The Top 5 Plants for Lepidoptera (and hence birds and everything else!) : Interview with Dr. Doug Tallamy

We were a little star struck this episode, having the opportunity to chat with Dr. Doug Tallamy, professor of entomology at the University of Delaware and author of several best selling books on conservation, sustainable gardening and insects  Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees In this interview we focused on his recent paper in Nature Communications about the key trees that support 80% - yes you read that right, 80% of the lepidoptera species in North America.  If you can include some of these trees in your yard, garden, farm you will be helping these critical insects immeasurably. You can find this important paper at this link: Few keystone plant genera support the majority of Lepidoptera species Narango, D.L., Tallamy, D.W. & Shropshire, K.J. Few keystone plant genera support the majority of Lepidoptera species. Nat Commun 11, 5751 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19565-4 From this paper the top 5 genera were:  Quercus (‘Oaks’, mean score: 0.79), Salix (‘Willows’, 0.55), Prunus (‘Cherries, Plums, Peaches, etc.’, 0.51), Pinus (‘Pines’, 0.46), and Populus (‘Poplars, Aspens, and Cottonwoods’, 0.44). Dr. Tallamy has several excellent youtube videos, a recent one on keystone plants is: Native Keystone Plants for Wildlife - Doug Tallamy You Tube     Our theme music was composed and performed by Heather's son Callum, and the challenging job of audio editing done by the uber-talented Laura Eccleston.