Natural History Webinars

Creator of the Massbeetles.com website, which offers a county-level checklist for beetles known from Massachusetts, biologist Jenn Forman Orth introduces beetle ID and ecology and gives a demonstration of the Massbeetles website. This webinar will give you a sense of the diversity and beauty of the order Coleoptera, while introducing you to key concepts, methods, and tools you can use to study these interesting and important insects.

MVAL program director Matt Pelikan presented this webinar to the Newton (Massachusetts) Conservators in October 2023. The webinar summarizes the process and results of Matt’s ongoing study of Orthoptera on Martha’s Vineyard and introduces important methods for studying this fascinating but often neglected insect order.

Tree crickets rank among the most elusive yet fascinating of all insects; their songs are a major component of the insect chorus of a Vineyard late summer night. Tree cricket expert Nancy Collins prepared this video version of a webinar she presented on July 27, 2023.

Tree crickets rank among the most elusive yet fascinating of all insects; their songs are a major component of the insect chorus of a Vineyard late summer night. Tree cricket expert Nancy Collins prepared this video version of a webinar she presented on July 27, 2023.

Winter birding on Martha’s Vineyard centers largely around the waterfowl that spend the season on our bays, ponds, and coastal waters. MVAL director Matt Pelikan introduces many of our regularly occurring sea ducks: where to find them, what to look for, and how to identify them.

Flies – the insect order Diptera – are understudied and underappreciated. But this is a diverse, ecologically important, and often surprisingly beautiful group of insects. This recorded webinar will introduce you to the basics of fly ecology and will help you begin to identify flies by introducing the higher-level taxonomy of this order.

While they have not been studied extensively on Martha’s Vineyard, flies are abundant, diverse, and ecologically important here. Records in iNaturalist suggest that the Vineyard hosts an interesting fly fauna, with many species that are rarely reported elsewhere in the region. Here’s a webinar recording that will introduce you to some of the diversity of flies that occur here.

About 56 species in the insect order Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids) have been documented on Martha’s Vineyard. While little studied, these insects are interesting, relatively easy to find and observe, and of considerable importance ecologically. Here’s a webinar recording to introduce you to the Vineyard’s Orthoptera.

Ecologically vital given their proficiency as pollinators, bees (the superfamily Anthophila) are also beautiful, interesting, and easily studied. Pollinator ecologist Molly Jacobson introduces bee natural history and identification in this recorded webinar.