Dr. Kim Franklin is a conservation research scientist for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
Nancy McCluskey-Moore
The Friends of SaddleBrooke Libraries (FSL) lecture on Thursday, April 14, at 4 p.m. in the DesertView Theater will feature Dr. Kim Franklin. She will present “Welcome to the Tucson Bee Collaborative: Investing in Our Future—One Bee at a Time.” According to Franklin, with over 700 bee species, the Sonoran Desert region is predicted to be home to one of the greatest diversities of bees in the world! We need them, and in many cases, we don’t even know their names. The Tucson Bee Collaborative is a partnership effort to increase awareness of Tucson’s exceptional bee diversity and to empower future scientists by engaging them in research activities. Researchers, students, teachers, artists, photographers, and citizen scientists are working together to understand and monitor the health of the native bees of the Sonoran Desert region. In this talk, Franklin will take you on a short tour of our bee diversity, including one charismatic bee that nests right here in SaddleBrooke, and explain how the Tucson Bee Collaborative is working to conserve this exceptional diversity by cultivating awareness, understanding, and appreciation of biodiversity—one bee at a time.
Kim Franklin, who works as a conservation research scientist for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, specializes in insect ecology and taxonomy, community and insect ecology, and conservation biology. She received her doctorate in insect science from the University of Arizona and a bachelor’s degree in biology from New College of Florida. Her current research focuses on ant assemblages in the Sonoran Desert and Sky Islands.
This lecture is free for FSL members and $5 for non-members.