- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Have you ever seen a freeloader fly trying to sneak a meal?
Since it's Friday Fly Day--and the best things in life are free, aren't they?--it's time to post an image of a freeloader fly.
So here's the story: a praying mantis was polishing off the remains of a honey bee, and uninvited dinner guests--freeloader flies (family Milichiidae, probably genus Desmometopa)--showed up. This genus includes more than 50 described species, according to Wikipedia.
Another time, a spider snagged a honey bee, and freeloaders arrived just in time to chow down. "Call me anything you like but don't call me late to dinner." They bring nothing to contribute to the meal except their appetites.
So did the predators chase away the freeloader flies? No. Absolutely not. Apparently they're too tiny a morsel to eat, and the freeloaders don't eat much. (See BugGuide.net's images of them.
Happy Friday Fly Day!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The project? Fourteen articles in The Journal of Economic Entomology's Special Collection: Research Advances in Spotted-Wing Drosophila suzukii Management, published in the August 2022 edition.
The insect? It's native to Asia and primarily targets soft-skinned fruits in the berry industry, such as raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. The tiny insect, about 1/12 to 1/8 inch long, invaded the continental United States in 2008.
The authors? They're from eight countries: United States, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and represent perspectives from universities, federal and state laboratories, growers, and pest product companies.
Thirteen UC Davis scientists or former affiliates are among the authors who contributed.
“All of the papers were by invitation of the co-editors of the special collection—Jana Lee, Cesar Rodrigue-Saona, and me,” said journal editor-in-chief Frank Zalom, a UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus and recall professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology. Zalom's research includes the insect, Drosophila suzukii.
Lee, formerly with the UC Davis laboratory of the late chemical ecologist Steve Seybold, is a research entomologist with the Horticultural Crops Research Unit, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Corvallis. Rodriguez-Saona, who received his doctorate from UC Riverside, is an Extension entomologist with the Department of Entomology, Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey.
One paper, Spatio-temporal Variation of Spinosad Susceptibility in Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae), a Three-year Study in California's Monterey Bay Region, is from the Zalom lab and includes co-author, molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Since 2008, "D. suzukii has become a key economical pest of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and cherries in the United States and worldwide," the editors wrote in their introductory remarks. "Not surprisingly, the number of publications has proliferated from 29 publications as of 2010 to 978 additional publications between 2011 and 2021 from a Web of Science search for ‘Drosophila suzukii.' While many publications are available, this special collection will highlight advances in D. suzukii pest management since its U.S. invasion. We solicited papers by open call and received 66 abstracts, and selected 14 papers covering: 1) review, 2) monitoring and risk, 3) behavioral control, 4) biological control, 5) cultural control, and 6) chemical control."
The editors pointed out that “Given that 14 years of research has accumulated since the continental U.S. invasion, it was fitting to include two reviews that provide a different scope than was covered in prior reviews on D. suzukii biological control (Lee et al. 2019, Wang et al. 2020), trapping (Burrack et al. 2020), cultural control (Schöneberg et al. 2021), and chemical ecology (Cloonan et al. 2018). This special collection is anchored by Tait et al. (2021), a review of the most promising methods as part of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy against D. suzukii across the world since 2008. The effectiveness, impact, sustainability, and present stage of development and implementation are discussed for each of the considered techniques, and insights for continued development are presented.”
The researchers related that the pest is a significant threat to California's berry production industry, which the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) valued at more than $2.8 billion in 2019. Caneberries, in particular, "are a preferred host of D. suzukii, and California accounts for 89.4 percent of all production in the United States, with the Monterey Bay region producing about half of the state's raspberries and blackberries (CDFA 2020). This pest has now spread to all major berry and cherry growing areas of the United States."
The collection is meant to serve "as a key reference point for entomologists across many institutions (e.g., academia, government, and industry) on important advances in D. suzukii pest management," according to the Entomological Society of America. "The articles in this collection will also provide scientists information on potential research gaps that will help guide future research directions on this important pest. The goal is to preserve and catalog articles on various aspects of D. suzukii pest management, i.e., monitoring, cultural control, chemical control, behavioral control, and biological control, that will be shared among entomologists."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Congratulations to Melody Keena, UC Davis alumna and entomologist extraordinaire.
Keena, a research entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station in Hamden, Conn., is a newly selected Honorary Member of the 7000-member Entomological Society of America (ESA), the organization's highest honor.
She joins two other Honorary Member recipients this year: Walter Soares Leal, UC Davis distinguished professor with the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and a former chair of the Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology), and research entomologist Alvin Simmons of the USDA Agricultural Research Service. (See UC Davis news story)
Keena, an international expert on the biology and behavior of the spongy moth (formerly known as the gypsy moth) and the Asian longhorned beetle, focuses her research on “developing the knowledge and tools needed for exclusion, eradication or control of non-native invasive forest pests and investigating basic biology, behavior, and population genetics,” according to the ESA officials who announced her Honorary Membership. "Honorary Membership recognizes extraordinary service by ESA members who have had significant involvement in the affairs of the Society for at least 20 years."
Keena may be the first Honorary Member to receive all three degrees in entomology from UC Davis: a bachelor's degree obtained in 1983, a master's, 1985, and a doctorate in 1988. Professor Jeff Granett served as her major professor for both her graduate degrees.
Keena initially chose to attend UC Davis because of its renowned School of Veterinary Medicine. An entomology course changed her plans. "I had taken a non-majors entomology class and liked it, so I took the first majors course and told myself that if I got an A in it that would be my major. Then I did work study, helping in entomology labs so I was exposed to research. That led me to do the masters to see if research was for me. Obviously, I got hooked on entomology."
At UC Davis, Keena worked on spider mite pesticide resistance management in the almond cropping system. After receiving her doctorate, she headed to Connecticut as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Connecticut. She's served as a research entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Hamden since 1992 and is now the lead scientist in the lab.
So, what sparked Melody Keena's initial interest in entomology? Fence lizards!
“They eat live insects so I had to find them,” said Keena, who was born in the Los Angeles area but moved at age 4 to Chico and then to Paradise as a teenager. “We fed them any insects we could find, since store-bought were too expensive. We fed them mostly crickets and grasshoppers. I also reared some mealworms at home for the winter.”
In a letter of support for her Honorary Member nomination, Frank Zalom, UC Davis distinguished professor, president of ESA in 2014, and an Honorary Member of ESA since 2021, said he has known Keena since 1983 when she "became a graduate student at UC Davis." He also served with her on a number of ESA committees.
"Melody is an internationally known researcher on biology and control of non-native forest insect pests with the US Forest Service, and has gained a number of significant accolades for her research and leadership," Zalom wrote. "Her CV illustrates the breadth and quality of her journal articles that present important biological studies of many of the most notorious invasive forest insects in North America this century. What sets Melody apart from other outstanding entomology researchers in my experience is the quantity, quality and impact of her service to our Society over her almost 40 years as an ESA member." (Read her accomplishments on Department of Entomology and Nematology website).
ESA has now singled out six UC Davis faculty members as recipients of its highest award:
- 2022: UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal
- 2021: UC Davis distinguished professor Frank Zalom
- 2001: Professor John Edman
- 1996: Professor Bruce Eldridge
- 1993: Professor and 1984 ESA President Donald MacLean (1928-2014)
- 1990: Professor Harry Lange (1912-2004)
Melody Keena may be in a class by herself. And that could be music to the Aggie Nation! Nobody else on the Honorary Member list appears to have received three entomology degrees from UC Davis.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It involves fossilized male ants, estimated to be about 20 million years and encased in Ethiopian amber.
And a talented young UC Davis doctoral alumnus and ant specialist who's an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology and Evolutionary Research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Basically, an international team scientists led by Friedrich Schiller University Jena and including key researcher and lead author Brendon Boudinot, the UC Davis doctoral alumnus, discovered a new genus of an extinct ant. Their work, international newly published in the journal Insects, is drawing international attention and rightfully so.
The researchers examined 13 individual male fossilized ants that lived during the Miocene epoch and identified them as a new genus of primordial ants. The team used the X-ray light source PETRA III at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, aided by state-of-the-art imaging technology. The name given to the new species and genus: "†Desyopone hereon gen. et sp. nov," to honor the two research institutions involved--DESY and Hereon.
The males resemble species of the relictual lineage Aneuretinae, "but which effectively belong to the Ponerinae, as revealed by advanced 3D-imaging technology (synchrotron radiation micro-computed tomography, SR-µ-CT)," the authors wrote. "We subsequently propose a revision of ant classification at the subfamily level. We also recognize that the new species belongs to a new genus based on recent phylogenomic results that have clarified the generic boundaries of Ponerini ants. Our work, therefore, represents an example of reciprocal illumination between phenomic and genomic data."
"The study was really pleasing from a scientific perspective, as we were able to pass through the whole cycle of hypothesis induction based on the original light microscopy, then deductive prediction for structures we then tested using synchrotron radiation, which allowed us to reject the initial hypothesis—and to go even further!" said Boudinot, an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology and Evolutionary Research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
"There are a couple of important elements to the study," Boudinot said. "Based on this discovery, we had to redefine two ant subfamilies and two tribes, and we demonstrate the value of the oft-neglected male ants for understanding evolution through the comparison of mandibles of male and females across the phylogeny, revealing a major trend in mandible evolution. In the bigger picture, what I think is significant is that this work marks a boundary for ant paleontology, where we will increasingly be able to use x-ray micro-computed tomography (µ-CT) to generate 3D models for study and quantitative analysis. Soon, we will be able to analyze these phenomic data simultaneously with genomic data. The study of ant morphology and paleontology is transforming and becoming 'big data'! There will be lots more work to come."
The team, in addition to researchers from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, included scientists from the University of Rennes in France, the University of Gdansk in Poland, and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon in Geesthacht, Germany.
In a University of Jena news release, Vincent Perrichot from the University of Rennes explained: "The piece with these ants is from the only amber deposit in Africa so far that has featured fossil organisms in inclusions. Altogether, there are only a few fossil insects from this continent. Although amber has long been used as jewelry by locals in the region, its scientific significance has only become clear to researchers in the last 10 years or so. The specimen therefore offers what is currently a unique insight into an ancient forest ecosystem in Africa.” Its complicated dating was possible only indirectly, by determining the age of the fossil palynomorphs--the spores and pollen--enclosed in the amber, he added.
"Research results such as these are only possible through the use of state-of-the-art technology," according to the University of Jena news release. "As the genetic material of fossils cannot be analyzed, precise data and observations on the morphology of animals are particularly important. Comprehensive data can be obtained using high-resolution imaging techniques, such as micro-computed tomography (CT), in which X-rays are used to look through all layers of the sample."
A quote from Jörg Hammel from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon: “Since the ants enclosed in amber that are to be examined are very small and only show a very weak contrast in classical CT, we carried out the CT at our measuring station, which specializes in such micro-tomography. This provided the researchers with a stack of images that basically showed the sample that was being studied slice by slice.”
"Put together, these produced detailed three-dimensional images of the internal structure of the animals, which the researchers could use to reconstruct the anatomy with precision," the news release related. "This was the only way to exactly identify the details that ultimately led to the new species and genus being determined."
Boudinot, a two-year Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, recently was awarded a Peter S. Buck Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and will begin his fellowship there early next year.
Highly honored for his academics, leadership, public service activities, professional activities and publications while at UC Davis, Boudinot received his doctorate in entomology in 2020, working with major professor Phil Ward. Boudinot's many honors: the John Henry Comstock Award from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America, the highest ESA graduate student honor; and the coveted Robert E. Snodgrass Memorial Research Award (2020) from the Entomological Society of America (ESA).
Boudinot served on—and anchored—three of the UC Davis Linnaean Games teams that won national or international ESA championships. The Linnaean Games, now known as the Entomology Games, are a lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competitions on entomological facts played between university-sponsored student teams.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
On Labor Day, a federal holiday, we celebrate the our country's labor movement, our gratitude, and our achievements.
But there is no Labor Day holiday for the worker bee, one of three castes (queen, worker and drone) in a honey bee colony. No Labor Day holiday for the queen, either. In peak season, she will lay from 1000 to 2000 eggs a day. A laborious task, to be sure.
Most will be worker bees, the most needed of the three castes. Worker bees perform such age-related duties as nurse maids, nannies, royal attendants, builders, architects, foragers, dancers, honey tenders, pollen packers, propolis or "glue" specialists, air conditioning and heating technicians, guards, and undertakers. The worker bees (sterile females) run the hive. They're the "you-go" girls, the "you-got-this" girls and the "go-to" girls.
No "atta boys" here. The boys, or drones, have one job to do: mate with a virgin queen (in flight) and then they die. (Or as the late Eric Mussen, UC Extension apiculturist emeritus and a longtime member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, would add "They die with a smile on their face.")
It's a matriarchal society.
But life is short for the foraging worker bees.
"Worker bees live for approximately five to six weeks in the spring and summer," writes author and retired bee scientist and bee wrangler Norman Gary, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, in his book, Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care and Keeping of Bees.
"Those reared in the fall live for several months--long enough for the colony to survive the winter--and are replaced by young bees in late winter or early spring," says Gary, whose entire apicultural career spans 75 years, from student to retirement 26 years ago. (He still works with bees.)
For the foragers, collecting nectar and pollen can be dangerous. Their searching expeditions and forays can take them four to five miles from their hive. Due to predators (including birds, praying mantids and spiders), pesticides and other issues, many do not return home at night.
They put the "severe" in persevere.
What's not to admire about the honey bee? All hail Apis mellifera, not just on Labor Day, but every day of the year. You go, girls! You got this!
(Editor's Note: Interested in becoming a beekeeper or learning more about beekeeping? Be sure to check out the UC Davis-based California Master Beekeeper Program, directed by Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.)
