Dr. David L. Wagner, author, teacher and entomologist, will be the guest speaker at the Norfolk Land Trust’s annual meeting on Feb. 22 at the Norfolk Library. The talk will follow the Land Trust’s annual meeting at 3:30 p.m. Wagner is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut.

Wagner began his study of invertebrates at Colorado State University and went on to earn a doctorate from University of California at Berkeley. He is best known for his expertise in microlepidopteran families of leaf miners and primitive moths, especially ghost moths. Over time he has become increasingly concerned that climate change and other anthropogenic factors threaten to destroy the hard work of decades of invertebrate conservation work.  

He chairs both Connecticut’s advisory Committee on Endangered Invertebrates and the Lepidopterists’ Society Conservation Committee. He also participates in the state’s annual butterfly bioblitz species-counting project and works on several ecological restoration projects to protect habitat for endangered species.  

 “Spending any amount of time with Dave Wagner in the field whether by day with insect nets or in the dead of night with ultraviolet flashlights searching high and low is a joy for all who have been lucky enough to experience his expertise and enthusiasm for the little things in hiding,” says Star Childs, a longtime associate of Dr. Wagner’s. “We are all the better for having his body of scientific work to build upon as he connects almost everything that his little crawling caterpillars and metamorphosed lepidopterans do to support our own food web as well as the myriad other ecosystem services they perform day in and day out.”