- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Bonning is one of only 10 Fellows elected this year in the 6500-member ESA “for outstanding contributions to entomology in one or more of the following: research, teaching, extension, or administration.”
The 10 will be honored at ESA’s annual meeting set Nov. 10-13 in Austin, Texas. Other 2013 Fellows with UC connections are Jocelyn Millar, entomology professor at UC Riverside, and Jeffery G. Scott of Cornell University, who received his doctorate in entomology and toxicology from UC Riverside.
“Bryony is a star in our department,” said distinguished professor Bruce Hammock of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Hammock was elected an ESA Fellow in 2010.
“Bryony and I worked together at the NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology at Oxford and she came back to UC Davis with me as a postdoc,” Hammock said.
“Bryony did amazing work on recombinant baculovirus insecticides working with Susumu Maeda, Sean Duffy and myself,” Hammock said. “She and Kelli Hoover, now a professor at Pennsylvania State University, were partners in my lab.”
Another UC Davis connection: Bonning married Jeff Beetham, a Ph.D. student in the Hammock lab and now a professor at Iowa State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
Bonning joined the faculty of ISU in 1994. She oversees fundamental and applied research on insect physiology and insect pathology with the goal of developing novel, environmentally benign alternatives to chemical insecticides for insect pest management. Her research has included the study of insect hormones and enzymes and insecticidal toxins derived from Bacillus thuringiensis, insect small RNA, the genetic optimization of insect viruses for pest management, insect virus discovery, and the use of viral proteins for development of insect resistant transgenic plants. Recent research has included modification of Bt toxins to target hemipteran pests which typically have low susceptibility to native Bt toxins, and the use of the coat protein of an aphid-vectored plant virus for delivery of insect specific neurotoxins to their target site within the aphid hemocoel.
Bonning is the founding director of the Center for Arthropod Management Technologies (CAMTech), a research center supported by the National Science Foundation, industry, and universities. CAMTech engages scientists at ISU and its sister institution, the University of Kentucky, in collaborative efforts with the world’s largest agricultural and insect pest control companies to better align research conducted within academe with the need of industry for practical pest management solutions. Bonning met the co-director at the University of Kentucky site, Dr. S. Reddy Palli, through a collaborative project while at Davis.
Bonning has mentored more than 30 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and teaches insect pathology and molecular entomology at the graduate level. Over the course of her career, she has authored or co-authored more than 110 scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters, and holds five patents. Her work has been funded by diverse research agencies, including the National Science Foundation and USDA. She has served as associate editor for the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, as council trustee and chair of the Virus Division and program chair for the Society for Invertebrate Pathology, and on the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, Baculovirus Study Group and Dicistrovirus and Iflavirus Study Group. Her accomplishments were recognized by the Iowa Technology Association through the Iowa Women of Innovation Award for Research Innovation and Leadership. She is a fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Bonning received her bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Durham, UK, in 1985, with specialization in entomology and neurobiology, and her doctorate in applied entomology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, UK in 1989.
While enrolled in college in the UK, she did field work on the detection and monitoring of insecticide resistance mechanisms in mosquitoes with the Anti-Malaria Campaign in Colombo, Sri Lanka; she was funded by the Overseas Development Administration. Bonning also did regional monitoring and field trials for biological or chemical control of arthropod and nematode pests in Derbyshire, UK, with the Department of Entomology, Ministry of Agriculture, Fishers and Food,Agricultural Development and Advisory Service.
After receiving her doctorate from the University of London, Bonning worked from 1989 to 1990 as a higher scientific officer with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology, Oxford, in Robert Possee’s lab, where she met Hammock during his sabbatical. She then moved to California to join the Hammock lab as a postdoctoral researcher.
On her last visit to UC Davis, on April 18, 2012, Bonning delivered an entomology seminar on "Novel Toxin Delivery Strategies for Management of Pestiferous Aphids.”
At the time Hammock said. "She is one of our most productive alumni in continuing her work on insect developmental biology and green pesticides based on insect viruses and expanded this dramatically into exciting new areas. She is advancing fundamental virology while applying this knowledge in production agriculture in both insect control and in blocking transmission of plant diseases by insects. She clearly is the leader in insect control with recombinant viruses.”