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This is an online event only. The Zoom link will be sent out a couple of hours before the start of the lecture.
This is a Linnean Lens event.
Join us to have a closer look at Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus’s pearls in the Linnean Society collections. Ted von Proschwitz and Stefan Lundberg will delve into the history of Swedish pearl fisheries and explain Linnaeus’s ‘secret method’ to produce artificial pearls from freshwater mussels in the 1750s.
Freshwater pearl mussels (Margaritifera margaritifera) are highly susceptible to water pollution and as such are excellent indicators of environmental health. Yet they are in global decline, due to low density and the absence of suitable fish hosts as a consequence of migration obstacles and overfishing. Ted and Stefan will talk about the efforts to reintroduce the freshwater pearl mussel into Swedish rivers.
Ted von Proschwitz, senior curator in invertebrate zoology at the Gothenburg Natural History Museum, Sweden, and associate professor in conservation biology at the University of Gothenburg. His specialities are taxonomy, zoogeography, ecology and conservation biology of land- and freshwater living molluscs (snails, slugs and mussels). He has a special interest in history of malacology and pearl-fishery.
Stefan Lundberg, curator in invertebrate zoology (retired) at the Stockholm Museum of Natural History Sweden, and with background in Limnology and Aquatic Ecology at the universities of Uppsala and Stockholm. Senior advisor/consultant and teacher/supervisor in graduate courses at Stockholm Resilience Centre with focus on biodiversity and ecosystem management in urban and semi-urban areas. His speciality is monitoring and conservation biology of freshwater benthic invertebrate fauna.
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