As part of its ongoing Natural History seminar series, University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus will welcome guest lecturer Tania Lewis on Monday, February 24th at 7:30pm in UAS room 229. Tania’s topic will be "Bears and Ice"

Tania will talk about the effects of glaciation on food resources, distribution, and population genetics of brown and black bears in Southeast Alaska. The geologic history of this region has had profound impacts on its plants and animals. Ice sheets devour suitable habitat and isolate small numbers of individuals in glacial refugia*. Then retreating glaciers provide a blank slate for species to colonize, patterns of succession to develop, and previously isolated populations to rejoin.

Brown and black bears are two species whose long histories in the region are tightly woven with the changing landscape. Tania will explore the contemporary and historic biogeography of these two iconic species, including the rare and little known glacier bear, with the latest research results. She will also celebrate these amazing creatures with stories from the field, photos, and song.

Tania Lewis is wildlife biologist for Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. She has been conducting wildlife research in Glacier Bay since 1997. Tania has studied harbor seals, humpback whales, nesting seabirds, and human impacts on wildlife but her primary focus since 2001 has been black and brown bears. She conducted many years of research on Glacier Bay bear ecology and bear-human conflict and wrote the Bear Management Plan for the park.

Tania recently received a Master of Science degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a thesis examining the distribution of black and brown bears along the shoreline of Glacier Bay, and the landscape population genetics of brown bears in the region.

Funding for the seminar series is provided by a grant to the Sitka Sound Science Center by the Sitka Permanent Charitable Trust and by support from the University of Alaska.

*Refugia: areas of relatively unaltered climate that are inhabited by plants and animals during a period of continental climatic change (as a glaciation) and remain as a center of relict forms from which a new dispersion and speciation may take place after climatic readjustment

Details:

· “Bears and Ice” – a Natural History Seminar Series event

· Presented by Tania Lewis, wildlife biologist of Glacier Bay National Park.

· UAS Sitka Campus, 1332 Seward Ave., in Room 229 at 7:30 pm, Monday, February 24, 2014.

· Contact UAS Associate Professor Kitty LaBounty at 747-9432, or kitty.labounty@uas.alaska.edu