"Protecting American Coffee, Wine and Baseball Bats Through Areawide Integrated Pest Management (AIPM)"

Those catchy words headlined a recent notice of a congressional briefing.

What does coffee, wine and baseball bats have to do with integrated pest management (IPM), you ask?

Well,  insects can wreak havoc on the coffee, wine and forestry industries. Consider these invasive species:

• the coffee berry borer, native to Africa, is a pest impacting the coffee industry
• the European grapevine moth, native to southern Italy,  targets grapevines
• the emerald ash borer, native to Eastern Russia, Northern China, Japan, and Korea, is a forestry pest.

So there you have it: coffee, wine and baseball bats.

IPM specialist Frank Zalom, distinguished professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and a past president of the Entomological Society of America, played a key role in that U.S. Congressional briefing, held last month  in the Rayburn House Office Building.

The purpose of the congressional briefing? To raise awareness for and increase understanding of areawide integrated pest management (AIPM) and the benefits of a comprehensive pest management policy, particularly as it relates to invasive species, Zalom said.

A newly authored bill by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Florida) seeks a broader expansion of AIPM and a broader invasive species policy. The bill, the Areawide Integrated Pest Management (AIPM) Act of 2018 (H.R. 5411), would amend the Agricultural Research, Extension and Education Reform Act of 1998 with respect to enabling competitive grants for certain areawide integrated pest management projects, and for other purposes.

Zalom moderated the panel and delivered a presentation on the history of AIPM and the need to manage some pests on an areawide basis. AIPM is particularly useful for sites that are not suitable for management on an individual basis, such as natural and urban areas or for public health pests. It is similar to IPM, Zalom said, in that its focus is on implementing systems-based strategies that utilize multiple tactics which emphasize prevention, avoidance, monitoring, and suppression using practices that are biologically-based and reduce risk to human health and the environment.  However, its focus is on managing pest populations in all the habitats in which they occur. It involves multi-year strategic planning and organization, and it tends to utilize technologies that may be difficult or less effective when used on a limited scale.

Zalom drew attention to past areawide successes in controlling the yellow fever mosquito, the screw worm fly, and tephritid fruit flies in Hawaii. He also described the recently concluded areawide program that targeted the European grapevine moth which had been introduced into northern California, threatening the state's wine industry.

First found in Napa County in 2009, the moth was eventually detected in nine California counties. A partnership that included the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), California Department of Food and Agriculture, County Agricultural Commissioner Offices, grape growers, and University of California Cooperative Extension Advisers and specialists  implemented an applied research and public outreach and engagement program that ultimately resulted in the elimination of the insect from throughout these grape-growing areas.  (For its work, the European Grapevine Moth Team, led by Lucia Varela, UC IPM advisor, won a Distinguished Service Team award in 2016 from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, and received an international award at this year's 9th International IPM Symposium.)

Note that Rep. Gabbard, in particular, wants to protect Hawaii's coffee industry from the recently introduced coffee berry borer, and Rep. Yoho, the U.S. citrus industry from the Asian citrus psyllid and the devastating bacterial disease that it vectors.

Partner host organizations included the ESA, Weed Science Society of America and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU).

Four panelists—Faith Oi of the University of Florida, Lee Van Wychen of the Weed Science Society of America, Paula Shrewsbury of the University of Maryland and Kelley Tilmon of Ohio State University--zeroed in on urban pests, aquatic pests, forestry pests, and agricultural pests, respectively, and the industry impacts.

• Oi elaborated on mosquitoes, including the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, a major public health issue.
• Van Wychen discussed the waterhyacinth, an aquatic pest in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta and Everglades in Florida.
• Shrewsbury drew attention to the emerald ash borer, a pest in both urban and rural forests
• Tilmon covered the agricultural pest, the brown marmorated stink bug.

The panelists focused on various geographic topics to help Congressional offices from across the nation understand why AIPM is relevant to them and to support AIPM-related policies.

AIPM strategies not only offer important economic, health and environmental benefits, Zalom said, but the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 directs federal agencies to use IPM techniques in carrying out pest management activities.

Coffee, wine and baseball bats? The next time you're enjoying a ball game or sipping a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, think about the emerald ash borer, coffee berry borer and the European gravevine moth.

And the IPM specialists trying to protect us from invasive species...

Remember the California drought of 2011 to 2015? What effect did that have on butterflies?

Newly published research examining more than four decades of data collected in central California by Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, clearly reveals the effect: a marked difference between how butterfly populations fared at low and high elevations.

It's basically good news for the valley or low-elevation butterflies and bad news for the mountain or high-elevation butterflies.

The research, "Impacts of Millennium Drought on Butterfly Faunal Dynamics," is published in the journal Climatic Change Responses.

Lead author Matthew Forister, a biology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, is a former Ph.D. student of Art Shapiro's, as are two co-authors James Fordyce of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Chris Nice of Texas State University, San Marcos. UC Davis co-authors, besides Shapiro, are  James Thorne and David Waetjen of the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy. 

The six-member team analyzed the data in Shapiro's 10-study site dataset, which dates back to 1972 and encompasses 163 butterfly species. The sites, representing what Shapiro calls the "great biological, geological and climatological diversity of central California,"  range from the Sacramento River delta, through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains, to the high desert of the western Great Basin. See his research website. Shapiro walked the study sites every two weeks between 45 and 29 years, noting the presence or absence of all butterfly species. (He still does. Of course, he walks during what he calls "good butterfly weather," when conditions are suitable for insect flight. This is nearly year-around at low elevations but understandable, there's a more narrow period at higher elevations.)

The scientists analyzed such data as first flight, species richness, and diversity.  They found that the "dates of first flight advanced across the elevational gradient during the drought, leading to an overall expansion of the flight window at low elevations and a compression of the flight windows in the mountains. The number of species observed per year increased at lower elevations but decreased at high elevations, apparently as a consequence of extreme sensitivity to hot and dry climates."

Of the research paper, Professor Shapiro said:  "This is the most important contribution from our research group in a while. It documents the responses of entire butterfly faunas to the recent California drought. It demonstrates that, counter to intuition, butterfly faunas near sea level apparently benefited from the drought, temporarily reversing long-term declines, while montane Sierran faunas were severely harmed...the study has broader implications for the biological impacts of climate change."

Bottom line: Climate change, aka global warming, is real. Wikipedia describes it as "the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming." Indeed, we should all be concerned with the increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as drought, and the challenges that plant and animal life face.

"Despite ongoing political controversy swirling around climate change, the vast majority of scientists dealing with the subject have no doubt that it is occurring and that its ecological implications are profound," Shapiro told us today. "One way to address potential long-term impacts of climate change on living things is to examine in detail how they are reacting to shorter-term climatic events, especially climatic extremes. The recent 'millennia'-scale California drought affords just such an opportunity. We have been monitoring entire butterfly faunas along the I-80 corridor in California for many years (in some cases way back to the early 1970s), so we have a huge baseline for comparison to data from the drought years. There are very few comparably continuous and extensive data sets on any group of organisms world-wide. As we explain, butterflies reacted to the drought in mostly unexpected and 'counterintuitive' ways. By trying to understand those reactions, we can approach longer-term trends in a much more sophisticated way. Or so we think."

Read the research paper here and learn how the scientists compiled the statistics and obtained the results. 

"A bog is a wetland that accumulates peat, a deposit of dead plant material—often mosses, and in a majority of cases, sphagnum moss."--Wikipedia.

Not so with the Biological Orchard and Gardens (BOG) on the University of California, Davis, campus. It's a 24,000-square foot treasure, a living museum planted not only with several dozen species of heritage fruit trees, but landscaped with colorful mini-gardens.

This spring scores of wildflowers bloomed in awe-stopping glory, prompting passersby to pull out their cell phones and take selfies. 

“The project began in 2010 when a group of students raised the money to convert an under-utilized lawn into a working orchard with fruits free for everyone to enjoy,” related former student project manager and now BOG volunteer Emily Dorrance. She recently graduated with a bachelor of science degree in environmental policy analysis and planning.

“Since then, the team has grown to involve many other UC Davis faculty, staff, and student groups," Dorrance said. ”Ernesto Sandoval, manager and curator of the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory, has been an advisor to the BOG student leadership for many years now and continues to be an important partner!”

At its core, BOG is a collaboration of students, staff and academic programs and an outdoor ecological laboratory that directly supports the university's popular Introduction to Biology course. Or, as the BOG Facebook page indicates: "An agro-biodiverse collaboration between students, staff, academic specialists and programs at UC Davis!"

BOG is located in front (or back) of the Mann Laboratory on Kleiber Hall Drive, depending on which way you're going! If you park in Lot 26, off Kleiber Hall Drive, it's a short walk down the sidewalk to BOG.

"The orchard you see today was planted two years ago," Dorrance noted. "The wildflowers were seeded four years ago and continue to self-seed, with some supplementation.We're planning on planting some more permanent plantings in the fall. The Mediterranean plots surrounding the orchard will have some more seasonal variety as well! I don't think we have any major planting plans for this summer but that could change!"

Among the flowers blooming in the Bog in the early spring, by color:

• Red: European red flax, Linum grandiflorum rubrum, an annual that's native to Algeria
• Yellow: tidy tips, Layia platyglossa, an annual that's native to California
  --The seep monkey flower, Mimulus guttatus, native to California
  --Lupine, Lupinus, native to North America.
• Blue: Desert bell, Phacelia campanularia,  an annual herb that is native to California and  endemic (limited) to California.
• Lavender: Phacelia, also called Lacy phacelia, blue tansy or purple tansy (Phacelia tanacetifolia), native to the southwestern United States
  --Lupine: Lupinus, native to North America
• Red-Orange-Yellow: Blanket flower or Gaillardia (Gaillardia × grandiflora), native to North and South America
• Orange: California golden poppies, Eschscholtzia californica

The orchard contains heritage fruit tree varieties threatened with commercial extinction. They include the Gravenstein and Johnathan apples; the Suncrest peach; the Bleinheim apricot, the Mariposa plum and the Meyer lemon. See the full list of trees as well as some fun facts here: https://thebogatucd.wixsite.com/bogucd/single-post/2017/07/18/BOG-Fruit-Trees.

In 2013 BOG received a "Go Green" grant from the UC Davis Dining Services. Then last month, the Green Initiative Fund (TGIF)  awarded $19,934 to the BOG for final site development. It was a major effort.  (On its Facebook page, BOG thanks Kelly Richmond and Andra George for help on the grant and supporters Geoffrey Benn, Ivana Li, Pat Randolph, Lee Anne Richmond, and Peter Hartsough.)

Future plans? According to the website: "The BOG is joining the campuswide effort in transitioning towards a landscaping genre that embraces lawn reduction and plantings more suitable for the teaching, outreach and research mission of the university and sustainability practices. The motivation for the BOG is to serve as a teaching garden for multiple university courses and provide a relaxing space to enjoy the outdoors and simply delicious fruit. The BOG's main function is to serve a demonstration of and test site for plants more suitable to the region's hot dry summers and cool wet winters, with a focus on drought tolerant plants less commonly available in the Sacramento Valley."

When we stopped by the BOG in mid-April, the Phacelia tanacetifolia proved to be a favorite: honey bees (Apis mellifera), male and female Valley carpenter bees (Xylocopa varipuncta) and yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) were all over it. It's fairly uncommon to see male Valley carpenter bees--"teddy bear bees" or green-eyed blonds--foraging, but there they were, along with the female of the species. "The girls" are solid black in a clear-cut case of sexual diphormism.

Want to get involved? The BOG seeks volunteers, interns and donors. See its website at https://thebogatucd.wixsite.com/bogucd or its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ucdBOG  or email "thebogatucd@gmail.com."

You can even adopt a tree!

Or become buddies with a bee!

(Note: Most of the annual wildflowers have "passed" since our visit in mid-April, but the orchard is thriving with newly formed fruit.)

The Anise Swallowtail, Papilio zelicaon, fluttered into our pollinator garden and headed straight for the Verbena.

Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, identified the gender: "it's a girl."

The Anise Swallowtail, our first sighting of the season, bypassed the butterfly bush, Buddleia davidii.

But she'll be back--hopefully to gather some more nectar and lay her eggs on our fennel.

The Verbena patch was a little too populated for her liking--honey bees and yellow-faced bumble bees, Bombus vosnesenskii, wanted their share of the nectar, too.

"The Anise Swallowtail is a complex set of ecological races, or 'ecotypes,' whose seasonality has been adjusted by natural selection to match that of their host plants," says Shapiro on his research website. He's studied butterfly populations in central California since 1972.

"In multivoltine populations the spring brood is typically small, pale, heavily marked with blue and with narrow dark borders on all wings. Summer individuals are larger, with richer yellow color, broader black borders and little or no blue in males. Univoltine populations tend to be intermediate between these extremes. The small larvae resemble bird droppings. Large larvae are pale green with black bands containing orange spots; in hot, dry sites there is more green and less black, while under cool, humid conditions the green may even disappear! The pupae may be brown or green."

Read more about the swallowtail, including its food sources, on Shapiro's web page.

Meanwhile, whether you see your first Anise Swallowtail of the season or the last of the season, you'll want to see more of this yellow-mellow butterfly!