The Business Meeting will take place at 1:00–1:50pm; Program Presentation at 2–3pm; and Show Table, Auction, and Raffle at 3–3:30pm.

Program

Roughly 10 percent of the world’s plant species are orchids. This huge family has long fascinated scientists and been prized by collectors for its strange and often showy flowers. However, orchids are often among the first casualties of environmental degradation. Of North America’s approximately 230 native orchid species, 1 in 4 are globally threatened and nearly half are threatened at the state or federal level. Orchids’ dependence on specific mycorrhizal fungi and pollinators makes their conservation and restoration especially challenging, but harnessing mycorrhizal fungi can also boost conservation success. The North American Orchid Conservation Center (NAOCC) is a network of collaborating organizations that are working to safeguard our native orchids by conducting research on orchid-fungus relationships, propagation techniques, and pollinators and applying it to in situ and ex situ orchid conservation. In this talk, Melissa McCormick will talk about how NAOCC research and collections are advancing native orchid conservation.

Bio:

Melissa McCormick is a Senior Ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and is the Director of the North American Orchid Conservation Center (NAOCC). She earned her B.S. degree Trinity University (San Antonio, Texas, 1992) and Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior from Michigan State University (1999). Melissa joined SERC in 1999, first as a postdoctoral researcher, then a research scientist, and now as a senior ecologist. Her main research focus is on associations between plants and mycorrhizal fungi, with a strong focus on orchids. In 2011, with Dennis Whigham, she co-founded NAOCC at the Smithsonian. The goal of NAOCC is to safeguard the native orchids of the US and Canada, through propagation, preservation, and education. She has authored over 60 peer reviewed scientific publications about orchids, their mycorrhizal fungi, their pollinators, and other drivers of plant distribution.

Talk description: