Free Discovery Lecture - Seal Lice...go where no insects have gone before!
About this Event
Seal lice boldly go where no insects have gone before! Dr. Kayce Bell, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
to receive free parking and join us before the lecture for a special members-only reception with the speaker!
Did you know that there is only one group of insects that regularly spend time below the ocean surface? Sucking lice are flightless insects that infest about one-third of all mammal species, including 13 species that live on pinnipeds. These remarkable insects are adapted to survive the unique challenges of accompanying their hosts into the ocean and on dives up to two kilometers deep. Pinniped lice have modified physical traits and altered reproductive cycles that allow them to live and reproduce in the unique habitat of amphibious mammals. These obligate parasites provide insight into their hosts’ evolutionary histories, population dynamics, and even diets. This talk will discuss the adaptations of seal lice, their evolutionary history, and cover some of the remarkable things about their biology that we still do not understand.
Dr. Kayce Bell is an Associate Curator of Mammalogy at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC). Her research focuses on the history and distribution of mammal and parasite diversity, using data from genome sequencing and physical traits to understand how these host-parasite associations form and change through time. She received her PhD from the University of New Mexico in 2016 followed by a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and has been a curator at the NHMLAC since 2019. Throughout her academic career Kayce has leveraged natural history collections to study the evolutionary histories of mammals and explore the dynamics of species interactions.
Parking is $1 per hour, but FREE for members - !
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