- (Focus Area) Environment
The Nutrition Policy Institute is seeking a University of California graduate student fellow to join our efforts to improve food and nutrition security among currently and formerly incarcerated individuals in California. This fellowship opportunity is part of the 2024-2025 UC Bonnie Reiss Climate Action Fellowship Program, which supports the UC's climate goals by reducing greenhouse gas emission and establishing climate programs and policies centered on equity, sustainability, and resiliency. In addition to working with the NPI Farm to Corrections project team, fellows will participate in UC systemwide activities. This fellowship is a 10-month commitment from September 2024 – July 2025. Fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend. Applications are due by July 31, 2024. The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Thought for the day...
Every time we see a honey bee "posing perfectly" on a Gaillardia, commonly known as blanket flower, we think of a quote by internationally known honey bee geneticist, Robert E. Page Jr., a UC Davis doctoral alumnus and professor and chair emeritus of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology):
"The impact of bees on our world is immeasurable. Bees are responsible for the evolution of the vast array of brightly-colored flowers and for engineering the niches of multitudes of plants, animals, and microbes. They've painted our landscapes with flowers through their pollination activities and have evolved the most complex societies to aid their exploitation of the environment."
That's a passage from his book, The Art of the Bee.It's also featured on his YouTube Channel, https://www.youtube.com/@artofthebee.
Rob obtained his doctorate in entomology in 1980 from UC Davis; joined the UC Davis faculty in 1989; and chaired the Department of Entomology from 1999 to 2004. After retiring from UC Davis in 2004, he accepted an appointment at Arizona State University (ASU) as founding director of the School of Life Sciences. He served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2011-2013, and provost of ASU from 2013-2015. He is now emeritus. He was recently featured in Legends, American Entomologist. (See UC Davis Department of Entomology website)
Why did Page create the free and accessible-to-all YouTube Channel? Because that's what Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), known as a German geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science, would have done.
It's about making science understandable.
Check out Page's YouTube channel, including:
- Landscape Artists
- Environmental Engineers
- The Social Contract
- Superorganisms
- How to Make a Superorganism
- Song of the Queen
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So there it was, an exotic-looking bug resting against a freshly painted red bollard at a Vacaville supermarket.
It was not there to shop. Or to stop vehicles from crashing into the store or colliding with shoppers.
It was there, I suspect, because of the pheromone-like scent of the fresh paint.
What was it? A banded alder borer, Rosalia funebris, in the family Cerambycidae. It's a longhorned beetle with spectacular black, white and blue coloration.
Look closely and you'll see the dark elytra (wing covers) with white bands and a white thorax with a large black spot. What's really striking, though, are the long, black-and-white banded antennae. The male antennae are longer than its body.
The beetle "feeds during its larval stage in declining or dead branches of broadleaf trees, including alder, ash, California bay, oak, and willow," according to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. "Longhorned beetles develop though four life stages—egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Adult banded alder borers emerge and mate from April through August. Adult females lay eggs individually on small- to medium-sized, dying or recently dead branches. The eggs hatch within 2 weeks and the larvae bore in and feed for 6 to 7 months under the bark. Mature larvae then bore in more deeply to overwinter as pupae. In the spring, pupae develop into adults, each of which chews an exit hole and emerges from the branch."
"The banded alder borer is the only species of this genus in North America, occurring from Alaska to southern California and in the Rocky Mountains from Idaho to New Mexico," according to Washington State University Extension.
However, scientists say it's not a significant pest because the females lay their eggs in downed, damaged or dead branches. The damage is not theirs. They're not the culprits!
You may never see a banded alder borer, but if you're painting a bollard (not going to happen!), your house, or some other structure, you might. Just enjoy its striking beauty!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Ever seen a honey bee and a butterfly sharing a lavender blossom?
Just in time for National Pollinator Week, June 17-23, we saw this today.
What could be more pollinator friendly than that?
The honey bee, Apis mellifera, and the Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae, meet on many a blossom. The butterfly usually flutters away, departing first.
This time the bee left first.
As Pollinator Partnership says on its website:
"Pollinator Week 2024 is a celebration of the vital role that pollinators play in our ecosystems, economies, and agriculture. Under the inspiring theme Vision 2040: Thriving Ecosystems, Economies, and Agriculture, this year's event urges us to envision a future where pollinators not only survive but thrive. These essential creatures, including bees, butterflies, moths, bats, beetles, and hummingbirds, are the unsung heroes behind the food we enjoy and the beauty that surrounds us. As we reflect on the interconnectedness of our world, let's unite in a collective effort to protect and preserve these crucial pollinators. By understanding the impact of our actions on their habitats and embracing sustainable practices, we can pave the way for a flourishing future..."
The bee and the butterfly would agree--if they could agree.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
if you hike a short distance up a meandering trail, you'll see a landscape of turrets, the work of solitary, ground-nesting digger bees, Anthophora bomboides standfordina.
The nests remind us tiny sandcastles. The female bees did that!
In the early spring you'll see the bees nectaring on wild radish and other flowers.
These digger bees are found along the sandy cliffs of beaches along the Pacific Coast, not just Bodega Head. They're sometimes called the “Stanford bumble bee digger” because its subspecies name, “stanfordiana,” refers to a 1904 Stanford University collection.
They are bumble bee mimics; they mimic the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii.
It was Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), distinguished emeritus professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT), who alerted us to them. He studied them at the Bodega Marine Reserve and loved to share his research.
So, on every trip to the Bodega Head, we scramble up the trail to see what the bees are doing. Of course, when they're overwintering, we don't see them at all, just the turrets.
Fast forward to today. On the ENT website, we posted a research story today that began 'Microbes found in the immature stages of a solitary bee that nests in sand cliffs along Pacific Coast beaches may be helping the bee defend itself from pathogens and protect it from cold stress, according to newly published research led by microbiologist Shawn Christensen of the Rachel Vannette Lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology."
The research publication, “Symbiotic Bacteria and Fungi Proliferate in Diapause and May Enhance Overwintering Survival in a Solitary Bee,” appears in the current issue of the journal, International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME), and is posted on the National Library of Science website.
“Contrary to what has previously been assumed and found in other systems, we found that dormant--also called diapausing--bees have more abundant symbiotic bacteria and fungi,” said Christensen, a doctoral candidate and the 2024 recipient of the Merton Love Ecology and Dissertation Award, an annual award that celebrates the university's most outstanding doctoral dissertation in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. He's scheduled to receive his doctorate this month.
The six-member research team, including colleagues from Cornell University, UC Riverside and the University of Arizona, also found “that the microbiome of this solitary bee is very consistent--the same taxa appear in most brood cells, in similar proportions,” said Christensen. “This is uncommon in solitary species, which normally have variable microbiomes due to lack of social transmission. We are still exploring this unique aspect!”
Vannette, associate professor and vice chair of the department and an international leader in microbial ecology, researches interactions between plants, insects and microbes. She is a principal investigator of a National Science Foundation grant that funded the project.
“Previous work on bee-microbe interactions has shown how gut bacteria benefit honey bees and other corbiculate social bees but these microbes are limited to social bees,” Vannette told us. “We wondered if solitary bees also associate with beneficial microbes and uncovered this previously undescribed partnership between bees, fungi and bacteria. This study opens up new questions in bee ecology and host-microbe interactions: how do solitary bees maintain specific associations with bacteria and fungi? What chemistry are Streptomyces using to suppress fungi? Does this association benefit bees? We think it is likely but ongoing work will examine these questions.”
“We are also thrilled to find this unique symbiosis in a bee species that has been well-studied by previous faculty at UC Davis, including RobbinThorp,” Vannette said. “UC Davis nematologist Harry Kaya, with graduate student Robin Giblin, also described Bursaphelenchus seani, a nematode that inhabits Anthophora bomboides. Our lab is also investigating links between the brood cell microbiome and the nematodes in this bee species.”
Other co-authors of the paper are
- Quinn McFrederick, assistant professor at UC Riverside who studies symbionts (pathogens, commensals, and mutualists) of wild and solitary bees
- Bryan Danforth, professor at Cornell University, who specializes in bee systematics and evolution
- Stephen Buchmann, pollination ecologist affiliated with the Departments of Entomology and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona
- Sriram Srinivas, then a UC Davis undergraduate researcher in the Vannette lab
Check out Thorp's presentation on digger bees that he delivered at the “Proceedings of the Symposium on Biodiversity of Northwestern California” in October, 1991, in Santa Rosa.
Also check out the wonderfully done PBS Deep Look Video, This Bee Builds Sandcastles at the Beach.
Let's dig the digger bees.