Crowdfund UC Davis began today (Feb. 1) for the UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day (Month), the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven and the California Master Beekeeper Program and will continue through the month of February.

The project is described as "where alumni, students, parents and friends can make donations to support innovative projects that propel student engagement, new research discoveries, and efforts to expand UC Davis impact on California and the world."

Capsule information from the sites:

UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day (Month)

Project coordinators are Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum of Entomology; Kyria Boundy-Mills, curator of the Phaff Yeast Culture Collectionand Rachel Alsheikh, a junior specialist and curatorial assistant at the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology

In its 10th year, UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day remains a free, annual, educational event for the community.   Each year thousands of visitors stroll the campus on the Saturday of Presidents' Day weekend, visiting UC Davis' biological collections and meeting and talking with scientists. Participating collections include, but are not limited to

• 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

This year, throughout the month of February, we will be offering a virtual “BioDivDay” with lectures, talks, and demos from experts, but we want our student interns to have the opportunity to take the lead on producing 15 cross-disciplinary videos and educational activities. These videos and activities will broaden our audience and will aim to reach underserved populations. Creating these resources and helping to plan for a future in-person event will solidify our students' science communication skills--skills that are crucial in this day and age.  Your support will enable our diverse group of students to have a meaningful and lasting impact as science communicators for Biodiversity Museum Day.

Donations will not only help us sustain the free, in-person event, but it will also enable our student interns to take science outreach to a whole new level. Using their science communication skills, our interns will create 15 themed videos and associated educational activities related to Biodiversity Museum Day. The goal of these educational resources is to reach new audiences and to connect people from all walks of life to science and the biodiversity surrounding them.

To donate, click here: 

https://crowdfund.ucdavis.edu/project/24310

A honey bee and a yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenkii, share a purple coneflower. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño, serves as the director of the Haven. Chris Casey manages the half-acre garden, located on Bee Biology Road next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. It is part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Like to eat? Thank a bee! These hard-working animals pollinate nearly 90 percent of all flowering plants, including the fruits, nuts, and vegetables that make our diets tasty and nutritious. Bees also pollinate the plants that create food and habitat for birds and most other wildlife. It's clear: healthy, abundant bee populations are vital.

But bees are in trouble and they need our help. California has about 1600 native bee species; along with the non-native honey bee all are pollinators. Bees need flowers, and the Haven is a source of information and inspiration about what and how to plant. From a single flowerpot to acres, we can all do something to help.

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. 

To donate, click here:

https://crowdfund.ucdavis.edu/project/24323

A beekeeper looks for the queen bee. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

California Master Beekeeper Program

Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology founded and directs the California Master Beekeeper Program. Wendy Mather serves as the program manager.

The California Master Beekeeper Program at UC Davis is raising funds for an online, accessible, 'Beekeeper's Apprentice' course that is educational, engaging and entertaining for all ages.

Learners will explore the intersection of honey bees, beekeepers, farmers, food diversity and security and become beginner beekeepers and honey bee ambassadors, equipped to explain the basics of beekeeping and honey bee biology, and to convey the devastating effects of pesticides, pests, pathogens, habitat destruction, and climate change on our beloved bees. The online course is a series of science-based modules in which you and your avatar, the Beekeepers' Apprentice explore and earn badges for the knowledge and skill you acquire about honey bee biology, beekeeping basics, equipment and PPE, public safety, and the future of farming and food security. You'll get a ‘bees-eye' view of what it's like to be a honey bee through video and audio from inside the hive, and examine the benefits and challenges faced by today's beekeepers and honey bees.  This course will be accessible to learners across all demographics so kids and grownups can enjoy "pollinating" and sharing the science behind the relationship between honey bees and our fresh healthy food.  

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!

Please support the California Master Beekeeper Program, where our current priority is an online, fully accessible, fun, science-based course to raise awareness of our dependence on honey bees for the many delicious and healthy foods we sometimes take for granted! Thank you for your support and consideration in bee-coming a honey bee ambassador and environmental steward!

To donate, click here: 

https://crowdfund.ucdavis.edu/project/24314

Ivana Li, UC Davis biology teaching lab coordinator, crafted this art to spotlight the 13 museums or collections participating last year. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

It will not be a day--it will be a month, the month of February.

It will not be a walk-around event--it will be virtual.

Traditionally billed as a “free, educational event for the community where visitors get to meet and talk with UC Davis scientists "and see amazing objects and organisms from the world around us,” it's a science-based event showcasing the diversity of life, according to Biodiversity Museum Day coordinator Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum of Entomology. 

Over the last nine years, it took place the Saturday of Presidents' Day weekend. Last year more than 4000 attended. 

Information on the event is being posted on the UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day website as plans unfold. The 12 museums or collections participating in the virtual program this year via Zoom webinars, Facebook programs and YouTube will be:

• 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

The live talks and demonstrations and pre-recorded talks and activities are being posted on the Biodiversity Museum Day/Month website.

Live talks will encompass such topics as heliconius butterflies, bees and gardens, orchid bees, plants in the Botanical Conservatory, Asian giant hornets (aka murder hornets), ants, yeasts, mammal specimen preparations and raptors. 

Pre-recorded programs will cover bee diversity, millipedes, herbariums and marine life, as well as how to make a bee condo and how to prepare insects (spread the wings of butterflies and moths) for display, among other subjects.

All participating museums and collections have active education and outreach programs, Yang said, but the collections are not always accessible to the public.  More information is pending on the website at http://biodiversitymuseumday.edu, and on social media, including Facebook and Twitter, @BioDivDay. 

The UC Biodiversity Museum Day/Month program is participating in Crowdfund UC Davis "where alumni, students, parents and friends can make donations to support innovative projects that propel student engagement, new research discoveries, and efforts to expand UC Davis impact on California and the world."  The funding program will continue through the end of February.

To donate, click here: 

https://crowdfund.ucdavis.edu/project/24310

This graphic from UC Riverside shows the campuses that comprise the UC network of bee researchers and engineers.

The three-year grant, titled "Strengthening Honey Bee Health and Crop Pollination to Safeguard Food Availability and Affordability" and headed by principal investigator Boris Baer, a UC Riverside professor of entomology, also includes the San Diego and Merced campuses. “I'm very excited about so many different kinds of bee expertise joining forces through this project,” Baer said. 

"Most excitingly, this funding will not only support research that will help improve pollinator health so crucial for California's agriculture, but it will provide opportunities for training of students and postdoctoral scholars,” said co-principal investigator, Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, which operates the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. “Work focused on improving honey bee stocks via novel tools aligns well with ongoing work in the Niño lab and will further cement collaborations with beekeepers and growers.” 

Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of UC Davis, co-principal investigator

Honey bees pollinate more than 80 agricultural crops, accounting for about a third of the American diet.  Researchers attribute the widespread collapse of bee colonies over the past decade to several factors, including pesticide exposure, spread of parasites and pathogens, habitat destruction and environmental changes.  Population declines have resulted in decreased pollination services and increased food prices. Worldwide declines continue despite substantial efforts of researchers, beekeepers, conservationists, and growers to identify the issues facing pollinator communities and develop innovative solutions. 

The UC scientists plan a three-pronged approach to resolve the issue: develop better breeding programs, better medications and treatments, and better tools to monitor bee health in the hives. Small “listening and smelling” devices will be placed inside the hives to monitor bee health.

Boris Baer of UC Riverside, principal investigator

In the successful grant proposal, part of the Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI), the researchers wrote:

"Safeguarding honey bees and their pollination services requires beekeepers to be better able to manage the health and survival of colonies, which requires research into the causal factors and interactions affecting pollinator health, and the development and implementation of novel tools in close collaboration with industry partners. To do this, we will form a California wide, cross disciplinary research network and 

1. experimentally study the ecological and molecular factors and their interactions that affect honey bee health and their interactions to identify biomarkers of their health
2. use the knowledge gained to develop and deliver new, effective solutions for stakeholders, including remote sensing of bee health, a marker-assisted breeding program, and the development of novel medications,
3. build a research industry nexus to conduct collaborative research. We will also develop and deploy new extension and outreach modules that will be offered through UC Cooperative Extension statewide. We will support California beekeepers to build and maintain a sustainable and profitable beekeeping industry, which has implications for food security on a national level."

Niño, who works closely with California beekeepers, launched and directs the California Master Beekeeper Program, which uses science-based information to educate stewards and ambassadors for honey bees and beekeeping.

The co-principal investigators also noted in their grant proposal that "The current coronavirus pandemic and impending recession is putting more pressure on agriculture to provide sufficient and affordable food. Honey bees are key to such efforts, and supporting a California based beekeeping industry also decreases the state's dependence on managed pollination from elsewhere, thereby creating new jobs and income."

Funding also will help provide research opportunities for undergraduates, including underrepresented students, with the goal of ensuring that the pipeline of students who enter research, academia, industry, and multiple other professions reflects the diversity of the communities in which they learn and work.

Co-principal investigator James Nieh of UC San Diego, said he and his students will be testing how nutritional supplements may help bees that have been exposed to pesticides and on how to harness the natural honey bee microbiome against a very common bee gut disease.

“We want to use what evolution has already given us to deal with bee disease because this should be a more natural and sustainable approach,” said Nieh, a professor in the Section of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, Division of Biological Sciences. “Researchers have also focused a great deal on the harms caused by pesticides and this has helped improve some aspects of regulation," he said in a UC San Diego news release. "But we need to develop treatments for bees that are exposed to these chemicals because we will not realistically be able to eliminate all pesticide use.”

Co-principal investigator Joshua Kohn of UC San Diego said research in his lab is aimed at understanding the complex genomes of feral honey bees in Southern California. These bees have genomes that are a complex mixture of genomes of honey bee varieties from Africa, Europe and the Middle East,  Kohn said in a UC San Diego news release. He described the feral  bees as "highly genetically diverse and ecologically successful." Their genomes, he pointed out, likely hold variation useful to breeding domesticated honey bees with increased levels of resistance to the common diseases that currently plague the honey bee industry.

“This network of bee researchers comprises a unique mixture of expertise that can apply highly multidisciplinary approaches to benefit the honey bee industry essential to the production of many of California's most economically important crops,” Kohn related.

Other co-principal investigators are Kerry Mauck, Tsotras Vassilis, and Kim Hyoseung, all of UC Riverside. Marilia Gaiarsa of UC Merced is a co-investigator.

A vial containing saliva is deposited at a UC Davis COVID-19 testing kiosk. (Photo by Walter Leal)

Scientists will share information on COVID-19 saliva, hospital, and sewage surveillance tests--as well as the Healthy Davis Together program--at a UC Davis virtual symposium set for 5 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 13.

UC Davis Chancellor Gary May will deliver the opening remarks. UC Davis scientists Richard Michelmore, Nam Tran  and Heather Bischel will explain the UC Davis COVID tests and answer questions, said UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal, who is organizing and moderating the symposium.   

The public is invited to submit advance questions and also may ask questions during the symposium via the Zoom chat. 

“This symposium will yield important information that everyone should know,” said Leal, a chemical ecologist with the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and a former chair of the Department of Entomology, now the Department of Entomology and Nematology. Registration is underway at https://bit.ly/2Li9pnV.

“Registration is required for the symposium, even if you cannot attend the live presentation but are interested in retrieving the symposium video later,” Leal said. This is the fourth in a series of COVID-19 symposiums that he has organized and moderated since April 23. A query from one of his students prompted the Jan. 13 symposium.

Free COVID-19 saliva tests are being administered by appointment to the Davis community--those who live in Davis or work at UC Davis--at testing kiosks on campus. It is a rapid, comprehensive laboratory-developed test that detects whether a person is currently infected with the coronavirus. The UC Davis Genome Center processes the saliva samples. Technically, the test uses a high throughput, real time, quantitative polymerase chain reaction protocol run on machines repurposed from the agricultural genetics industry. 

The symposium also will cover how the COVID-19 tests administered in an hospital emergency room or at bedside can distinguish between whether a patient has COVID-19 or the flu. In addition, wastewater surveillance tests, also known as sewage tests, are underway to detect the virus. 

“Healthy Davis Together” is a program partnering UC Davis with the City of Davis to prevent the spread of the virus and “to facilitate a coordinated and gradual return to regular city activities and reintegration of UC Davis students back into the Davis community.”  

Michelmore, a UC Davis distinguished professor, directs the Genome Center, and holds joint appointments with the College of Biological Sciences, School of Medicine, and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.  

Tran is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine who specializes in clinical chemistry and point-of-care. Bischel is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.  

Resource:

• All about COVID-19 Saliva Testing on the UC Davis campus (What it's all about and how to make an appointment)