- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
He points out that he is a Lepidopterist but "not a monarch specialist."
Shapiro's 10 monitoring sites stretch from the Sacramento River Delta through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains to the high desert of the Western Great Basin. The largest and oldest database in North America, it was recently cited by British conservation biologist Chris Thomas in a worldwide study of insect biomass.
Shapiro records his research on his website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/.
At the Bohart Museum open house, his topics included the research that he co-authored, "Understanding a Migratory Species in a Changing World: Climatic Effects and Demographic Declines in the Western Monarch Revealed by Four Decades of Intensive Monitoring" (Anne Espeset et al), published in Oecologica in 2017. Professor Matthew Forister of the University of Nevada, one of his former graduate students, is among the co-authors.
The abstract: "Migratory animals pose unique challenges for conservation biologists, and we have much to learn about how migratory species respond to drivers of global change. Research has cast doubt on the stability of the eastern monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) population in North America, but the western monarchs have not been as intensively examined. Using a Bayesian hierarchical model, sightings of western monarchs over approximately 40 years were investigated using summer flight records from ten sites along an elevational transect in Northern California. Multiple weather variables were examined, including local and regional temperature and precipitation. Population trends from the ten focal sites and a subset of western overwintering sites were compared to summer and overwintering data from the eastern migration. Records showed western overwintering grounds and western breeding grounds had negative trends over time, with declines concentrated early in the breeding season, which were potentially more severe than in the eastern population. Temporal variation in the western monarch also appears to be largely independent of (uncorrelated with) the dynamics in the east. For our focal sites, warmer temperatures had positive effects during winter and spring, and precipitation had a positive effect during spring. These climatic associations add to our understanding of biotic-abiotic interactions in a migratory butterfly, but shifting climatic conditions do not explain the overall, long-term, negative population trajectory observed in our data."
Handout. "When I was asked to participate in this event, it got me thinking…" Shapiro began in his monarch comments handout.
"My group did an analysis of the Monarch vis-à-vis climate in a 2017 paper (Espeset et al.,, DOI: 10.1007/s00442-01607600-1) None of my group is a Monarch specialist, and that includes me. Since 1999 I have done counts of all butterfly species at 4 Valley sites (Suisun, West Sacramento, North Sacramento and Rancho Cordova) using standard “Pollard walk” methods, slightly modified. As a result we have a quantitative picture of Monarchs in breeding season... Such data are very rare. Population estimates of Monarchs are typically based on the overwintering (non-breeding) aggregations and we know from published material that what breeding-season data exist routinely diverge from the overwintering data. That is, trends in population size as measured by overwinter animals are not routinely reflected in the summer numbers. There can be a variety of explanations for this. To me the most likely is that as a very mobile species, the Monarch may breed in different places in different years, so that a monitoring program like mine, based on a limited number of fixed, Intensively-monitored sites, is unlikely to capture this stochasticity in where Monarchs breed. I am attaching the overwintering estimates from the Xerces Society. Direct quantitative comparisons are inappropriate, but you can judge how well the local trends match them just by eyeball (until we develop a convincing statistical approach to the problem!)
"My assignment for today forced me back to the original data for my Valley sites. The actual data are reproduced on the attached sheets. It is immediately evident that:
- There is very high variability in Monarch numbers among years at all sites, but
- There are short-term trends that may be associated with climatic fluctuations, in particular drought, and
- Among my sites, Suisun has had the highest counts, partly but not entirely reflecting coastward migration from farther inland early in the season, but these high numbers have effectively disappeared—perhaps reflecting a systematic change in migratory trajectories, and
- Rancho Cordova has very consistently had the lowest counts, with little year-to-year variation compared to other sites..
"My interest is now piqued and I am going to go with this. From 1972 to 1998 at all sites, and from 1972 to date at our 5 mountain sites, monitoring was on a presence/absence basis only because there are too many species to Pollard-count simultaneously. But the seasonal distribution of the Monarch is still easily extracted. We know Monarch breeding seasonality has changed over the 50-year time span of this study. We also have devised and published methods to use presence-absence data (“day-positives”) as a crude proxy for population trends. This is perhaps a good moment to revisit the Espeset et al. paper and try to get into the specific components of Monarch trends. Suggestions are welcome!" (amshapiro@ucdavis.edu)
Shapiro, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 1971, continues his research. The author of the book, Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento Valley Regions, he has studied more than 160 species of butterflies in his transect.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Western monarchs are now settling in their overwintering sites along coastal California, but the iconic butterflies showed up in force at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's recent open house--in the form of specimens, photographs, books, maps and displays.
Some 650 visitors arrived to talk to the scientists, see the displays, and take home native milkweed seed packets, provided by community ecologist Louie Yang, professor of entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT-NEM). Yang shared seeds of narrow-leafed milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis.
Statistics show that the overwintering population of western monarchs along coastal California has declined by more than 99 percent since the 1980s, according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, but the population has been showing a mini-boom in recent years. Scientists blame habitat destruction, pesticide use, and climate change as the primary causes of the decline.
Scientists participating in the open house were:
- UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, who has studied butterfly populations in central California since 1972 and maintains a research website, Art's Butterfly World.
- UC Davis emeritus professor Hugh Dingle, a worldwide authority on animal migration, including monarchs. He is the author of Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move (Oxford University Press), a sequel to the first edition published in 1996. (See news story on the ENT-NEM website.)
- UC Davis professor Louie Yang, who does research on monarchs and milkweed and has been featured nationally. (See news story about his work.)
- UC Davis professor Elizabeth Crone of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, formerly of Tufts University, who researches monarchs. (See news story about the declining monarch population on the ENT-NEM website.)
In addition, the Bohart Museum showcased monarch photography by Larry Snyder of Davis and Kathy Keatley Garvey of ENT-NEM.
Yang and Crone were among the 12 nationally invited scientists who delivered presentations during the two-day Monarch Butterfly Summit, held last year at the Capitol in Washington D.C. and organized by Sen. Jeffrey Merkley of Oregon, During that summit, the Department of the Interior announced a $1 million award to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Monarch Butterfly and Pollinators Conservation Fund, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a Pollinator Conservation Center. (See news story)
In another project, Yang organized and led a three-year study of wild monarch butterflies and milkweed in rural Davis. The project, funded by two of Yang's National Science Foundation grants, involved UC Davis, Davis Senior High School and the Center for Land-based Learning, Woodland. The 135-member team included 107 high school students, a K-12 teacher, 18 UC Davis undergraduates, three graduate students and two postgraduate researchers.
"This study collected a high-resolution temporal dataset on milkweed-monarch interactions during the three years prior to the precipitous single-year population decline of western monarchs in 2018,” Yang said. From 2015 through 2017, the team monitored the interactions of monarchs, Danaus plexippus, on narrow-leafed milkweed, A. fascicularis, planted in December 2013 on city-owned property.
“This study has three key findings,” Yang related. “First, we documented early and late seasonal windows of opportunity in the wild, migratory western monarch population. Second, our data suggest that early and late seasonal windows were constrained by different factors. Third, climatic and microclimatic variation had a strong effect on the timing and importance of multiple factors affecting monarch development. Broadly, we hope that this study contributes to a more temporally detailed understanding of the complex factors that contribute to year-to-year variation in monarch breeding success.” (See news story on ENT-NEM website)
In February of 2022, Yang appeared on Science Friday, National Public Radio, in an interview titled "How Long Will California's Butterfly Boom Last?"
Hugh Dingle. Professor Dingle, an internationally known expert on animal migration, has researched animal migration for some 50 years. In the last two decades, he has focused on monarch butterflies. National Geographic featured him in its cover story on “Great Migrations” in November 2010. LiveScience interviewed him for its November 2010 piece on “Why Do Animals Migrate?”
Dingle says:
- "There is not enough tropical milkweed planted to have much influence (see the amount of A. syriaca and A. fascicularis throughout the American West not to mention various other species like A. erosa, cordifolia, californica, etc.) Yes, there are parasites on A. curassavica as there are on ALL milkweeds."
- "There are populations of monarchs that are doing just fine feeding exclusively on A. curassavica (e.g. on many Pacific Islands, such as Guam where I have studied them."
- "Migration and the diapause that accompanies it in the fall are determined by shortening photoperiod and temperature (warm temps can override short days hence the issue with climate change). There is no significant influence of food plant."
Elizabeth Crone. Crone focuses her research on population ecology, "especially of plants and insects, and plant-animal interactions. Specifically, I am interested in how environmental changes translate to changes in population dynamics in animals. I was also one of the first ecologists to use generalized linear mixed models to parameterize stochastic population models." She co-authored "Why Are Monarch Butterflies Declining in the West? Understanding the Importance of Multiple Correlated Drivers," published in 2019 in Ecological Applications, Ecological Society of America.
Art Shapiro. Professor Shapiro shared several handouts, including "Comments on Monarchs." He co-authored research (lead author Anne Espeset and six other colleagues) titled, "Understanding a Migratory Species in a Changing World: Climatic Effects and Demographic Declines in the Western Monarch Revealed by Four Decades of Intensive Monitoring," published in Population Ecology.
"None of my group is a Monarch specialist, and that includes me," Shapiro wrote in the handout. "Since 1999 I have done counts of all butterfly species at 4 Valley sites (Suisun, West Sacramento, North Sacramento and Rancho Cordova) using standard 'Pollard walk' methods, slightly modified. As a result we have a quantitative picture of Monarchs in breeding season over 14 years. Such data are very rare. Population estimates of Monarchs are typically based on the overwintering (non-breeding) aggregations and we know from published material that what breeding-season data exist routinely diverge from the overwintering data. That is, trends in population size as measured by overwinter animals are not routinely reflected in the summer numbers. There can be a variety of explanations for this. To me the most likely is that as a very mobile species, the Monarch may breed in different places in different years, so that a monitoring program like mine, based on a limited number of fixed, Intensively-monitored sites, is unlikely to capture this stochasticity in where Monarchs breed."
Over the last 50 years, "Suisun has had the highest counts (of monarchs), partly but not entirely reflecting coastward migration from farther inland early in the season, but these high numbers have effectively disappeared—perhaps reflecting a systematic change in migratory trajectories."
Also at the open house, entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the Bohart's Lepidoptera collection, and colleague Greg Kareofelas showed visitors drawers of monarch and other butterfly specimens.
Two origami monarchs, the work of UC Davis alumnus Kevin Murakoshi of Davis and a gift to the Bohart Museum, drew special attention. Murakoshi earlier crafted origami praying mantises, ticks and bed bugs for Bohart Museum open houses.
One of the books displayed at the open house was UC Berkeley professor Noah Whiteman's newly published work, "Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature's Toxins--from Spices to Vices" (Little Brown Spark, Oct. 24, 2023) It includes information on the toxicity of milkweed.
The Bohart Museum, directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It is the home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens. It also houses a live "petting zoo" (including Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas) and a gift shop.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Congratulations to UC Davis doctoral students Shawn Christensen, Lexie Martin and Iris Quayle!
They each won the President's Prize (first-place) for their graduate student research presentations this week at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) meeting in National Harbor, Md.
That's quite a feat and well-deserved! From bees to beetles...
Shawn and Lexie are members of the lab of associate professor and community ecologist Rachel Vannette, who serves as vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology andNematology. Iris studies with professor and arachnologist Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics for the department, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Shawn competed in the Plant-Insect Ecosystems (P-IE) Section, Apiculture; Lexie in the P-IE Section, Pollinator Biology; and Iris in Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity (SysEB) Section, Biogeography.
Shawn, who has advanced from doctoral student to doctoral candidate, presented his research, titled "Bee Specific! Solitary Bee (Anthophora bomboides) Hosts a Specialized Core Microbiome through Development." Lexie delivered her presentation on "Establishment and Health Impacts of Floral and Intraspecific Microbes in Bees." And Iris? “Colorless but Never Dull: Unraveling Population Genetics and Color Evolution in ‘White' Darkling Beetles (Onymacris).” (See news story)
Iris earlier won first-place for her graduate student presentation at the annual meeting of the Pacific Branch of ESA (PBESA), held in April in Seattle. This was her first-ever presentation at a scientific meeting. “Iris has hit the ground running in all respects," Professor Bond commented at the time. "Winning the student paper award, the first time ever presenting her research, reflects her exceptional capabilities as a scientist and as a future professor and teacher. Iris comes from a non-traditional STEM background and it is exactly those experiences that will continue to contribute to her success as she evolves as a scientist. I predict that this is only a prelude of things to come.”
Iris is focusing her dissertation on the evolutionary relationships and color/trait evolution in Onymacris. Tenebrionidae (darkling beetles) comprise “more than 80 percent of all known beetle species in the Namib desert (Southern Africa) where the genus Onymacris contains a rarity unexpected from aptly named darkling beetles--the presence of several species with striking ‘white' elytra (wing sheaths).” (See news story)
The complete list of student winners--first, second and third places--is posted on the ESA site.
Founded in 1889, ESA is the largest entomological organization in the world. Its more than 7,000 members are affiliated with educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Assassin flies--so fascinating--are also commonly referred to as robber flies, and that's the very insect that UC Davis doctoral alumna Charlotte Herbert Alberts will zero in on when she presents her research at the next UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar.
She'll discuss "Assassin Fly (Diptera: Asilidae) Systematics and Predator Ecology," at 4:10 p.m., Monday, Nov. 13 via Zoom only. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672
"Assassin flies (Diptera: Asilidae) are a diverse family that plays an essential ecological role as top aerial and venomous predators," she writes in her abstract. "Little is known about the evolution of their predatory habits. This study provides a novel phylogenetic hypothesis of Asilidae along with prey preference and ancestral state reconstruction in a maximum likelihood framework. This study is based on 176 assassin fly species, 35 Asiloidea outgroup species, 3,400 prey preference records accumulated from literature and museum collections, and approximately 7,913 bp of nuclear DNA from five genes (18S and 28S rDNA, AATS, CAD, and EF-1a protein-encoding DNA) and mitochondrial DNA from one gene (COI)."
"Of the 12 asilid subfamilies included in the analysis the monophyly of six was supported," she continued. "We used ancestral state reconstruction and stochastic character mapping to test whether a polyphagous arthropod predator is the ancestral state for Asilidae. Assassin flies are polyphagous arthropod predators, with specialized arthropod prey preferences evolving 20 independently across the Asilidae phylogeny. I will also summarize my other dissertation chapter, a review of Nearctic Saropogon with a new species description."
Alberts, who enjoys systematics, phylogenetics, insect biotechnology, genomics, speciation, and macroevolution, received her doctorate from UC Davis in 2023. She and her husband, George, and their two children are residents of Silver Spring, Md.
A native of Plainfield, N.H, Charlotte is a 2015 graduate of St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y., where she majored in conservation biology and developed an interest in assassin flies--and in celebrating World Robber Fly Day every April 30.
Why assassin flies? “I chose assassin flies because I fell in love researching them as an undergraduate at St. Lawrence University,” she said. "They are fascinating flies and I like that they can immediately change someone's perspective of flies. They are venomous, predatory flies that eat other insects! And they sometimes even look exactly like the creatures they eat. Example: bumble bees!”
Seminar coordinator is Brian Johnson, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. For Zoom technical issues, he may be reached at brnjohnson@ucdavis.edu. The list of seminars is posted here.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The annual meeting, hosted by the Entomological Society of America (ESA), is taking place Nov. 5-8 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.
The theme: "Insects and Influence: Advancing Entomology's Impact on People and Policy."
At the helm of ESA this year--and influencing scientists, insects and the general public--are four women scientists:
- President: Marianne Alleyne, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Vice President: Jennifer Henke, Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District
- Vice President-Elect: Lina Bernaola, Texas A&M University
- Past President: Jessica Ware, American Museum of Natural History
Among the top honorees at Entomology 2023 is UC Davis doctoral alumnus Douglas Walsh, professor and Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology, Washington State University (WSU). He is one of six newly elected Fellows
"Walsh is known internationally for his research on the modes of action and resistance mechanisms of acaricides on spider mites and regionally in the Pacific Northwest for his extension and outreach efforts on specialty crops," ESA announced in a news release, citing that:
"Walsh has maintained a well-funded (more than $30 million) and productive program as the research director of the Environmental and Agricultural Entomology Laboratory located at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in the Yakima Valley near Prosser, Washington. Walsh is the Extension integrated pest management (IPM) coordinator for Washington State and the Washington State liaison representative to the U.S. Department of Agriculture IR-4 Project."
"Walsh has an extensive and varied integrated pest and pollinator management research and Extension program assisting regionally important commodities including hops, alfalfa, grapes, and mint. Walsh also directs environmental impact studies on alfalfa leafcutting and alkali bees, the key pollinators of alfalfa produced for seed. Walsh's efforts in IPM have resulted in the documented reduction of over 100,000 pounds of insecticide use in the Pacific Northwest annually."
Born in New York in 1963 and a resident of California since 1969, Walsh holds a bachelor's degree in biology from UC Santa Cruz (1985). He received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1998, studying with major professor Frank Zalom, who went on to become a UC Davis distinguished professor and president and Honorary Member of ESA. "He is very deserving," Zalom said. "I couldn't be more proud of all that he has accomplished." Zalom is now emeritus, but continues to do research.
"I was Frank's first PhD student," Walsh said. "Frank had one before me, Rachid Hanna. Frank picked up Rachid when Rachid was orphaned when his original professor left UC Davis. Rachid and I quibble about who was Frank's first student. I'm the first that went from start to finish with Frank."
"(Professors) Sean Duffy and Harry Kaya were also on my PhD committee," Walsh said.
Outstanding Graduate Student. Kaya remembers Walsh well. "He was studying integrated pest management at UC Davis and was an outstanding graduate student in Frank Zalom's lab," Kaya said. "Even as a graduate student, he published some significant papers on IPM research, and I had no doubt that he would excel in research in his post graduate years. He has not only done superb IPM research but has been a leader in the Entomological Society of America as well as other national and international organizations. He richly deserves being elected as an ESA Fellow."
Walsh joined the WSU Department of Entomology as assistant professor in 1998 and advanced to associate professor in 2003 and to professor in 2007. The author of more than 200 publications, he annually delivers more than 35 Extension presentations. He has mentored 12 doctoral students and 11 master's degree students.
Walsh served as president of the Pacific Branch of ESA (PBESA) in 2010 and represented PBESA on the ESA governing board from 2013 through 2019. Among his ESA awards: Excellence in IPM Award and he led two teams that received the IPM Team Award.
A WSU news story (Sept. 7, 2023) related that Walsh has "worked primarily on pest control issues, mostly on hops, grape vines, mint, and alfalfa. One of his first successes at WSU in 2005 involved developing a novel method for controlling cutworms, which climb up from the soil in spring to nibble on grapevine buds."
Walsh initially set out to become a botanist. “I was working in a local Extension office in California after I got my bachelor's degree," he told the WSU writer Scott Weybright. "That work involved battling spider mites on strawberries. I kind of fell into entomology, but I love the work and the creative solutions we find to help growers."
His wife, Catherine (Kikie) is a senior software engineer with Altera Digital, a hospital software firm. The couple, married 35 years, raised three children, Claire, Russ, and Jeff, all WSU grads. Claire is the lifecycle marketing manager with Niantic Labs; Russ is working toward his master's degree in teaching at WSU Tri-Cities: and Jeff is a site reliability engineer at TikTok.
Other newly inducted ESA Fellows are:
- Cassandra Extavour, Harvard University
- James Hagler, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service
- Alvin M. Simmons, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service
- Lukasz Stelinski, University of Florida
- Edward L. Vargo, Texas A&M University
Founded in 1889, ESA is a worldwide organization of more than 7000 members, who are affiliated with educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government. Members are researchers, teachers, extension service personnel, administrators, marketing representatives, research technicians, consultants, students, pest management professionals, and hobbyists.
