Meeting January 20th: Partnerships and Betrayal: Plant/Insect Interactions.

Happy New Year everyone! Please join us on Friday, January 20 for our January meeting. We will begin with a pre-meeting social starting at 6:30, followed by the usual business meeting at 7:30 and the talk by our speaker. The talk will be screen shared. Afterward we will have a Q&A and members are free to hang around or leave at their leisure afterward. As always, the minutes for the previous meeting are on the website. The meeting will be held on Zoom. If you would like to attend, please email ctentsoc@gmail.com to receive the meeting link.

January's speaker will be Jillian Cowles, giving a talk titled Partnerships and Betrayal: Plant/Insect Interactions.

Abstract: Interactions between plants and insects are full of surprises and drama. Plants deploy bribery, cheating, and poisons to achieve their success, and insects have nimbly evolved their own counter-offenses and innovations in response to these challenges. Some of the relationships are manipulative or benefit only one of the parties, while others are mutually beneficial. Sometimes third parties are recruited into the action. Over 100 million years, this complex interaction between plants and insects has catalyzed an explosion of species diversity. Among the cast of characters are tiny wasps and massive sphinx moths, angel trumpets and orchids. Please join me for a glimpse into the world of plant/insect relationships.