Surprisingly, I was not disappointed by my first colloquium at a new university, in a new city. I say surprisingly, as the topic of lichen may not elicit immediate excitement or wonder from most people. However, after listening to lichenologist, Dr. Curtis Bjork, for an hour, your opinion may change, mine did.

It would be hard for most people to leave Curtis’ talk and not have learned anything. He provided many facts about lichen, flora and geology related to the Robson Valley and his multi-year inventory study. As an animal biologist, I have been briefly taught about lichen, but the main fact that struck me from his presentation was the connection that lichen and rock substrates have. The importance of geology to biodiversity of lichens and other flora was shocking to me, but more specifically was the emphasis of limestone. Curtis admitted he wasn’t certain why limestone was so precious to lichen, but he knew every time he stumbled upon some he was in for a great inventory site.

The idea of a “controlled intuitive wander”, wandering an area with no set transect or pre-destined path as Curtis put it, seemed very foreign to me, as I’ve been taught to conduct transects, quadrants or to pre-plan routes. However, after some thought I realized that to find birds in the field, controlled intuitive walks are essentially what we have to do. We know that certain birds like certain habitats, so we can alter our routes accordingly to head in the directions of likely habitat for the species we are in search of. For my project, I will be locating chickadees and may be mapping their territories and locating their nests. To do this, I will need to survey numerous locations and look for appropriate habitat types, thus undergoing controlled intuitive wanderings.

The sheer passion and emotion that Curtis displayed was enough to make anyone sit up in their chair and listen to what he has to say (except one tired woman in the third row), and to consider the importance of his message. He conducted a solid presentation; he spoke clearly, did not rush, finished with five minutes to spare for questions, and did not overwhelm his audience with heavy vocabulary that only few in the room may know. He excelled at answering questions, for even when he was asked questions related to caribou food preferences, which is not his specialty, he easily admitted his lack of knowledge but still hypothesized a response.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, I can’t leave out the fact that British Columbia, and more importantly, the Robson Valley, now has the highest lichen biodiversity in the world!! Beautiful British Columbia is right. A great talk by an enthusiastic and passionate lichenologist has set the bar high for exciting colloquiums this semester.