Professor Art Shapiro has won the Beer for a Butterfly Contest every year since 1972 except for four. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

If you collect the first cabbage white butterfly of the year in the three-county area of Sacramento, Solano and Yolo, you'll win a pitcher of beer or its equivalent, compliments of Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology.

Shapiro is sponsoring his 48th annual Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest and it's all in the name of research--to determine the first flight of the cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae. Since 1972, when he launched the contest, the first flight has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20.

The butterfly inhabits vacant lots, fields and gardens where its host plants, weedy mustards, grow. The male is white. The female is often slightly buffy; the "underside of the hindwing and apex of the forewing may be distinctly yellow and normally have a gray cast,” Shapiro said. “The black dots and apical spot on the upperside tend to be faint or even to disappear really early in the season.”

The contest rules include:

• It must be an adult (no caterpillars or pupae) and be captured outdoors.
• It must be delivered alive to the department office, 2320 Storer Hall, UC Davis,  during work hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with the full data (exact time, date and location of the capture) and your name, address, phone number and/or e-mail. The receptionist will certify that it is alive and refrigerate it. (If you collect it on a weekend or holiday, keep it in a refrigerator; do not freeze. A few days in the fridge will not harm it, Shapiro says.)
• Shapiro is the sole judge.

Shapiro, who maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu, usually wins his own contest and did so again in 2019. He collected the winner near the Suisun Yacht Club, Suisun City, Solano County, at 1:12 p.m., Friday, Jan. 25. 

Shapiro has been defeated only four times, and all by UC Davis graduate students: Jacob Montgomery in 2016; Adam Porter in 1983; and Sherri Graves and Rick VanBuskirk each defeated him in the late 1990s.

The list of winners, dates and locations since 2010:

• 2019: Jan. 25: Art Shapiro collected the winner near the Suisun Yacht Club,Solano County
• 2018: Jan. 19: Art Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento, Yolo County
• 2017: Jan. 19: Art Shapiro collected the winner on the UC Davis campus
• 2016: Jan. 16: Jacob Montgomery, UC Davis graduate student, collected the winner in west Davis
• 2015: Jan. 26: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
• 2014: Jan. 14: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
• 2013: Jan. 21: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
• 2012: Jan. 8:  Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
• 2011: Jan. 31: Shapiro collected the winner in Suisun, Solano County
• 2010: Jan. 27: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento

The 2019 winner was the earliest recorded in Suisun City in 47 seasons, said Shapiro. That day he noticed dandelions, mustard, radish and mallow in bloom and a few Picris (sunflower family) in the area. "But near the Suisun Yacht Club (703 Civic Center Blvd., Suisun City) at 1:12 p.m. I saw a rapae. It didn't land and I had to take it in the air. It's a small and very heavily infuscated male.” It had just eclosed that day, he said.

The UC Davis professor has monitored butterfly population trends on a transect across central California since 1972 and records the information on his research website. His 10 sites stretch from the Sacramento River Delta through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains to the high desert of the Western Great Basin. He visits his sites every two weeks "to record what's out" from spring to fall, weather permitting. He has studied more than 160 species of butterflies in his transect. The largest and oldest database in North America, it was recently cited by British conservation biologist Chris Thomas in a worldwide study of insect biomass.

Shapiro and illustrator Timothy D. Manolis co-authored A Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions, published in 2007 by the University of California Press. Shapiro is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Entomological Society, and the California Academy of Sciences.

Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about this butterfly, see the data on the UC Integrated Pest Management Program website. In its larval stage (cabbageworm), it's a pest.

And if you want a free pitcher of beer (or its equivalent), don't leave home without your net!

Cristina Davis

Walter Leal

• Walter Leal, distinguished professor, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and former chair of the Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology
• Cristina Davis, the Warren and Leta Geidt Endowed Professor and Chair, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

NIA honors and encourages academic inventions that benefit society. Between the two UC Davis faculty members, they hold 42 patents: Davis with 12; and Leal with 28 Japanese and 2 U.S. patents.

Davis is a world leader in trace chemical sensing, while Leal is a leading global scientist in the field of insect olfaction and communication, investigating how insects detect odors, how they detect host and nonhost plant matter, and how they communicate within their species.

Leal's research, spanning three decades, focuses on insects that carry mosquito-borne diseases as well as agricultural pests, such as the Asian citrus psyllid and the orange navelworm. He and his lab drew international attention with their discovery of the mode of action of DEET, the gold standard of insect repellents.

We remember when Leal and a group of 18 students hosted a Zika Public Awareness Symposium in 2016 on the UC Davis campus.  It was an amazing symposium that drew attention to Aedes aeqytpi, which transmits the disease. Soon thereafter, Brazilian-born Leal and his colleagues in Brazil, detected the Zika virus in wild-caught Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes in Recife, the epicenter of the Zika epidemic.

We also remember when Leal identified the sex pheromones of the navel orangeworm (Amyelois transitella), a pest of almonds, figs, pomegranates and walnuts, the major hosts. This led to practical applications of pest management techniques in the fields.

Those are just several examples of the work he does. And still, he found time to co-chair the 2016 International Congress of Entomology meeting, "Entomology Without Borders," in Orlando, Fla., that drew the largest delegation of scientists and experts in the history of the discipline: 6682 attendees from 102 countries.

We're not sure how Leal can find the time to do all this (see news story on the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology). We figure he must have a clone! Make that multiple clones!

At any rate, Leal is the second faculty member affiliated with the entomology department to be selected an NIA fellow. The other scientist: Bruce Hammock, distinguished professor, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. Hammock is the co-founder and chief executive officer of EicOsis LLC, a Davis-based company that is developing a non-opiate drug to relieve inflammatory pain in companion animals and target chronic neuropathic pain in humans and horses.

As Hammock said: “When Walter Leal reached UC Davis (in 2000), he came with the reputation of being a 'one man army in research.' This reputation was well deserved. I know of no one at UC Davis who matches Walter in taking his remarkable fundamental advances in science and translating them to increase the safety and magnitude of world food production.”

Tom Eisner, father of chemical ecology, at his microscope at Cornell University. (Courtesy Photo)

Jordan, the second-highest-scoring NBA player scorer (5,987 points), "wasn't good enough" to make his high school varsity basketball team (at first). And the late Tom Eisner, the renowned Cornell University professor who went on to be known as "the father of chemical ecology," just "wasn't good enough" to be accepted at Cornell as an undergraduate student.

"Sorry, you didn't make it!" probably rang in their ears.

So when chemical ecologist and distinguished professor Walter Leal of the University of California, Davis, delivers the Founders' Memorial Award Lecture on Tom Eisner (1929-2011) at the Nov. 17-20 Entomological Society of America (ESA) meeting in America's Center in St. Louis, Mo., the Jordan-Eisner comparison will surface amid all of Eisner's incredible accomplishments, including his National Medal of Science award in 1994 from President Bill Clinton for his "seminal contributions in the fields of insect behavior and chemical ecology, and for his international efforts on biodiversity."

Leal will speak on "Tom Eisner--An Incorrigible Entomophile and Innovator Par Excellence" at the Founders' Breakfast  meeting that begins at 7:30 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 19.  His presentation, at 8:15, promises to be inspirational, educational and entertaining.  (And it's free to all ESA meeting registrants.)

ESA established the Founders' Memorial Award in 1958 to honor the memory of scientists providing outstanding contributions to entomology. 

Eisner is known as an exemplary scientist, teacher and leader whose research discoveries focused on how insects use their chemical substances as friends or foes: to attract mates or to defend from foes. He discovered how "a bombardier beetle creates a chemical reaction within its body and then ejects a boiling hot chemical from its abdomen." As Joe Rominiecki, ESA communications manager, said: “Notable among them was deciphering how the bombardier beetle defends itself with an internal exothermic chemical reaction, explosively sprayed at attackers. That discovery topped a lengthy list of revelations about the complex and often surprising biochemicals insects produce, from the bitter, predator-deterring taste of the cochineal scale's brilliant red pigment to the sticky foot secretions that allow the palmetto beetle to cling so tightly to leaf surfaces.“

Leal, whose career spans three decades (see Bug Squad blog) built his career on Eisner's work. So we asked Leal to name 10 interesting facts about Tom Eisner. He obliged.

1. Tom Eisner was born in Berlin, grew up in Uruguay, went to college and lived the rest of life in the United States.
2. In 1969 Tom gave the Founders' Memorial Lecture to honor Robert Snodgrass. This year he is being honored by the same lecture.
3. Tom was an excellent musician; he owned three Steinway Grands, two remains with his daughters and one he gave to the Cornell Music Department
4. His application to enter Cornell University was rejected in 1947. Ten years later he was hired as an assistant professor.
5. Tom got his BS and PhD from Harvard.
6. Tom is considered one of the founding fathers of chemical ecology but mentioned this cannot be proven without a paternity test.
7. Tom believed that he did not have good ideas, but he always got good data to support other people's idea.
8. One of Tom's many covers of Science appeared on 4th of July (1969) to highlight the “firework” from bombardier beetles.
9. For an unknown reason, Tom never traveled by air. He loved to drive long stretches to allow time to connect thoughts and relive experiences.

Leal, whose distinguished career includes co-chair of the 2016 International Congress of Entomology (ICE), serves as a distinguished professor in the UC Davis Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and is a past chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology).  In his research, Leal investigates the molecular basis of olfaction in insects and insect chemical communication. (See the Leal lab's work on DEET in Entomology Today.) 

And another factoid: Leal is the first UC Davis scientist selected to present the Founders' Memorial Lecture. (Medical entomologist Shirley Luckhart of the University of Idaho, formerly of UC Davis, delivered the lecture in 2018.)

One other factoid: Tom Eisner, born in Berlin, was multi-lingual in German, French, Spanish and later English. Leal, born in Brazil, speaks Portuguese, Japanese and English fluently.

Who knew?

(Editor's Note: Listen to Walter Leal's presentation on YouTube)

Today was a Monarch Kind of Day...in Vacaville.

When Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, searched for butterfly species today at one of his field sites--Gates Canyon in Vacaville--he spotted not one, but two monarchs.

He spotted them separately, both near the bottom of the Brazelton property, and recorded "Two Danaus plexippus: one large, fresh-looking male; one small, unfresh-looking female."

Shapiro, who maintains a research website, Art's Butterfly World (he's monitored the butterfly population in central California since 1972), knows just how scarce monarchs are this year.

Yes, they are. In the fall of 2016, we'd see seven or eight monarchs at a time flutter in for nectar or lay eggs on our milkweed in our Vacaville pollinator garden. This year they're as scarce as the proverbial hen's teeth.  However, over the last two weeks, they're starting to appear, one sighting at a time, one monarch a day. They are mostly huge, fresh-looking males seeking nectar from our patch of Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia). A few are females that head over to the tropical milkweed or Tithonia. Solo sightings.

But today was a Monarch Kind of Day.

Around noon, two monarchs arrived at the same time and they both sipped nectar from the Tithonia at the same time. In tandem. Inches away.

It was a Monarch Kind of Day.