#7: Merav Vonshak - Outreach and Education with BioBlitzes

My guest in this episode is Merav Vonshak. Merav is an ecologist, naturalist, and citizen science organizer located in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Merav is the founder of BioBlitz Club, a group that organizes BioBlitzes to raise awareness for environmental causes, often partnering with specific organizations, or simply to raise community awareness of nature that is nearby.

If you’re unaware of what a BioBlitz is - they are focused efforts to document all living organisms within a defined location and period of time. I’ve participated in a couple of these events now, and must say that I’m hooked. BioBlitzes provide a sense of exploration and discovery, they get you out in nature, and have a wonderfully enthusiastic community to learn from.

Back to Merav...prior to founding BioBlitz club, she received a Doctorate in Ecology at Tel Aviv University, and had postdoctoral fellowships at Tel Aviv University and Stanford University. She is an expert in ant biology, having studied impacts of alien ant species and human disturbance on ant communities.

Merav has a wealth of ecological information, and also a curator on iNaturalist.

In this episode we discuss the story of Merav’s formation of BioBlitz Club, some of the surprising discoveries from these events - including in highly urban areas, how to get people engaged and caring about nature, her ant research and how you can even identify ant species by smell (some smell like Banana Cream Pie!), using BioBlitzes and Citizen Science as part of a broader conservation awareness playbook, and much more.

Show notes at https://naturesarchive.com/2020/10/28/merav/