You are cordially invited a special seminar by Dr. Panuwan Chantawannakul. The　details are as follows.

Date and Time: April 14th (Thu.), 2016, 13:00 – 15:00
Place: Tonan Tei on the second floor of Inamori Memorial Building,
CSEAS, Kyoto University

Speaker: Dr. Panuwan Chantawannakul, Associate Professor, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University

Title: Honey bees: their importance and interactions with humans in South East Asia

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 great importance and South East Asians have been consuming honeybee products and applying them as traditional medicines due to their known therapeutic properties. Furthermore, traditional knowledge and beekeeping practices to harvest bee products have long been embedded in the beliefs and cultures in the region. However, due to societal change and the fast changing way of life of South East Asians, in recent years wild honeybee populations have been severely affected. Some species are adapting to the changing environment while some bee populations have been decreasing. This presentation looks at how, through human activities, newly 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.

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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