- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What's that critter, as described by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis?
A cuckoo wasp, and a rare one at that.
"Also, unlike most other chrysidid cuckoo wasps--which are lovely metallic blues and greens--they are flat brown," she says. "We have no idea how they make a living."
Kimsey has just published a journal article about that rare cuckoo wasp.
“The genus, Rhadinoscelidia, is a very weird chrysidid--kind of if you wanted to create something too weird to be real,” she said.
“Unlike other cuckoo wasps that lay their eggs in the nests of bees and wasps killing the unsuspecting hosts, these wasps may very well be parasites of walking stick eggs, like other members of their group,” Kimsey said.
The paper, Morphology and Review of the Odd Genus Rhadinoscelidia Kimsey, 1988 (Hymenoptera, Chrysididae, Loboscelidiinae) is published in current edition of the Journal of Hymenoptera Research.
Kimsey, an expert on wasps and the co-author of “Chrysidid Wasps of the World” (Oxford University Press) with entomologist Richard Bohart (1913-2007) reviewed the small chrysidid genus, Rhadinoscelidia Kimsey, 1988, which is “rarely collected and is the most oddly modified of the chrysidid wasps.”
To date, the genus is known only from Hainan Island (China), Thailand, Laos, West Java (Indonesia) and Malaysia (mainland). However, Rhadinoscelidia species probably occur throughout Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Viet Nam, southern mainland China and Myanmar.
In the journal article, the professor described the new species, Rh.chaesonensis sp., and documented “peculiar deformations of the head” in one species, Rh. malaysiae Kimsey, 1988, from Thailand.
Rhadinoscelidia is one of two genera in the subfamily Loboscelidiinae, characterized by antennae that appear to be inserted horizontally on a shelf-like structure in the mid-face, Kimsey said.
But Rhadinoscelidia is even more unusual. Kimsey said the specimens from Thailand showed “marked and inconsistent asymmetry of the head.”
“The reason for this asymmetry is not clear,” she wrote. “However, it may affect the value of species distinctions based on facial dimensions, facial sculpturing, presence or absence of carinae (elevated ridge), and the shape and position of emarginations or projections on the back of the head.”
This study was made possible by the efforts of Michael Sharkey's Thailand Inventory Group for Entomological Research (TIGER) Project and the collaboration of Zai-fu Xu of South China Agricultural University; Doug Yanega of UC Riverside; and David Wahl, American Entomological Institute.
Kimsey, who administers the Bohart Museum of Entomology, which houses some eight million insect specimens, is a recognized global authority on the systematics, biogeography and biology of the wasp families, Tiphiidae and Chrysididae. A past president of the International Society of Hymenopterists and a member of the UC Davis faculty since 1989, she has authored more than 116 publications, and described more than 270 new species.
Kimsey's areas of expertise also include insect include insect biodiversity, urban entomology, civil forensic entomology, and arthropod-related industrial hygiene. She shares her knowledge of insects by consulting with international, national and state agencies. She also identifies thousands of insects every year for scientific collaborators, public agencies and the general public; and annually answers scores of questions about insects from the news media and public.
Kimsey received her undergraduate degree (1975) and doctorate (1979) in entomology from UC Davis, studying with major professor Richard Bohart, for whom the UC Davis insect museum is named.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you've been thinking about blanketing your garden with blanketflower (Gaillardia), you're in luck.
The UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden is hosting a spring plant sale from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, March 10 at its Arboretum Teaching Nursery on Garrod Drive, located across from the School of Veterinary Medicine.
And Gaillardia will be available.
The one-ace nursery "has an incredible selection of Arboretum All-Stars, California natives, and thousands of other attractive, low-water plants perfect for creating a landscape alive with environmentally important pollinators," officials said.
Gaillardia is a favorite among pollinators, including honey bees, bumble bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and syrphid or hover flies. You'll see them buzz, fly or flutter over to it. It's a member of the sunflower family Asteraceae, and native to North and South America. Named for M. Gaillard de Charentonneau, an 18th-century French magistrate and botany enthusiast, the plant is commonly called "blanketflower"--probably because it's reminiscent of the colorful blankets crafted by the native American Indians.
The genus includes dozens of species. Among those available at the UC Davis plant sale are Gaillardia 'Celebration'; Gaillardia 'Red Sun'; and Gaillardia x grandiflora or 'Arizona apricot.'
The plant sale is a "Membership Only Appreciation Sale," but you can become a member online now or at the gate on Saturday. Members receive 10 percent off their purchases and an additional $10-member appreciation gift. New members will receive an additional $10-off coupon as a thank you for joining. Davis Botanical Society members also receive a 10 percent discount on their plant sale purchases.
Here's a list (PDF) of what's being offered.
Plant them and they (the pollinators) will come. And sometimes you'll see a little predator-prey interaction--like a praying mantis lying in wait--but that's okay, too. Everybody eats!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Tooker speaks at 4:10 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall, off Kleiber Hall Drive in a seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Some of the key words are corn fields, soybean fields, no-till fields, neonicotinoid seed treatments, slugs, goldenrods, carabid beetles, goldenrod gall fly, volatile emissions, and eavesdropping plants.
“Top-down (natural enemies) and bottom-up (plant defense) effects are well-known regulators of herbivore populations," Tooker says in his abstract. "Our recent research has revealed some unexpected strengths of both types of effects, one in field crops and the other with the goldenrod Solidago altissima. In no-till corn and soybean fields in Mid-Atlantic states, slugs are challenging pests for farmers, but carabid beetles can provide adequate control. Unfortunately our recent research has found that ubiquitous neonicotinoid seed treatments can disrupt this predator-mediated control. Our follow-up work has revealed the extent of adoption neonic seed treatments, the generality of their effects on natural enemies, and control options for farmers."
Goldenrods are particularly interesting to ecology researchers. These plants are insect-pollinated and they host numerous insect herbivores, including gall-inducing insects.
"Gall-inducing insects force their host plants to form novel, nutritive and protective tissues to house and or feed them," according to graduate student/now postdoctoral scholar Anjel Helms, writing on the Tooker lab website. "We still don't know exactly how galling insects induce these plant galls but we hope to figure out the mechanisms someday. One of the goldenrod gallmakers we study in the Tooker lab is the goldenrod ball gall fly, Eurosta solidaginis. The gall fly adults emerge in the spring and the male flies perch on the tops of goldenrod plants producing a volatile emission to attract females. After mating, the female flies lay their eggs into the apical buds of the goldenrod plants and the developing larvae induce ball-shaped galls in the stems of the plants."
"Goldenrod plants have evolved a variety of both chemical and physical defense strategies against the gall flies," Helms writes. "The Tooker lab's goldenrod research team is working to better understand these defenses and the chemical interactions between the goldenrod and the flies."
Check out Penn State's database of insect fact sheets.
Coordinating the UC Davis seminars are assistant professor Rachel Vannette; Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño and Ph.D student Brendon Boudinot.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So said bee scientist and author Tom Seeley of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., when he keynoted the fourth annual UC Davis Bee Symposium, held March 3 in the UC Davis Conference Center.
"EVERYTHING that colonies do when they are living on their own (not being managed by beekeepers) is done to favor their survival and their reproduction, and thus their success is contribution to the next generation of colonies," Seeley said in his talk on "Darwinian Beekeeping."
"And I mean everything."
Seeley, the Horace White Professor in Biology, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, where he teaches courses on animal behavior and researches the behavior and social life of honey bees, visually transported the symposium crowd to his research site, the 4200-acre Arnot Teaching and Research Forest owned by Cornell University.
Located about 15 miles from the campus, Arnot Forest is a place where the honey bees live in the wild, that is, they are not managed by beekeepers, Seeley pointed out. They build small nest cavities high in the trees, about 25 feet high, and space their colonies apart by at least 750 meters. They build drone comb freely, amounting to 15 to 20 percent of the nest cavity. They live as they did millions of years ago.
It's survival by natural selection.
"We can learn from the wild colonies," Seeley said. "I go into the wild areas and track down where bees are living and follow the bees home. It takes me about two days to find a bee tree."
Does the Arnot Forest have Varroa mites, the worldwide parasitic, virus-transferring mite that's considered the No. 1 enemy of beekeepers? A pest that arrived in the New York area around 1994?
Yes, they do. All the colonies in the forest are infested with Varroa mites. And they survive.
Seeley's research shows that before 1978 (pre-Varroa mite), the forest contained 2.8 colonies per square mile. After 2002 (post-Varroa mite), the forest still contained 2.8 colonies per square mile.
Honey bees typify the Charles Darwinian concept of evolution by natural selection, Seeley said. Indeed, "all bees living today are the products of natural selection."
Darwin, who described comb building as "the most wonderful of all (insect) instincts" and Lorenzo L. Langstroth, who invented the movable-frame hive, "both had important insights that can help us with our beekeeping," Seeley related.
"Darwinian beekeeping is allowing the bees to use their own beekeeping skills fully."
However, Darwinian beekeeping or "bee friendly beekeeping" is not for everyone, Seeley emphasized. "It's not for large-scale beekeepers, it's not for urban beekeepers. It is an option for small-scale rural beekeepers who want to avoid chemical treatments and who are satisfied with modest honey crops."
With Darwinian beekeeping, the emphasis is on the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness, "or the original environment in which wild colonies live," Seeley said. "Colonies are genetically adapted to their location."
How can beekeepers practice Darwinian beekeeping?
"Keep bees that are adapted to your location," he said. "Rear queens from your best survivor colonies, OR capture swarms with bait hives in remote locations OR purchase queens from a queen breeder who produces locally adapted queens."
"If the mite level gets high (more than 10 mites per 100 bees), then euthanize the colony; pour warm, soap water into hive at dusk," he said. "This does two things: it eliminates your non-resistant colonies and it avoids producing mite bombs. An alternative to euthanasia of the colony: treat for Varroa and requeen with a queen of resistant stock."
The issues of hive size and proximity are also important. Many modern beekeepers use "multi-storied wooden kits, super-sized like McDonald's," the professor said. "And managed bee hives are often a meter away from one another, as compared to 750 meters in the wild."
Seeley also said it's important "not to disturb colonies in winter: no checking, no stimulative feeding, no pollen patties, etc. Even a brief removal of the lid causes winter cluster to raise its temperature in alarm for several hours."
In his presentation, Seeley touched on nine Darwinian beekeeping tips, summarized here:
1. Keep bees that are adapted to your location
2. House colonies in small hives and let them swarm
3. Space colonies as widely as possible
4. Line hives with propolis collection screens or untreated lumber to allow them to build a "propolis (antimicrobial) shield"
5. Provide the most resilient (lowest mite count) colonies with 10 to 20 percent drone comb
6. Keep the nest structure intact
7. Use a small, bottom entrance
8. Do not disturb colonies in winter
9. Refrain from treating colonies for Varroa
He lists 20 Darwinian beekeeping tips in his article published in the March 2017 edition of the American Bee Journal. (The article also appears on the Natural Beekeeping Trust website, printed with permission.)
Seely is the author of Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life(1985), The Wisdom of the Hive: the Social Physiology of Honey Bee Colonies (1995), and Honeybee Democracy (2010), all published by Princeton Press.
The UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology sponsored the event, which drew a crowd of 250. Amina Harris, director of the center, coordinated the event.
In introducing the keynote speaker, Professor Neal Williams of the entomology faculty and the faculty co-director of the Honey and Pollination Center board, described Seeley's work as "innovative and insightful. He is truly a gifted author who blends science and philosophy."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Like a winter ant. Or a jumping spider.
This winter ant, Prenolepis imparis (as identified by ant specialist Brendon Boudinot, a Ph.D. candidate in the Phil Ward lab in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology), was crawling along a branch of an almond tree last week on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, when it encountered...oops...a jumping spider (Salticidae).
"I'm sure that ant's fate was soon in the cold embrace of that cute spiders chelicerae," quipped entomologist Wade Spencer of the Lynn Kimsey lab, Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Not this time. No arthropods were harmed in the making of this photo.
Winter ants, says Boudinot, "have a lovely life history, being the only species specialized for activity during the 'dead' of winter." They're sometimes called "false honey ants." BugGuide.net calls this an "unfortunate name, since the storage product in the corpulent young workers of these ants is fatty, not sugary."
According to Ant Wiki, the winter ant "nests deep in the ground. It remains underground during the warmest months of the year, and in many parts of its range forages during times when the temperature is much cooler than other ant species will tolerate. Prenolepis imparis avoids competition with most ant species by not being active at the times of the year when other ants are most actively foraging."
