Urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke (Photo by Leon Godwin)

“However, the plants that are keeping up with climate change might also experience costs to earlier leaf-out,” said Meineke, lead author of the first-of-its-kind study, Phenological Sensitivity to Temperature Mediates Herbivory. 

One of the costs is that “early” species get eaten more in warmer years. “This seems to be because when they leaf out earlier,” she said, “they also lengthen the amount of time herbivores have in a given year to eat their leaves.” 

Two plant species that showed higher insect damage due to rising temperatures were two native blueberries: Vaccinium angustifolium, a wild lowbush blueberry native to eastern and central Canada and the northeastern United States, and Vaccinium corymbosum, the northern highbush blueberry, a native North American species and a significant commercial food crop. 

The publication is the result of a massive five-year research project involving herbarium specimens collected from the northeastern United States and France from 1900 to 2015.  These two areas have warmed more than the global average, Meineke said, and the plants studied are distributed widely across them.

Meineke, an assistant professor who joined the UC Davis faculty in March 2020, launched her research while a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Herbaria, where she studied how worldwide urbanization and climate change have affected plant-insect relationships over the past century.

The blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum, is a significant commercial food crop. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

“This was a true collaboration,” Meineke said. “Each of us was interested in different pieces of the research. Davies and Davis brought the phenology hypotheses and expertise, and I brought an interest in/knowledge of herbivory and how it may change as the climate warms.” 

The authors wrote that “both insect and plant development are sensitive to temperature, though the specific cues plants and associated insects use to time life history events may differ and include photoperiod, chilling, ‘forcing' and precipitation. For the vast majority of insect and plant species, the combined and relative contributions of these cues have not been well characterized.” 

The specimens studied were selected first on the basis of the availability of previously published phenological sensitivity metrics: flowering sensitivity and leaf-out sensitivity. “We use the general term ‘phenological sensitivity' to refer to the extent to which a particular life event (e.g., for plants, budbreak, leaf-out, flowering, fruiting) responds to temperature from year to year (e.g. days change in phenology per ‘C' warming),” they explained. 

The next step? “We are now beginning to look into whether and how herbivory might have shifted over time in California native plants,” Meineke said. “Our focal species so far is the valley oak, Quercus lobata, but we hope to eventually expand these observations to more taxa. We're also looking into other mechanisms that might drive herbivory shifts here in the west, where phenology is driven more by moisture than by temperature.” 

A native of Greenville, N.C., Meineke holds a bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina in environmental science, with a minor in biology, and a doctorate in entomology from North Carolina State University where she completed her dissertation,  "Understanding the Consequences of Urban Warming for Street Trees and Their Insect Pests.” 

The project was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology in a grant awarded to Meineke. 

The abstract:

Species interactions drive ecosystem processes and are a major focus of global change research. Among the most consequential interactions expected to shift with climate change are those between insect herbivores and plants, both of which are highly sensitive to temperature. Insect herbivores and their host plants display varying levels of synchrony that could be disrupted or enhanced by climate change, yet empirical data on changes in synchrony are lacking. Using evidence of herbivory on herbarium specimens collected from the northeastern United States and France from 1900 to 2015, we provide evidence that plant species with temperature‐sensitive phenologies experience higher levels of insect damage in warmer years, while less temperature‐sensitive, co‐occurring species do not. While herbivory might be mediated by interactions between warming and phenology through multiple pathways, we suggest that warming might lengthen growing seasons for phenologically sensitive plant species, exposing their leaves to herbivores for longer periods of time in warm years. We propose that elevated herbivory in warm years may represent a previously under appreciated cost to phenological tracking of climate change over longer timescales.  

Feb. 28 is the last day to donate to the current crowdfunding efforts of the UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day/Month, Honey Bee Haven and the California Master Beekeeper Program.

• Biodiversity Museum Day/Month: https://crowdfund.ucdavis.edu/project/24310
• Honey Bee Haven: http://crowdfund.ucdavis.edu/project/24323 
• Master Beekeepers: http://crowdfund.ucdavis.edu/project/24314 

UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day sign

“Last year our in-person event occurred just before the global pandemic. Together 13 biological collections welcomed 4,000 people to campus. It involved nearly 300 students, staff and faculty committed to science communication and outreach. This February it had to take place virtually with live webinar talks and pre-recorded activities throughout the month, including some content in Spanish.” 

"Our goal right now is to get 100 individual donations by Saturday when the crowd fund ends," Yang said.  

Those participating in the 2021 Biodiversity Museum Day/Month:  

• Anthropology Museum
• Arboretum and Public Garden
• Bohart Museum of Entomology
• Botanical Conservatory
• California Raptor Center
• Center for Plant Diversity
• Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven
• Nematode Collection
• Marine Invertebrate Collection 
• Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology
• Paleontology Collection
• Phaff Yeast Culture Collection
• Viticulture and Enology Collection

Beekeeper holding a frame. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The program is raising funds for an online, accessible, 'Beekeeper's Apprentice' course that is educational, engaging and entertaining for all ages.

From the website: "Your donation is a legacy to help ensure the health and longevity of our honey bees. Money raised for our "Beekeepers' Apprentice" course is an investment in science-based knowledge relative to our food security and the health of our environment now and for future generations - let's educate as many people as we can about the plight of our precious honey bees. Together we can bee the change!"

As of Friday at 10:30 a.m., the donations amounted to $16,823 or 67 percent of the $25,000 goal.

A honey bee and a bumble bee sharing a purple coneflower. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

From the website: "Our goal is $5000 to purchase plants, irrigation supplies, and tools for the Haven to continue our vital mission of inspiration and education about bees and the plants that support them." 

As of Friday at 10:30, the donations amounted to $2345 or 46 percent of the $5000 goal.

For more information, see their websites or the Feb. 1 news story on the Department of Entomology and Nematology website.

Professor Lynn Kimsey speaks on Asian giant hornets at 1 p.m., Feb. 18. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

• Asian giant hornets (aka "murder hornets"): 1 to 2 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 18, by Professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
  
  
• Ants: 11 a.m., to noon, Saturday, Feb. 20, by Professor Phil Ward, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
  
  
• Bees: 12:15 to 12:45, Tuesday, Feb. 23, by Christine Casey, manager of the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven
  
  
• Botanical Conservatory (in Spanish): 1 to 2 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 23, by collections manager Ernesto Sandoval (postponed)

To obtain the Zoom links, click here.

About UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Month
The 10th annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Month program is all virtual this year via live talks and demonstrations, and pre-recorded presentations. It's being celebrated throughout the month of February. The science-based event traditionally occurs on only one day--the Saturday of Presidents' Weekend, when families and friends gather on campus to learn first-hand about the UC Davis museums and collections. The 2020 event drew more than 4000 to the campus.

This year's biodiversity event is featuring 12 museums or collections:

• Anthropology Museum
• Arboretum and Public Garden
• Bohart Museum of Entomology
• Botanical Conservatory
• California Raptor Center
• Center for Plant Diversity
• Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven
• Nematode Collection
• Marine Invertebrate Collection 
• Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology
• Paleontology Collection
• Phaff Yeast Culture Collection

For more information and the schedule, access these two formats on the UC Davis Biodiversity program website: (1) live talks and demonstrations and (2) pre-recorded talks and activities. Information on the biodiversity museum events also appear on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, @BioDivDay. 

If you'd like to donate to the UC Davis Diversity Museum Program in its crowdfunding efforts--this year is the 10th annual--click here. To donate to the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, click here. To donate to the California Master Beekeeper Program, directed by Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, click here. Niño also serves as the director of the haven. Crowdfunding will continue through the month of February.

Estelí Jiménez-Soto

Host is Extension specialist Ian Grettenberger, who coordinates the department's seminars. Access the Google form link here to attend the seminar.

"Coffee agroforests are great for biodiversity conservation and sustain millions of families and national economies," Jiminez-Soto says in her abstract. "Within these shaded agroecosystems, a complex network of interactions and the availability of resources maintain coffee pests in check, particularly the coffee berry borer, the most devastating insect pest for coffee. Despite the importance of biodiversity conservation and maintenance of shade in these systems, the life of people is often at odds with conservation efforts and management practices, revealing social inequalities and contradictions in plantation-like agricultural systems. In this presentation, I share socio-ecological complexities in the coffee-biodiversity nexus, focusing on ants as biocontrol agents, and the everyday lived experience of farmworkers in Mexican coffee agroforests."

This is one of the coffee pests that agroecologist Estelí Jiménez-Soto will discuss in her UC Davis virtual seminar.

Jiménez-Soto was quoted in a National Geographic piece, "How This Invasive Snail Could Save Your Coffee from Destruction," published on March 10, 2020.

Writer Forest Ray pointed out that "Coffee leaf rust is the most economically significant coffee pest in the world. Since the 1980s, occasional outbreaks of this fungus have crippled coffee production in the Americas, at times doubling or tripling its price. And the problem has escalated since 2008, as have the massive resources invested in fighting it."

Jiménez-Soto, sharing her expertise on both coffee and biocontrol measures, was quoted as saying: "Classic approaches to pest control have often failed to understand this complexity, causing major natural disasters."  

She holds a master's degree and doctorate in environmental studies from UC Santa Cruz, receiving her master's degree in 2015 and her doctorate in 2018. 

For technical issues involving the seminar, contact Grettenberger at imgrettenberger@ucdavis.edu. A list of the remaining virtual seminars for the winter quarter (with the Zoom links) are here.