News flash: a fruit fly identification-training workshop, taught by internationally recognized Tephritidae experts, will be offered March 11-13 in the Plant Pest Diagnostics Center, California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), located at 3294 Meadowview Road, Sacramento.
The workshop is free to participants.
CDFA senior insect biosystematist Martin Hauser will provide the lab space and microscopes for everyone, as well as his expertise.
Covered will be "All economic pest fruit flies," Hauser said in an email. "The main focus are the subfamily Dacinae (Asian and African genera: Bactrocera, Ceratitis, Zeugodacus), the South American Anastrepha and the genus Rhagoletis (mainly Europe and North America). Everybody will learn how to pin adults out of alcohol and preserve them pinned (and keep them), how to ID larvae at least to genus level, how to use keys and literature to identify these important flies, discussing problems with keys and problems with species concepts, etc."
CDFA's Target Pest Profiles, posted on its website, include the Guava fruit fly, Malaysian fruit fly, Mediterranean fruit fly, melon fruit fly, Mexican fruit fly, Oriental fruit fly, peach fruit fly, Queensland fruit fly, Tau fly, and the white-striped fruit fly.
The team includes:
Luc LeBlanc, curator and manager of William F. Barr Entomological Museum, Idaho State University. He received his doctorate in 2014 from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, completing his dissertation on the nontarget effects of fruit fly lures. He has extensive experience in insect taxonomy (especially Tephritidae and Ichneumonidae) and managing insect collections. He implemented plant protection-related projects in Africa (1989-1994) and the South Pacific Islands (1994-2002).
Jung Wook "Woogie" Kim of the USDA-APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service). His title is national taxonomist, Diptera, National Identification Services (NIS), USDA-APHIS-PPQ-PHP (Plant Protection and Quarantine, and Plant Health Programs). He received his doctorate in entomology from UC Riverside in 2003. His dissertation: “Classification and Evolution of the Aphelininae (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae).
Erick Rodriguez, research scientist and curator of Diptera, Division of Plant Industry, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and "the world expert in pest fruit fly larvae," Hauser said. Rodriguez holds a doctorate from the University of Florida, where he completed his dissertation on "Integrative Taxonomy to Enhance Accuracy of Identification of Fruit Fly Larvae in the Genus Anastrepha (Diptera:Tephritidae).
Martin Hauser, CDFA senior insect biosystematist. He holds a doctorate in entomology (2005) from the University of Urbana-Champaign. His dissertation: "Systematics and Evolution of the Basal Lineages of Therevidae (Insecta:Diptera)."
Severyn Korneyev, an environmental scientist at CDFA and a research associate at the Bohart Museum of Entomology. He received his doctorate in 2016 from I.I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. His dissertation: "A Revision of the Genus Tephritis (Diptera, Tephritidae) of the Western Palaearctics"). In 2017, he received a Fulbright grant to Michigan State University to study the molecular phylogeny of Tephritis and Rhagoletis fruit flies. In 2020, as a postdoctoral researcher, he joined the UC Davis/CDFA program; his work involved collecting, identifying and DNA barcoding Tephritidae collected in the Old World.
Hauser, Rodriguez, LeBlanc and Korneyev are all foreign-born, so "this is an attempt to motivate the next generation of Tephritidae experts," Hauser commented.
Registration is underway on this Google document at https://tinyurl.com/43ffnx2t.
Long version:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe_fNKthItnLrQQ40kXKocjyu7ieSgW2uyIBu9d4SrOmPkvfA/viewform
For further information, LeBlanc may be reached at leblancl@uidaho.edu and Hauser at mhauser@cdfa.ca.gov.