Landscape Architecture lecture to explore animal-plant food webs

The Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture will host Doug Tallamy, professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, on Monday (Nov. 5) for the Landscape Architecture Bookwalter Lecture.

At 5 p.m. in Pfendler Hall’s Deans Auditorium (Room 241), in a lecture titled "Creating Living Landscapes," Tallamy will discuss how plants that evolved side by side with local animals provide for their needs better than plants that evolved elsewhere. He will discuss how specialized food relationships determine the stability and complexity of the local food webs that support animal diversity and how gardens function as essential parts of the ecosystems that sustain us.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Tallamy has authored 92 research publications. He researches the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. Tallamy is the author of “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens” and “The Living Landscape,” which was co-written with Rick Darke.

The Bookwalter Fund was established by Elinor F. Bookwalter and her daughter Ellie, an alumna of the Landscape Architecture Program, for the purpose of bringing significant speakers from the professions of landscape architecture and allied fields. The fund also supports other Landscape Architecture student activities.

More information about the lecture can be found online.

Writer: Kelsey Schnieders Lefever, kschnied@purdue.edu

Source: Teresa Koltzenburg, tkoltzen@purdue.edu