- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
These little insects pollinate figs, but some figs are self-pollinated.
"There's no real way to tell from the outside, but if the fig contains seeds it will have been pollinated [by a fig wasp],” UC Extension specialist Louise Shanahan, based at the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, told writer Ali Francis of the magazine Bon Appétit in a Sept. 7, 2022 feature article, "What Do You Mean There Are Dead Wasps in My Figs?"
Now for the entomological side.
Fig wasps will be among the wasps discussed when the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis hosts an open house, "Weird and Wonderful Wasps" from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 25 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It's free and family friendly.
"Fig wasps are among the weirdest insects I can think of both in their obligatory relationship with plants and the strange looking males," said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. "Females are winged and wasp-like; males on the other hand spend their entire lives in the fig fruits and look really strange and are wingless and often look like they only have four legs."
Fig wasps belong to the superfamily Chalcidoidea and spend their larval stage inside figs. "Most are pollinators but others simply feed off the plant," according to Wikipedia. "The non-pollinators belong to several groups within the superfamily Chalcidoidea, while the pollinators are in the family Agaonidae. While pollinating fig wasps are gall-makers, the remaining types either make their own galls or usurp the galls of other fig wasps; reports of them being parasitoids are considered dubious."
Sunday's open house is the first open house of the academic year. The focus will be on a variety of wasps, including Asian giant hornets, aka "murder hornets," pteromalids, oak galls, and fig wasps, among others.
"At the wasp event, we will also have some photos from Dr. Ismail Seker, who earlier displayed his coffee table book on silk moths," said Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator. Seker, a Turkish-trained medical doctor, "has a book coming out on chestnuts next, but he is working on olives and figs as well," Yang added. (See Bug Squad blog on Dr. Seker's silk moth presentation at the Bohart Museum). Seker's son, Erkin Seker, is a UC Davis professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Visitors are also invited to hold and take images of the insects from the live "petting zoo," which will include Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects, also known as "walking sticks."
Visitors will learn about the smallest fairy wasps to the "murder hornets"; what role wasps play in plant galls and figs; and how to distinguish a parasitoid from a parasite. Kimsey will discuss the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia, dubbed by the news media as “the murder hornet." The Entomological Society of America recently established as its official common name, “northern giant hornet.”
The Bohart Museum is the home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens. It also houses a live “petting zoo,” comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas; and a gift shop with insect-themed items. More information is available on the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by contacting bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A landmark textbook on the newly emerging field of biodemography, lead-authored by UC Davis distinguished professor James R. Carey, has evolved into another landmark: Carey has created, recorded and published a first-of-its-kind video guidebook with free worldwide access.
The video guidebook showcases the 480-page textbook, Biodemography: An Introduction to Concepts and Methods (Princeton University Press, 2020), co-authored by Deborah Roach, professor and chair of the University of Virginia's Department of Biology. Carey and Roach define the pioneering field of biodemography as “integrating biology, mathematics and demography.”
Carey, a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty since 1980 and a senior scholar with the UC Berkeley Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging (CEDA), opted to create the video playbook because “we believe the contents should be available to anyone interested in any aspect of biodemography regardless of their access to the book or their primary language.”
The video guidebook, now online on the UC Berkeley Population Sciences website, is unique in that never before has a scientific textbook author produced, scripted and narrated videos that encompass a book's entire content. The playlist includes 175 separate presentations, closed captioned in English and subtitled through YouTube in 300 different languages. The content covers the contents of his entire biodemography book with video modules on content ranging from life tables, mortality models and reproduction to stable population theory, matrix models and applied demography. He also has several dozen videos on best practices in visualization and presentation strategies.
Basically, the video guidebook is a cross-media learning experience that's viewers will find engaging, enduring and enjoyable. "Readers can scroll, scan and peruse the book's contents as well as add notes, bookmark pages, and highlight text,” Carey said. “Unlike books video content can be easily added or updated and as well as both closed captioned and foreign language subtitled.”
His playlist includes demographic basics, life tables, mortality, reproduction, population models, and such topics as the Donner Party tragedy, the Titanic disaster, Napoleon's Grand Armée, and “Why the Oldest Person in the World Keeps Dying.”
Carey also delves into “Entomology and Insect-Related Videos” (see https://bit.ly/3lgYcD2), ecology and conservation biology, and other specialty grouped topics. In addition, his playlist includes video appendices of African elephants and mountain gorillas that he recorded on his teaching trips to Africa.
Carey describes demography as “the taproot of an interdisciplinary tree containing multiple branches whose demographic topics range from health, disease, marriage and fertility to anthropology, paleontology, history, and education. Our book now adds a new branch to this tree—biodemography.”
Highly honored for his research, teaching and public service Carey served as the principal investigator of a 10-year, $10 million federal grant on “Aging in the Wild,” encompassing 14 scientists at 11 universities.
Carey won a 2018 global award in the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching Program, an academic competition sponsored every two years by Baylor University, Waco, Texas. He received the 2015 Distinguished Achievement in Teaching Award from the Entomological Society of America (ESA) and the 2014 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Pacific Branch of ESA. The UC Davis Academic Senate honored him as the recipient of its 2014 Distinguished Teaching Award, given to internationally recognized professors who excel at teaching.
Carey is a fellow of four organizations; American Association for the Advancement of Science, Entomological Society of America, California Academy of Science and the Gerontological Society of America. He holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Do you have a question about wasps or want to learn more about them?
It's the first open house of the academic year and will focus on Asian giant hornets, aka "murder hornets," pteromalids, oak galls, and fig wasps, among others.
The family arts-and-crafts activity will be to create "gall ghosts."
Visitors are also invited to hold and take images of the insects from the live "petting zoo," which will include Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects, also known as "walking sticks."
Visitors will learn about the smallest fairy wasps to the "murder hornets"; what role wasps play in plant galls and figs; and how to distinguish a parasitoid from a parasite. Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, will discuss the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia, dubbed by the news media as “the murder hornet." The Entomological Society of America recently established as its official common name, “northern giant hornet.”
A single colony of the Asian giant hornet was found and destroyed Sept. 18, 2019 in Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, Canada, and a single dead hornet was found Dec. 8, 2019 in nearby Blaine, Wash. Since then, it also has been sighted-- and destroyed--in both Canada and Washington state.
Kimsey and two other wasp experts published “The Diversity of Hornets in the Genus Vespa (Hymenoptera: Vespidae; Vespinae); Their Importance and Interceptions in the United States,” in the journal Insect Systematics and Diversity in May of 2020. (See https://bit.ly/3BVZ34Y)
Lead author Allan Smith-Pardo, U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), and co-authors James Carpenter of the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Invertebrate Zoology, and Kimsey covered 22 species of hornets, including V. mandarinia.
Fairy wasps, which belong to the family of chalcidoid wasps, are tiny insects that include the world's smallest known insect, with a body length of 0.139mm, and the smallest known flying insect, only 0.15mm. All known fairy wasps are parasitoids of the eggs of other insects.
Other special events planned by the Bohart Museum this year include:
Saturday, Oct. 15, 1 to 4 p.m.
Insects, Art & Culture
Visitors will learn about insects through the lenses of art and culture. This event is part of Spirit Week (Oct. 10-16) for Aggie students, parents and alumni, but all are welcome.
Saturday, Oct. 15, 11 to 11:50 a.m.
Special Talk: Plants, Insects and Art: Mary Foley Benson's Scientific Illustrations
Location: Teaching and Learning Complex (TLC) Building, 482 Hutchison Drive, UC Davis campus
This event is part of Spirit Week for Aggie students, parents and alumni, but all are welcome. Srdan Tunic, a candidate for a master's degree in art history and a Bohart associate, will be highlighting the scientific illustrations of Mary Foley Benson (1905-1992), formerly of the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Entomology and the Smithsonian Institution and who later worked for UC Davis entomologists. Much of her work appears on campus. (See research story on the artist by Malcolm Furniss)
Sunday, Nov. 6, 1 to 4 p.m.
Dragonflies Rule!
Dragonflies are described as "the ultimate predator both in the water and the air." Visitors will meet scientists and natural historians who will share information on the world of dragonflies.
The Bohart Museum is the home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens. It also houses a live “petting zoo,” comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas; and a gift shop with insect-themed items. More information is available on the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by contacting bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Yellowjackets, commonly known as "meat bees," in comparison to the "vegetarian" honey bees, will be among the wasps featured at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 25 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. The theme: "Weird and Wonderful Wasps."
The open house is free and family friendly. A family arts and crafts activity is also planned.
"Yellowjackets are social wasps that build large, hidden nests," writes Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, on one of her online fact sheets. "The nests are usually subterranean in rodent burrows or in cavities in trees, walls or attics.
"Yellow jacket nests can be huge with 50,000 to 100,000 workers," Kimsey points out. "In temperate climates these colonies are annual. Their nests die in the fall after producing new queens. New queens produced by the colonies in the fall spend the winter in protected places until spring when they found new colonies. Yellow jacket colonies can become perennial in warmer climates, such as in Hawaii and coastal California. In these situations the nests can become enormous, with millions of workers!"
Kimsey says that yellowjacket nests "can be distinguished from paper wasp nests because the brood cells are encased in a paper envelope so they can't be seen without taking off the outer envelope. These wasps generally feed on live prey, but the pest species, such as Vespula pensylvanica, will scavenge other sources of meat and sugar, including sodas, hamburgers and road kill. They will also visit aphids and scale insects for honeydew."
At the open house, visitors will learn about the smallest fairy wasps to the "murder hornets"; what role wasps play in plant galls and figs; and how to distinguish a parasitoid from a parasite. Kimsey will discuss the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia. A single colony of the Asian giant hornet was found and destroyed Sept. 18, 2019 in Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, Canada, and a single dead hornet was found Dec. 8, 2019 in nearby Blaine, Wash. Since then, it also has been sighted-- and destroyed--in both Canada and Washington state.
Fairy wasps, in the family of chalcidoid wasps, are tiny insects. They include the world's smallest known insect, with a body length of only 0.139 mm (0.0055 in), and the smallest known flying insect, only 0.15 mm (0.0059 in) long, according to Wikipedia. The fairy wasps are found in temperate and tropical regions throughout the world. The family contains approximately 100 genera with 1400 species. All known fairy wasps are parasitoids of the eggs of other insects, Wikipedia says, "and several species have been successfully used as biological pest control agents."
(See Bug Squad blog on European paper wasps and Bohart Museum Fact Sheet comparing yellowjackets to European paper wasps.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Emily Meineke, assistant professor of urban landscape entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and coordinator of the department's seminars for the 2022-23 academic year, announced that all 11 seminars will take place both in-person and virtually at 4:10 p.m. on Wednesdays. in Room 122 of Briggs Hall except for the Nov. 9th and Dec. 7th seminars, which will be virtual only.
First in line is assistant professor Nicholas "Nick" Miller of the Department of Biology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, who will present his seminar on "Adaptation in the Cornfield, Research in the Classroom." The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/
Host is molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
"Our interest in Diabrotica biology and evolution has lead naturally to an interest in Diabrotica genomics," Miller related. "Sequencing arthropod genomes is becoming relatively easy but analyzing and understanding those genomes remains hard and labor intensive. The flood of arthropod and other non-model genome sequences represents an opportunity for undergraduates to access research experiences that would otherwise be unavailable."
Research in the Miller lab focuses on the population genetics and evolution of herbivorous insects. "We mostly study species that are pests of agriculture," he says on his website. "Key areas of interest include: adaptation by insect pests to the technologies intended to control them, including genetically-modified crops and pesticides; the interactions of specialist and generalist herbivores to plant defenses; dispersal and movement of insects and the genes they carry."
The other speakers:
Wednesday, Sept. 28
Nissa Coit, master's degree candidate studying honey bees
Elina Niño Bee Laboratory, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Title: "Effects of Ethyl Oleate Pheromone on Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Overwintering Physiology” (Exit seminar)
Wednesday, Oct. 5
Olivia Winokur, doctoral candidate studying how the environment and mosquito behavior affect transmission dynamics of mosquito-borne viruses
Christopher Barker lab, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis
Topic: Exit Seminar (title pending)
Wednesday, Oct. 12
Julian Dupuis, assistant professor, Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky
Title: “Developing Genomics-Based Molecular Diagnostic Tools for Recurrently Invading Tephritid Pests"
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Oct. 19
Filipa Rijo-Ferreira, assistant professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley
Title: "Circadian Rhythms in Parasitic Diseases"
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Oct. 26
Yao Cai, doctoral candidate
Joanna Chiu laboratory, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Title: Exit Seminar: "How Do Flies Tell the Time of Day?"
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 2
Wanhe Li, assistant professor, Department of Biology, Texas A&M
Title: “How Time Flies During Lock-down?--Mechanisms Underlying Chronic Social Isolation-Induced Sleep Loss in Drosophila”
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 9 (virtual only)
Xoaquín Moreira, Biological Mission of Galicia (CSIC)
Title: “Insularity Effects on Plant-Herbivore Interactions: Searching for Biotic and Abiotic Explanatory Variables to Promote Insular Biodiversity Conservation”
Host: Richard "Rick" Karban, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology
Wednesday, Nov. 16
Cynthia Gleason, assistant professor, Department of Plant Pathology, Washington State University
Title: “How Do We Help Potato Growers Combat the Root-Knot Nematode Meloidogyne chitwoodi?”
Host: Shahid Siddique, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 30 (postponed as of Nov. 28; to be presented at a later date)
Quinn McFrederick, assistant professor Department of Entomology, UC Riverside
Title: To be announced
He specializes in insect-symbiont interactions, particularly the study of wild bees.
Host: Rachel Vannette, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Dec. 7 (virtual only)
Mônica Ulyssea, Universidade de São Paulo Museu de Zoologia
Topic: Ants (title pending)
Expertise in myrmecology, taxonomy, phylogeny, systematics, curatorial practices, and science dissemination
Host: Jill Oberski, doctoral candidate, Phil Ward laboratory, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
For further information on the seminars or technical difficulties with Zoom, contact the coordinator at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu.
