- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Yes? Then you'll want to attend the Science Café presentation on Wednesday, June 7, when medical entomologist and tsetse expert Geoffrey Attardo of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology will discuss “Got Milk? The Evolution and Biology of the Lactation in the Tsetse Fly.”
The event, set for 5:30 p.m., in the G Street Wunderbar, 228 G St., Davis, Calif., is free and open to the public. Jared Shaw of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science will host the presentation.
“It is actually going to be a very basic talk aimed at lay audiences and kids,” Attardo says. “I'll be talking about my background, how I became an entomologist and how I ended up working on tsetse flies. Then I am going to discuss the life history of tsetse flies, where they can be found, why they are of medical importance and how their reproductive biology differs so dramatically from other flies that people are familiar with. My plan is to go over their reproductive cycle, how they develop intrauterine larvae, the reproductive adaptations that allow them to perform this feat and then go over what we know about tsetse milk secretions and how they compare to mammalian milk in terms of nutritional content.”
“The aim is for it to be very informal, with very little scientific jargon and to be discussion-oriented so that there is lots of questions and answers. I am also bringing some items from the lab that can be passed around the audience for show and tell (homemade tsetse cages, the blood feeding system we use to feed the flies and some tsetse flies preserved in alcohol).
Attardo focuses his research on numerous aspects of the physiology of tsetse fly reproduction, with the goal to identify and understand key aspects of its reproductive biology. He joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in 2017 from the Yale University School of Public Health, New Haven, Conn., where he researched tsetse flies in the lab of Serap Aksoy.
Attardo considers the tsetse fly "one of the champions of the insect world."
"In addition to being vectors of a deadly disease, Trypanosomiasis, these flies have undergone amazing alterations to their physiology relative to other insects," he says. "Some examples of this are their ability feed exclusively on blood, their obligate relationship with a bacterial symbiont, the fact that they lactate and that they give birth to fully developed larval offspring."
If you'd like scientific information on tsetse fly lactation, see Adenotrophic Viviparity in Tsetse Flies: Potential for Population Control and as an Insect Model for Lactation, co-authored by Attardo and published in January 2015 in the Annual Review of Entomology.
The UC Davis scientist was featured in a New York Times' article on tsetse flies on Feb. 12. Pulitzer-Prize winning science writer Natalie Angier penned the article, "Everywhere in the Animal Kingdom, Followers of the Milky Way" (subhead: "As scientists learn more about milk's evolution and compositional variations, they are redefining what used to be a signature characteristic of mammals.")
"Most female flies take a low-rent approach to parenthood, depositing scores of seed-sized eggs in the trash or on pet scat to hatch, leaving the larvae to fend for themselves," Angier wrote. "Not so the female tsetse fly. She gestates her young internally, one at a time, and gives birth to them live. When each extravagantly pampered offspring pulls free of her uterus after nine days, fly mother and child are pretty much the same size."
Then she quoted Attardo: “It's the equivalent of giving birth to an 18-year-old."
Attardo is also a talented macro photographer. He won the 2010 Fogarty Grantee Photo Contest with an image of a tsetse fly. The Yale School of Public Health magazine featured his images on “An Eye for the Tsetse Fly.” The Los Angeles Times published his remarkable video (in 2014) of a tsetse fly giving birth. Also, see his portraits of the tsetse fly on Live Science, published in 2014.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Ask away at the Science Café.
This is an informative scientific presentation held the second Wednesday of each month in the G St. Wunderbar, 228 G St., Davis. The scientist delivers a brief talk and then engages the public.
Next Wednesday, Oct. 10, biodemography expert James R. Carey, a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology and an expert on human aging (as well as insects!) will speak at 5:30 p.m. on "Are There Upper Limits to Human Lifespan?"
How long can humans live? Well, supercentarian Jeanne Calment of France (1875-1997), lived to be 122. Born Feb. 21, 1875, she died Aug. 4, 1997. She enjoyed a healthy lifestyle, prayed and exercised daily, and lived a basically stress-free life. But yes, she drank a little wine and smoked a little. She outlived her husband, daughter and grandson.
“Why do we live as long as we do (evolutionary question), why do we age (mechanisms question) and why do we die (closure question)?” Carey asks.
Some of the topics to be discussed at the event, billed as “a conversation and dialogue with a scientist,” include:
- The trends in aging research on extending human lifespan.
- Theoretical arguments for upper limits and empirical evidence in humans
- The impact of disease elimination and organ replacement on longevity
- With the changes in human life expectancy, humans are now being given a second chance-- somewhat like the proverbial cat with nine lives--after an otherwise life-ending disease or incident
- Look to nature for perspectives on the limits of “life duration,” for example 40,000-year-old frozen nematodes; hibernation and dormancy) and limits to “active lifespan.”
An internationally recognized leader and distinguished scholar in insect demography and invasion biology, spanning three decades, Carey also researches health demography, biology of aging, and lifespan theory. He is the author of a landmark study published in the journal Science in 1992 that showed mortality of Mediterranean fruit flies (medflies) slows at older ages. Earlier this year scientists confirmed that this also occurs in humans, citing the study of 105-year-old Italian women.
Carey, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 1980, directed an 11-university, $10 million, 10-year study on biodemography of aging from 2003-2013. He is also known for discovering Carey's Equality or the death distribution in a life table population equals its age structure. He teaches a popular longevity course that draws 250 to 300 students year, and recently authored a book on biodemography, to be published by Princeton University next year.
And, if you want to ask Professor Carey about medflies, he can answer those, too. He was a recent recipient of a UC Davis Academic Senate Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award for his “outstanding research, outreach and advocacy program involving invasion biology, specifically his significant contributions on two California insect pest invaders, the Mediterranean Fruit Fly (medfly) and the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM).”
Professor Jared Shaw, interim chair of the UC Davis Department of Chemistry and founder of the Science Café series, will host the Oct. 10th presentation. Launched in 2012 and initially supported by the National Science Foundation, the popular series now draws support from the Department of Chemistry and Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and is promoted by Capital Science Communicators.
See schedule on the UC Davis Department of Chemistry website.