Steve Wratten, a professor of ecology with Lincoln University’s Bio-Protection Research Centre in New Zealand, will present the 2013 E. Paul Catts Memorial Lecture at 4:30 p.m. Friday, April 26, in the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education (CUE), Room 202. The lecture, titled “Bees, Birds, Butterflies, Biological Control and the Future of Agriculture,” and a social immediately following in CUE 518 are free and open to the public.

As the center’s deputy director and project manager, Wratten runs a six-year research program on biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainable agriculture, according to the center’s website. Many of the postdoctoral and doctoral research projects in the group concern the ecological basis of biological control, especially conservation biological control of insect pests and diseases.

A post-lecture dinner is set for 7:30 p.m. at Banyans on the Ridge. Cost is $25, and an RSVP is required. Please contact Adam Williams, 509-335-5425, adam.williams@wsu.edu, to attend the dinner.

The E. Paul Catts Memorial Lecture started in 1997 to honor the longtime and popular professor, public speaker and artist. Catts was a trained parasitologist and taught medical entomology at WSU for 16 years before his death in 1996. He also wrote and illustrated several books, including a laboratory manual for medical and veterinary entomology and a guide for forensic entomology.

Past Catts speakers include Robert Michael Pyle, Xerces Society founder, and Neal Haskell, world-renowned forensic entomologist. Lecture topics have ranged from bed bugs and the evolution of bird lice to insects in the movies and University of Tennessee’s Body Farm in Knoxville.

For more information about the Catts Lecture, visit the website at http://entomology.wsu.edu/events/e-paul-catts/.