Ecologist Monika Egerer, an assistant professor at Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany.

Egerer will speak on "Entomological Investigations in Urban Gardens," focusing on wild bees and natural enemies in urban gardens in Germany, at a virtual seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology on Wednesday, Nov. 24. 

Her seminar begins at 4:10 p.m., Pacific Time. The Zoom link is here.

More than 60 percent of our world's population will live in cities in the next decades, Egerer says in her abstract. "Urban agriculture has great potential to support arthropod biodiversity and thereby potentially enhance ecosystem services such as pollination and pest predation for more sustainable food production. In this talk, I discuss interdisciplinary research on wild bees and natural enemies in urban community gardens in Berlin and Munich, Germany. Specifically, I examine how urban garden management can play an important role in supporting species diversity and the provision of insect-mediated services. Furthermore, I discuss citizen science initiatives that our group uses to engage the public in scientific research on urban biodiversity and ecosystem services."

Egerer, whose research and teaching interests include ecology, biodiversity, agroecology, urban ecology, insect ecology, climate change, and food systems, holds a bachelor's degree in biology (2013) from Kalamazoo College, Mich., and then received her master's degree (2017) and her doctorate (2019) in environmental studies from UC Santa Cruz, studying with major professor Stacy Philpott.

After research work in Australia, Egerer joined the Institute of Ecology at the Technical University of Berlin in 2019 as an International Postdoc Initiative (IPODI) postdoctoral fellow. In 2020, she was appointed to the professorship for Urban Productive Ecosystems in the TUM School of Life Sciences.

A bee in an urban garden in Germany. (Photo courtesy of Monika Egerer)

• Egerer M and Kowarik I. (2020) Confronting the modern Gordian Knot of urban beekeeping, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 1-4.

• Philpott SM, Egerer M, Bichier P, Cohen H, Cohen R, Liere H, Jha S, Lin BB. (2020) Gardener demographics, experience, and motivations drive differences in plant species richness and composition in urban gardens, Ecology and Society 

• Buchholz S and Egerer M. (2020) Functional ecology of wild bees in cities: what we know about trait-urbanization relationships, Biodiversity and Conservation 1-23.

• Philpott SM, Lucatero A, Bichier P, Egerer M, Jha S, Lin BB, Liere H. (2020) Changes in natural enemy-herbivore networks along local and landscape gradients in urban agroecosystems, Ecological Applications 0: 1-13.

• Egerer M, Lin B, Diekmann L. (2020) Nature connection, experience and policy encourage and maintain adaptation to drought in urban agriculture, Environmental Research Communications 2: 1-12.

• Egerer M, Liere H, Lucatero A, Philpott SM. (2020) Plant damage in urban agroecosystems varies with local and landscape factors, Ecosphere 11(3): 1-19.

• Egerer M, Fouch N, Anderson EC, and Clarke M. (2020) Socio-ecological connectivity differs in magnitude and direction across urban landscapes, Scientific Reports 10: 1-16.

• Egerer M, Wagner B, Lin BB, Kendal D and Zhu K. (2020) New methods of spatial analysis in urban gardens inform future vegetation surveying, Landscape Ecology 1: 1-18. 
  
  
• Egerer M, Cecala JM and Cohen H. (2020) Wild bee conservation within urban gardens and nurseries: effects of local and landscape management, Sustainability 12: 1-10.

The Department of Entomology and Nematology seminars are coordinated by nematologist and assistant professor Shahid Siddique, who may be reached at ssiddique@ucdavis.edu for any technical issues.