- (Focus Area) Natural Resources
- Author: Daniel K Macon
Writing my last blog post as the Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor for Placer, Nevada, Sutter, and Yuba Counties is bittersweet. When I became the advisor in 2017 (filling Roger Ingram's enormous shoes), I assumed I would stay in this job until I retired. Life had other plans for me.
As many of you know by now, I lost my wife Samia to brain cancer in August 2023. Around the same time she was beginning treatment, we learned that my mother had been diagnosed with dementia. As a result, in January of this year, I requested a transfer to the vacant Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor position in the Central Sierra UC Cooperative Extension office, closer to Tuolumne County (where most of my family still lives). I'm grateful that UC Ag and Natural Resources (UCANR) granted my request; I start this new position on October 1 (just two weeks away!). I've sold our home in Auburn and am in the process of relocating to the small town of Mountain Ranch in Calaveras County, where I'll be much closer to my parents and to my sister.
Sami and I became part of the Placer County agricultural community in 1994, when we moved to Penryn. Leaving our community – and the Auburn home we'd purchased in 2001 – is difficult. We raised our daughters in Auburn. We still have some many friends and connections in Placer County. But I'm excited about this new opportunity, too – I'll be based out of the San Andreas office, so I'll just be a couple of hours south on Highway 49!
And I will maintain my Ranching in the Sierra Foothills blog and my UCCE Foothill Sustainable Ranching Facebook page. And you can still find me on X (or Twitter) as @flyingmulefarm (or Sheepherder Scientist). I look forward to reconnecting with ranchers and rangeland managers in the communities where I was raised! Stay tuned for the next chapter!
Finally, I'm very pleased to announce that UCANR has named my replacement for Placer, Nevada, Sutter, and Yuba Counties! Andrea Warner will join UC Cooperative Extension on October 1! I hope you'll join me in welcoming Andrea!
Andrea was born and raised in Nevada County, California, where she was active in youth sports and the 4-H program. Her interest in livestock and agriculture started when she had the opportunity to rise and show market pigs for the Nevada County Fair. Once in high school, Andrea's interest in agriculture increased as she became more involved in her school's FFA chapter through speaking competitions, extracurricular courses, and continuing to raise market pigs. She knew that she wanted to pursue a career in agriculture after high school and started by enrolling at Sierra College.
During her time there, Andrea developed an excitement for animal science, and started an internship at the UC ANR Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center. There, she assisted with a variety of beef cattle research projects and calving out the UC Davis cow herd. Andrea then transferred to California State University, Chico, where she earned her B.S in Animal Science in 2018. Following her passion for livestock research, Andrea decided to continue her education at Oklahoma State University. There, her research focused on feedlot nutrition and feeding cotton byproducts to finishing cattle, and she worked on several commercial cow/calf operations while attending school. Following the completion of her M.S in 2020, Andrea accepted a position at Langston University as the Research Farm Manager at the American Institute for Goat Research. At Langston, Andrea managed a large herd of dairy and meat goats, and hair sheep which were used for nutrition, health, and management research at the facility.
For the past year and a half, Andrea has been the Staff Research Associate at the Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center where she has worked on many research projects related to beef cattle production, natural resources, climate change, and rangeland management. Becoming a farm advisor was Andrea's long time career goal, and she is most excited about building relationships with local producers and community members in the industry while continuing to address challenges with a research-based approach. When she is not working, Andrea enjoys taking full advantage of the outdoor recreation our area has to offer; some of her favorite activities include hiking, riding dirt bikes, hunting, fishing, and spending the day at the lake or river with friends and family.
Andrea will be based out of the Auburn office. She can be reached at (530) 889-7385 or alnwarner@ucanr.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
But agriculturists and scientists have.
The spotted-wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii, is an agricultural pest that is super tiny.
It's approximately 2 to 4 millimeters in length with a wingspan of 5 to 6.5 millimeters. One millimeter is approximately 0.039 inches. There are 25.4 millimeters in 1 inch. So, the adult is about the size of a grain of sand, which can measure 0.5 to 2 mm in diameter.
SWD, native to southeast Asia and first discovered in California in 2008, lays its eggs in such soft-skinned, ripening fruits as strawberries, raspberries, cherries, blueberries, peaches, nectarines, apricot and grape.
In 2008, the first year of its discovery in California, the economic loss attributed to this pest amounted to $500 million. Latest statistics from 2015 indicate a $700 million national economic loss.
Lead author of the paper, “Transcriptome Analysis of Drosophila suzukii Reveals Molecular Mechanisms Conferring Pyrethroid and Spinosad Resistance,” is Christine Tabuloc, then a doctoral candidate and now a postdoctoral researcher working under the mentorship of Professors Chiu and Zalom.
"In this work, we leveraged high throughput sequencing to identify biomarkers of insecticide resistance in D. suzukii,” Tabuloc explained. “We found that different genes are responsible for resistance to different chemicals. Specifically, we found that genes involved in metabolism are highly expressed in flies resistant to pyrethroid insecticides. We also observed evidence of two different mechanisms of resistance in 2 lines generated from a single spinosad-resistant population. We found an increased expression of metabolic genes in one line and increased expression of cuticular genes in the other.”
Tabuloc added that “our work has enabled for the detection of resistance in California populations, and we are currently doing a nationwide screening to determine whether resistance is now present in other states. Currently, we are working with the Zalom lab to use the results of our assays to try and combat resistance. There are experiments in progress trying to increase the efficacy of insecticides by blocking some of the genes involved in resistance, such that the enzymes encoded by those genes have decreased function."
A giant in the entomological world, Zalom directed the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program for 16 years. He is an Honorary Member of the Entomological Society of America (ESA), the highest ESA honor, and he served as its president in 2014.
“This work not only represents good science; it has very practical implications," Zalom said. He and Tabuloc presented results of the work at a special berry grower seminar on insecticide resistance organized by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) Farm Advisor Mark Bolda, strawberry and caneberry farm advisor in Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties, Mark Bolda in Watsonville.
"The presentations were extremely well-received," Zalom noted. "The original program was targeted for about 1.5 hours, but the meeting extended to over three hours due to the extent of questions and great discussion that followed. Growers and their consultants are hungry for new information that they find interesting and potentially useful, and this work was clearly of interest to them.”
Said Bolda: “The research was top shelf and the need, of course, is very great. Some of the information that Frank and Christine presented has been put into immediate use in the industry.”
What most people don't know is that Bolda was the first to discover the pest in North America. That was in 2008.
"He asked me to come down to look at it and the problem...we weren't able to get an actual species identification until 2009!" Zalom said.
As the pest continues to spread throughout much of the country, anxious growers are worried about its increased resistance to pesticides. The UC Davis research team is alleviating that worry.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's Friday Fly Day, when folks post images of flies.
Flies seem to the entomological equivalent of Rodney Dangerfield's "I-don't-get-no-respect" quote.
So how about a black syrphid fly, a Mexican cactus fly, Copestylum mexicanum, nectaring on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifolia?
The genus Copestylum includes more than 350 species in the new world, according to Martin Hauser, senior insect biosystematist with the Plant Pest Diagnostics Branch of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).
The female Mexican cactus fly lays its eggs in rotting or dying cactus tissue.
This fly, about 3/4 of an inch long, is a delight to see in a patch of Mexican sunflowers mostly frequented by honey bees and Gulf Fritillaries. It's big. It's bold. And it's beautiful.
Happy Friday Fly Day! Respectfully...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
In your childhood, somebody probably gave you a jack-in-the-box toy, a music box that you crank up, and then the lid springs opens and out pops a wildly dressed clown, startling you and everyone around you.
A praying mantis sighting is something like that, but without the music box. You're walking in the garden and suddenly you notice that the Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, appears to have an extra petal.
You look closer and you see a triangular head with bulging eyes. And a spiked foreleg that looks as if it's extending a hand in (fake) friendship. It's a praying mantis and it's staring right at you.
Such was the case recently when a female praying mantis, Mantis religiosa, popped up between the petals.
Jackie-in-the-box!
"Nice to meet ya, m'dear," she seemed to be saying. "Too bad you're not a bee."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's beginning to look a lot like...Halloween.
If you haven't noticed, stores are gearing up for Halloween with assorted ghosts, goblins and ghouls for you.
We remember Halloween 2023 when a female migratory monarch fluttered into our pollinator garden. She checked out the milkweed (we had several native and one non-native species) and chose to sip nectar on the tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, a non-native.
We managed to capture several images of her around 5:30 p.m. before she left on her journey to overwinter in coastal California.
The Center for Biological Diversity, headquartered in Tucson, says on its website: "Across their range, monarchs are threatened by pesticides, climate change, ongoing suburban sprawl, and fragmented and poisoned habitats as they navigate their way across the continent. They need a helping hand from the government, businesses and concerned individuals."
Threats? To that we'd add a minor threat: such predators as birds, spiders and mantises.
Monarchs in western North America overwinter in coastal California (roosting in eucalyptus, Monterey pines, and Monterey cypresses), while those in eastern North America "have a second home in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico" (roosting in oyamel fir forests), as noted by the U.S. Forest Service.
"Researchers are still investigating what directional aids monarchs use to find their overwintering location," the U.S. Forest Service says. "It appears to be a combination of directional aids such as the magnetic pull of the earth and the position of the sun among others, not one in particular."
We're glad to see that the raging controversy over native vs. non-native milkweed is subsiding a bit, as the more crucial threats are pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change. After all, tropical milkweed, a native of Mexico, has been in California for more than 100 years. And longer than that when you consider that California was once part of Mexico. A. curassavica is also native to Central America (including Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) and South America (including Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela), according to Johnny Butterflyseed.