Dr. Valerie Peters is an Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences at Eastern Kentucky University. Valerie is an ecologist interested in the conservation of biodiversity, with research projects both in Kentucky but also Costa Rica, and she studies how global stressors such as land use change, invasive species, and climate change impact biodiversity and use ecosystem services, such as pollination, as a tool to place value on species, such as pollinators and biodiversity. By giving species a value, such as the pollination of commercial coffee, she hopes to interest more people in conservation. Dr. Peters also is involved in the Earth Watch Institute’s wild bee conservation projects in Costa Rica that provides citizen scientists with an opportunity to work with tropical bees.
Listen in to learn the intersection between changing tropical climates, pollinator habitats, and the coffee crop, and the impact of mines on pollinators.
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“For a lot of species, we don’t know if they’ll be able to successfully move fast enough northward, so the other potential could be that we would just see loss of species in a particular location or maybe declining pollinator population numbers.” – Dr. Valerie Peters
Show Notes:
- How climate change can affect pollinator populations
- What other parts of the ecosystem will change and indirectly affect pollinators
- How different regions’ weather patterns will change
- Coffee’s life cycle and it’s role in the pollination ecosystem
- The research Valerie is doing on coffee and it’s pollination cycles
- The ways the effects of climate change are shifting the patterns of coffee plants
- How Valerie has worked with Earth Watch in Costa Rica to protect pollinators
- The role of citizen scientists in Valerie’s research
- The mine reclamation process and how the spaces are rehabilitated
- How pollinator compositions in areas are affected by the presence of mines
“From that moment, I was addicted to how interesting it is to invite these [citizen scientists] to come out in the field and see who is going to come out and how you can get them inspired.” – Dr. Valerie Peters
Links Mentioned:
- Learn more about Valerie Peters’s Lab at Eastern Kentucky University
- Peters, V. E., & Carroll, C. R. (2012). Temporal variation in coffee flowering may influence the effects of bee species richness and abundance on coffee production. Agroforestry systems, 85(1), 95-103.
- Sign up to join Dr. Peters on a citizen science project in Costa Rica though the Earth Watch Institute
- Dr. Valerie Peters’ favorite pollinator resources: