survey in western Vermont and what's being done to monitor these aerial insectivores. Watch a video of this presentation from CATV 8/10 »
