Winter Lecture Series: Strangers in the Night: The Essential Role Moths Play in a Healthy Ecosystem

Moth expert Elena Tartaglia, PhD, associate professor at Bergen Community College, will highlight the essential roles that moths play in ecosystems as pollinators, environmental indicators and decomposers. Her talk details lepidopteran life cycles, as well as various ways to attract and observe these organisms in your own garden. Learn about conservation threats to moths and other nocturnal biodiversity, and how to contribute data to National Moth Week, a citizen project focused on documenting global moth diversity and distributions.

Elena Tartaglia, a former BHWP intern, earned her PhD in ecology from Rutgers University. She is an expert on moths of the family Sphingidae and has studied various aspects of their ecology and behavior in urban ecosystems. She is a co-founder of National Moth Week, a global-scale citizen science project focused on nocturnal insect biodiversity. She has worked in public outreach and environmental education since 2005.