Horseshoe crab conservation expert to speak March 4

The Lewes Public Library’s Science and Society series will present “Horseshoe Crabs in the Limelight: Regional and Global Concerns, and Conservation Efforts” with Dr. Mark L. Botton at 5 p.m., Tuesday, March 4, offered online via Zoom.

Horseshoe crabs are one of the iconic species of the Delaware Bay ecosystem. These 450-million-year-old “living fossils” are known for their importance to the pharmaceutical industry, and for the crucial role their eggs play in providing food for the tens of thousands of migratory shorebirds passing through the Delaware Bay area each spring. Botton will discuss the life history, ecology and commercial uses of horseshoe crabs, as well as concerns about the status of their populations and the conservation efforts being made on their behalf.

To register for the online event, go to tinyurl.com/LPLScienceSpring25 or call the library at 302-645-2733. 

Botton is professor of biology emeritus in the Department of Natural Sciences at Fordham University in New York City. He has published more than 70 articles and book chapters on a variety of aspects of horseshoe crab biology and is co-editor of three books about horseshoe crab conservation. He co-chairs the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Horseshoe Crab Specialist Group, which advocates for the science-based conservation of horseshoe crabs, and their essential spawning and nursery habitats.

The lecture series is co-organized and moderated by Colin Norman, former news editor at Science; Fred Dylla, executive director emeritus of the American Institute of Physics and author of “Scientific Journeys”; and Lynda Dylla, former public information officer at the Jefferson Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy.