Archived News for month of March 2024 from the UC Davis Entomology and Nematology website,

• Bond Lab Research Paper Calls Attention to Diversity of California's Trapdoor Spiders
  
  
• Tule and Cattail: A Tale of the Marsh Economy and Its Role in Human Health and Wellbeing
  
  
• UC Davis Students Fuse Art and Science to Create Wall Mural at Raptor Center
  
  
• News Briefs
  
  Our Retiring Faculty: James R. Carey, Lynn Kimsey, Robert Kimsey, Sharon Lawler, Jay Rosenheim and Diane Ullman
  Academic Senate Awards
  Mary Louise Flint: Butterflies in Decline
  Sol Wantz: Shedding Light on Grasshoppers, Crickets and Katydids
  Art Shapiro Discusses Butterflies and Climate Change
  UC Davis Picnic Day
  
  
• In Remembrance
  
  The nation's entomological community, including the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is mourning the deaths of Professor Emeritus Charles Mitter of the University of Maryland, a resident of Davis; entomologist-author Elizabeth "Liz" Bernays, Regents' Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and formerly on the UC Berkeley faculty; and Kim Flottum of Medina, Ohio, longtime editor of Bee Culture.
  
  
• Picnic Day: Bohart Museum Display Moves to Briggs Hall
  
  All UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology displays and activities at the 110th annual UC Davis Picnic Day, set Saturday, April 20, will be in and around Briggs Hall. This includes the Bohart Museum of Entomology displays.
  
  

• UC Davis Bee Haven to Celebrate 15th Anniversary 
  
  The UC Davis Bee Havesn will celebrate its 15th anniversary with an open house from 10 a.m. to noon, Saturday, April 6. The half-acre garden,  a project of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, west of the central campus.

See UC Davis Entomology and Nematology News

(Note: The main UC Davis Department of Entomology news page is at https://entomology.ucdavis.edu.)

UC Davis Distinguished Professor Walter Leal: Third Academic Senate Award

The saying, “Good things come in threes,” or “Omne trium perfectum,” rings true.

The UC Davis Academic Senate today announced that UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and former professor and chair of the Department of Entomology, is the recipient of the Faculty Distinguished Research Award.

And with that award, comes Academic Senate history.
Leal is the first UC Davis faculty member to be honored by the Academic Senate for all three of its awards celebrating outstanding teaching, public service and research.  In 2020, the Academic Senate awarded him the Distinguished Teaching Award for Undergraduate Teaching, and in 2022 Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award.

“Dr. Leal is an internationally recognized entomologist and a world leader in his field for his groundbreaking and transformative research in insect olfaction and chemical ecology,” said nominator UC Davis distinguished professor Bruce Hammock of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, who won the Academic Senate's Faculty Research Award in 2001 and its Distinguished Teaching (Graduate Students/Professional) Award in 2008.

Leal said he's honored and humbled to receive the award, but emphasized that “it's a team effort.” See more.

Professor Louie Yang Receives Academic Senate's Distinguished Teaching Award

Community ecologist Louie Yang, a UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology professor known as  “a phenomenal  teacher, mentor and an incredibly strong advocate for students” is the recipient of the UC Davis Academic Senate's 2024 Distinguished Teaching Award, Undergraduate Student Level.

“I have watched him engage, inspire, and challenge his students, fostering creative and critical thinking like no one else I've ever seen,” Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the department, wrote in her nomination letter. “We deeply appreciate and admire his innovative and inclusive teaching, his exemplary work ethic, his welcoming demeanor, his dedication to his students, and his nationally recognized ecology expertise. Louie has received many well-deserved teaching and mentoring awards for his teaching contributions on and off campus.” See more.

Professor Joanna Chiu: PBESA's Student Mentoring Award 

Described as a “mentor extraordinaire,” molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. is the 2024 recipient of the Distinction in Student Mentoring Award from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA).

Professor Chiu will receive the award at the PBESA meeting, set April 14-17 in the city of Waikoloa Beach, Hawaii. PBESA encompasses 11 Western states, plus parts of Canada and Mexico, and U.S. territories.

Nematologist Steve Nadler, professor and former chair of the department, nominated her for the mentoring award. He praised her as “an incredible mentor, inspirational, dedicated and passionate about helping her students succeed, as exemplified by her receiving the 2022 UC Davis Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching and Mentoring Award for her contributions to graduate student and professional mentoring, and the 2023 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research. See more. 

Forest entomologist Todd Johnson assistant professor at Louisiana State University, will speak on "Characterizing Ecological Interactions of Arthropods in Forests under Global Change"at the next seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

He will deliver his seminar at 4:10 p.m., Monday, Jan. 29 in 122 Briggs and on Zoom. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.

"Forests cover approximately 30 percent of the Earth's landmass and provide important ecosystem services that include food, fuel, and timber, as well as habitat for diverse organisms," Johnson writes in his abstract. "Threats posed to forests by invasive and pestiferous species are rapidly growing.

"Global change, an umbrella term that includes may human-mediated processes such as climate change and international trade, is altering the structure and functioning of forests. Our recently formed research group studies how natural variation impacts the outcomes of interactions between trees, herbivores, and the natural enemies of herbivores. My seminar will provide an overview of our ongoing and developing studies to better understand how variation in chemistry across the landscape shapes the fitness of woodboring insects, and how this variation can be harnessed to optimize management of forest ecosystems."

His research group studies the behavioral and chemical ecology of forest arthropods, with an emphasis on building fundamental knowledge that can further our understanding and management of natural and managed ecosystems. Johnson received his bachelor's degree in biology from Moravian College, his master's degree in entomology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to accepting his position at LSU in the fall of 2022, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of New Hampshire.  

Newly published research led by UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal and  Jiao Yin of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, identifies the major sex pheromone receptor gene involved in the unusual 48-hour rhythm clock of the large black chafer beetle, a severe agricultural pest that targets such crops as peanuts, potatoes and soybeans in China, Japan, South Korea and India. 

The research, “Circabidian Rhythm of Sex Pheromone Reception in a Scarab Beetle,” published in the Jan. 18 edition of Current Biology, marks the first sex pheromone receptor identified in Coleoptera, the order of beetles. 

While most insects exhibit a 24-hour circadian rhythm that regulates their behavior and physiology, the large black chafer beetle, Holotrichia parallela, operates on a 48-hour clock, said Leal, a global expert on insect olfaction and communication.  A professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, he is a former professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, now the Department of Entomology and Nematology. 

“Insects smell with their antennae,” said Leal, who has unraveled the molecular mechanisms of mosquitoes, true bugs, long horned beetles, moths and other insects. “They have a sophisticated olfactory system and can selectively detect minute amounts of odorants.” 

The female H. parallela emerges from the soil every other night, after sunset, climbs the canopy of the host plant, and seeks a mate by releasing a sex pheromone. Leal wanted to know if the males are also on a 48-hour rhythm clock, and he wanted to identify the elusive male gene in the pheromone receptor that allows the male to scent the female's pheromone.

The answers: “yes” and “yes.” 

“I have been waiting for almost three decades to answer these questions,” Leal said. “I identified the sex pheromone of this beetle species in 1993 while working for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Japan. At that time, I found for the first time a very unusual sex pheromone, which is derived from an amino acid. Now similar sex pheromones have been identified from many species of beetles.” 

“Also, we showed that females produce the sex pheromone every other night,” Leal said. “The burning question in biology is what males do about sensing or smelling the female sex pheromone. Back then, we had no idea how insects sense smell. With the advancements in sequencing, we identified all potential receptors and identified which one senses the sex pheromone. COVID happened and delayed our research collaboration. Finally, we found that the receptor is expressed every other day.”

“This is remarkable,” Leal said. “How do they know when it is a 'date night' or a non-calling night? It is still a mystery, but we will find out one day.”  

Leal and Yin and their team pointed out that virtually all life on Earth experiences a 24-hour circadian rhythm, which affects almost all behaviors, including sexual activity and mating. 

“I love science that leverages rigorous molecular and cellular analysis to tell stories about fascinating natural history of species,” shared molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu, chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, in an email to the UC Davis News and Media Relations and the Department of Entomology and Nematology. “This study fits the bill. When Professor Leal first told me about the circabidian rhythm of pheromone release and reception in this scarab beetle, I was more than intrigued. Circadian rhythms (24-hour rhythms) in physiology and behavior are commonly observed in organisms, from bacteria to humans, but observations of circabidian rhythms (48-hour rhythms) in nature are rare. This elegant study by Professor Leal and his collaborators has provided us with an in-depth description of how the circabidian rhythm of pheromone detection in this beetle is generated. But like all good science, this study has now generated many more interesting questions that need to be answered.” 

Leal, a native of Brazil, received his Ph.D. in applied biochemistry from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, with subsequent postdoctoral training in entomology and chemical ecology at the National Institute of Sericultural and Entomological Science and Cornell University, respectively. He was the first non-Japanese person to earn tenure at Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. 

Leal, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 2000, is a newly elected trustee of the Royal Entomological Society, the first UC Davis scientist to be elected a trustee. He chaired the UC Davis Department of Entomology in 2006-2008 before accepting a position in 2008 as professor of biochemistry in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.  His many honors include Fellow of the Entomological Society of America (2009), American Association for the Advancement of Science (2005), and the National Academy of Inventors (2019). 

Other co-authors of the Current Biology paper:  Yinliang Wang, Huanhuan Dong, Yafei Qu, Jianhui Qin, Kebin Li, Yazhong Cao and Shuai Zhang, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing; Yuxin Zhou and Bingzhong Ren, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China; and Chen Luo, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences. 

The research drew financial support from the National Key R&D Foundation of China; National Natural Science Foundation, China; and the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing. 

Resources:

• For This Beetle, ‘Date Night' Comes Every Other Day, Jan. 18, 2024, Andy Fell, UC Davis News and Media Relations
• Walter Leal Elected Trustee of Royal Entomological Society, Sept. 5, 2023