- (Focus Area) Natural Resources
- 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.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Titled "Robert E. Page, Jr.: The Spirit of the Bee," it's a great article chronicling his life, his love of bees, and his massive number of achievements. Rice captured it well.
Rob, a native of Bakersfield and now 74, received his doctorate in 1980 from UC Davis, studying with major professor Norman Gary and doctoral research mentor Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. He advanced to professor and chair of the Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology). A second career emerged when Arizona State University (ASU) recruited him.
Today Page holds the titles of ASU University Provost Emeritus and Regents Professor Emeritus as well as UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor and Emeritus Chair of the UC Davis Entomology Department.
Page is known for his research on honey bee behavior and population genetics, particularly the evolution of complex social behavior. One of his most salient contributions to science was to construct the first genomic map of the honey bee, which sparked a variety of pioneering contributions not only to insect biology but to genetics at large.
Page pioneered the use of modern techniques to study the genetic basis of social behavior evolution in honey bees and other social insects. He was the first to employ molecular markers to study polyandry and patterns of sperm use in honey bees. He provided the first quantitative demonstration of low genetic relatedness in a highly eusocial species.
He is "arguably the most influential honey bee biologist of the past 30 years," his peers say.
At UC Davis, Page worked closely with Laidlaw. Together they published many significant research papers and the landmark book, “Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding” (Wicwas Press, 1998), considered the most important resource book for honey bee genetics, breeding, and queen rearing.
For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a UC Davis honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.
Page authored two books: The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution (Harvard University Press, 2013) and the Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies (Oxford University Press, 2020). In 2023, he launched a publicly accessible YouTube Channel, https://youtube.com/@artofthebee.
When Rice asked Page "Who was the most influential person in your education," Page replied: "Today, all my research approaches, the way I thought about things, everything I did I can point back to four people. Norm Gary taught me the importance of knowing behavior and having good behavioral assays. He was superb at it. Nobody knows better what bees will do than Norm Gary, but he doesn't care much about why they do it. Which then brings me to my training in evolution from Tim Prout, who was an evolutionary biologist and population geneticist. He taught me population genetics, which I use to develop a population way of thinking about the work that I do. Harry Laidlaw taught me the value of breeding and the value of attention to detail. When we wrote papers together, we went over every word. Harry believed that every word had to be there for a reason. Every word had to be right. Robert A. Metcalf, an incredible guy, really turned me on to social insects, and got me interested in using molecular and biochemical markers. Everything I did for the rest of my career came from those four people."
This week we asked Gary, now 90, what it was like to have Rob as his graduate student.
In a June 17th email, Gary wrote: “When I first met Rob Page at the beginning of his graduate studies, I was immediately impressed that he was a very exceptional student in all respects! He was enthusiastic about insect behavior, especially honey bee behavior. I became his major professor. His fascination with behavior soon evolved into behavioral genetics. Consequently, I encouraged him to conduct his graduate research under the direction of Harry Laidlaw whose research program focused on honey bee genetics."
"Rob and I shared several bee research projects, one of which involved research on honey bees to determine if insects would be adversely affected by exposure to microwaves from solar power satellites that were under consideration as a future source of energy for mankind. Rob excelled in all activities. His enthusiasm was contagious! He richly deserves the many rewards he has received during his career, especially for his superior skills in research, teaching, and leadership in every facet of the academic world.”
You may know Norm Gary as not only a professor, scientist, musician, and author but one of the world's most incredible professional bee wranglers. He used to wear full-body bee suits and play the b-flat clarinet. (See Bug Squad blog of Nov. 30, 2016). He once trained bees to fly into his mouth to collect food from a small sponge saturated with his patented artificial nectar. He holds the Guinness World record (109 bees inside his closed mouth for 10 seconds) for the stunt.
It's all about The Bees for Rob Page and Norm Gary.
It's always been about The Bees.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"For me, at least a lot of my interest developed when my parents gave me a net and a butterfly picture book and then gave me enough independence to explore on my own," recalls UC Davis distinguished professor emerita Lynn Kimsey, who served 34 years as director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology before stepping down on Feb. 1.
"Today parents seem to schedule every minute of their kid's day with scheduled activities," Kimsey said, "and this simply doesn't allow kids to explore, and use their imaginations."
So true. Kids are naturally curious. When they see lady beetles, aka ladybugs, they check out what they're doing, what they're eating (a menu of aphids and other soft-bodied insects), and how they take flight.
You can ask them questions: What do you think that is? What is it doing? Can you describe it? Do you want it to be your friend? Why or why not? Do you want to write a poem about it? Do you want to photograph it?
They quickly learn that everything eats in the garden. They can watch a honey bee foraging for nectar and pollen, and then get nailed by a praying mantis. Ditto the butterfly. One minute a butterfly is sipping nectar, and the next minute, it's snared in a spider web.
And they never forget metamorphosis: how a butterfly egg magically transforms into a caterpillar, the caterpillar into a chrysalis, and then an adult butterfly ecloses from that chrysalis. "Magic" and "miracles" occur right before their eyes!
A great example of the natural curiosity of children occurs every year on the UC Davis campus during the "Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work." Mom and Dad show youngsters where they work, and also visit other workplaces. One of the highlights is the Bohart Museum of Entomology
For the Bohart Museum staff and volunteers, it's a good opportunity to engage in science communication or sci-com. Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator organizes the open houses and leads the team. At the recent event, the science communicators included doctoral student Em Jochim of the Jason Bond lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; Oliver Smith, a UC Davis entomology student; psychology major Naomi Lila of the UC Davis Entomology Club; Syd Benson, a high school intern from Met Sacramento; and animal biology major Jakob Lopez wearing a quite appropriate "Have a Nice Day" shirt.
Everly Puckett, 3, was there with her father, Ryan Puckett with Facilities Management. She wasn't sure she wanted to hold any insects (Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects) from the petting zoo but her dad encouraged her to touch a stick insect, aka walking stick.
Ten-year-old Mark Blankenship eagerly held a thorny stick insect. His dad, Mark Blankenship, works for Supply Chain Management.
Eight-year-old Hunter Baker was super interested in the insects and wanted to know more about them. His mother, Kate Schaul, works in security at the UC Davis Library.
Sebastian Carrasco, 3, whose mother Nadia works in UC Davis Health, attended with his father, Lizandro. When asked if he wanted to hold an insect, Sebastian hid behind his father. Then he shook his head and said "Bye, Bye!" to the insect. Clever and creative!
Daphne Shuman, 7, whose mother Amy Shuman, works for Students Affairs, loved the Bohart Museum. In fact she loved it so much she attended the event twice, in the morning and in the afternoon.
Mark Blankenship, 10, peered closely at a stick insect crawling on a hand. His father, Mark, works for Supply Chain Management.
Atlas Scott, 4, attended with his mother Danielle Hoskey who works for UC Davis Health. He decided he'd rather not become acquainted with the stick insects, but he did hold a tomato hornworm.
Bottom line: they will all remember that day at the Bohart Museum, a day when they were encouraged to look, touch and hold an insect.
And, quite likely, many may enroll in college entomology courses and some may seek entomology as a career.
The Bohart Museum, home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens (plus a gift shop and petting zoo), is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane. Summer walk-in hours are Tuesdays, June 17-Aug, 27, 9 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 4:30 p.m. The museum will be closed to the general public from Sept. 1-Sept. 22.
Director is Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in the Department of Entomology and Nematology. He's also associate dean of agricultural sciences for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
The next open houses are:
Saturday, July 20: Moth Night at the Museum (inside and outside activities) 7 to 11 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 28: Museum ABC's: Arthropods, Bohart and Collecting, 1 to 4 p.m.
All open houses are free and family friendly. Parking is also free. For more information, contact the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu. or call (530) 752-0493.
- Author: Denise Godbout-Avant
Pollinators receive food in the form of nectar (source of sugar) or pollen (source of protein, fat, and other nutrients). In the process of moving from flower to flower to feed, pollinators disperse pollen grains among plants of the same species, enabling the plants to reproduce. Flowers have evolved over long periods of time into many colors, shapes and scents to attract their pollinators, thus creating a mutually beneficial relationship.
The Pollinators
While bees are the primary pollinators, other insects including butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, some birds such as hummingbirds, and bats also play important roles.
Honeybees & Native Bees
Honeybees (genus Apis) are the bees we are most familiar with. However, honeybees are just one species of a very diverse group with over 20,000 species worldwide, 4,000 species in the USA and 1,600 in California. Native bees come in a variety of shapes, colors, sizes and lifestyles that make them very efficient pollinators. Unlike honeybees and bumblebees, which are social bees living in colonies, native bees are solitary with 70 percent nesting in the ground with the rest nesting in wood and plant stems.
Butterflies
Butterflies are daytime flying insects who often have gorgeous colorful wings. Their larvae sometimes require a specific plant to feed on, though most adults will get their nectar from many plants.
Moths
Moths are mostly evening and nighttime fliers, though some are out in the late afternoon or early morning. They are attracted to sweet-smelling flowers. Less colorful than butterflies, they are easily differentiated from butterflies by their “feathery” antennae.
Flies
Flies are not generally thought of as pollinators, however many are, particularly hover flies (family Syrphidae) and bee flies (family Bombyliidae), both of which are generalist pollinators. Generalist pollinators visit a wide range of plants, making them important inhabitants of gardens and fields.
Beetles
Beetles are a large group, with up to 28,000 species in the USA. Most beetles are not pollinators, but some do visit flowers for nectar or pollen and help fertilize some flowering plants, particularly magnolias.
Wasps
Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds are the most prominent pollinating birds in the Americas. With their long beaks, they can reach deep into flowers while sipping nectar. In addition to nectar, they also forage on insects and spiders.
Bats
Bats are nocturnal pollinators that play an important role in pollinating cacti and agave, as well as many tropical and subtropical plants including bananas, avocados, century plants and cashews. Species such as Mexican long-nose bat (Leptonycteris nivalis) have evolved heads and long tongues to access light-colored flowers which open at night, often producing abundant nectar and pollen.
How You Can Help Pollinators
Pollinators need a diversity of flowers with lots of nectar and pollen. They require easy access to flowers blooming throughout the seasons, particularly during late winter, early spring, and late autumn seasons when fewer flowers bloom. Different flower species provide differing amounts of nectar. Native plants generally provide more nutritious nectar for pollinators, so they attract more pollinators. Download the Xerces Society Recommended Plants for the Central Valley Region for a list of plants.
To help protect pollinators, if you choose to use a pesticide, select one that are less toxic, such as an insecticidal soap or oil. Avoid broad-spectrum sprays that kill numerous insects. Spray on non-windy days in the early morning or late evening when pollinators are not present. Use UC Integrated Pest Management for information on pests and pest management (https://ipm.ucanr.edu/).
Citations
- The Pollinator Partnership https://www.pollinator.org/
- Xerces Society book: Attracting Native Pollinators: https://xerces.org/publications/books/attracting-native-pollinators
- California Native Plant Society (CNPS) native planting guides: https://www.cnps.org/gardening/choosing-your-plants/native-planting-guides
Free Resources from University of California and your local UC Master Gardeners
- CA Friendly Friendly Garden Recipes https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/Details.aspx?itemNo=8518
- How to Attract and Maintain Pollinators in your Garden https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/Details.aspx?itemNo=8498
- UC Stanislaus County Master Gardener: Butterflies in Your Garden with list of plants that attract butterflies: https://ucanr.edu/sites/CEStanislausCo/files/345791.pdf
- Gardening for Pollinators and Diversity from UC Davis Arboretum: https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/pollinator-gardening
- Bees in the Neighborhood: best practices for urban gardeners. https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/Details.aspx?itemNo=8596
Books and ID Cards for Purchase
Common Plants to Attract California Native Bees https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/Details.aspx?itemNo=3557
Want both cards? Bundle and save $10 at https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/Details.aspx?itemNo=3557BUN
Denise Godbout-Avant has been a UC Cooperative Extension Master Garden in Stanislaus County since 2020.
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- Author: Michael Hsu
UCCE advisor outreaches to LGBTQ+ community, partners with Karuk Tribe in Northern California
Costumed as river creatures with papier mâché heads and dressed as the Army Corps of Engineers, Cleo Woelfle Hazard and a performance art group called The Water Underground dazzled the biennial Bay Delta Science Conference a few years ago.
Woelfle Hazard – then a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley – and his companions performed numbers from the film they were making, a “queer slapstick musical” about salmon migration. They soon got 150 scientists, engineers, resource managers and other conference attendees singing along to their songs.
“Meanwhile, some of my professors were in the audience, and they were saying, ‘Well, he's also a scientist, he doesn't just do this art stuff!'” recalled Woelfle Hazard, who started at the beginning of this year as the UC Cooperative Extension fire advisor for Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
Identifying as a “queer trans masculine person,” Woelfle Hazard has spent much of his career bringing together gender studies with his professional interests – a quest chronicled in his book “Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice.”
Prescribed burn training to help shape queer fire ecology
In his new role, Woelfle Hazard is organizing a prescribed burn training for people who are 2SLGBTQ+ (2S is a common abbreviation for Two-Spirit, which refers to people of Indigenous North American descent who identify as having both masculine and feminine qualities). The sessions, which began in the middle of Pride Month in June, will continue over three more weekends in the fall when participants conduct forest thinning and prescribed burns.
Inspired by the WTREX (Women's TRaining EXchange) burn trainings for women organized by UC ANR Fire Network Director Lenya Quinn-Davidson and her colleagues, Woelfle Hazard is excited to grow skills and foster connections within the LGBTQ+/Two-Spirit community.
“I try to be ‘out' in different contexts that are not particularly queer,” Woelfle Hazard said. “And the queer burn training is one way that I'm trying to increase the visibility of queer people in fire.”
He has been overwhelmed by interest in the training – with over 100 people already registered – and is looking forward to learning how subcultures within those diverse communities can contribute to a nascent “queer fire ecology.”
“I do social science and I do ecology, but my core field is feminist science and technology studies,” Woelfle Hazard explained, “which is a field where we're looking at the social context of science and who asks the questions and how the questions change if a Native person, or a Black person, or a queer person, or an immigrant is asking those questions.”
Working alongside Karuk Tribe on Klamath River floodplain restoration
The book “Underflows” also explores the intersectionality of queer theory with Indigenous conceptions of kinship and belonging – building on Woelfle Hazard's extensive experience working with tribal communities.
During his undergraduate years, Woelfle Hazard edited an anthology, “Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground” and contributed a chapter on tribal-led dam removal efforts, including those of the Karuk, Hoopa, Yurok, and Klamath Tribes in the Klamath Basin. In graduate school, he also participated in the UC Berkeley-Karuk Collaborative, started by UCCE specialist Jennifer Sowerwine and others.
Later in his career, as a faculty member at the University of Washington, Woelfle Hazard had an opportunity to work more directly with the Karuk Tribe. Seeking to bring students to the region for field sessions, he contacted Lisa Morehead-Hillman, who directed the Píkyav Field Institute, the educational wing of the Karuk Department of Natural Resources.
In return, she asked if there was a way her Karuk students could benefit from the experience as well – and Woelfle Hazard said he would be glad to host them in Seattle. “She had never had anyone from a university make that offer before, so that was really the foundation of building trust,” he said.
From there, Woelfle Hazard connected with Leaf Hillman, the founder of the Karuk Department of Natural Resources, and they co-developed a project to look at how reconnecting the Klamath River with its floodplain could restore ecological processes and eco-cultural practices such as basketry.
Working alongside Morehead-Hillman and University of Washington students Jocine Velasco and Ry Yahn, they produced a Storymap, patterned after the Karuk creation story of “Coyote's Journey,” recounting the historical impacts of mining, dams and fire suppression in the region. They are now working on a follow-up Storymap that will describe the tribe's plans to restore the floodplain and revitalize the Tishániik ceremonial site.
Navigating intersections of science, culture
Earlier this month, Woelfle Hazard brought climate scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to Orleans in Humboldt County, where the Karuk Department of Natural Resources is located. NCAR scientists had developed a climate model that describes changes to the Klamath Basin under a variety of future fire regimes, and Woelfle Hazard presented on how well the model meets the needs of local communities.
“Our activity kind of broke their model, which they're pretty happy about, actually,” Woelfle Hazard said. “There's a lot of learning just about what is actually useful for the tribe and other organizations; we're working with the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership, which is a tribal-led partnership with the Forest Service and a number of NGOs in the Klamath Basin.”
As part of the NCAR Innovators project, which intentionally pairs social scientists with NCAR scientists, Woelfle Hazard also studied the researchers themselves, interviewing them about their experiences and looking at ways they can better partner with tribes and grassroots organizations.
“It's been a really complex project, putting together lots of different forms of knowledge – Karuk science, climate science, and I'm in the middle, trying to translate between them,” Woelfle Hazard said.
Native and Western ways of knowing. Social sciences and natural sciences. Fire and water. Artist and scientist. In work and in life, Woelfle Hazard has sought to deconstruct binaries that obscure more complicated realities – and blur those distinctions to illuminate greater truths.
During Pride Month and throughout the year, he said it's important to celebrate progress while also continuing to fight so all people can secure their basic rights and live their lives with dignity and purpose.
“Queer ecology is another frontline of the struggle; if you're a queer/trans/Two-Spirit person and you want to be a fish ecologist, you should be able to be a fish ecologist,” he said. “You shouldn't have to worry that people are going to be saying some stuff while you're out in the field getting into your wetsuit!
“This is work that we all have to do – dismantling these structures of racism, of sexism, of homophobia. And we have to do it all the time, every day.”
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