View National Championship Round on YouTube
The UC Davis Linnaean Games Team has successfully defended its national championship.

The team, comprised of three UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology graduate students, defeated the University of Georgia in the championship round.

The annual Linnaean Games, sponsored by the Entomological Society of America (ESA), took place at ESA's recent meeting in Orlando, Fla., held in conjunction with the International Congress of Entomology meeting.

UC Davis team members are captain Ralph Washington, a third-year graduate student; Brendon Boudinot, a third-year graduate student; and Emily Bick, a second-year graduate student. They defeated the University of Georgia, the 2012 winner, in the championship match (score, UC Davis 145; Georgia, 55). The UC Davis entomologists earlier outscored Ohio State University, North Carolina State University (champions in 2014), and Texas A&M in advancing to the finals.

The ESA Linnaean Games are a lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competition on entomological facts played between university-sponsored student teams. The teams score points by correctly answering random questions. The winning team receives a trophy cup for the department, and each individual, a plaque.

Washington is studying for his doctorate with major professors Steve Nadler and Brian Johnson, who respectively specialize in systematics and evolutionary biology of nematodes and the evolution, behavior, genetics, and health of honey bees; Boudinot with major professor Phil Ward, systematics and evolutionary biology of ants; and Bick, with major professor Christian Nansen. Bick is working on ecosystem models to optimize pest management  in two systems:  invasive aquatic weed species water hyacinth and its biological control agent, Neochetina bruchi; and working to control Lygus bugs using alfalfa as a trap crop in strawberries. UC Davis Extension entomologist Larry Godfrey serves as the advisor.

Below are some of the questions that the UC Davis team answered correctly in the championship match.

1. Question: “You have just moved into an apartment that has been vacant for weeks but whose prior owners had several cats and dogs. A very few days after you move in you are bitten by a huge number of cat fleas that seem to have appeared out of nowhere. What characteristic behavior of cat fleas biology is probably responsible for this?”
   
   Answer: “Cat flea pupae eclose in response to the presence of a host.”

2. Question: Insects inhabiting a very thin water film such as splash zones marginal to streams are called what?
   
   Answer: Madicoles

3. Question: The insect order Notoptera unites what two former insect orders?
   
   Answer: Notoptera unites Mantophasmatodea and Grylloblattodea
   
   
4. Question: What are the two obvious clinical symptoms that someone is suffering from onchocerciasis?
   
   Answer: Blindness and hanging tissue around lymph nodes, often times the scrotum.
   
   
5. Question:  What is the common name for the zygentoman pest that thrives in high humidity and high temperatures and is often found in boiler rooms?
   
   Answer: The firebrat, Thermobia domestica.
   
   
6. Question: Projection neurons travel across what two major regions of the insect brain?
   
   Answer: The protocerebrum and the deutocerebrum.

 (Editor's Note: The video of the 2016 Linnaean Games' championship match will soon be posted on the ESA YouTube channel. Meanwhile, here's a link to the 2015 championship game, won by UC Davis.   https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL21ACF32985978D25

Related Links:

• Article from American Entomologist about the Games
• Smithsonian article about the Games
• Department News Story about UC Davis Team's 2015 championship (includes some of the questions asked)
• Photos from ICE 2016 on Flickr