- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The incredible University of California Linnaean Games Team, comprised of graduate students from UC Davis and UC Berkeley, won the national championship at the popular and highly competitive Linnaean Games hosted this week at the Entomological Society of America's meeting in Vancouver, B.C.
This makes the third year that a UC Davis-based team has won the national championship.
"In the final, UC defeated Texas A&M (graduate students), 140-20," said Joe Rominiecki, manager of communications for the Entomological Society of America (ESA). "UC defeated the University of Florida 110-100 in the semifinal round. In the preliminary round, UC defeated the Texas A&M undergrad team."
The Linnaean Games, launched in 1983, are lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competitions on entomological facts and played by winners of the ESA branch competitions. The teams score points by correctly answering random questions.
The UC team is comprised of captain Ralph Washington Jr., a UC Davis entomology graduate who is studying public policy at UC Berkeley; UC Davis doctoral students Brendon Boudinot, Jill Oberski and Zachary Griebenow, all of Phil Ward lab, specializing in ants; and UC Davis doctoral student Emily Bick of the Christian Nansen lab, a lab that specializes in insect ecology, integrated pest management and remote sensing.
In the first round, the UC team defeated the Texas A&M undergrads, the defending champions, by 120 to 0. "In the second round, we played Florida (including doctoral candidate David Plotkin, who specializes in the systematics and morphology of emerald moths), and won it in a nail-biting competition down to the last question!" said Boudinot. "Our final round was against the Texas A&M grads."
"Before us, there was a sudden death double overtime game (Texas A&M grads vs University of Delaware) which was really exciting," Boudinot said.
Griebenow recalled that among the questions the UC team correctly answered in the championship round:
Question: The longest-lived lepidopteran is a wooly-bear moth in the Arctiidae. In what habitat would you find these?
Answer: Arctic tundra
Question: The Passandridae are a family of beetles. What is unusual about their larvae?
Answer: The larvae are e ectoparasitoids of wood-boring insects.
The UC Davis Linnaean Games Team, captained by Washington, won the national championship twice, defeating the University of Georgia in 2016 and the University of Florida in 2015. Boudinot served on both championship teams, and Bick, the 2016 team. Last year UC Davis did not compete. Texas A&M won the national championship, with Ohio State University finishing second.
Each ESA branch hosts a Linnaean game competition at its annual meeting. The winning team and the runner-up both advance to the national competition. The national preliminaries took place Sunday, Nov. 11 while the finals got underway at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 13.
Members of the winning team will each receive a gold medal and and a plaque for the team's department.
To get to the national finals, the UC team won the regional championship hosted by the Pacific Branch of ESA at its meeting June 10-13 in Reno. They defeated Washington State University in a sudden death overtime to win the title.
Congrats, UC Linnaean Team!
(Editor's Note: More information and photos are pending.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you know the answer to that, you could have scored at the Linnaean Games competition at the recent meeting of the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA).
The answer: "In moving streams." (Rheophilic means "preferring or living in flowing water.")
The UC Berkeley-UC Davis Linnaean Games Team, comprised of graduate students, answered that question--and many more--to win the PBESA championship and will now compete for the national championship at the Entomological Society of America's annual meeting, set Nov. 11-14 in the Vancouver Convention Center, Vancouver, B.C.
If you've ever been to the national Linnaean Team Games, they're a kick, both educational and entertaining. Launched in 1983, they're described as "lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competitions on entomological facts." The competitors? Winning teams from the ESA branch competitions. The teams score points by correctly answering random questions.
Such as:
Question: Name the fungal agent that grows naturally in soils throughout the world and causes white muscardine disease and is commercially packaged as a biological insecticide for the control of termites, whiteflies, and other insect pests?
Answer: Beauveria bassiana
Question: Name the process through which spiders use silk to fly and disperse.
Answer: Ballooning.
Washington also captained the UC Davis Linnaean Games Team that won the national championship twice, defeating the University of Georgia in 2016 and the University of Florida in 2015. "Veteran teammate" Boudinot, president of the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association, served on both championship teams, and Bick, the 2016 team.
Last year UC Davis did not compete. Texas A&M won the national championship, with the Ohio State University finishing second.
Background: Each ESA branch hosts a Linnaean game competition at its annual meeting. The winning team and the runner-up both advance to the national competition. The UC Berkeley-UC Davis team won the regional championship at the Linnaean Games hosted by PBESA at its meeting June 10-13 in Reno by defeating Washington State University in a sudden death overtime.
Look for both of them at the national preliminaries, which begin at noon Sunday, Nov. 11. The finals will get underway at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 13. Members of the winning team will each receive a gold medal and and a plaque for the team's department.
Theme of the ESA meeting is “Sharing Insect Science Globally.” It's a joint meeting with the Entomological Societies of Canada and British Columbia.
The 7000-member ESA, founded in 1889, is the world's largest organization serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and individuals in related disciplines. It is affiliated with educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government.
Resources:
Videos of the championship matches:
- 2017: Texas A&M (winner) vs. The Ohio State University
- 2016: UC Davis (winner) vs. University of Georgia
- 2015: UC Davis (winner) vs. University of Florida
All videos of the national Linnaean Games championships are posted here. To gain a preview of how this year's competing teams practice, be sure to read this piece in ESA's Entomology Today.
And examples of rheophilic insects? Heptageniid mayflies, perlid stoneflies, and some psephenid beetles. Think "moving streams."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Doctoral candidate Emily Bick of the Christian Nansen lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is the newly announced recipient of the Entomological Society of America's 2018 student certification award, which recognizes outstanding entomology students interested in the mission of the ESA certification program.
Bick is one of 19 recipients of this year's ESA's Professional and Student Awards, which recognize scientists, educators, and students who have distinguished themselves through their contributions to entomology.
The UC Davis entomologist and the other awardees will be honored at “Entomology 2018,” the joint meeting of the entomological societies of America, Canada and British Columbia, to take place Nov. 11-14 in Vancouver, B.C.
What does the does the student certification award entail? “Post college, I sat for and passed the ESA Board Certified Entomologist exam," she said. "Then, this past summer, I was flown to Denver, Co., by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to sit for the Medical Entomology Specialty Exam. At that time, I sat for an additional exam--Plant-Related Entomology Specialty. The Student Certification Award is given to a student who is a Board-Certified Entomologist who has written an essay about the importance of the Board Certification process."
Bick focuses her career on leveraging entomological knowledge to best serve people. Her career includes working in industry to develop practical solutions for invasion biology of urban forests. For her master's degree, she researched an invasive aquatic weed, the water hyacinth, and its insect biological control agent, Neochetina bruchi.
For her doctorate, she is behaviorally manipulating a pesticide-resistant insect (Lygus spp.) away from high-value horticultural crops using a push-pull strategy. “I use simulation models of ecosystems to optimize integrated pest management strategies, a technique I learned while on an American Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship working with Dr. Niels Holst out of Aarhus University in Denmark,” she said.
A native of New York City, Bick received her bachelor's degree in entomology from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and her master's degree in entomology from UC Davis. She is a Board-Certified Entomologist, specializing in medical and plant entomology.
Bick credits a high school research program with inspiring her to study entomology. “I was in a high school science research program and chose to work on an insect repellent because I did not like mosquitoes,” Bick said. “Four years later, I was majoring in entomology at Cornell.”
The UC Davis doctoral student was a member of the 2016 UC Davis Linnaean Games Team that won the ESA national championship for expertise in answering questions about insects and entomologists. Now she and her team members have an opportunity to win another national championship: with the UC Berkeley-UC Davis team. The team, captained by Ralph Washington Jr., a graduate student at UC Berkeley and a former graduate student at UC Davis, also includes Brendon Boudinot, Zachary Griebenow and Jill Oberski, all of the Phil Ward lab. Boudinot was also a member of the 2016 national award-winning team.
Bick recently drew praise for her review of the San Francisco Playhouse production, "An Entomologist's Love Story," published in the ESA blog, Entomology Today.
The 7000-member ESA, founded in 1889 and headquartered in Annapolis, Md., is the world's largest organization serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and people in related disciplines. Its members are affiliated educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That sign greets visitors to the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, and that's exactly what Noah Crockette, 18, an intern there since age 11 and the winner of an international beetle research award as a teenager, plans to do.
This week he's already gone far--a distance of more than 2700 miles--from Davis to Ithaca, N.Y., where he is majoring in entomology at Cornell University.
Fondly known as “The Beetle Boy,” Noah won the 2015 Coleopterists' Society Award (senior division) for his project, “Survey of the Dung Beetles of Stann Creek, Belize.”
He volunteers at the Bohart Museum, home of nearly eight million insect specimens, and a live petting zoo of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. He has helped out with open houses, outreach programs and collecting trips.
“Yes, Noah has been volunteering here for quite a few years,” said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis. “We've seen him go from a middle school kid to a very mature 18-year-old. He's a great kid, always ready with a big smile, great attitude and really hard working. Smart, too. He should do very well at Cornell. We already miss him.”
Two Cornell University alumni--Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator, and UC Davis doctoral candidate student Emily Bick of the Christian Nansen lab, serenaded him with the Cornell fight song. Yang's degree is in general biology, and Bick's degree in entomology. After they sang the fight song, they told him how cold the winters are!
His major advisor is drosophila (fruit flies) expert Patrick O'Grady, who taught at UC Berkeley for 12 years before joining the Cornell faculty last year. His ecology professor is UC Davis alumnus Anurag Agrawal, an ecologist who received his doctorate in 1999, studying with Richard Karban.
His acceptance into Cornell, one of the top-ranked entomology programs in the country, came in 2017. Noah graduated in 2017 from The Met Sacramento High School, and Cornell offered him a one-year student transfer contract for the fall of 2018.
“I have always been interested in bugs but my interest in entomology started in sixth grade,” Noah said. “I mostly became interested in insects through my internship at the Bohart and participating in the undergraduate UC Davis Entomology Club (open to all interested persons). Before then I had only known that I was interested in zoology and started going to the Ent Club after learning about it from talking to (UC Davis forensic entomologist and club advisor) Robert “Bob” Kimsey at UC Davis Picnic Day. After attending the club for awhile, Danielle Wishon (club president and entomology major) and Bob got me connected with the Bohart to start the internship from which my interest grew.”
Career plans? Noah is keeping his options open as to specialty, but he wants to work in research. Beetles fascinate him, especially scarab beetles. “I have a tendency towards scarab beetles,” he said. “I particularly like the tribe Cyclocephalini, the masked chafer beetles. I really like that they are a Dynastines like the Hercules beetles but lack any sort of horns or other glitzy features. Even though they are small and brown, I love the subtle beauty of the markings which remind me of the Rorschach ink tests.
”I also really love venom so I have also thought about going into venom research but would like to grow more familiar with it before considering it more.”
As a Bohart Museum intern and associate, Noah collected insects twice in Belize on Bohart-affiliated collecting trips “where I was able to get field work experience in entomology as well as herpetology and ornithology.” Fran Keller, assistant professor, Folsom Lake College, and David Wyatt, an entomology professor at Sacramento City College, led the collecting trips. Keller, who served as his mentor, received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, studying with Lynn Kimsey.
“My last trip to Belize," Noah said, "was when I completed my Coleopterists' Society project in which I designed and constructed 12 baited pitfall traps which I used to survey the dung beetle species on the property as well as determine their preferred bait, between human feces, pig feces, chicken manure, rotten chicken, and rotten fruit."
In his freshman year, Noah taught an entomology class to elementary students, and as a senior project, organized a museum day at Shriners Hospital for Children.
Outside of entomological pursuits, he enjoys hiking, kayaking and birdwatching. “I really love the outdoors,” he said. “Last year after my trip to Belize I was also given the opportunity through my school to go on a month-long backpacking and kayaking trip through the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Alaska. I also played rugby for C.K. McClatchy High School during my senior year which was a fun experience and I now plan on continuing with the sport. At home I like to keep reptiles and invertebrates--mostly tarantulas--as pets and enjoy collecting zoology related books and objects.”
During the going-away party, a photo of Noah Crockette flashed on the wall-mounted computer screen. It pictured him at about age 14, enthusiastically working with insects.
Doing what he loves.
Not overlooked was the quote from noted scientist E. O. Wilson “Go as far as you can [young scientists]. The world needs you badly."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you've ever watched a mating pair of mantids and seen the male lose his head, or seen other insect mating rituals, then you ought to read entomologist Emily Bick's review of the play, An Entomologist's Love Story, which showing at the San Francisco Playhouse through June 23.
And see the play.
Emily Bick, a doctoral candidate in the Christian Nansen lab, University of California, Davis, recently attended a world premiere showing and penned a review published by the Entomological Society of America (ESA) in its Entomology Today.
Her review is drawing high praise. San Francisco Playhouse tweeted: “Quite possibly the coolest review we've ever received.”
Bick, who holds a bachelor of science degree from Cornell University and a master's degree from UC Davis, is a board-certified entomologist and a member of the 2016 UC Davis Linnaean Games Team that won the ESA national championship for expertise in answering questions about insects and entomologists. Bick also will compete in the 2018 national championships, scheduled in November in Vancouver, B.C., as a member of the UC Berkeley-UC Davis Linnaean Games Team.
In her review, Bick wrote that the play “shows that life imitates art and art imitates life, with insect mating rituals serving as a proxy for human dating behavior.”
“The well-known antagonistic insect mating behavior of bed bugs' traumatic insemination, praying mantids' sexual cannibalism, and honey bees' mating plugs are all accurately described and then used to represent adversarial (human) dating behavior. Fireflies' bioluminescence, meanwhile, is cast in a romantic light.”
“The play brims with entomological humor, from anthropomorphizing bed bugs to a running joke that sometimes volunteers actually make life harder for researchers,” Bick noted. “While the public will be entertained by the gross descriptions of entomological behavior (pun intended), only we insect scientists will know that the “Lou” the protagonists keep referring to is actually Dr. Louis Sorkin of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (and that, yes, he does keep a bed bug colony there). Or, for those of us who have been lucky enough to take a tour, you know the Museum's offices really are that difficult to get to.”
The production team consulted with entomologists at the American Museum of Natural History and the California Academy of Sciences.
“Overall, An Entomologist's Love Story,” Bick wrote, “juxtaposes a range of complex human dating behaviors with a humorous yet biologically accurate description of example insect species' mating behavior. From an entomologist's perspective, I highly recommend seeing An Entomologist's Love Story if you are or will be in the San Francisco area before June 23.”
Bick, who is delighted that Entomology Today published her piece, says she can now list “published theater critic” to her resume.
(Editor's Note: Bick will compete in the Linnaean Games National Championships with the UC Berkeley-UC Team team at the Entomological Society of America's annual meeting, set Nov. 11-14 in Vancouver, B.C. The UC Berkeley-UC Davis team is captained by Ralph Washington Jr., a graduate student at UC Berkeley and a former graduate student at UC Davis. Other members are Brendon Boudinot, Zachary Griebenow and Jill Oberski, all of the Phil Ward lab. The UC Berkeley-UC Davis team won the Linnaean Games hosted in mid-June by the Pacific Branch, ESA. For a look at the kinds of questions asked, watch the 2016 National Linnaean Games Championship Round (won by UC Davis), posted on YouTube.)