- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you've ever wondered about the relationship between predator biodiversity and herbivore suppression, that subject is on tap Wednesday, Jan. 27 at UC Davis.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology will host associate professor William Snyder (right) of the Department of Entomology, Washington State University, at a noon seminar in 122 Briggs Hall, Kleiber Drive.
The seminar is from 12:10 to 1 p.m. and will be Webcast. Folks can tune in, listen, and ask questions. Graduate students James Harwood and Amy Morice of the James Carey lab will be Webcasting the lecture. Here's the link to listen to the Webcast.
Snyder, who received his doctorate in entomology from the University of Kentucky in 1999, focuses his research on the relationship between biodiversity and biological control; community ecology; predator-prey interactions; and sustainable agriculture.
Snyder shares this abstract:
Classic ecological theory suggests that species must differ in their resource use patterns in order to co-exist. Although much recent empirical work has shown that resource use generally increases with greater species diversity, it has nonetheless proven difficult to demonstrate that resource partitioning truly underlies this pattern. Progress has been limited by the fact that differences among species in resource use typically are confounded with other species-specific attributes (size, metabolic rate, fecundity, etc.). In the first study I will discuss, we overcame this obstacle by co-opting plasticity in host choice among a community of aphid parasitoids, in order to manipulate the breadth of resource use independent of parasitoid species identity and diversity. We found that aphid suppression improved with greater specialist, but not generalist, parasitoid diversity. Thus, it was resource partitioning among species that fostered greater resource consumption in multi-species communities. I will then discuss results from several other natural enemy communities we have been studying, where resource partitioning among predator and/or pathogen species again appears to underlie stronger herbivore suppression at higher diversity levels.
Snyder's lecture is the fourth in a series of seminars that began Jan. 6 and will continue on Wednesdays through March 10. See the remainder of the seminar schedule. The seminars are archived.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
James R. Carey is used to dissent.
The entomology professor at the University of California, Davis, fervently believes that the Mediterranean fruit fly and light brown apple moth, two exotic and invasive pests, have long been established in California and cannot be eradicated.
Trying to eradicate them, he says, is like "throwing money down a rathole."
Check out the current (Jan. 8th) edition of Science Magazine and read the three-page NewsFocus piece headlined "From Medfly to Moth: Raising a Buzz of Dissent."
This is sure to garner a plethora of comments, concern and criticism. This is about as high-profile as it gets in the scientific community. And this is not the message that the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is trying to get across. (See CDFA's Web site on the light brown apple moth).
Carey, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, just completed a term as the chair of the UC Systemwide Academic Senate University Committee on Research Policy. He also directs a federally funded program on lifespan and aging; the program just received a $3.4 million grant renewal from the National Institute on Aging.
"James Carey is at it again," began writer Ingfei Chen of Santa Cruz. "In the early 1990s, as a scientific adviser in California's unpopular pesticide-spraying war against the Mediterranean fruit fly, the entomologist vocally charged that the state's program was fundamentally flawed. Bucking conventional wisdom, Carey claimed that the Medfly was already established, defying the eradication attempt."
Fast forward to February 2007 and the discovery in California (Bay Area) of a new invasive pest, the light brown apple moth, a native of Australia.
Aerial spraying of a pheromone resulted in a "red-hot-public ruckus, forcing the state to shift to a plan to release zillions of sterile moths...And once again, Carey has surfaced as a relentless voice of dissent," Chen wrote.
Carey insists it can't be eradicated, that it's here to stay and we ought to focus on pest management, not eradication.
What's next? Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology wants to organize a spring conference "to reexamine the invasive species-policy paradigm from to bottom," Chen wrote.
"The goal," she wrote, "is an open dialogue with major stakeholders," including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and CDFA.
Carey told us today that Parrella plans to meet with him and a group of other entomologists next week to discuss the proposed workshop.
"It would be nice to think we could sit down and discuss things," Parrella told Chen in the Science Magazine article. "It's not us versus them."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Like to know more about the biocontrol of tea pests? Aging of insects? What honey bee research is under way?
If you can't physically attend the UC Davis Department of Entomology's fall seminars, starting Wednesday noon, Oct. 7 in 122 Briggs Hall, you can participate via Webinars or listen to the archived Webcasts. Most will be Webcast.
UC Davis entomology professor James Carey, former chair of the UC Systemwide Academic Senate University Committee on Research Policy, launched a pilot program in February to inform and educate the scientific community and the public on research findings.
Carey's lab researchers and graduate students began taping the series of Webinars on Feb. 18. Then came the summer break. Now that we're into the fall season, the Webinars will continue Oct. 7.
Here's the link to access the Webinar.
The UC Davis Webinars drew international attention on March 4 when chemical ecologist Tom Baker of Pennsylvania State University spoke on “But Do We Shoot the Driver? Meeting New Challenges in Detecting Agents of Harm by Using Old Entomological Knowledge.” Joining in were listeners from 10 countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany and Japan as well as the United States.
“We were hooked up to Pennsylvania State, too, so my colleagues knew where I was at, what I was doing and what I was saying,” Baker quipped.
Fellow chemical ecologist Walter Leal, UC Davis professor of entomology, who hosted Baker, later marveled at the technology.
“Just think, someone was sitting at a computer in Japan at 4 in the morning listening to Tom,” Leal said.
Both the virtual and physical audience can ask questions.
Webinars not only save time, but money, Leal pointed out. “The average round trip cost for airfare only for the 10 countries that participated in Baker’s seminar is $1,480, with Mexico being the cheapest ($700) and Montivideo, Uruguay the most expensive ($3,600).”
“It means that we saved in average $59,200 considering one participant per computer,” Leal said. “Note that in a couple of cases the presentation was displayed for multiple participants. If all participants would be accounted for, the cost would be astronomical.”
“As for travel time, only for each way, the average for the 10 countries would be 20 hours and 30 minutes, with the shortest trip being from Mexico (six-hour flight plus six hours of layover and check-in) and the longest from Montivideo (19-hour flight, plus six hours for layover and check-in),” Leal said.
The archived Webinars, from Feb. 18 through May 27, are online.
Here's the fall line-up:
Oct. 7: Biological control scientist Madoka Nakai, associate professor, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, will discuss biocontrol of tea pests in her talk, “A Novel Protein from Lepidopteran Virus Killing Endoparasitoid and Viral Control for Tea Pests in Japan” (Webcast)
Oct. 14: Plant taxonomist Dean Kelch, assistant researcher, University and Jepson Herbaria, UC Berkeley, “Mimicking Science Interpretation: A Visit to the Creation Museum” (this one won't be Webcast)
Oct. 21: Entomologist James R. Carey, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology, “Demography of the Finitude: Insights into Lifespan, Aging and Death from Insect Studies" (Webcast)
Oct. 28: Insect virus researcher Michelle Flenniken, Haagen-Dazs Postdoctoral Fellow, “Microarray-Based Pathogen Detection and the Antiviral Role of RNA Interference in Honey Bees” (not Webcast)
Nov. 4: Chemical ecologist Jonathan Gershenzon, professor, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany, "Plant Volatiles: Versatile Agents of Defense"
Nov. 18: Community ecologist and population biologist Matt Forister, assistant professor, University of Nevada-Reno, on the “Agricultural” Melissa Blue butterfly: “Anatomy of a Niche Shift: Lycaeides melissa and the Colonization of Alfalfa”
Dec. 2: Entomologist Michael Parrella, professor and chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology, “An International Perspective on Sustainable Production in Greenhouses”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Bam!
LBAM is back in the news.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture announced Aug. 29 that it has established a 19-square-mile quarantine straddling portions of two counties after the light brown apple moth (LBAM) was found July 23 in Napa County and Aug. 10 in Sonoma County.
That's bad news all around.
As a leafrolling caterpillar, the light brown apple moth loves grapes. And just about everything else from A to Z: apple, apricot, beans, caneberries (blackberry, blueberry, boysenberry, raspberry), cabbage, camellia, chrysanthemum, citrus, clover, cole crops, eucalyptus, jasmine, kiwifruit, peach, pear, persimmon, plantain, pumpkin, strawberry, tomato, rose and zea mays (corn).
It's a herbivorous generalist.
When I attended the Northern California Entomology Society meeting in May of last year, Alameda County acting ag commissioner Gregory Gee commented about its polyphagous nature: "It even likes pine trees."
Pine trees! Even!
Fact is, Gee said, the pest (Epiphyas postvittana) likes other landscape trees, too, including oak, willow, walnut, poplar, cottonwood and alder.
A native of Australia, LBAM has been found in a dozen counties since retired UC Berkeley entomologist Jerry Powell, a moth taxonomist, first detected the pest in his Berkeley backyard on July 19, 2006.
Controversy swirls over how long the pest has actually been in California and how to battle it. UC Davis entomologist James R. Carey says it's probably been here for years--maybe even decades. Carey doubts that the foreign invader can be eradicated.
But there's no controversy about its appetite.
UC Davis entomologist Frank Zalom, an integrated pest management specialist who researches tree crops, small fruits, vegetables and invasive species, said LBAM's appetite spans 250 hosts--and the spectrum of known hosts continues to grow.
Meanwhile, the moth even has its own song, a no-spray message played by KGO Radio as bumper music. The tune, "Ain't No Moths on Me," written and performed by the Bay Area group, Charity and the JAMband, is as catchy as the Muhammad Ali quote, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."
LBAM has no stinger but it definitely stings.
A USDA study indicates that, if California becomes generally infested, the moth could cause billions of dollars in crop damage annually. Additionally, it would hinder export opportunities and interstate commerce due to quarantine restrictions, as demonstrated by the quarantines already enacted by Canada and Mexico. California agricultural exports to the two countries totaled more than $2.4 billion in 2006. Source: CDFA press release.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“The war is over—again,” wrote reporter Pat Brennan of the Orange County Register in a news article published Aug. 14.
Brennan was referring to the war against the Mediterranean fruit fly, a tiny pest that targets some 260 crops. The pest, first detected inCaliforniain 1975, prefers such hosts as peach, nectarine, apricot, avocado, grapefruit, orange and cherry. It is considered the world's worst agricultural pest.
California State Department of Agriculture had earlier announced the eradication of the medfly in three counties:Los Angeles, Solano andSanta Clara.If it were to become permanently established in California, the medflycould cost the state $1.3 to $1.8 billion in annual losses, estimated CDFA Secretary A. G. Kawamura.
I remember whenSolanoCountyag officials discovered four live medflies in a single trap in downtownDixon. The date: Monday, Sept. 10, 2007. Newspapers bannered the story. A quarantine ensued. Farmers fretted, and rightfully so. Later I attended a press conference at theNutTreeAirport, Vacaville;a pilot had just released the first of many millions of sterile male fruit flies over Dixon. He showed us the sterile medflies, dyed pink.
The sterile flies mate with wild flies and biologically force wild populations out of existence, the CDFA says.
UC Davis entomologist James Carey, who has published widely on the medfly, said the pest has been multiplying and spreading undetected--like cancer--for years in California. He says it's never been really eliminated and he questions whether it could ever be eradicated.
CDFA and Solano County ag officials said no; that an errant tourist likely brought it to Dixon on a piece of fruit fromHawaii. The medfly lays its eggs inside fruit.
Medfly wars ensued.
Carey shared an email he sent Aug .14 to Brennan:
“The absence of medfly appearances anywhere else in the continental U.S. besides California over the past two decades strongly supports the argument that the medfly has never been completely eradicated in our state. CDFA's efforts at eradication have been successful at driving the populations back to subdetection levels for a few years. However, the reappearances of the medfly in the same cities and even in the same locations within these cities is due to a long-term established population. Although I fully acknowledge the need to respond to the medfly when it appears in the state as it did last year, I have no reason to believe that this program will have been any more successful than the previous ones which merely suppressed rather than eliminated the medfly population from the state."
“This recent declaration of eradication is around the 50th emergency response to medfly outbreaks over the past two decades by CDFA, virtually all of which have been in the same general locations. To my knowledge during this same period no other state such as Arizona, Florida or Texas has experienced any outbreaks even though these states, like California, have climates suitable for the medfly establishment and have many tourists and migrants who are capable of introducing the medfly. These states have experienced no outbreaks while California has experienced 50.”
The CDFA Web site says medflies are not established in California.
"These (medflies) and other exotic pests have not become established in California due to (1) strict federal exterior and state interior quarantines, (2) a pest detection program, and (3) aggressive eradication programs when an infestation is discovered."
Carey, who has plotted all medfly finds in California, says medfly populations “do not really get going until late summer and fall. Stay tuned for this fall.”
One thing is certain: the little bugger draws a lot of attention. That's because, as Brennan wrote, it “attacks so many crops.”