Event to be held in conjunction with Dallas Safari Club convention
Writer: Steve Byrns, 325-653-4576, s-byrns@tamu.edu
Contact: Dr. Dale Rollins, 325-650-0311, d-rollins@tamu.edu
DALLAS – The fifth annual Distinguished Lectureship in Quail Management featuring an international wildlife researcher as the keynote speaker, is scheduled from 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Jan. 10 at the Dallas Convention Center in Seminar Hall C4.
Dr. Peter Hudson is director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and Willaman Professor of Biology at Penn State University.
Dr. Dale Rollins, director of the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch near Roby, said Hudson is noted for his work associated with the dynamics of infectious disease in wildlife.
“He is skilled at finding how parasites interact with their hosts, other natural enemies and climatic conditions to affect the population dynamics of those hosts,” Rollins said. “His research with red grouse in Scotland has demonstrated that parasites cause population cycles in the birds and those parasites shared between hosts can lead to localized extinction of those hosts. In this case, the red grouse.
“One might ask what the demise of a population of red grouse in Scotland has to do with the widespread decline of wild Texas quail? The Rolling Plains Quail Research Foundation has invested over $3.5 million in the past three years to assess the role of diseases and parasites in quail.
“Is Hudson’s work a precedent for our concern? Might there be some type of similarity between his work overseas and our work here with eyeworms and cecal worms in bobwhite quail? We believe there could well be. Dr. Hudson’s research in Scotland is something I personally feel anybody concerned with the plight of wild Texas quail should be familiar with as it provides an interesting analogy in the red grouse.”
Admission to the lectureship is free and open to the public. It’s being held in conjunction with the Dallas Safari Club’s annual convention. For more on the convention, go to: http://biggame.org/convention/ .
The lectureship is sponsored by the Rolling Plains Quail Research Foundation and is funded in part through the legislatively funded Reversing the Quail Decline Initiative, in cooperation with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, the Dallas Safari Club and the Quail Coalition.
For more information contact Rollins at d-rollins@tamu.edu or call 325-650-0311.
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