- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You're a high school junior and you want to become a marine biologist. You're influenced by Jacques Cousteau, and encouraged by your high school biology teacher.
So you launch a project to collect, record and sketch the intertidal invertebrates in the San Francisco Bay.
And 50 years later, your work is published and hailed as "legacy data," with scientists keenly interested in what invasive species were there.
That's what UC Davis entomologist Lynn Kimsey did.
Kimsey, now director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, grew up as “Lynn Siri” of El Cerrito, the daughter of a biologist and a biophysicist.
“I always wanted to be a scientist but I really wanted to be a marine biologist then,” she recalled.
Over a 13-month period, from April 1970 to May 1971, Lynn collected, recorded and sketched 139 marine specimens in the San Francisco Bay, covering 34 locations in six counties, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, San Francisco and Solano.
She was a high school junior and her work was never published—until now.
Kimsey and marine biologist James Carlton co-authored the article, “The First Extensive Survey (1970–1971) of Intertidal Invertebrates of San Francisco Bay, California,“ published last December in the journal Bioinvasions Records.
“There have been few surveys of intertidal invertebrates in San Francisco Bay, California, USA. Most prior intertidal surveys were limited spatially or taxonomically. This survey of the intertidal invertebrates of San Francisco Bay was conducted over 13 months between 1970 and 1971, generating what is now a legacy data set of invertebrate diversity. Specimens were hand collected at land access points at 34 sites around the Bay. In all 139 living species in 9 phyla were collected; 28.8% were introduced species, primarily from the Atlantic Ocean (62.5%) and the Northwest Pacific and Indo-West Pacific Oceans (30%)."
Kimsey, who holds bachelor and doctoral degrees from UC Davis, is a 32-year member of the UC Davis entomology faculty and a recognized authority on insects, particularly Hymenoptera (bees and wasps). She has directed the Bohart Museum, home of nearly 8 million specimens, since 1990.
She is also an accomplished scientific illustrator. “I worked my way through college as a scientific illustrator,” Kimsey said. “In those days women weren't hired as lab or research assistants. I switched to entomology when I came to UC Davis from UC San Diego.”
“I guess I started doing detailed pen and ink drawings in junior high. Then in high school, I worked summers as a volunteer lab assistant and professional SCUBA diver at San Diego State.”
At each site, Lynn surveyed approximately 800 meters of shoreline at low tide, and typically spent between 60 and 120 minutes. She collected, by hand, samples of all common invertebrate species larger than 1 mm from the surface of mudflats, rocks, or pilings, and from under rocks, tires, and boards (with the underside of the object and substrate below examined for invertebrates). She observed but did not collect insects or arachnids. She preserved her collected specimens in 3 percent formalin (soft-bodied specimens) or 70 percent methanol. She deposited selected specimens in the California Academy of Sciences' Department of Invertebrate Zoology.
Recalling how her research came to be published, Kimsey said that during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she began looking through her half-century-old notes. She contacted Carlton, an emeritus marine sciences professor from Williams College (Williamstown, Mass.) and director emeritus (1989-2015) of the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Maritime Studies Program (Mystic, Conn. Carlton is known for his research on the environmental history of coastal marine ecosystems, including invasions of non-native species and modern-day extinctions in the world's oceans. In 2013, he received the California Academy of Science's highest honor, the Fellows Medal.
They agreed the research contains important baseline information about intertidal macro-invertebrate biodiversity.
Together they assigned all species to either a native (Northeast Pacific origin), introduced, cryptogenic, or undetermined biogeographic status. “Eighty-six (61.9%) were considered native, 40 (28.8%) introduced, and two (1.4%) cryptogenic,” they wrote. “An additional 11 species (7.9%) were undeterminable as to their origin due to insufficient taxonomic resolution. Of the introduced species, 25 (62.5%) originate from the North Atlantic Ocean, 12 (30%) from the Northwest or Indo-West Pacific. The origins of the three remaining introduced species and of the two cryptogenic species, while likely from either the Atlantic or the Pacific, remain uncertain.”
“Unpublished historical biodiversity data are frequently lost over time,” the scientists wrote. “Such data from earlier periods can serve as critical baseline information by which to assess long-term biodiversity shifts and environmental changes.”
Digital editor Eric Simons of the Bay Nature publication chronicled the research in an Aug. 18th piece titled “Scientists Resurface a One-of-a-Kind, 50-Year-Old Record of San Francisco Bay Life.”
Kimsey and Carlton told him that they hope the project will inspire other scientists to proceed with similar research in the San Francisco Bay. But they wonder if this will ever happen.
“It's not hot and sexy,” Kimsey told Simons. “Hot and sexy is going to Costa Rica and playing in coral reefs. And that's really what attracts people. Getting down and dirty in the suburbs, it takes a different attitude about a whole different subject area.”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Hear that buzz?
Are you ready for National Honey Bee Day?
It's held the third Saturday of August and that's tomorrow.
Launched in 2009 by a small group of beekeepers petitioning the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture (USDA), the day basically "honors" honey bees and beekeeping. We first observed National Honey Bee Day on Aug. 22, 2009 (the fourth Saturday of August), but it is now permanently celebrated on the third Saturday of August.
It's a "buzzworthy" day to celebrate our tiniest agricultural workers. One-third of the food we eat comes from crops pollinated by honey bees, including almonds, apples, plums, pomegranates, onions, strawberries and much more.
"Honey bees play a critical role in agricultural production and pollinate dozens of food producing crops in the United States," according to UC Davis-based scientists. "In the U.S., honey bees account for $15 billion in added crop value."
Show me the honey? Okay. In 2019, U.S. honey bees produced about 157 million pounds of honey worth a total value of $339 million, according to the USDA. California ranks 5th in the nation in honey production.
At UC Davis, Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of our Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, researches honey bees, and helps beekeepers and consumers. Her laboratory research interests include honey bee biology, health, breeding, behavior, reproductive physiology, genomics, chemical ecology and sociology of beekeeping. Check out her lab webpage on "Lending Bees and Beekeepers a Helping Hand." Niño, who serves all of California as the state's one and only apiculturist, also founded and directs the California Master Beekeeper Program, heralded for "using science-based information to educate stewards and ambassadors for honey bees and beekeeping."
Question: how many images do you have of honey bees pollinating different California crops? Here are a few.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Our showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) is putting on a show.
The towering plant--a good eight feet--anchors the garden as we patiently wait for monarch butterflies to arrive and lay their eggs.
It's mid-August and it appears the monarchs are not coming here to our little pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif. Maybe we'll see some during their late summer or early fall migration--on their way to their overwintering sites along coastal California.
Meanwhile, the speciosa has more than its share of lady beetles (aka ladybugs) and aphids.
But now we have a new visitor, well, maybe a permanent resident.
A praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata (as confirmed by mantis expert Lohit Garikipati, a UC Davis graduate and Bohart Museum of Entomology associate now attending graduate school in Towson University, Maryland) has arrived.
For the first several days, Ms. Mantis hung upside down and did not eat (at least in our presence). She watched the bees buzzing around but made no effort to snag one. We think she was yawning. "Okay, I know you're there. I don't care and I'm not hungry."
Then we found her exoskeleton on one of the speciosa leaves.
A mantid's "skeleton," you know, is outside its body and it's known as an "exoskeleton." It reminds us of a suit of armor, for protection, support and form (is it a "suite of amour" when love abounds?).
A young mantis eats and outgrows its exoskeleton and then it molts (sheds it). Scientists say some species of growing mantids may lose their exoskeletons as many as 10 times.
And, according to Garikipati, a mantis that has just molted may not eat for two or three days.
Did you hear that, bees?
So, bottom line, no monarchs on the milkweed.
But we do have assorted lady beetles, aphids, and one praying mantis and her exoskeleton.
Wait, correct that. Just one mantis. A breeze just swept away the exoskeleton.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
ESA announced the award today.
Sparks, who holds a doctorate in entomology (1978) from UC Riverside, was the first graduate student of then UCR faculty member Bruce Hammock, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 1980.
“This is a huge honor and directly due to Bruce's influence,” said Sparks, a retired research fellow at Corteva Agriscience (a Dow AgroSciences) in Indianapolis, Ind. He will receive the award at ESA's annual November meeting, to take place in Denver, Colo.
The award recognizes creative entomologists who have demonstrated the ability to find alternative solutions to problems that significantly impact entomology.
Sparks is the first scientist from the crop protection industry to receive the Nan-Yao Su Award and the second Hammock lab alumnus to do so. ESA selected Bryony Bonning, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Hammock lab and now a professor at Iowa State University, for the award in 2013. Walter Leal, former chair of the entomology department and now a UC Davis distinguished professor with the UC Davis Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, won the award in 2011.
“As a graduate student studying insect physiology and toxicology, Tom was amazingly innovative,” said Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. “He was in the lab early, he stayed late and he 'sang while he worked.” (Sparks says he sang "because no radios were allowed in the lab.")
“Fifty years later this is mainline biological chemistry,” Hammock pointed out, adding that Sparks started in biological control and then moved to insect physiology and toxicology (Hammock's lab) while in graduate school at UC Riverside. After graduate school, Sparks served as a professor of insecticide biochemistry and toxicology with the Louisiana State University's Department of Entomology. He then headed to Indianapolis to join Eli Lilly and Co., which shortly thereafter became DowElanco, then Dow AgroSciences, and finally Corteva Agriscience.
Sparks' lifelong focus is on developing green pesticides, Hammock said. “His greatest success of many successes has been with a complex group of what are known as polyketides. Specifically, Tom pioneered the spinosids as a new class of selective pesticides for integrated pest management (IPM). Tom was a leader in this program from the concept of natural product compounds through structural optimization to integration into pest management and resistance management programs nationally and internationally.”
“Dr. Sparks is internationally recognized as a leader and innovator in the field of insect biochemistry and toxicology, especially as it relates to the discovery of new crop protection compounds,” wrote Ronda Hamm of Corteva Agriscience, Indianapolis, who headed the nomination team.
A member of ESA for more than 40 years, Sparks “has a history of bringing new ideas and innovative approaches to the discovery of new insect control agents, resulting in several commercial products,” Hamm pointed out. “Through his innovative application of state-of-the art technologies, Dr. Sparks has succeeded in catalyzing the discovery and development of natural product-based compounds for the control of pest insects. One particularly relevant measure of Dr. Sparks' innovation is patents--unusually for a non-chemist, he has 47 patents covering a wide range of chemistries and ideas as it applies to the control of agricultural pests.”
Hammock praised Sparks for his innovative accomplishments. “For the past several decades, Dr. Sparks' goal has been to provide new, greener, tools that will allow growers and farmers around the world to feed an expanding global population," Hammock said. "To this end, Dr. Sparks employed an array of innovative approaches to the discovery of new insect control agents. His innovations are well-illustrated by his ‘what if..' questions and his answers and results from those questions.”
(Editor's Note: See list of other 2021 ESA winners)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So began noted neuroscientist John Hildebrand in his keynote speech heralding the opening of the first-of-its kind international olfaction/taste symposium. Hildebrand is the Honors Professor and Regents Professor at the University of Arizona and the International Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences.
UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal coordinated and co-hosted the Zoom symposium, titled “Insect Olfaction and Taste in 24 Hours Around the Globe.” The free event drew attendees from 66 countries.
The presentations, which began at 9 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), Wednesday, Aug. 11, were uploaded to YouTube. All ten videos from the symposium are now online:
- Video One is at https://youtu.be/QlyNCZtSvtY
- Video Two is at https://youtu.be/-aO8-1yfQRI
- Video Three is at https://youtu.be/2SsQvYlXKXY
- Video Four is at https://youtu.be/hmmEac7MliI
- Video Five is at https://youtu.be/60D99Z6nJI8
- Video Six is at https://youtu.be/rZ7i4d7VogQ
- Video Seven is at https://youtu.be/19ukK_R7eKE
- Video Eight is at youtu.be/eROTKZFhu9w
- Video Nine is at https://youtu.be/uVrESHyAyvU
- Video Ten is at https://youtu.be/-XUuKGYbByc
"As an undergraduate student, I started in research working on bacteria in the laboratory of the biochemist John Law," he related. "At that time he was beginning to redirect his research to problems in insect biochemistry and among other projects; he was collaborating with the biologist E. O. Wilson in studies of ant pheromones. The term pheromone had been invented only three years earlier in 1959 in Germany by Peter Carlson and Martin Luther, and in that same year another German out of Bhutan and his group had reported the first chemical identification of an insect pheromone."
That was the silk moth pheromone, Bombykol, released by the female silkworm moth (Bombyx mori) to attract mates.
The rest, they say, is history. Insect history.
The symposium included 15 invited (keynote) and 36 contribution presentations,” said Leal, a 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). Leal hosted the PDT segment. Wynand van der Goes van Naters of Cardiff University, UK, hosted the British Summer Time (BST) segment; and Coral Warr of La Trobe University, Australia hosted the Australia Eastern Standard Time (AEST) segment.
The presentations covered a wide variety of insects, including three species of mosquitoes (Culex, Aedes and Anopheles); honey bee (Apis mellifera); fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster, Drosophila sechellia, and Drosophila suzukii); sand flies (the blood-sucking dipteran flies); cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera); housefly (Musca domestica); cabbage butterfly (Pieris rapae); and the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana).
Some statistics:
- Total users (including those logging in periodically): 2,990
- 71 percent of the attendees surveyed said they were "very satisfied" with the symposium, and 12 percent "satisfied."
- 54 percent of the surveyed attendees had never attended a conference on chemosensation.
"One of the highlights of the symposium was the participation of students and postdocs who showcased their work and announced at the end, that they will be looking for a position," Leal said. "Other professors, at the end of their talks, advertised vacancies in their lab. I had asked all presenters to share some new data. In fact, many presenters showed unpublished data, while others showed data that they had already submitted to BioRxiv, a non-peer reviewed pre-print server."
At the closing, Leal selected two persons to give their impressions of the symposium:
- See opinion by Greg Pask, an assistant professor of biology at Middlebury College, Vermont: https://twitter.com/wsleal2014/status/1427040189147275271.
- See comments by Nathalia Brito, who just completed her Ph.D. at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro: https://twitter.com/wsleal2014/status/1427431406527934490
- "I used to work in the field of insect taste and olfaction and have attended a couple of ESITO meetings (European Symposium for Insect Taste and Olfaction) when I was a grad student and in early days as a postdoc. This was a wonderful opportunity to see that latest advances in the field and see many of the people whom I had met in person talk and some new people."
- "Thank you to the organizers for coordinating such an informative and well run virtual event."
- "Great collegial and convivial atmosphere. Really good idea to have a commentary on the lectures."
- "I am working on bark beetle olfaction, so I am available in the future with this topic. Thank you."
- "I learnt a lot from different groups especially disease vectors. It was a privilege to listen to some of the big names in this area. Looking forward to a future meeting."
- "I would like say the heartiest thanks to everyone who worked on this webinar. I am doing research for more than 10 years and I never experienced such a wonderful scientific event. What you have done can not be appreciated by words."
- "Undoubtedly, this is the best symposium I have ever attended to. I was able to join with almost every presentation. As an early-career researcher in chemical ecology, this inspired me a lot. Hope to present in this meeting and getting to know great scientists in the future. Hats off to the organisers. Thank you."
- "Thank you for organizing! I only wish there were more detailed times for each presentation so I could be sure to tune in for specific talks, but this is a great concept!"
The detailed schedule of times and speakers was purposely not announced in advance "in order to keep attendance high when students, postdocs, and early-career scholars presented," Leal said, adding "I enjoyed listening to the student/early-career researchers talks. All of them were very interesting and well executed."
For more information and updates, follow Walter Leal on Twitter at @wsleal2014 or access his biochemistry channel where all the videos will be posted. Folks can also turn on YouTube and Chrome browser notifications to receive alerts.