Professor Jennifer Thaler

Her research includes fear as a biological control.

Meet Jennifer Thaler, professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and the 2017 recipient of the Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award from the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Professor Thaler will be honored at a reception from 3:30 to 4:15 on Thursday, Feb. 9 at the International House, located at 10 College Park, Davis. Following the reception, she will present a seminar in the International House conference room from 4:15 to 5 p.m. on "Tritrophic Interactions and the Ecology of Fear."

Her areas of expertise are population and community ecology, plant-insect interactions, tri-trophic interactions and chemical ecology. "I study the ecological interactions between plants, herbivores, and carnivores in wild and agricultural Solanaceous plant species," she says. "My approach focuses on understanding behavioral and phytochemical mechanisms of such tri-trophic interactions, testing theory on the organization of multi-trophic communities, and generating novel strategies to control insect pests."

If you look on her website, you'll see a piece she co-authored for Cornell Agricultural IPM (Integrated Pest Management) on "Fear as a Biological Control? How Scaring Farm and Garden Pests Could Lessen Plant Damage."

"For many of us, the threats of predators--lions and bears, say--are long gone," she and Nicholas Aflitto wrote. "The common pests in your garden or farm are no exception. Simply the threat of predation can greatly shape an organism's behavior, internal function, and even what it looks like."

"As a pest shifts its energy from feeding and reproduction to hiding or dropping off of plants, it becomes less able to function or even survive." Be sure to read the entire piece and how a prey's response to the risk of predation is termed the non-consumptive effect (NCE). The authors wrote that NCE effects "can be observed in nearly all predator-prey interactions, both on land and in water."

Thaler, who received her bachelor of science degree in biology, cum laude, from Wellesley College in 1993 and her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis with major professor Rick Karban in 1999, joined the Cornell University faculty in 2004 as an assistant professor. She advanced to associate professor in 2006, and to full professor in 2015.

She's a member of the Entomological Society of America, the Ecological Society of America and the International Society of Chemical Ecology.

The professor presented a invited seminar at the 2017 Gordon Research Conference, Rhode Island, on "Plant-Herbivore Interactions, Tritrophic Interactions and the Ecology of Fear" and a presentation on Predator-Prey Interactions: Chemical Ecology of Tri-Trophic Interactions" at the 2016 Gordon Research Conference.

The Leigh Alumni Award memorializes cotton entomologist Thomas Frances Leigh (1923-1993) and his wife Nina. Leigh was an international authority on the biology, ecology and management of arthropod pests affecting cotton production. During his 37-year UC Davis career, he was based at the Kern County Shafter Research and Extension Center, also known as the U.S. Cotton Research Station. Leigh researched pest and beneficial arthropod management in cotton fields, and host plant resistance in cotton to insects, mites, nematodes and diseases. Leigh joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology in 1958, retiring in 1991 as an emeritus professor, but he continued to remain active in his research and collaboration until his death on Oct. 26, 1993.

It's an honor to be selected for the Leigh Alumni Award. Congratulations, Professor Jennifer Thaler!