Redbud Audubon Society welcomes speaker Floyd E. Hayes, Ph.D. who will be presenting his program: “Adventures Along the Amazon.”
The talk will be a PowerPoint presentation with a few short videos, mostly of plants and animals, but also of the landscapes and people, from four trips with students from Pacific Union College to Amazonian Brazil during each spring break from 2013-2016. During each trip Hayes is accompanied by 4-5 students who take courses from him in tropical biology. Each day they search for plants and animals to learn as much as possible about the creatures of the Amazon. The group is also part of a larger group of students participating in a mission trip in which they help build health care facilities and provide water filters for rural communities.
Hayes is a zoologist specializing in the ecology, behavior and biogeography of birds, but has studied a diversity of other organisms including anemones, crustaceans, sea urchins, frogs, turtles, snakes and bats.
While an undergraduate student, Dr. Hayes took off a year to teach in an elementary school on the island of Kosrae in Micronesia (1981-1982). He worked for three years as a vertebrate biologist for the US Peace Corps, based in the National Museum of Natural History of Paraguay (1987-1989). He also taught biology for nine years at the University of the Southern Caribbean and the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago (1993-2002), and spent a year working as a wildlife biologist for the Division of Fish and Wildlife in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands (2002-2003).
Since 2003 Dr. Hayes has worked as a Professor of Biology at Pacific Union College. He has published the results of field research in 14 countries in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and was the editor in chief of Journal of Caribbean Ornithology from 2005-2013. In his spare time he enjoys birding, rock climbing, mountaineering, snorkeling, scuba diving, and documenting his adventures with photos and videos.
Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating program.
