- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event, launched in 2017 to celebrate the importance of bees and to promote honey and honey bees and their products, last year drew a crowd of 40,000. It's free and family friendly.
Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, Robert Mondavi Institute, and a co-founder of the festival, announced the list of speakers who will deliver 20-minute talks on the Speakers' Stage, located just west of First Street.
10:30 a.m.: Pollination ecologist and professor Neal Williams, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who will discuss "Pollination, the Importance of Native Bees and How to Promote Them"
11 a.m.: Kitty Bolte, GATEways horticulturist, UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, "Planting Your Garden to be a Welcoming Space for Pollinators"
12 noon: Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, and co-owner of Z Food Specialty and The HIVE, Woodland, "Let's Learn to Taste Honey."
1 p.m.: Wendy Mather, co-program manager of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMPB), "So, You Want to Be a Beekeeper?"
1:30 p.m.: Jean-Philippe Marelli, senior director of Integrated Pest Management for Mars Wrigley Confectionery (also a journey level master beekeeper and Melipona beekeeper in Brazil), "Stingless Bees: The Amazing World of Melipona Bees"
2 p.m.: Cooperative Extension apiculturist/associate professor Elina Lastro Niño of Entomology and Nematology, and director of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMPB), "What Our Bee Research Is Teaching Us."
2:30 p.m.: Sanmu "Samtso" Caoji, a 2022-23 Hubert Humphrey fellow, and founder of the Shangri-la Gyalthang Academy, and CEO of the Cultural Information Consulting Company, "Empowering Women to Become Beekeepers and Bread Winners for Their Families While Keeping Bees in the Wild"
3 p.m.: Rachel Davis, coordinator of Bee City USA Woodland and chair of Bee Campus USA UC Davis (GATEways Horticulturist for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden), "Woodland Is a Bee City; UC Davis Is a Bee City--What This Means to Our Communities"
UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology communications specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey will provide a background slide show of honey bees and native bees.
The event is both educational and entertaining. Attendees can taste honey, check out the bee observation hives, watch cooking demonstrations and kids' shows, taste mead and other alcoholic drinks (if of age) and learn about bees from beekeepers and bee scientists. Vendors, offering various products and food, will line the streets.
The UC Davis-based California Master Beekeeper Program, founded in 2016 by Niño, provides a program of learning, teaching, research, and public service. They offer comprehensive, science-based information about honey bees and honey bee health. Since 2016, the organization has donated 32,000 hours of volunteer time and served 186,630 individuals in education, outreach and beekeeping mentorship. Read more about their classes and their work on their website.
An after-party will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. at The HIVE Tasting Room and Kitchen, 1221 Harter Ave., Woodland. It will feature pollinator-inspired food, drinks, and dancing to the music of Joy and Madness, an 8-piece soul and funk group. Tickets are $20 and will benefit the California Master Beekeeper Program. "Each ticket includes entry to win a bountiful Yolo County food and drink basket (value $500)," Harris said. More information is on this website.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So wrote two Casida lab alumni, UC Davis distinguished professor Bruce Hammock and Qing X. Li, a professor at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, in their recently published biographical memoir in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal.
Casida, a UC Berkeley professor of toxicology and nutritional science for 50 years, also taught environmental science, policy and management, before becoming an emeritus professor in 2014. However, he continued to do research and mentor students until his death at age 88. He was actively involved with the UC system and often served on exam committees at UC Davis.
Casida was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 1991 and to the London- based Royal Society in 1998. He won the first International Award for Research in Pesticide Chemistry in 1971 and the 1978 Spencer Award for Research in Agricultural and Food Chemistry by the American Chemical Society. In 1993, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture "for his pioneering studies on the mode of action of insecticides, design of safer pesticides and contributions to the understanding of nerve and muscle function in insects.”
“John's legacy is his science, and this knowledge fostered subsequent science,” wrote Hammock and Li, longtime collaborators and friends of Casida. “A second legacy is the scientists he mentored in his career and the next generation who grew up with tales of ‘when we were in John's laboratory'. At scientific meetings, there is always a period of informal ‘Casida tales' ranging from practical jokes that extend for decades to stories of John and the charming eccentrics in his laboratory.”
“There is also a uniform awe and respect among his alumni. John set a high standard of ethics as well as work ethic in the field…What drives any of us, and particularly John Casida? Clearly wealth and fame were not important drivers, but there was a competitive spirit. The success of his many alumni brought him pleasure. We are confident John appreciated the tremendous contribution his career made to pesticide toxicology, the environment, human health and agriculture.”
Casida alumnus Sarjeet Gill, now UC Riverside distinguished professor emeritus, described him “the preeminent toxicologist in the world.”
In their abstract, the authors pointed out that Casida's “research in pesticide toxicology led to more effective agricultural chemicals that are far safer for human and environmental health. He used pesticides as probes for his fundamental studies of metabolism and mode of action, resulting in great insight into biological chemistry and the underlying mechanisms of regulatory biology, ranging from voltage-gated sodium channels, through the ryanodine receptor and calcium regulation, the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-gated chloride channel, to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. These discoveries, among many others, have had a profound impact on pharmacology and toxicology.”
Casida's research career “started with the introduction of DDT into agricultural practice and continued to assist in the development of many pesticides that dominate the market today,” the authors wrote, that he “trained multiple generations of toxicologists who obtained leading positions in government, industry and academics.”
Casida, born Dec. 22, 1929, spent his formative years in Madison, Wis. He received three degrees at the University of Wisconsin: his bachelor's degree in entomology in 1951; his masters in biochemistry in 1952; and a doctorate in entomology and biochemistry in 1954. He joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin for six years, advancing to full professor, and then accepted a faculty position at UC Berkeley, where he remained active in teaching and research until his death on June 30, 2018.
His wife, Katherine “Kati” Faustine Monson, a well-known artist, died in 2021. Survivors include two sons, Eric of BeRex Corp., Berkeley, and Mark, professor of theoretical chemistry, Grenoble-Alps University, Grenoble, France. Casida “loved laboratory science and this, coupled with insatiable curiosity and a gift for finding the unexpected, led to papers from his laboratory sparkling with creativity,” the authors shared. “He similarly loved teaching at all levels and had just finished grading the final examination in his toxicology class at the time of his passing.”
“The phrase ‘long and productive career' is often used in remembrances, but this phrase is seldom more appropriately applied than when it describes J. E. Casida,” Hammock and Li wrote. “His first lead author paper was published when he was an undergraduate in Science Magazine. John was productive until his last brief illness, and even during this period of hospitalization he was planning his next works.”
Professor Casida is sorely missed by his colleagues and the broad field of toxicology and pharmacology, they said.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
His seminar begins at 4:10 p.m. and also will be on Zoom:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.
Host is UC Davis distinguished professor James R. Carey, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
"African Trypanosomiasis, also known as 'sleeping sickness,' is caused by microscopic parasites of the species Trypanosoma brucei," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It is transmitted by the tsetse fly (Glossina species), which is found only in sub-Saharan Africa."
"Insect vectors attract small fractions of the funding spent on studying and controlling the diseases they transmit," Hargrove says in his abstract. "Emphasis on vector studies for tsetse (Glossina spp) have, however, resulted in several novel vector and disease control options. Experiments carried out over the past 60 years at Rekomitjie Research Station in the Zambezi Valley of Zimbabwe, together with daily meteorological readings, provide a platform for studying the effects of climate change on the population dynamics of tsetse species occurring around Rekomitjie. Rates of pupal production and development, of abortion rates and of mortality among immature and adult stages of the flies are all highly correlated with temperature. Methods used to estimate such relationships in the field will be discussed and the relationships are used in explaining the sudden collapse in tsetse populations during the past decade, consequent on significant increases in temperature, particularly in the hot dry season."
Hargrove served as the inaugural director of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA). The precursors for MMED and DAIDD were launched in 2006 at the beginning of his directorship; he has been involved continuously as an instructor in the program since, according to his biography on ICI3D. Over the past nearly 50 years, Hargrove has combined fieldwork and mathematical epidemiology to understand the population dynamics and control of tsetse flies, the vectors of human African Trypanosomiasis.
He focuses his current research on the modelling population dynamics, with a particular focus on how increasing temperatures in Africa will affect tsetse distribution. This work involves improving estimation of mortality in adult and immature stages of the fly. Since 1999, he has also focused on the analysis and modelling of data in the world of HIV. Current interest are in improving the use of biomarkers for the accurate estimation of HIV incidence.
He holds a bachelor's degree in zoology (1968) from the University of Oxford; a master's degree in biomathematics (1981) from UCLA, and a doctorate in insect physiology (1973) from the University of London.
Department seminar coordinator is urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor. For technical issues regarding Zoom connections, she may be reached at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu. (See complete list of spring seminars.)
Resource:
SERVIR--From Space to Tsetse Fly
World Health Organization: Trypanosomiasis (Human African Sleeping Sickness)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Meet Chryseobacterium kimseyorum, named for UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum, and her husband, forensic entomologist Robert "Bob" Kimsey, both of the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
“We've had a few things named after us but never bacteria--that's a first,” said Lynn Kimsey.
The story begins more than a decade ago when then UC Davis doctoral student Matan Shelomi, now an associate professor of entomology at National Taiwan University, Taiwan, was studying the digestive physiology of the stick and leaf insects, Phasmatodea, for his Ph.D, under the guidance of his major professor, Lynn Kimsey. He isolated and cultured bacteria from the guts and cages of the stick insects. Some of the species seemed new to science, but Shelomi had neither the time nor the resources to prove it then.
He stored the microbes inside the deep freezers of the Phaff Yeast Culture Collection, UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology.
The years slipped by. So did the memory of isolating the bacteria. Then after becoming a professor himself, his graduate student, Chiao-Jung Han, discovered a new bacteria species inside a beetle. That prompted Shelomi to renew his interest in the microbes from the Bohart Museum.
"Thankfully, I kept all my notes from graduate school," says Shelomi, "so I was able to check and see which strains I had flagged as possibly new species. When I saw one of them was the same genus as the new microbe found in Taiwan, I realized this was an opportunity to describe them both together." So Shelomi emailed Kyria Boundy-Mills, curator of the Phaff Collection, “who had my old specimen revived and shipped across the Pacific.”
The abstract begins: “Two strains of Chryseobacterium identified from different experiments are proposed to represent new species. Strain WLa1L2M3T was isolated from the digestive tract of an Oryctes rhinoceros beetle larva. Strain 09-1422T was isolated from a cage housing the stick insect Eurycantha calcarata. Sequence analysis of the 16S rRNA and rpoB genes found both strains to be similar but not identical to other Chryseobacterium species. Whole-genome sequencing suggested the isolates represent new species, with average nucleotide identity values ranging from 74.6 to 80.5?%.”
Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator of the Bohart Museum, relayed the news to a tour group visiting the insect museum on April 20. “I just used this story today with a tour group,” she told Shelomi. “I mentioned how your student was denied her dog's name. I love how this ties the Bohart and the Phaff Yeast collection together and then California and Taiwan.”
As for the stick insect, “It's pretty aggressive for a walking stick,” Lynn Kimsey said, noting that Andy Engilis, curator of the UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, told her about his work in Papua New Guinea. “These walking sticks would actually chase rodents out of their burrows and take over the burrows to rest in,” she related. “That's pretty tough for a walking stick.”
Meanwhile, the Kimseys are enjoying their new namesake. Lynn Kimsey already has seven other species named for her:
- Mystacagenia kimseyae Cambra & Wasbauer 2020 (spider wasp)
- Oligoaster kimseyae Soliman 2013 (tiphiid wasp)
- Exaerate kimseyae Oliviera 2011 (orchid bee)
- Spilomena kimseyae Antropov 1993 (solitary wasp)
- Manaos kimseyae Smith (argid sawfly)
- Spintharina kimseyae Bohart 1987 (cuckoo wasp)
- Neodryinus kimseyae Olmi 1987 (dryinid wasp)
Bob Kimsey has as at least two species named for him: Acordulacera kimseyi Smith, 2010 (sawfly) and Grandiella kimseyi Summers & Schuster (mite).
Shelomi, a Harvard University graduate who received his doctorate from UC Davis in 2014, served as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany for two years before accepting a faculty position in 2017 at National Taiwan University.
Shelomi returned to UC Davis in 2017 to present a seminar on "Revelations from Phasmatodea Digestive Track Transcriptomics,” to the department.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
His seminar, "Telling The Whole Story: Using Native Caterpillars, Their Ecological Connections, and Novel Outreach Tools to Showcase the Importance of Biodiversity," begins at 4:10 p.m. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672
Jaffe relates that he will present "an original photograph and video-packed talk that explores backyard pollinators, plants, parasitoids, and the many caterpillars that are positioned at the center of it all. I will introduce a 'Whole Story' perspective of natural history study and appreciation that just might make you reconsider an herbivore's place in our world. Throughout the presentation, I will relate these topics to my experience with outreach education, showcase invaluable educational tools such as digital microscopes, and be available for discussion about The Caterpillar Lab's outreach techniques and how they might be incorporated into your own work."
Jaffe, a New England-based naturalist, photographer, and educator who works with native insects, is a native of eastern Massachusetts, where he spend his childhood "chasing birds, mucking through ponds, and turning over leaves." For the last seven years, he has been photographing caterpillars and organizing programs "to promote these special creatures to the public." He founded The Caterpillar Lab in 2008 and now "travels across the country working with museums, nature centers, schools, and individual teachers helping native insects find their place in our everyday lives."
Jaffe holds a bachelor's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology (2007) from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and a master's degree in environmental science (2014) from Antioch University New England, Keene, N.H. He served as a lab technician at Harvard Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Labs for a year, gaining experience with caterpillar and ant care and reproduction, ant-caterpillar interaction research and experimental design/implementation; morphological study; native insect collection; natural history guided walks.
On his LinkedIn page, Jaffe describes The Caterpillar Lab, a non-profit corporation, as fostering "greater appreciation and care for the complexity and beauty of our local natural history through live caterpillar educational programs, research initiatives, and photography and film projects. We believe that an increased awareness of one's local environment is the foundation on which healthy and responsible attitudes towards the broader natural systems of this world is built."
The Caterpillar Lab "works with native New England caterpillar species as a resource for art, education, science, and other natural history pursuits," he writes, adding that he shows his fine art collection of caterpillar photographs at galleries and museums across the country; offers educational workshops; and works with BBC as a consultant, providing caterpillars and expertise.
Department seminar coordinator is urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor. For technical issues, she may be reached at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu. (See complete list of spring seminars.)