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A paper co-authored by Christian A. Johnson Professor of Biology Ernest Williams titled"Decline of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico: is the migratory phenomenon at risk?" is the subject of an article on the homepage of Science News dated April 4.

An article co-authored by Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Biology, recently appeared online in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity. “Decline of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico: is the migratory phenomenon at risk?” will appear in a forthcoming print issue of the publication, which is a journal of the Royal Entomological Society.

Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Biology, gave a talk at Utica College sponsored by the Asa Gray Biological Society on Feb. 28. The title was "Microclimate benefits for monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico," and the talk was based on work he has done in Mexico over the past several years.

Christian A. Johnson Professor of Biology Ernest Williams recently presented a talk at the 6th International Conference on the Biology of Butterflies, held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta.

A book with a chapter coauthored by Hamilton faculty Ernest Williams, Patrick Reynolds and Onno Oerlemans has been published by the University of Iowa Press. The chapter, “Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Adirondacks,” appears in Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest, (edited by Pavel Cenkl, 2010).

Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Biology, published a conservation column titled "Managing Habitat for Lupines and Rare Butterflies" in the magazine of the Lepidopterists' Society.

The Ecology class made its annual trip up Whiteface Mountain on Sunday, Sept. 27. Despite low cloud cover, the group was able to study changes in forest composition and size at different elevations, the dwarfed trees (krummholtz) near the mountain top, and the vegetation of the alpine zone. The class is taught jointly by Associate Professor of Biology Bill Pfitsch and Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Biology.

A story about monarch butterfly research that Christian A. Johnson Professor of Biology Ernest Williams conducted with collaborators was published in BBC Wildlife Discoveries for October, 2009. The BBC story describes the results the researchers published in Insect Conservation and Diversity (2009) 2, 163-175. The research paper was titled “Oyamel fir forest trunks provide thermal advantages for overwintering monarch butterflies in Mexico.”

Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Biology, recently published a journal article, co-authored with collaborators from Sweet Briar College and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. The article, "Oyamel fir forest trunks provide thermal advantages for overwintering monarch butterflies in Mexico," appeared in Insect Conservation and Diversity 2:163-175.

Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Biology, recently attended the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Albuquerque, N.M, where he gave a talk titled "Habitat change and population loss and gain in a montane butterfly." This talk summarized research he has conducted over the past 25 years on Gillett's Checkerspot butterfly in the Rocky Mountains; the distribution of this species has changed as the meadows they inhabit have been altered by climate change, forest fire, and vegetative succession. Also, Williams had an article published in American Butterflies (vol. 17, pages 4-13; summer 2009 issue) titled "Lifestyles of the scaled and beautiful: Pearl and Northern Crescents." For a number of years, Williams and students have conducted research on Pearl Crescent butterflies and their host plants, with parallel studies being run from a chemical viewpoint by Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry Robin Kinnel and his students.