5 Minute Presentation: Martha White: PLGC Community Services: Year End Update
Program: Native Bees in Point Loma
Patricia Simpson is Vegetation Technician, Great Basin Institute and Cabrillo National Monument, and Jess Mullins is a PhD Student at the University of California San Diego in the Department of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution.
Their talk will introduce native bees and plants and how to support them in our gardens. The planet currently faces biodiversity loss due to human-driven land-use change, and conservation action is crucial to slow the decline. Biodiversity hotspots should be prioritized for conservation as they are areas that are characterized by high species diversity, particularly with species unique to the area (“endemic species”) that have rapidly lost habitat and are at risk of extinction. Point Loma is located in a biodiversity hotspot called the California Floristic Province. San Diego County alone has nearly 700 species of bees and over 2,000 plant species, many of which we can support in our native gardens. Providing habitat for native plants and their pollinators in our neighborhoods is essential to curb biodiversity loss.
