DAVIS--Nematologist Ray Hong, associate professor of biology at California State University, Northridge, will speak on "A Fatal Attraction: Regulation of Development and Behavior in the Nematode Pristionchus pacificus by a Beetle Pheromone” at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar on Wednesday, Nov. 19 in 122 Briggs Hall.

The seminar is from 12:10 to 1 p.m. and will be hosted by UC Davis nematologist Valerie Williamson. It will be recorded for later viewing on UCTV.

"Nematodes and insects are the two most species-rich animal phyla, and nematode-insect associations encompass widespread biological interactions," Hong said. "However, even for the few species-specific insect-nematode associations that have been known for some time, the genetic basis for such interactions remains largely unknown. Previous studies suggest that the beetle host specificity of Pristionchus nematodes is in part due to nematode attraction for various plant volatile compounds released during beetle feeding, as well as for beetle aggregation and sex pheromones during mating. Recent studies from our lab revealed that the role of a specific beetle pheromone is actually more complex and stage-specific."

In his presentation, Hong will show that although the pheromone of oriental beetle (Exomala orientalis) is attractive to Pristionchus pacificus adults, the beetle host pheromone may moderate nematode infection by arresting embryonic development, inducing larval paralysis, and inhibiting dauer larvae resumption of reproductive development.

In addition, "we identified a putative lipid binding protein that mediates both beetle pheromone attraction as well as P. pacificus development," Hong said. "Our data suggests that Ppa-OBI-1 is required to protect P. pacificus larvae against a host beetle pheromone, as well as to enable P. pacificus attraction to the pheromone."

One of the images he will show (see below) is a Serica sp. beetle and an associated Pristionchus sp. nematode. Hong  describes it: "This dissected decomposing Serica sp. beetle from the Los Angeles area is surrounded by bacteria, fungi, and an associated Pristionchus sp. nematode. Superimposed on the beetle is a Pristionchus pacificus nematode expressing the fluorescent GFP pattern of the obi-1 gene that mediates the nematode-beetle interaction. We (the Hong lab) are just beginning to identify the genetic components of this omnipresent but little-understood interaction between nematodes and insects."

Hong received his bachelor's degree in biology from Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., and his doctorate in biology from UC San Diego. He served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen, Germany.

The remaining noon-hour seminars for the fall quarter are:

Wednesday, Nov. 26
Doris Bachtrog, lab
Associate professor of integrative biology, UC Berkeley, specializing in evolutionary and functional genomics
Title: "Numerous Transitions of Sex Chromosomes in Diptera"
Host: Michael Parrella, professor and chair, Department of Entomology and Nematology

Wednesday, Dec. 3
No seminar

Wednesday, Dec. 10
Sawyer Fuller
Postdoctoral researcher, Harvard University
Title: "RoboBee: Using the Engineering Toolbox to Understand the Flight Apparatus of Flying Insects"
Host: James Carey, distinguished professor of entomology
This seminar is being remote broadcast to UC Davis via internet

Contacts:

Steve Nadler, sanadler@ucdavis.edu
Professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology

Jesael "Jesa" David, jcdavid@ucdavis.edu 
Student Affairs Officer, Graduate Programs
Plant Pathology, Entomology and Nematology 

DAVIS--Teriyaki-flavored grasshopper kebobs: Yum or yecch? 

The protein-rich delicacies drew mixed reactions at the “Bugs and Beer” event hosted recently in the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science's Silverado Vineyards Sensory Theatre at the University of California, Davis.

“Don't worry—be hoppy,” celebrity bug chef David George Gordon, author of the award-winning “Eat-a-Bug” cookbook, told the budding entomophagists as they eyed the colorful kebobs threaded with grasshoppers and green and red peppers. 

Quipped Gordon:  “Some people call them 'sheesh-kebobs.'” 

Gordon, from Seattle, joined “The Pope of Foam” Charlie Bamforth--the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences in the UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology--to pair six bug dishes with six different beers.  The theme: “Bugs and Beer—Why Crickets and Kölsch Might Be Matches Made in Heaven."

Their quips and puns punctuated the four-hour event. Coordinator Elizabeth Luu, a UC Davis student-employee at RMI who originated the idea of the beer-bug fest, praised the humorous duo as “a match made in heaven.” 

Clare Hasler-Lewis, RMI executive director, welcomed the capacity crowd.  “Who's going to want to eat bugs--and drink beer with them? I did eat a cricket this morning—without beer—and it was good.” 

Luu, who said she occasionally practices entomopaghy, told her fellow bug eaters:  "The more disgusting the bug, the more I want to eat it." She recalled the day she approached Bamforth in his classroom and asked “What do you think about this, pairing beer with bugs?” He deadpanned: “I think I should kick you out of the room today." 

As it turned out, the beer-bug fest was a kick: “one of the best-ever events we've had at RMI,” said Hasler-Lewis, who said "Let's do this again!" Some participants asked that it be an annual event. 

Gordon and Bamforth paired:

• Flavored mealworms with Ruhstaller Gilt Edge Lager
• Wasabi sago worms with Lagunitas Pils
• Baked European house crickets with Sudwerk Hefeweizen
• Cambodian crickets with Gordon Biersch Winterbock
• Ant and pear salad with Sierra Nevada Boomerang IPA
• Teriyaki grasshopper kebobs with Rubicon Angus Scottish Ale
• Cricket flour cookies with Heretic Chocolate Hazelnut Porter
• Chocolate-dipped chapulines (grasshoppers) with Berryessa Whippersnapper English Mild

UC Davis students majoring in food science, brewing science, or entomology prepared the bug dishes, using the chef's bugs and recipes.

Entomologist Danielle Wishon, a UC Davis graduate now with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, cooked in the kitchen and sampled the bugs.

"This event was a fun way to introduce a sustainable food supply that is as common in other areas of the world as our hamburger," Wishon said. "While I don't expect the 'cricket burger' to replace hamburger anytime soon, it is important that we start opening our food horizons now before it is no longer a choice. I spent all my time in the kitchen--which is laughable for anyone who knows me--but if anything could make that happen it would be by putting insects in the kitchen with me. This was an experience I will not soon forget! Strangely, my friends and family have declined to let me practice my new cooking skill to make them dinner."

Anne Schellman, manager of the UC Davis California Center for Urban Horticulture who attended with friend Javier Miramontes, a community education specialist for UC Agriculture and Natural Resources in Fresno, said her favorites were the European house crickets andgrasshopper kebobs.  “They were both chewy but crunchy and had good flavor,” she said.

She wasn't so sure about the Cambodian crickets.  “I ate the head and part of the body--after I pulled off the legs and played with the wings,” Schellman said. “It was just too darned big and intimidating to eat it (all).”

 “It had an interesting flavor, and the ‘meat' inside actually kind of looked like an artichoke heart in coloring and also texture. Javier ate the cricket whole--I didn't even see him do it he was so fast. A piece of leg got stuck in his throat, and he was trying to keep from gagging, poor guy!”

Ursula Selby, a UC Davis junior majoring in neurobiology, physiology and behavior, attended with her husband Ian Gamble. “I've always wanted to eat sago worms ever since I saw the movie, 'The Lion King,'" she said. “The movie made the sago worms look delicious.”  

And they were, Selby confirmed.  

Sago worms are the immature larvae of the red palm weevil. “Sago worms eat palm trees, and we can't import sago worms,” Gordon said. “If they got loose in Los Angeles, they would change the identity of the city.”

RMI program representative Evan White, who does design and communications, said he especially loved two dishes: the pear-spinach-ant salad “with the crunchy weaver ants” and  the dessert, the chocolate-dipped chapuline grasshoppers. “But then anything with chocolate is delicious,” White said.

White did not eat the Cambodian crickets, which he described as “as big as a small mouse,” and which Bamforth characterized as “a full-flavored meat dish.”

 “How many of you ate the full-flavored meat dish?” Bamforth asked after the pairing. “How many of you drank the beer?”

The beer won.  

In his talk on "Adventures in Entomophagy: “Waiter, There's No Fly in My Soup!” Gordon said that 80 percent of the world's culture eat bugs and two-thirds of all animal species are insects. "Bug-eating is good for the planet. Bugs are nutritious, delicious, cheap and plentiful.” 

 “John the Baptist was the most famous bug eater,” Gordon said. “The Bible tells us he ate locusts and honey. Angelina Jolie is the second most famous bug-eater. And I'm third, the godfather of insect cuisine.”

 “Whether a country eats bugs has a lot to do with dependence on agriculture,” Gordon said. “Insects are in direct competition with humans for food. But as the human population grows, we can't feed them all (what Americans are accustomed to eating). People are eating hamburgers when they should be eating bugs.”

 Raising cows, pigs and sheep is a “tremendous waste of the planet's resources, but bug ranching is pretty benign,” Gordon  said. With cows, “it takes the equivalent of 16 pounds of grain and 2000 gallons of water to get one pound of steak." And the resulting greenhouse gases are not good for the planet, either, he pointed out.

 “In our culture, bugs are often considered a novelty food, such as tequila-flavored lollipops,” the chef told the crowd.  However, cricket energy bars "have gone mainstream," and cookies made with cricket flour are becoming more and more popular.

 “Insects are the food of the future,” Gordon declared.

 He cautioned that all bugs should be cooked, as cooking kills any parasites.  Bug chefs must also take special precautions in preparing stinging arthropods. 

He paused.  “How many of you take calcium pills? If your fingernails keep breaking, eat more crickets. They're rich in calcium. And how many of you are anemic? Termites are rich in iron.”

Food choice is just a matter of what we're accustomed to eating,” Gordon said.  He asked how many eat sushi (raw fish), pickled pig's feet, chicken eggs and lobster. “Lobster used to be served to inmates in prison on the East Coast. And talk about the all-time weird food--the chicken egg comes from the butt of a chicken."

You shouldn't eat  just any bug, Gordon said “You don't want to eat that cockroach that crawled under your refrigerator or a bug in the field sprayed with pesticides.” He advocates that “you raise your own insects under hygienic conditions or order bugs from supply companies.”

Gordon said it's only right—and it's justice--that we humans eat the pests that eat our food in our garden. Tomato hornworms, for one.  One of his recipes calls for tomato green hornworms, with olive oil, green tomatoes, pepper, white cornmeal and basil. Gordon said it's important to be environmentally friendly and not to use pesticides, especially if you're going to eat the pests.

Gordon said the key ingredients in his signature dish, “Orthopteran Orzo” (orzo is a rice-shaped pasta) are three-week old cricket nymphs. Gordon recalled serving the dish at one event and a young boy, a pre-teen, kept returning for more. “Don't they ever feed you at home?” Gordon asked him after the fourth helping. “But this is way better than anything my mom makes,” the boy said.

In his talk titled "Bugs Are No Strangers to Brewers," Bamforth discussed the intricacies of  beer brewing and why he paired certain beers with certain bug dishes. He also touched on beer preference:  what some people love, others may loathe. Bamforth likened some beers (not served at the event) as reminding him of “cat's breath, newly filled baby diapers, and wet horse blanket with mouse pee.” At one beer tasting, a beer reminded him of “a wet dog urinating in a telephone booth.”

Bamforth said bugs and beer go together in another way, but not a good way. A beer's key ingredient is a grain, and insects may contaminate them. For example, hop aphids may contaminate hops and the saw-toothed beetles, the rice. Grain contamination can also involve such organisms as bacteria, powdery mildew virus and fungi

Some of the entomophagists at the bug-beer fest jokingly inquired if the bugs displayed by the Bohart Museum of Entomology were for eating, as well as for viewing. Arachnids included  Tanzanian Giant Whipspider, Costa Rican Red Tarantula and Salmon Pink Bird-Eating Tarantula.

“No, they're not for eating,” said White, holding a millipede as people milled around him talking about Gordon's recipes, including “Superworm Tempura With Plum Dipping Sauce,” “Pest-O,” “Larval Latkes,” “Curried Termite Stew,”  “Cream of Katydid Soup,“ and "Ant Jemina's Buckwheat-Bug Griddlecakes.”

In fact, Gordon said millipedes are poisonous and should not be substituted for centipedes in recipes. He writes in his cookbook: "These animals (millipedes) secrete a foul-smelling fluid that, in some species, may contain traces of hydrogen cyanide--not good, unless you're from the Borgia household."

DAVIS--Community ecologist Louie Yang, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will speak on "Pulses, Phenology and Ontogeny: Towards a More Temporally Explicit Framework for Understanding Species Interactions?" at his seminar from 12:10 to 1 p.m.on Wednesday, Nov. 12 in 122 Briggs.

His seminar will be recorded for later viewing on UCTV.

"Ecologists have long recognized that species interactions change over time, due to temporal variation in abiotic environments and in the abundance and relative life stages of interacting species," Yang says. "Despite - or perhaps because of - the ubiquitous role of time in structuring species interactions, other aspects of community complexity have often been emphasized ahead of temporal complexity. However, a growing emphasis on understanding how phenology, ontogeny, stage-structure and transient event-driven dynamics affect species interactions may signal the re-emergence of a 'temporally explicit' perspective in community ecology. A temporally explicit view of community ecology aims to understand how species interactions change over time, and the consequences of shifts in this timing."

 In his talk he will suggest "how a temporally explicit view of species interactions could build upon the ubiquitous and implicit consideration of time that is already fundamental to ecology. If we step away from common simplifying assumptions about the constancy of community structure and process, what new questions emerge? This introduction to the session will attempt to identify some common themes that are emerging from a temporally explicit perspective in ecology, illustrated with examples from recent studies in multiple systems."

Yang said the key emerging themes of this synthesis are

1. In systems where multiple dynamic processes operate on different timescales, it is important to consider sequential (as opposed to strictly alternative) hypotheses;
2. The study of species interactions should consider both phenology and ontogeny, especially when stage-structured interactions occur throughout life histories;
3. Biotic and abiotic constraints on species interactions can define windows of opportunity in time, where quantitative shifts in the timing of key events (such as physical disturbances or resource pulses) can qualitatively alter life history outcomes;
4. A temporally explicit perspective seeks to explain the mechanisms of historical contingency in community assembly; and
5. The continued development of a temporally explicit perspective in ecology is important for understanding how real-world species interactions are coordinated in time, and the potential implications of disrupting this coordination.

Yang's research interests include community ecology, species interactions, temporal variation, extreme events in nature, and the integration of ontogeny and phenology. Last year received a prestigious National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award of $600,000. He was one of four young UC Davis faculty members selected for the award.  Yang is studying the importance of timing in interactions between plants, animals and their environment, specifically studying the monarch butterfly and milkweed. Species interactions change with the seasons and with different life stages, and climate change may disrupt these interactions, for example, if caterpillars emerge before food sources are available. 

Yang earned his bachelor's degree (ecology and evolution) from Cornell University in 1999 and his doctorate from UC Davis in 2006, studying with entomology professor and ecologist Rick Karban. Yang conducted postdoctoral research at UC Santa Barbara before returning to UC Davis as a faculty member in 2009. While at UC Santa Barbara, he served as a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology.

DAVIS--Whales and monarch butterflies aren't the only animals that migrate to overwintering sites, although they get the most human attention. 

“Equally apparent are the migrations of insects like armyworm moths and locusts that have severe negative impacts on agricultural systems,” says Hugh Dingle, an emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, and a worldwide authority on animal migration. 

“What is not so appreciated, however, are the numerous tiny insects, mites, and spiderlings that also migrate.” 

 “Even to the most casual observer of nature it is apparent that migration is a conspicuous behavior for many organisms,” said Dingle,  author of the newly published second edition of Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move (Oxford University Press), a sequel to the first edition published in 1996. “The great whales move up and down our coasts and are often viewable from promontories like Pt. Reyes; millions of birds appear in high latitudes to breed in the spring and depart in the fall; and millions of bright orange monarch butterflies inspire awe with their migrations from North America to overwintering sites in Mexico or on the coast of California.”

Winged aphids and ballooning spiders often escape the human eye. ““On summer evenings at temperate latitudes the air to considerable altitudes is often filled with winged aphids and ballooning spiders that with the aid of selected winds can migrate for hundreds or even thousands of kilometers,” he said. “Birds, grasshoppers, and moths are also adept at selecting winds of the right speed and direction, the more impressive because many of these migrations are at high altitude or at night when the ground cannot provide information on direction. Recent studies have shown that information may be derived from the kinetic energy of wind turbulence.” 

Why is it important to understand the biological basis of migration and its evolution? “ Because migration is so widespread and because migrants have such impact on both natural and man-altered ecosystems,” he said.  

The  book covers a wide taxonomic diversity of organisms from aphids to whales. Included is a discussion of recently developed techniques, such as radar and geolocators, used for tracking migrants. “These methods,” Dingle said, “reveal just how astonishing some migratory journeys can be; godwits and plovers, for example, make nonstop flights over the central Pacific Ocean from Alaska to Australia and New Zealand.” 

However, not all migration is a round trip; sometimes it's one-way.  “Important defining behavioral characteristics are specific departure and arrival tactics and the refusal to stop even in favorable habitats until the migration program is complete,” Dingle says. “In the words of National Geographic reporter David Quammen migrants ‘are flat-out just gonna get there.' 

“The program or syndrome includes specific modifications of metabolic physiology like enhanced fat storage to fuel migration and of sensory systems to detect inputs from the sun, stars, and magnetic field lines to determine compass direction. Intimately involved in the latter are daily and yearly biological clocks. The pathway followed is an outcome of the syndrome of migratory behavior and is part of the ecology that provides the natural selection acting to determine the evolution of migration.” 

This interaction between behavior and outcome is a unique aspect of this book. Another important focus: he covers the relation between migration and life histories, including the evolutionary genetics of the relationship. Long-distance round-trips, for example, require long lifespans, hence most insects, although not all, migrate only one-way. 

“Natural selection acts differently on long versus short lives. With long lives there are usually many opportunities to produce offspring; with short lives there may be only one,” Dingle said. “Thus reproductive opportunities may determine when and where to migrate. Migrating aphids postpone reproduction until they colonize new host plants; birds reproduce following migration in the spring, but not in the fall. Some birds and insects use migration to exploit ‘rich patches' and breed in different places in different years or even in the same year. 

There are also insects that alternate between winged generations for migration and colonization and wingless generations devoted exclusively to high reproductive effort once colonization is accomplished. Genes influence not only migratory effort but also the relation between behavior, reproduction, and morphological traits such as wing length (longer narrower wings in migrants). 

Dingle said the full understanding of migration, or “life on the move,” involves genetics, physiology, and morphology, as well as behavior and ecology. 

“'They are flat-out just gonna get there,' as David Quammen said.” 

National Geographic featured Dingle in its cover story on “Great Migrations”  in November 2010.  LiveScience interviewed him for its November 2010 piece on“Why Do Animals Migrate?”

Dingle, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Animal Behavior Society, has done research throughout the world, including the UK, Kenya, Thailand, Panama, Germany and  Australia. 

He served as a professor at UC Davis Department of Entomology from 1982 to 2002, achieving emeritus status in 2003. He chaired the Animal Behavior Graduate Group from 1985 to 1988; and was acting director of the Animal Behavior Center, 2000-2002.

Dingle is a former secretary of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology and past president of the Animal Behavior Society.