Wed 01 Oct 18:45: A Buzzing of Bees: Tales of Honeybees Through History Joint meeting with the Cambridgeshire Beekeepers' Association (NB Wednesday)
Dino Martins will talk about the relationship between honeybees and people.
Honeybees are one of the most familiar and widespread insects that are kept, managed, exploited and familiar to humanity. It is often said that ‘There is a crisis around bees’, but the reality is that overall honeybee numbers are actually increasing worldwide, the result of more intensive management, mass production and commercial trade of queens and colonies.
With examples drawn from around the world, this talk will highlight the complex, multi-faceted relationship we have with honeybees and explore how we can all play a role in better stewardship of the planet.
Joint meeting with the Cambridgeshire Beekeepers' Association (NB Wednesday)
- Speaker: Dino Martins
- Wednesday 01 October 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Thu 27 Nov 18:45: History of the Little Wilbraham River
David Lomas is an active member of the Wilbraham River Protection Society as well as the CamElyOuse Catchment organisation.
He will explain the complex history of this chalk stream, its relationship to the adjacent habitats and why its survival is under threat as Cambridge continues to expand.
The Little Wilbraham River is just one example of the 29 water bodies in the Cam catchment – all of which are increasingly challenged by human activity.
- Speaker: David Lomas, retired academic, medic & engineer
- Thursday 27 November 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Thu 20 Nov 18:45: A Visit to the Vercors
Monica Frisch will describe discovering some of the delights of the Vercors National Park in eastern France, with its dramatic limestone mountain scenery, fascinating flora, including alpine specialities such as gentians and orchids, beautiful butterflies and some of the other natural history.
- Speaker: Monica Frisch, CNHS
- Thursday 20 November 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Thu 13 Nov 18:45: Unsung Songbirds: Vocal Communication and Cognition in Corvids
Corvids — members of the crow family including jackdaws, ravens, and magpies — are known for their remarkable behavioural flexibility and complex social lives.
Claudia will share insights from her research into how corvids communicate and make decisions, revealing the intricate ways these birds respond to and navigate their social environments.
The talk explores how vocalisations are used to maintain relationships, coordinate actions, and convey social information, and how ecological and social factors shape their cognitive processes. By examining corvids through the lens of socio-ecology, we gain a deeper appreciation for the diversity of animal minds.
- Speaker: Claudia Wascher, Anglia Ruskin University
- Thursday 13 November 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Thu 06 Nov 18:45: Looking for the Goshawk - The Lost Raptor
Conor Jameson will give a personal, narrative account of the natural history of this mystery-shrouded bird of prey: how it lives, where it lives, and why it might be missing from our lives.
But there are increasing reports of goshawks, which at last are getting ‘out of the woods’. His search takes him to some unexpected places, at home and abroad.
The talk focuses on how this adventure turned into the essay which won him the BBC Wildlife Nature Writer of the Year, and then the book, which received awards from the Society of Authors and the Royal Literary Fund.
- Speaker: Conor Jameson, writer and naturalist
- Thursday 06 November 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Thu 30 Oct 18:45: Plastics in the Environment
Claire Barlow will talk about plastics: amazing materials that have transformed our lives, but at a cost. Their durability, one of the properties that makes them so useful, means that large and small pieces of plastic waste find their way into the natural environment, causing many different problems.
We will look at where the plastic waste comes from, and investigate some of the ways in which it affects living organisms. Solutions are not easy, but there are a lot of good initiatives and there is some hope for the future.
- Speaker: Claire Barlow, Senior Lecturer in Manufacturing, IfM
- Thursday 30 October 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Thu 23 Oct 18:45: Conserving Butterflies: Past, Present and Future
In this talk, final year PhD student Matt Hayes discusses how he combines fieldwork and studying museum specimens to research butterfly populations from the past and present.
Matt’s work is partnered with the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire with whom he trials management strategies to see how species can be protected from some of the negative impacts of climate change and extreme weather events.
Matt also studies the UK butterfly specimens held at the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge to see how wildlife of the past can inform modern day conservation action.
- Speaker: Matt Hayes, Department of Zoology, Cambridge
- Thursday 23 October 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Thu 16 Oct 18:45: Searching for (and finding) Snow Leopards
Peter Pilbeam will describe the trials and tribulations of searching for snow leopards in the Altai mountains in southern Siberia and in the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan. And (eventually) finding them in Ladakh in north-eastern India, in China, and in Mongolia.
- Speaker: Peter Pilbeam
- Thursday 16 October 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Thu 09 Oct 18:45: The Past and Future of Natural History
Brian Eversham will present a history of naturalists over 3000 years, of trends in wildlife and the study of wildlife, and some personal thoughts on where it’s heading, and where the next generation of field naturalists might come from.
- Speaker: Chief Executive of the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire
- Thursday 09 October 2025, 18:45-20:00
- Venue: Main Seminar Room (First Floor) David Attenborough Building, University of Cambridge Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QZ.
- Series: Cambridge Natural History Society; organiser: events.
Fri 19 Sep 11:00: The role of the Southern Ocean in the Climate System: risk, dangers and solutions. - Nathan Bindoff
The Southern Ocean and Antarctica are changing rapidly. New discoveries and understandings are pointing to a growing role of the Southern Ocean in our changing climate. The loss of mass by Antarctica, the slowing of the southern hemisphere over-turning circulation and the remarkable loss of winter sea-ice in the last two years will be discussed. There is an urgent need to understand these changes and track the human contributions to these changes to support policy makers in this critical decade. I will talk to potential solutions for tracking the Southern Ocean.
- Speaker: Nathan Bindoff - University of Tasmania
- Friday 19 September 2025, 11:00-12:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 1.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Katherine Turner.
Fri 13 Feb 17:30: Song in the Ancient World: Echoes of Religion and Resistance
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Matthew Gordley, Carlow University
- Friday 13 February 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Fri 23 Jan 17:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Professor Hans Slabberkoorn, Leiden University
- Friday 23 January 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Fri 13 Mar 17:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Richard Morrison, The Times
- Friday 13 March 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Fri 06 Mar 17:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Professor Issa Boulos, University of Chicago
- Friday 06 March 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Fri 27 Feb 17:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Professor Conny Aerts, KU Leuven
- Friday 27 February 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Fri 20 Feb 17:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Carola Darwin, Royal College of Music
- Friday 20 February 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Fri 13 Feb 17:30: Song in the Ancient World: Echoes of Religion and Resistance
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Matthew Gordley, Carlow University
- Friday 13 February 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Fri 06 Feb 17:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Ibrahim Baltagi, Lebanese American University
- Friday 06 February 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Fri 30 Jan 17:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Carole Pegg, University of Cambridge
- Friday 30 January 2026, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
Wed 02 Jul 14:00: Rethinking Antarctic Polynya Productivity: The Impact of Ice-Adjacency Effects on NPP Estimates along Icy Coasts
Ocean color-based estimates of Antarctic net primary productivity (NPP) have indicated low nearshore productivity in ice-adjacent waters, contrasting with coupled physical-biogeochemical models. To understand this discrepancy, we assessed satellite records of polynya NPP by comparing field data with two satellite imagery datasets derived using different processing schemes. Our results indicate historical underestimation of chlorophyll a (Chl) for imagery obtained using default atmospheric correction processing within approximately 100 km of ice-covered coastlines due to adjacency effects. Using radiative transfer modeling, we find that biases in ocean color polynya observations due to adjacency effects correspond to the high albedo of ice and snow. When applying an atmospheric correction processing scheme more robust to adjacency contamination, estimates of NPP more than doubled in 65 % of polynyas, especially smaller eastern Antarctic polynyas. Adjacency effects should therefore be managed when analyzing spatial and temporal trends in Antarctic coastal primary productivity.
- Speaker: Hilde Oliver, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- Wednesday 02 July 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 1.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Yohei Takano.
- 1
- 2