Tonan Talk to be held on June 26th has been cancelled.

You are cordially invited to a CSEAS Tonan Talk, a Brown Bag lecture series. The talk is open to the public, and you can bring your lunch bag to the place. The details are as follows.

Title: Honey bees: their importance and interactions with humans in South East Asia
Speaker: Dr. Panuwan Chantawannakul, Associate Professor, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University

Date: June 26th (Fri.), 12:00 – 13:30, 2015
Place: Conference room (Room No. 107), 1st floor of East building, CSEAS, Kyoto University

Abstract:
Asian honey bees have been long evolved for million years along with flowering plants. Pollination services provided by bees to maintain the plant biodiversity in South East Asian forests and crops for human food production are of greatly importance. Additionly, South East Asians have been consuming honeybee products and applied them as traditional medicines due to their therapeutic properties. Furthermore, traditional knowledge and beekeeping practices to harvest bee products have been embedded in beliefs and cultures in this region. Nevertheless, due to
societal change and the way of life of South East Asians, wild honeybee populations have been severely affected. Some species are adapting to the new changing environment while some bee populations have been decreasing. This presentation looks at how, through human activities; new emerging diseases; and climate change, honey bees, the key
pollinators, are struggling to adapt themselves towards those threats under both natural and artificial (human) selections to maintain their species survival.

About the Speaker:
Dr. P. Chantawannakul has worked on bee pathology for more than 10 years and collaborated with bee resarchers at USDA (Baton rouge and Beltsville, US), University of Bern (Switzerland), National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science (Japan), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (China), CSIRO (Australia), Free University of Bolzano (Italy), and Bulgarian Academy of Science (Bulgaria). She is one of executive committee members of the COLOSS network (www.coloss.org)

Moderator: Mario Lopez, CSEAS, Kyoto University