- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Congrats to the UC Davis-based California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMBP) on winning a coveted Citation of Excellence award from the UC Davis Staff Assembly for "outstanding achievements and notable contributions" in disseminating science-based beekeeping information through a network of organizations and trained volunteers since 2016.
Honored with the Faculty-Staff Partnership Award: CAMBP director Elina Lastro Niño, associate professor of Cooperative Extension and a member of the faculty of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and co-program manager Wendy Mather, staff. Niño founded CAMBP in 2016.
They will receive the award from Chancellor Gary May at a fall reception.
Staff Assembly officials announced the winners this week and it's perfect timing, as Saturday, May 20 is World Bee Day! (Shouldn't every day be World Bee Day?)
"The award seeks to highlight teams who actively develop and encourage faculty/staff partnerships and as a result are able to make notable contributions to UC Davis that contribute to the University's Mission of Teaching, Research, and Service; and who exemplify outstanding achievement and/or service," according to Staff Assembly officials.
Since 2016, CAMBP has:
- Given 32,000 hours of volunteer time (Beneficial Educational Experiences) and served 186,630 individuals in education, outreach and beekeeping mentorship. If a volunteer hour is worth $26.87, the program has given $859,840 back to the state of California in service of science-based beekeeping and honey bee health.
- Enrolled 185 Honey Bee Ambassadors (a level established in 2021), 494 Apprentice, 93 Journey level candidates and certified 20 Master level beekeepers. There are 12 members in 2023 participating in their Master Capstone projects.
- Since the team began tracking Continuing Education Experiences in 2020, they're recorded 3752 hours
- They're also working on updating a safety manual.
Thanks to generous support from the Office of the Chancellor, Staff Assembly will award the staff winners with a total of some $17,000. Niño is one of three faculty recognized. (See list of all recipients.)
Elina Niño, in addition to being the Extension apiculturist for the state of California, a member of the entomology-nematology faculty, director of CAMBP, and a honey bee researcher, serves as the faculty director of the UC Davis Bee Haven, a half-acre bee garden on Bee Biology Road.
"My primary responsibilities are in providing professional support and education to California's beekeepers, growers, pesticide applicators, and other stakeholder groups," she writes on the CAMBP website. "I teach numerous beginner, intermediate and advanced beekeeping workshops, the culmination of which has resulted in the establishment of the first ever California Master Beekeeper Program serving beekeepers of California and neighboring states. I am also currently working on the development of apiculture education for veterinarians in collaboration with the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security (WIFFS). In addition to teaching formal workshops I serve on various commodity boards as a research liaison and adviser allowing me to directly impact California Agriculture. (See more)
Wendy Mather, a beekeeper since 2007, says she enjoys sharing her passion for bees, education, environmental stewardship and program design with the CAMBP. She achieved her Journey Level Beekeeper certification from the University of Montana in 2015. She owned and operated Hardscrabble Honey, self-described as "a modest sideline operation in central Ontario which averaged 1000 kgs of clean wildflower honey each year." She also worked as the Honey Bee Health tech representative for NOD Apiary Products in Canada and the United States.
As a social service worker and adult educator, Mather taught community development, program design and portfolio development at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario. (Kian Nikzad serves as the co-program manager of CAMBP but as a new employee, was ineligible to be nominated.)
Citations of Excellence
UC Davis Staff Assembly's annual Citations of Excellence awards program provides recognition for UC Davis and UC Davis Health individual staff and staff teams, who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in one of the following areas: teaching, research, service, innovation, supervision, mentorship, team awards and faculty/staff partnership award.
Nominating the Bee Team were Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist and a CAMBP Bee Ambassador; Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum of Entomology; and Nora Orozco, chief administrative officer for the Phoenix Cluster, Department of Entomology and Nematology and the Department of Plant Pathology.
The nominators wrote that the bee team "provides a program of learning, teaching, research, and public service, goes above and beyond in delivering comprehensive, science-based information about honey bees and honey bee health. They continually and consistently develop, improve, and refine their statewide curriculum that educates stewards in a train-the-trainer program to disseminate accurate, timely, and crucial information." (See more on the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology website)
CAMBP serves a crucial need. Note that honey bees pollinate more than 30 California crops, including almonds, a $5 billion industry (no bees, no pollination, no almonds). Indeed, California produces more than a third of our country's vegetables and three-quarters of our fruits and nuts. However, colony losses are alarming due to pesticides, pests, predators and pathogens.
Want to be "bee" part of "The Bee Team" and become a honey bee ambassador, or keep bees, reaching whatever level you want: apprentice, journey and/or master? You can sign up for classes and mastery levels on the viewer-friendly CAMPB website at https://cambp.ucdavis.edu/.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Or come for the hissers, stay for the ants.
Either way, it's all good.
When the Bohart Museum of Entomology hosts an open house on Sunday, May 21 from 1 to 4 p.m., ants will be the main attraction, but don't forget the critters in the live "petting zoo."
The Phil Ward lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will provide live ants and specimens, and answer questions, one on one.
The open house, free and family friendly, takes place in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
At the petting zoo, you can meet Princess Herbert, Coco McFluffin, Peaches and Beatrice and more.
Those are just a few of the tenants, says research associate Brittany Kohler, the zookeeper. Here are some of the critters:
Walking Sticks (5 species):
- Great thin stick insects (Ramulus nematodes), native to Malaysia, dimorphic (blue males)
- Borneo thorny stick insect (Aretaon asperrimus), native to Borneo
- Vietnamese stick insect (Medauroidea extradentata), native to Vietnam
- Golden-eyed stick insect (Peruphasma schultei) native to Peru/Ecuador
- Australian Leaf insect (Extatosoma tiaratum), native to Northern forests of Australia
Tarantulas/Spiders (6 species):
- Princess Herbert, the Brazilian salmon-pink bird-eating tarantula (Lasiodora parahybana). She is estimated to be around 20 years old, the oldest current resident of the Bohart Museum
- Peaches, the Chilean rose hair tarantula (Grammostola rosea)
- Coco McFluffin, the Chaco golden knee tarantula (Grammostola pulchripes), native to Paraguay and Argentina
- Two black widows (Latrodectus hesperus)
- One brown widow (Latrodectus geometricus)
Cockroaches (2 species):
- Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina sp.)
- Giant Cave cockroach (Blaberus giganteus)
Centipede:
- Beatrice the Vietnamese centipede (Scolopendra subspinipes), the newest resident
Also:
- Ironclad beetles
- Bark scorpion
The Bohart Museum, directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus the petting zoo and a gift shop stocked with insect-themed books, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, hoodies and more. Founded in 1946 and committed to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," the Bohart Museum is named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart. The insect museum is open to the public Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m.
More information is available on the Bohart website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Right.
They belong to the same order, Hymenoptera, but some folks insist that ants don't belong in your life.
Oh, but they do!
Find out why at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, May 21. The event, spotlighting ants, is free and family friendly. It will take place in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane.
Members of the Phil Ward lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will answer your questions, show live ants and specimens, and engage in one-on-one discussions.
In a video released by the Bohart Museum of Entomology during a campuswide Biodiversity Museum Day, Professor Ward related: "Ants have occupied almost all of the world's land surfaces, from deserts to rain forests. There's a few places they're absent. They're not in Antarctica, no surprise! They haven't colonized the Arctic and a few very high elevation tropical mountains, but apart from that, almost any place you go on land you'll see our friends, the ants. And they have assumed a quite a diverse array of ecological roles. Some of them are predators, others are scavengers, and some are seed collectors, and these habits vary tremendously among different species in different parts of the world."
Among the Ward lab personnel scheduled to participate are doctoral candidates Jill Oberski and Zach Griebenow (both are expected to receive their PhDs this year), and third-year doctoral student Ziv Lieberman. Griebenow and Oberski are veterans of UC Davis teams that won national championships in the Entomological Society of America's Entomology Games or "Bug Bowls." (See news story) UC Davis teams won national championships in 2022, 2018, 2016 and 2015.
Meanwhile, be sure to watch what Professor Ward says in the video posted on YouTube at https://youtu.be/d8eRNsD8dxo. He illustrated his talk with ant images taken by his former doctoral student Alex Wild (PhD from UC Davis in 2005), curator of entomology at the University of Texas, Austin, and a noted macro photographer, (http://www.alexanderwild.com).
How ancient are ants? Ants originated about 120 million years ago (early Cretaceous), evolving from "wasp-like creatures," Ward said. They are members of the order Hymenoptera, and their closest relatives include honey bees, cockroach wasp and the mud daubers.
How many species in California? California is home to some 300 species of ants, but thousands more live in the tropics. Globally, there may be as many as 40,000 to 50,000 species of ants, the professor estimated, but only about 14,000 are described.
How do they communicate? Ants communicate largely by chemical (pheromones) and tactile means, Ward said. Their vision is "not particularly acute." He pointed out that that they lay a trail pheromones from the source of food back to the nest. They have alarm pheromones, causing other workers to act defensively. Chemicals also help ants distinguish their nest mates.
What about those Argentine ants? Some ants, like the Argentine ants, are pests. These invaders from South America "form super colonies, which means different colonies don't fight each other; they're all cooperating. And the other downside of Argentine ants is that they tend to eliminate native ants. So over the years I've lived in Davis, I have certainly noticed that native ants have declined as the Argentine ants have expanded. And they expand not just in, say, urban areas, but along certain natural habitats and one that they really like is the riparian habitat. So if you look along rivers and streams that are near urban areas, they're getting invaded by Argentine ants. And when they do, most native ants just disappear. This is a very tough aggressive ant and the mellow California ants can't handle an aggressive invader from South America. So they just disappear."
Ward related that ants live in long-lived colonies with (1) cooperative brood care (2) overlapping generations and (3) reproductive division of labor, the hallmarks of eusocial behavior. He also pointed out:
- A typical ant colony contains a reproductive queen, numerous non-reproductive workers and brood (eggs, larvae, pupae)
- Colonies of ants can be thought of as superorganisms: tightly integrated and cooperative entities with complex systems of communication and division of labor (castes)
The Bohart Museum's arts-and-crafts activity will be to create paper ant headbands. "The current version has serrated mandibles, but people can go free form, too," said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator. "We're hoping for a colony of visitors with red headbands."
The Bohart Museum, directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus a petting zoo (including Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas) and a gift shop, stocked with insect-themed t-shirts, hoodies, jewelry, posters, books, and collecting equipment.
Founded in 1946, the Bohart is open to the public Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m. More information is available on the Bohart website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The Bohart Museum of Entomology has scheduled three open houses between now and Saturday, July 22.
The first open house is themed "Ants!" It's set from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, May 21. The Phil Ward ant lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is planning the event.
The second open house, "Insects and Forensics," featuring forensic entomologist Robert "Bob" Kimsey, aka "Dr. Bob" of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will be from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 3.
The third open house, and the last of the 2022-23 academic year, is "Night at the Museum," showcasing moths and flies and more. It's from 7 to 11 p.m., Saturday, July 22.
The open houses are free and family friendly. Parking is also free.
The Bohart Museum, directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus the petting zoo and a gift shop stocked with insect-themed books, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, hoodies and more.
Dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," the Bohart Museum, founded in 1946, is named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart. The insect museum is open to the public Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m.
More information is pending.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Enter researcher Paulo Vieira, a plant pathologist, molecular biologist and nematologist with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), Beltsville, MD.
He will speak on "Beech Leaf Disease: An Emergent Threat to Beech Forest Ecosystems in North America" at a virtual seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, announced host and nematologist Shahid Siddique. It is set for 4:10 p.m., Wednesday, May 17. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.
"The beech leaf disease nematode, Litylenchus crenatae mccannii, is recognized as a newly emergent nematode species that causes beech leaf disease (BLD) in beech trees (Fagus spp.) in North America," Vieira says in his abstract. "Since the first report of BLD on Fagus grandifolia in Ohio in 2012, the disease has rapidly spread to other states and Canada. This nematode has been so far reported in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Rhode Island, New Jersey, West Virginia, and Virginia, as well as Ontario. Leaf symptoms include swelling and darkening of interveinal tissues as well as chlorosis, while tissue necrosis and leaf curling occur at later stages of the disease. As a result, mortality of nematode infected understory beech trees has been reported after several years of infection in the United States. The fast dissemination of this nematode can impose a dramatic effect on beech forest ecosystems and natural diversity in North America."
Vieira says that "Little information on the molecular and cellular interaction between this nematode and its hosts is available. To advance our understanding into this unknown host- nematode system, we investigated the cytological aspects of this interaction using bright-field and scanning electron microscopy. Our data reveal that these nematodes can induce morphological changes in both bud and leaf tissues, which so far seem unique in the Nematoda phylum. These cellular changes ultimately provide the necessary nutrients for completion of the nematode life cycle, while dramatically affecting bud and leaf morphology. In addition, we used Illumina mRNA sequence analysis of a mixed stage population to obtain insight into the transcriptome of this nematode. Gene comparative analyses were combined to select a list of candidate effector/parasitism genes. Spatial expression of transcripts within the esophageal glands of L. crenatae mccannii by in situ hybridization validated a list of pioneer effectors novel to this species and across the Nematoda phylum. These analyses provide additional data for understanding the mode of parasitism of this newly emergent plant-parasitic nematode."
Vieira, who joined USDA-ARS in November 2021, holds a master's degree (2007) in plant pathology, phytopathoogy from the University of Évora, Portugal, and a doctorate (2012 in plant pathology, plant-nematode interaction from the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis and Institute Sophia Agrobiotech, France. His resume includes postdoctoral researcher at the University of Évora (2012-2013) and USDA (2013-2015). Vieira served as a researcher in molecular biology at Virginia Tech for eight years before joining USDA-ARS in Beltsville.
Vieira's current research interests:
- Identification and functional analyses of effectors of plant-parasitic nematodes
- Genomics and transcriptomics of plant-parasitic nematodes, with a particular focus on migratory nematodes
- Plant-nematode interaction studies using cell and molecular biology approaches
Department seminar coordinator is urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor. For technical issues regarding Zoom connections, she may be reached at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu. (See complete list of spring seminars.)
Related Resources:
First report of the beech leaf disease nematode Litylenchus crenatae mccannii (Nematoda: Anguinidae) in Michigan (Plant Disease journal, Nov. 22, 2022)
Paulo Vieria: Google scholar and Twitter accounts
