- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Lippey, mentored by UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Jay Rosenheim and assistant professor Emily Meineke, won a coveted President's Prize for her graduate student presentation at the 2024 Entomological Society of America (ESA) meeting, held recently in Phoenix.
Doctoral candidate and ant specialist Ziv Lieberman of the Phil Ward lab won a second-place award in the highly competitive graduate student presentations.
The ESA meeting drew more than 3,600 scientists who shared their research, networked, collaborated, and "stayed up to date with cutting-edge research in entomology," according to communications manager Joe Rominiecki, senior manager of communications. Highlights included the Student Competition, the Founders' Memorial Lecture, the 2025 Strategic Outlook and Member Forum and the Opening Plenary Session with keynote speaker Shawn Otto.
Lippey delivered her award-winning 10-minute presentation on "A Big Data Approach to Characterizing Impacts of Climate Warming on Agricultural Arthropod Populations" in the Plant-Ecosystems category, Biocontrol, General 2.
"A growing body of literature warns that climate warming will reduce the abundance and efficacy of insect natural enemies while promoting the growth of pest populations," Lippey wrote in her abstract. "However, comprehensive empirical support for these predictions are lacking, and some recent studies demonstrate that climate warming actually has mixed effects on agricultural insects depending on various factors such as geographic location. Despite these findings, the effects of warming on biocontrol agents and their target pests remain largely unknown, and the dominant narrative remains: warming temperatures will exacerbate pest problems."
"To address this knowledge gap, we applied an ecoinformatics approach, whereby long-term data collected in agricultural systems for pest management were repurposed for scientific research," she continued. "We collated several data streams across California and Spain gathered by independent pest control advisors, and analyzed a subset of the data comprising 30 insect species, six crops, and over 127,834 field-years of detailed observations on insect populations. In our initial analyses, insects at different trophic levels display variable responses to year-to-year and site-to-site temperature variation. In this talk, we will also describe how our study ultimately aims to answer why some insects respond positively to warming temperatures while others respond negatively, and build the foundation for a predictive, trait-based framework that informs integrated pest management as the climate warms."
Her research co-authors: Jay Rosenheim and Emily Meineke. Rosenheim, who retired in June after 34 years on the UC Davis faculty, taught insect ecology, with a focus on host-parasitoid, predator-prey, and plant-insect interactions interactions. Meineke specializes in urban landscape entomology.
The abstract: "The ubiquitous ant subfamily Dolichoderinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is one of the "big four" subfamilies wherein most diversity is concentrated. Its members range from rare and specialized taxa, such as the perplexing subterranean Anillidris, to common and economically significant species such as the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile. However, our understanding of dolichoderine evolution and systematics has never been studied from a phylogenomic perspective; the last molecular phylogeny having been performed over a decade ago, using limited Sanger-sequenced loci and relatively limited taxon sampling. Here, we revisit the phylogeny of Dolichoderinae using a subgenomic ultraconserved elements under maximum likelihood and Bayesian frameworks and a variety of partitioning and coalescent approaches. We more than double taxon inclusion, sampling all but one genera, including several for which sequence data were previously unavailable. Our results partially recapitulate the current tribal and generic classification, while also revealing novel and sometimes surprising relationships, which we corroborate from morphology and address through taxonomic actions. We revise divergence dating estimates under an unresolved fossilized-birth-death model and greatly expanded fossil tip inclusion, and use this chronogram for historical biogeographic inference."
UC Davis doctoral alumni Brendon Boudinot of the Smithsonian Institution and Jill Oberski of Senckenberg Museum and Research Institute, Frankfurt, Hessen, Germany, are research co-authors of the ant project.
The list of student competition winners is here.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's the cover of their final album, "Abbey Road," released Sept. 26, 1969.
All the Beatles, except Harrison, are wearing designer suits. And all, except McCartney, are wearing shoes. He is barefoot. Reportedly his newly purchased shoes hurt his feet, so he kicked them off.
Enter the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) and its longtime best-selling T-shirt, "The Beetles," of four beetles crossing Abbey Road. Beneath each image is the family name: Phengogidae, Curculionidae, Cerambycidae and Scarabaeidae. Think glowworm beetles, snout beetles, long-horned beetles and scarab beetles.
Beetles belong to the order Coleoptera, the largest of all the insect orders, constituting some 400,000 described species, or about 40 percent of all described species of insects.
If you look closely, these UC Davis beetles are all wearing clothes--maybe designer clothes designed just for them? Three are barefoot, and one, the long-horned beetle, is wearing shoes. EGSA records don't indicate who designed "The Beetles," but it's a keeper. It never fails to draw smiles.
"The Beetles" is one of the many shirts that EGSA sells as part of its fundraising projects. The T-shirts can be viewed and ordered online at https://mkt.com/UCDavisEntGrad/.
EGSA president Mia Lippey, a doctoral student in the laboratories of UC Davis distinguished professor Jay Rosenheim and assistant professor Emily Meineke, says that currently, the designs offered are:
- The Beetles (in black or red)
- Entomo Gothic (a play on the American Gothic, in grey)
- Whip Scorpion (in lavender and black)
- Bee-Haw (in black)
- They See Me Rollin' (dung beetles rolling a poop, in heather blue)
- Et in Terra (dark green)
- Entomophagy (in blue and green)
All T-shirts come in sizes from XS to XXL.
One of the newer designs is "Bee Haw," of a honey bee disguised as a cowgirl, complete with hat and rope. The entomophagy ("eating insects") T-shirts are also "in," as are those that whip and roll--whip scorpions and dung beetles.
If you love The Beatles, The Beetles, and Abbey Road--or just all insects--and want to help out the entomology graduate students, insect-themed T-shirts are the way to go. Insects rule the world. A recent National Geographic article related that insects evolved 400 million years ago and today "there are about 10 quintillion on Earth...at least 850,000 known insects exist worldwide."
And most of them are beetles...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Members of the Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology design insect and arachnid-themed T-shirts that are all the fashion.
The critters climb, crawl, jump, roll, flutter, buzz, fly or otherwise position themselves on EGSA T-shirts.
If you've ever seen the EGSA booth at Briggs Hall during the campuswide annual UC Davis Picnic Day, you know how popular the T-shirts are.
They are hot-ticket items during the holiday season, too. They can be viewed and ordered online at https://mkt.com/UCDavisEntGrad/.
EGSA president Mia Lippey, a doctoral student in the laboratories of UC Davis distinguished professor Jay Rosenheim and assistant professor Emily Meineke, says that currently, the designs offered are:
- The Beetles (in black or red)
- Entomo Gothic (a play on the American Gothic, in grey)
- Whip Scorpion (in lavender and black)
- Bee-Haw (in black)
- They See Me Rollin' (dung beetles rolling a poop, in heather blue)
- Et in Terra (dark green)
- Entomophagy (in blue and green)
All T-shirts come in sizes from XS to XXL.
"The Beetles" T-shirt is EGSA's all-time best seller. Instead of the English rock band John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star crossing Abbey Road in single file (that's the iconic image on the cover of their album, Abbey Road), think of The Beetles (four insects) crossing Abbey Road in single file. Beneath the images of the beetles are their family names: Phengogidae, Curculionidae, Cerambycidae and Scarabaeidae. Think glowworm, snout, long-horned, and scarab beetles.
One of the newer designs is "Bee Haw," of a honey bee disguised as a cowgirl, complete with hat and rope. The entomophagy ("eating insects") T-shirts are also "in," as are those that whip and roll--whip scorpions and dung beetles.
They are also great conversation pieces! What's that design on your shirt? Where did you get it?
