October 8, 2025 Meeting

Fire and Pollinators

with Lauren Ponisio

 7:15-9:00 p.m., presentation 7:30-8:30 p.m.

Main Hall, Hilyard Community Center, 2580 Hilyard St, Eugene (map)

Wildfires are becoming more frequent and severe across Oregon, driven by a legacy of fire suppression and the growing influence of climate change. These disturbances reshape entire ecosystems, but their impacts on pollinators—such as butterflies and bees—are only beginning to be understood. In this talk, Dr. Lauren Ponisio will share what recent research tells us about how wildfire affects pollinator populations and the plants they depend on, including her team’s work in the Holiday Farm Fire and in burned high-elevation meadows in H.J. Andrews. She will also highlight several ongoing projects exploring how post-fire landscapes can be restored and enhanced with native plants to better support diverse pollinator communities. Lastly, she will describe her team’s most recent project examining the effects of controlled prairie burns on pollinators at Mt. Pisgah.

Biologist Lauren Ponisio earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MS and BS from Stanford University. An Ecological Society of America Early Career Award winner and honored as a Global Food Initiative 30 Under 30 in Food Systems, Ponisio earned a Moore/Sloan Data Science Postdoctoral Fellowship and National Institute for Food and Agriculture Fellowship. Ponisio joined the University of Oregon Department of Biology in 2020. Ponisio studies bees and their roles as pollinators in managed and natural-plant communities. She’s currently leading a study that could change how forestlands in the Northwest are managed, particularly post-harvest and post-fire, to the benefit of wild bees. Her research has examined ways to persuade California almond growers to adopt more bee-friendly agricultural practices, discovered how native bee species may be best equipped to survive intensive agricultural practices and climate change and analyzed how forest fires can help maintain pollinator biodiversity. In addition to her research in biological sciences, her mission is to promote human diversity in the sciences.