- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
They're hairy. They're bristly. They're attention-getters.
They probably draw more "yecchs!" than most insects. All the more reason to love 'em.
Frankly, the tachinids (family Tachinidae, order Diptera) could never be misidentified as honey bees, as some pollinators such as hover flies, are. And yes, flies can be pollinators.
Entomologists tell us that worldwide, there are more than 8,200 identified species, and more than 1300 species in North America alone. Who knows how many more are out there?
The 2011 State of Observed Species (also called SOS), issued Jan. 18 by the International Institute for Species Exploration, Tempe, Ariz., lists 19,232 newly discovered species. Of that number, more than half--9,738--are insects. Those figures are already out of date. These newly discovered species were identified in 2009, the latest year statistics are available. It "takes up to two years to compile all newly reported species from thousands pf journals published in many languages," the SOS team says.
Check out the report, billed as "A Report Card on Our Knowledge of Earth's Species."
Who knows? If you're crawling around a flower bed, you might just discover a new tachinid.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A "she bee" on a hebe.
That has a nice ring to it.
It was Jan. 7, an unseasonably warm day for winter and we decided to take advantage of it by driving to the Loch Lomond Marina in San Rafael.
Gardeners do a good job tending the plants that border the marina and the honey bees do a good job of gathering nectar and pollen.
One of the plants popular among the bees is hebe (genus Hebe), an evergreen shrub that probably derives its name from Hebe, the goddess of youth (Greek mythology). A native of New Zealand, this plant is quite hardy, and some varieties bloom during the winter.
There's even a Hebe Society that promotes "the cultivation and conservation of hebes and other New Zealand native plants." Founded in 1985, it's a British registered charity. According to its website, the Hebe Society "is affiliated to the Royal Horticultural Society, New Zealand Alpine Garden Society and Tatton Garden Society. Most members are in the British Isles, but some are in the rest of Europe, North America and New Zealand."
Although the "she bees" (worker bees) forage on the hebe, the "he bees" (drones) eventually derive the benefits via the food brought back to the colony. So, the "she bees" and the "he bees" draw nourishment from the hebes.
That is, when the colony starts producing the "he bees."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The more we know about our pollinators, the better we'll be able to protect and sustain them.
Bee scientists from the UC Davis Department of Entomology will present four of the six talks at the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) Pollinator Workshop, set Tuesday, Feb. 21 in Woodland.
The event, free and open to all interested persons, will take place from 9 to 11 a.m. in Norton Hall, 70 Cottonwood St.
Topics will include multiple stresses on honey bees; sustainable pollination strategies for specialty crops; native pollinators and squash and pumpkin pollination; insecticides, honey bees and hybrid onion seed production; and creating habit for pollinators, according to UCCE's Yolo County farm advisor Rachael Long.
The meeting is sponsored by UCCE and the Yolo County Resource Conservation District.
The agenda:
9 to 9:10 a.m.
Introductions and Updates: Rachael Long, farm advisor, UCCE Yolo County
9:10 – 9:35 a.m.
“Multiple Stresses are Hard on Honey Bees”: Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist, UC Davis Department of Entomology
9:35 – 10 a.m.
“Sustainable Pollination Strategies for Specialty Crops”: Neal Williams, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology.
10 to 10:20 a.m.
“Native Pollinators and Squash and Pumpkin Pollination”: Katharina Ullmann, graduate student, Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology
10:20 – 10:40 a.m.
“Insecticides Reduce Honeybee Visitation and Pollen Germination in Hybrid Onion Seed Production”: Sandra Gillespie, postdoctoral researcher, Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology.
10:40 – 11 a.m.
“Creating Habitat for Pollinators”: Jessa Guisse of Sacramento, Pollinator Habitat Restoration specialist, The Xerces Society
Norton Hall is located between the UCCE office and the Agricultural Commissioner’s office.
For further information, contact Katie Churchill of UCCE, Woodland, at kmchurchill@ucdavis.edu or (530) 666-8143.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you're interested in pollen and pollinators, you'll want to attend the UC Davis Department of Entomology seminar at 12:10 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 1 in 122 Briggs Hall.
That's when T’ai Roulston, research associate professor and curator, State Arboretum of Virginia, will speak on "Pollen as a Resource for Pollinators: What Governs Quality?"
Pollen is a bee's protein. Nectar is a bee's sugar or carbohydrate.
T'ai Roulston will be speaking specifically on pollen. "Lab work using the sweat bee Lasioglossum zephyrum has shown that protein concentration of pollen may dramatically influence offspring size," he says.
"T'ai's work on native bees and insect-plant interactions includes pollination biology, foraging ecology, nesting biology, life-history as well as some work on multi-trophic interactions," said host Neal Williams, assistant professor. (Williams is currently in Japan to present a lecture at the International Symposium on Pollinator Conservation, set Jan. 27-29 in Fukuoka.)
Roulston says on his website:
"My primary research area is plant-pollinator interactions, which I study through field and laboratory approaches." These include
1. Studies of pollen chemistry, particularly protein, to characterize the diversity of pollen nutrient rewards and their effects on pollinator host plant choice and larval development;
2. Specialization/Generalization in plant-pollinator interactions
Other research areas include endangered species conservation, habitat fragmentation, foraging behavior and nestmate recognition in social Hymenoptera, and the impact of exotic species on native organisms.
Coordinating the UC Davis Department of Entomology winter seminar series are assistant professors Louie Yang and Joanna Chiu.
If you can't make it to the the lecture, Professor James R. Carey plans to video-record it. It will be posted in about two weeks on UCTV.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Izzo, who finished her doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology last year at the University of Michigan, where she worked with Elizabeth Tibbetts on wasp communication and sexual selection, will speak on "Spotting the Top Male: Sexual Selection in a Lekking Paper Wasp." (Lekking means to engage in courtship displays.)
The seminar is sponsored by the Animal Behavior Graduate Group, which is hosting a series of winter-quarter seminars every Friday at noon in 6 Olson Hall. The series began Jan. 13 and will continue through March 16.
“Sexual selection has seen many advances over the past several decades, yet many questions remain,” said Izzo in her abstract. "Polistes dominulus paper wasps are a good system in which to study sexual selection, as males have a lek-based mating system and sexually dimorphic abdominal spots.
“Here, I demonstrate that these spots are used in both inter- and intra-sexual selection. Males with smaller, elliptically-shaped spots are more dominant over male rivals and are more preferred by females than males with larger, irregularly shaped spots. Additionally, the spots are condition-dependent and advertise quality.
“Further, spots function as signals: males with experimentally reduced abdominal spots win a greater proportion of fights and are preferred by females as mates over control males. Finally, female choice for attractive spots results in direct benefits to females. Females mated to males advertising high quality survive hibernation longer than females mated to males that advertise low quality. These results demonstrate that male ornaments are an important mediator of mating dynamics in paper wasps, and that females can gain direct benefits in non-economic mating systems. ”
Last summer we spotted her subject--Polistes dominulus--on a leaf in our backyard.
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis, confirmed the identification. "Note the clean black and yellow coloration and the two circular spots on the second abdominal segment," she said.
(Michigan State University has some interesting information posted on this wasp. It's an Old World Species with a native range from Europe to China. It was first discovered in the United States--Cambridge, Massachusetts--in 1981.)
About Mandy Izzo: she initially accepted a postdoctoral researcher position in the UC Davis Department of Entomology involving honey bees but is now affiliated with the UC Davis Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology and hopes to work on animal coloration projects.
She holds a master’s degree in biology from California State University, Northridge (2005) and a bachelor’s degree in integrative biology from UC Berkeley (2001).
