Merlin presented his lecture, Bat Pollinators of the Americas, to an enthusiastic, sold-out audience today at the Texas Pollinators PowWow, hosted by the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, despite a winter weather advisory and freezing rain. He introduced a wide variety of nectar-feeding bats and their ecological and economic contributions to habitats from the Sonoran Desert of the North American Southwest to Central American rain forests, Caribbean Islands and the Andean páramo of South America, ending with a summary of bat contributions worldwide. His next speaking engagement, titled The Amazing World of Bats and a Novel View of Conservation, will be given to a plenary session of the 2015 Asia-Pacific Biodiversity Conference in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on April 1.
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MTBC’s Antoniya Hubancheva Award was established in honor of Antoniya Hubancheva—the recipient of our first student scholarship (thanks to a generous gift from our first director,
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Madelline Mathis has a degree in environmental studies from Rollins College and a passion for wildlife conservation. She is an outstanding nature photographer who has worked extensively with Merlin and other MTBC staff studying and photographing bats in Mozambique, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Texas. Following college graduation, she was employed as an environmental specialist for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. She subsequently founded the Florida chapter of the International DarkSky Association and currently serves on the board of DarkSky Texas. She also serves on the board of Houston Wilderness and was appointed to the Austin Water Resource Community Planning Task Force.
Michael Lazari Karapetian has over twenty years of investment management experience. He has a degree in business management, is a certified NBA agent, and gained early experience as a money manager for the Bank of America where he established model portfolios for high-net-worth clients. In 2003 he founded Lazari Capital Management, Inc. and Lazari Asset Management, Inc. He is President and CIO of both and manages over a half a billion in assets. In his personal time he champions philanthropic causes. He serves on the board of Moravian College and has a strong affinity for wildlife, both funding and volunteering on behalf of endangered species.
