- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The California Department of Food and Agriculture has awarded more than $1 million to fund three UC Agriculture and Natural Resources integrated pest management projects to research insects that have the potential to become pests in California agriculture. Each of the three-year projects received strong support from commodities which could be affected by invasive pests.
The projects that were awarded the funds are:
Proactive management of avocado seed and stem feeding weevils, led by UC Cooperative Extension specialist Mark Hoddle and entomology professor Jocelyn Millar, both at UC Riverside, will receive $348,893. This project will develop pheromones, identify natural enemies in the host range, and quantify flight capacity of the avocado seed weevils. Native to Mexico and invasive in Ecuador, these weevils feed directly on avocados and could cause substantial damage to the California avocado industry. The California Avocado Commission pledged an additional $150,000 to support this project. The work will be conducted at UC Riverside and in Mexico.
A proactive approach to prepare for the invasion of Tuta absoluta into California, led by UCCE specialist Ian Grettenberger, will receive $499,847. T. absoluta, a tomato leafminer, is a serious pest throughout Europe, Africa, western Asia and South and Central America and could decimate California's tomato industry. This project will proactively test targeted insecticides, identify native natural enemies that could be used in biological control, and conduct work to assist in breeding plants resistant to this pest. This project will be conducted at UC Davis, throughout California, and in Chile and Peru.
Detection, biology and control of the exotic Sweede midge for California cole crops, led by UCCE area IPM advisor Alejandro Del Pozo-Valdivia, UCCE specialist Ian Grettenberger and USDA research entomologist Daniel Hasegawa. Swede midge is a pest of cole crops in the Northeastern U.S. and Canada and could cause significant management issues for California's large cole crop industry. This project will collect important information about the biology of Swede midge, test low impact insecticides and botanical products as options for control, assess the possibility of weeds as alternative hosts, and work with growers to start monitoring for the pest. This project will be conducted at UC Davis and in the Salinas Valley.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Another book, pending publication in December, also will contain their work: the second edition of Pheromones and Animal Behaviour (Cambridge University) by Tristram Wyatt.
Saul-Gershenz, a PhD candidate in the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and UC Riverside professor Jocelyn Millar and staff research associate Steven McElfresh study a group of solitary ground-nesting bees, in the genus Habropoda and its nest parasite, a blister beetle, Meloe franciscanus.
They are examining the host range of Meloe blister beetles and how these nest parasites cooperate to mimic the sex pheromone bees. The larvae of the parasitic blister beetle produce a chemical signal or a pheromone similar to that of the female solitary bee to lure males to the larval aggregation, said Saul-Gershenz. The larvae attach to the male bee and then transfer to the female during mating. The end result: the larvae wind up in the nest of a female bee, where they eat the nest provisions and likely the host egg.
- Keeping the Bees: Why All Bees Are at Risk and What We Can Do to Save Them by Laurence Packer and published in 2011 by HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd.
- Cuticular Hydrocarbons: Biology, Biochemistry and Chemical Ecology by editors A. Bagnères-Urbany and G. Bloomquist and published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press.
- The Other Insect Societies by James T. Costa, and published in 2006 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Saul-Gershenz is the lead author of “Blister Beetle Nest Parasites Cooperate to Mimic the Sex Pheromone of the Solitary Bee Habropoda pallida (Hymenoptera: Apidae)," peer-reviewed research co-authored by Millar and McElfresh and published in the April 2012 edition of the Mojave National Preserve Science News.
The solitary bee is the first native bee to emerge in the spring on the Kelso Dunes in the Mojave National Preserve, she said. The adult beetles emerge on the dunes in the winter months at Kelso Dunes and feed exclusively on the leaves of Astragalus lentiginosus, which leafs out in January.
The bee's emergence is synchronized with the onset of blooms of the Borrego milkvetch, which is the sole host plant of adults of the blister beetle at Kelso Dunes.
“The Mojave Desert ecosystem supports 689 species of bees, which is the highest bee diversity in North America,” the UC Davis scientist said. The wide variety of insects endemic, or known only to that area, include a fly, scarabs, crickets, weevils, a bee, aphid wasp and scores yet to be described.
Saul-Gershenz, Williams and Millar received several grants including one from the Desert Legacy Fund, California Desert Research Program at The Community Foundation to study digger bee ecology and conservation. They're working with SaveNature.Org, which Saul-Gershenz co-founded. The relationship between the bee and the blister beetle is part of the research.
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