- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you’re having pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pancakes and pumpkin pie today (Thanksgiving), you can thank a squash bee.
The photos posted below are genus Peponapis, common name "squash bee." They emerge in mid- to late summer, nest in the ground, and are approximately half an inch in length. They're so tiny that you'll need a macro lens to capture their image.
A little bit about the squash bees:
- Squash bees are specialists; not generalists. Squash bees pollinate only the cucurbits or squash family, Cucurbitaceae, which includes pumpkins, squash, gourds and zucchini.
- Both the males and females are golden brown with a fuzzy yellow thorax. The males have a yellow spot on their face.
- Often you'll see a male or clusters of males sleeping in the flower in the afternoon and night.
- Squash bees are early risers (they rise before the sun does). They begin pollinating the blossoms as soon as they open in the morning. Other bee species, such as honey bees, don't visit the flowers so early. The squash blossoms close after several hours so there's a limited amount of pollination time.
So, as you're enjoying your pumpkin pie today, say "thank you" to the squash bee. They made it happen.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The UC Davis news circulating around the world about a horse’s remarkable recovery from laminitis--thanks to an experimental compound--has an insect connection.
But first: the news story. Veterinarians at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine recently announced “plans to conduct the first clinical trial of an experimental drug that has shown promise in treating horses stricken with laminitis, an excruciatingly painful and often life-threatening foot-related disease,” wrote Pat Bailey of the UC Davis News Service. See news story and accompanying video.
“Four horses suffering from laminitis have been treated with the investigational anti-inflammatory drug so far. One experienced a complete remission that has lasted for more than a year, and three others have shown some improvement.”
The horses were treated under a "compassionate use" protocol approved by the UC Davis Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. That protocol allows animals to be treated with an experimental drug if no approved alternative treatment exists. A clinical trial to assess the drug's safety and establish a tolerable dose for the compound is expected to begin in the spring. Further clinical trials would be needed to establish the drug's effectiveness as a laminitis treatment.
“In reality, we found the soluble epoxide hydrolase target in mammals while studying the mammalian metabolism of a green pesticide based on the insect juvenile hormone,” Hammock told us this week.
“Neuropathic pain is an unmet medical need. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are counter productive—aspirin, Advil and Motrin make it worse."
Our compounds, he said, work in morphine-resistant models of diabetic pain.
Neuropathic pain comes from nerve damage--professional football, car wrecks, pinched nerves, but also diabetes--sugar spikes make nerves sick.
The experimental compound is known t-TUCB and as Hammock says, belongs to a group of anti-inflammatory compounds called sEH (soluble epoxide hydrolases) inhibitors. Hammock discovered the compound more than 40 years ago while he was working on basic insect research.
So that's how horses and insects, and entomologists and veterinarians, are connected.
And laminitis? It's extremely painful and involves inflammation of a horse's nailbed, which as Guedes explains, is the connective tissue where the horse's hoof and lower foot bone join. The survival rate for laminitis is about 25 percent.
The horse below is Hulahalla, a three-year-old thoroughbred filly with acute laminitis in both front feet. In the first photo, she refused to stand up. When given the compound, she was up within three hours.
The entomology-veterinary collaboration is very exciting--and to think this all originated when Bruce Hammock's basic research on insects. Hammock began this research at UC Berkeley and then went on to join the UC Davis faculty. He holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, directs the campuswide Superfund Research Program, the National Institutes of Health Biotechnology Training Program and the NIEHS Combined Analytical Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of the UC Davis Faculty Research Lecture Award in 2001 and the Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching in 2008.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
UC Davis entomology graduate student Kevin Rayne Cloonan not only won a coveted award for his research presentation at the 60th meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Knoxville, Tenn., but it may prove to be a boon to California almond growers.
Cloonan, who is studying for his master’s degree with chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor of entomology, won a second-place award for his insect repellent research on the navel orangeworm (NOW), a major pest of California’s almond industry.
His talk was part of the 10-minute graduate student presentations.
Cloonan presented his paper on “Potential Oviposition Repellent for the Navel Orangeworm (Amyelois transitella) in Almond Orchards of Central California.” For his research, he tested 20 broad spectrum insect repellents as potential oviposition repellents. Bedoukian Research Inc. developed the repellents.
Cloonan's work involved electrophysiological recordings, laboratory behavioral assays, and a field behavioral assay. He first used electroantennogram (EAG) assays to identify which of those 20 repellents the female antennae could detect. Of the 20 repellents, three showed significant EAG responses, he said.
In testing the oviposition repellency under laboratory conditions with laboratory populations, he found that two of the three repellents showed significantly reduced oviposition; they were then tested with field populations in almond orchards in Arbuckle.
“One especially looks very promising,” said Cloonan, adding “I couldn’t have done this research without the support and help of Dr. Leal and everyone in the Leal lab.”
Cloonan has been asked to present a poster at the Almond Board of California conference, to be held Dec. 11-13 at the Sacramento Convention Center.
At the ESA meeting, Cloonan’s presentation was one of 14 vying for top honors in the Plant-Insect Ecosytems (P-IE) Section. The P-IE Section includes behavioral, ecological, and evolutionary relationships in natural landscapes, as well as integrated pest management (IPM) in agriculture, horticulture, forests, and lawn and garden. The section also deals with aspects of crop protection, host-plant response, plant pathology/vectors, pollination, biological control, microbial control, and others.
Cloonan, who plans to pursue his doctorate in entomology, is a graduate of the University of Idaho, with a bachelor's degree in entomology.
Almonds are big business in California and getting bigger.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service forecasts California’s 2012 almond crop at a record-breaking 2.10 billion meat pounds, valued at approximately $3 billion. Eighty-percent of the global supply of almonds is grown in California, and about 70 percent of California’s crop is marketed overseas.
Honey bees from all over the country are trucked to California to pollinate the state’s 780,000 acres of almonds, which begin blooming in mid-February, around Valentine's Day. Two bee colonies are required to pollinate each acre--and that's a lot of bees!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The UC Davis-based Bohart Museum of Entomology, home of nearly eight million insect specimens, is a good place to start.
Last Sunday two little 18-month-old girls intently watched an observation bee hive, much as their older counterparts would gaze at a computer screen.
The hive, an educational tool, was from the nearby Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility.
The toddlers quickly spotted the queen bee, the one with a red dot on her thorax. They watched the worker bees tend to her every need. They watched the nurse bees feed the brood, and undertaker bees carry off their dead.
With ears pressed closely to the hive, they listened to "The Buzz."
Tilly Matern of Woodland and Vivienne Statham of Davis knew what was making the buzz.
"Bees," said Tilly. Then she looked at a painted bug on the floor and identified another insect. "Ant," she said.
The occasion: the Bohart Museum's open house, themed "Insect Societies."
It doesn't appear that they will develop entomophobia (fear of insects) or apiphobia (fear of bees) or myrmecophobia (fear of ants) any time soon.
Start 'em while they're young and who knows--maybe they'll become entomologists!
Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, serves as the director of the Bohart Museum, located at 1124 Academic Surge on Crocker Lane (formerly California Drive. The insect museum includes a live "petting zoo," complete with Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and a rose-haired tarantula. There's also a gift shop filled with t-shirts, sweat shirts, posters, jewelry, insect nets and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum has scheduled its next weekend open house (free and open to the public) for Saturday, Dec. 15 from 1 to 4 p.m. The theme: "Insects in Art." Check the schedule for the remaining open houses for the 2012-2013 academic year.
Although special weekend open houses are held once a month, visitors can tour the museum from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday. It is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The latest edition of Fremontia, a publication of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS), is devoted to the state's declining prairies and grasslands.
"Humans are largely responsible" for this decline, writes editor Bob Hass. "We exploit natural resources for basic human needs and for consumable. But too few of us pay attention to the effect our actions have on the environment. Fewer still make the connection between an eroding environment (polluted water, air, soil from toxic chemicals) and cumulative impacts to human health (cancer, birth and immune system defects) or to plants and animals (disease, acid rain, increased toxins accumulating in the food chain)."
So true. And as Hass says "Nature cannot protect itself from what we humans do to the environment, but we can."
We were especially interested in the article, "Native Bees and Flowers in California Prairies and Grasslands" by native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis and a 35-year member of CNPS.
He quoted John Muir in his book, The Mountains of California: "When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its entire length...the Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that in waking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step."
Not so today! No wonder the bees are suffering from malnutrition (not to mention other issues).
Thorp calls attention to some of the flowers found today in the Central Valley grasslands. "Our state flower, the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) produces no nectar, but only pollen as a reward to bees...Generalist bumble bees (Bombus spp.) and sweat bees (Halictus spp.) are the main visitors, along with small pollen feeding beetles."
Thorp illustrated his article with a beautiful photo by Davis plant/insect enthusiast and photographer Gary Zamzow of the yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) foraging for pollen on a California poppy. Thorp also included several other photos.
No doubt you've seen honey bees foraging on California poppies, but as Thorp says, poppies provide no nectar, only pollen.
