- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The Zoom link is https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/92038151658, ID 920 3815 1658. (Contact Page at mpage@ucdavis.edu for the passcode.)
Page will present her dissertation research that investigates the impacts of increasing honey bee abundance on plant-pollinator interactions and plant pollination. Her work suggests that honey bees reduce pollen and nectar availability in flowers, leading to competitive displacement of native bees.
"Competitive displacement of native bees may in turn decrease plant pollination because native bees are often more effective than native bees as pollinators," Page says. "My research suggests that such changes are already occurring for Camassia quamash (small camas) following honey bee introductions in the Sierra Nevada."
Page is scheduled to receive her doctorate in entomology in June 2022 and then begin a postdoctoral fellowship with assistant professor Scott McArt at Cornell University, where she will investigate patterns of interspecific pathogen transmission and how more sustainable beekeeping practices might mitigate the negative effects of competition. McArt recently delivered a seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology on "Pesticide Risk to Pollinators: What We Know and What We Need to Know Better."
Page holds a master's degree in entomology (2019) from UC Davis and a bachelor's degree in biology (2016), cum laude, from Scripps College, Claremont, Calif.
Highly recognized for her work, Page received a three-year $115,000 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, funded by the Department of Defense. She was one of 69 recipients out of more than 3600 applicants. She earlier won a campuswide 2016-17 Graduate Scholars Fellowship of $25,200; a Vansell Scholarship in both 2018 and 2019; and Davis Society Botanical grants in 2017, 2018 and 2019. A 2018 Duffey-Dingle Research Fellowship also helped fund her research (optimizing pollinator plant mixes to simultaneously support wild and managed bees).
Active in the Entomological Society of America and the Ecological Society of America, Page scored a second-place award for her project, "Optimizing Wildflower Plant Mixes to Support Wild and Managed Bees" in a 2021 student competition hosted by the Entomological Society of America. She also presented “Impacts of Honey Bee Introductions on the Pollination of a Sierra Wildflower" at the August 2020 meeting of the Ecological Society of America, and "Can Visitation and Pollen Transport Patterns Predict Plant Pollination?" at the April 2019 meeting of the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America.
A strong supporter of community outreach and STEM, Page has been active in the summer program, Girls Outdoor Adventure and Leadership (GOALS) since August 2017. The free program is targeted for teens underrepresented in STEM. Page has served as a program co-organizer, mentor and lecturer. Part of her work included helping organize the 2021 summer program, leading a lecture on introductory data analysis, and helping students with their community science project (identifying pollinators in urban gardens).
Page was also active in Center for Land-Based Learning, serving as a mentor in the Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship. She mentored high school students, engaging them in hands-on conservation science at Say Hay Farm in Yolo County, and teaching them about how wildflower plantings benefit bees.
In July 2019, Page collaborated with colleagues at Cornell and the University of Minnesota to present a workshop on the intersections of science and social justice, aiming to make science more open and accessible.
Page and postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson of Williams lab recently co-authored the cover story, A Meta-Analysis of Single Visit Pollination Effectiveness Comparing Honeybees and other Floral Visitors, in the American Journal of Botany
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The seminar begins at 4:10 p.m. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/99515291076
"The use of synthetic chemical pesticides is central to current agricultural practices worldwide," McArt says in his abstract. "But what is the cost to wildlife via non-target exposures? This talk will summarize when there's risk to bees, when there isn't, and what types of research are most likely to influence farmers, regulatory agencies, and policy makers."
McArt, who joined the Cornell faculty in 2017, focuses his research on pollinator health and ecology. His areas of expertise include disease ecology, ecotoxicology, community ecology, chemical ecology, and plant-pollinator interactions. He maintains his lab research site at https://blogs.cornell.edu/mcartlab/.
"Research in our lab focuses on the impact of pesticides, pathogens, and habitat on honey bees and wild bees," he writes on his website. "We are particularly interested in scientific research that can inform management decisions by beekeepers, growers and the public. Current research projects include: 1) Understanding pesticide exposure and risk to bees in multiple land management contexts, 2) Combining empirical data with network modeling to understand pathogen transmission in complex plant-pollinator networks, and 3) Understanding how habitat enhancements (e.g., flowers at solar power sites) impact pollinator populations and the services they provide to agriculture."
McArt's duties at Cornell also include director of the Cornell Chemical Ecology Core Facility, and associate curator of the Cornell University Insect Collection.
He writes a monthly column, Notes from the Lab, in American Bee Journal; each month he summarizes scientific publications for a non-scientific audience. "The goal is to make the emerging pollinator health science more approachable and relevant to beekeepers," he says.
He is also a member of the New York State (NYS) Beekeeper Tech Team, which works directly with NYS beekeepers to improve honey bee health, reduce colony losses, and increase profitability of the state's beekeeping industry: https://pollinator.cals.cornell.edu/nys-beekeeper-tech-team/
In addition, McArt coordinates such beekeeping workshops as "Introduction to Honey Bee Queen Rearing" and "Honey Bee Biology and Disease Management for Veterinarians" and engages with growers regarding pesticide risk to bees and creating pollinator-friendly habitat. His extension materials are onsite.
When asked "What gets you out of bed in the morning?" during a new faculty interview, he responded "Most of the factors contributing to declines in bee health (pesticide exposure, lack of floral resources, disease, inadequate management practices) are preventable. With targeted research efforts and educated stakeholders, regulatory agencies and public, we can make a difference."
McArt holds a bachelor of arts degree in environmental and evolutionary biology (2001) from Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., and a master's degree in biological sciences (2006) from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He received his doctorate in entomology in 2012 from Cornell University. He served as a USDA-NIFA (National Institute of Food and Agriculture) postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amhurst, in 2014, and then as a research scientist at Cornell from 2014 to 2017, before joining the Cornell faculty.
Nematologist Shahid Siddique, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is coordinating the spring seminars. For Zoom technical issues, contact him at ssiddique@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Honey bee geneticist and UC Davis alumnus Robert E. Page Jr., will teach a course on "The Social Contract: from Rousseau to the Honey Bee" on Monday, Feb. 7 from 2 to 4 p.m. He is an emeritus professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and a university provost emeritus and a regents' professor emeritus at Arizona State University. A UC Davis alumnus and the 2019 recipient of the UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Award, administered by the UC Davis Emeriti Association, Page has published more than 230 research papers and three books on honey bee genetics and behavior. Course specifics: 213SNR388 $25 Zoom.
Molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and a Chancellor's Fellow, will cover "The Circadian Clock and Chronomedicine" on Wednesday, March 23 from 10 a.m. to noon. Chiu, who holds a doctorate in molecular genetics from New York University, received postdoctoral training at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University. Course specifics: 213SNR383 $25 Zoom.
Social Contract: from Rousseau to the Honey Bee Animals
"Animals that live together in a society, like the social insects, have a tacit agreement, a social contract, that guarantees that their interests are protected in exchange for their social cooperation," Page says. "Like social contracts that bind human societies, this contract isn't written on paper, it is implied, though in humans its enforcement is expressed in explicit written laws and national constitutions. The social contract of insects has been written by natural selection in their DNA over thousands of generations. In this class we will explore elements of the social contract of honey bee societies, its origins and 'laws for enforcement,' and the social services honey bees get as a consequence of being members of a society. Specifically, we will explore their systems of national defense, internal police, public works, public health and border control. Without these features, their society would fail, as would ours. Discover what we can learn about ourselves from studying social insects."
"The circadian clock is an internal body clock that controls all aspects of physiology and behavior in every single one of us. It interprets environmental and metabolic time cues to ensure our body performs at its best," Chiu says. "A sequel to the OLLI course 'What Time is it and Why Does it Matter?,' this course will revisit the very important, yet infrequently discussed physiological machinery that controls sleep- wake cycles, hormone production and immune system. Because disruptions in the circadian clock have been associated with a range of human diseases, we will highlight life-style choices and work schedules that cause clock disruptions. Finally, we will discuss new strategies in the medical field that leverage circadian biology concepts to increase the efficacy of medical treatments."
OLLI is headquartered at 463 California Ave. Davis, CA 95616. Members of the UC Davis Retirees' Association and the UC Davis Emeriti Association are offered a complimentary course credit equivalent to their paid OLLI membership fee.
The annual OLLI membership is $60 for the academic year (Oct. 4, 2021- June 30, 2022). More information on OLLI, which is part of the UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education, is available online or contact (530) 752-9695 or olli@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“I was thrilled to be invited to write this perspectives/review of my scientific career; it is a collection of 30 years of single-minded focus on one question,” said Page, who is renowned for his research on honey bee behavior and population genetics, particularly the evolution of complex social behavior, and for his work on the first genomic map of the honey bee.
"The editors contacted me to write a perspectives/review that focuses on my own work, a study in complex adaptation,” Page related. “This is the first time they have done a perspectives article like this. I was, of course, honored. More than half of the work was done at UC Davis.”
“Understanding the organization and evolution of social complexity is a major task because it requires building an understanding of mechanisms operating at different levels of biological organization from genes to social interactions,” Page wrote in his abstract. “I discuss here, a unique forward genetic approach spanning more than 30 years beginning with human-assisted colony-level selection for a single social trait, the amount of pollen honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) store. The goal was to understand a complex social trait from the social phenotype to genes responsible for observed trait variation.”
“The approach,” Page wrote, “combined the results of colony-level selection with detailed studies of individual behavior and physiology resulting in a mapped, integrated phenotypic architecture composed of correlative relationships between traits spanning anatomy, physiology, sensory response systems, and individual behavior that affect individual foraging decisions. Colony-level selection reverse engineered the architecture of an integrated phenotype of individuals resulting in changes in the social trait. Quantitative trait locus (QTL) studies combined with an exceptionally high recombination rate (60 kb/cM), and a phenotypic map, provided a genotype–phenotype map of high complexity demonstrating broad QTL pleiotropy, epistasis, and epistatic pleiotropy suggesting that gene pleiotropy or tight linkage of genes within QTL integrated the phenotype. Gene expression and knockdown of identified positional candidates revealed genes affecting foraging behavior and confirmed one pleiotropic gene, a tyramine receptor, as a target for colony-level selection that was under selection in two different tissues in two different life stages. The approach presented here has resulted in a comprehensive understanding of the structure and evolution of honey bee social organization.”
Page, who received his doctorate in entomology (1980) from UC Davis, joined the UC Davis entomology faculty in 1989, and chaired the department from 1999-2004. In 2004, Arizona State University recruited him as founding director of its School of Life Sciences. His career advanced from dean of Life Sciences, to vice provost and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, to university provost. Today he holds the titles of ASU provost emeritus, ASU Regents professor emeritus, and UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor, an award bestowed in 2019.
At UC Davis, Page worked closely with Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., (the father of honey bee genetics) for whom the university's bee facility is named.
For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a UC Davis honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. Together they discovered a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees.
Page has authored than 250 research papers, including five books: among them, The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution, published by Harvard University Press in 2013. His most recent book is The Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies, published by Oxford University Press 2020. (See news release on why bees are both artists and engineers.)
Page is a highly cited author on such topics as Africanized bees, genetics and evolution of social organization, sex determination, and division of labor in insect societies.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Niño, known internationally for her expertise on honey bee queen biology, chemical ecology, and genomics, joined the faculty in September of 2014 and maintains laboratories and offices in Briggs Hall and at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility.
Niño serves as the director of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMBP), which she launched in 2016. The California Master Beekeeper Program is a continuous train-the-trainer effort. CAMBP's vision is to train beekeepers to effectively communicate the importance of honey bees and other pollinators within their communities, serve as mentors for other beekeepers, and become the informational conduit between the beekeeping communities throughout the state and UCCE staff.
Niño is also the faculty director of the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, the department's half-acre educational bee garden located next to the Laidlaw facility, which serves as the outdoor classroom for the Pollinator Education Program, lovingly known as PEP.
“My research interests are fluid and designed to address immediate needs of various agriculture stakeholder groups,” she writes on her website. “Projects encompass both basic and applied approaches to understanding and improving honey bee health and particularly honey bee queen health. Ongoing research projects include understanding queen mating and reproductive processes, discovery and evaluation of novel biopesticides for efficacy against varroa mites, and evaluating orchard management practices with a goal of improving honey bee health. Some of our more fun projects revolve around precision beekeeping and investigate the use of cutting edge technologies to make beekeeping more efficient and sustainable.”
Niño says she “greatly enjoys working with the community and especially with children. To ensure that our future researchers, agriculture leaders and innovators and future voters understand the importance of honey bees and other pollinators to our agroecosystems.”
“Our Pollinator Education Program at the Häagen Dazs Honey Bee Haven garden has been working with the Farms of Amador County to serve third grade students and we are planning on expanding our efforts in the near future and as the pandemic hopefully resolves.”
Niño received her bachelor's degree in animal science from Cornell University in 2003; her master's degree in entomology at North Carolina State University in 2006; and her doctorate at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in 2012. She served as a postdoctoral fellow, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA), as a member of the PSU Center for Pollinator Research.
Niño has a varied entomology background. While working on her bachelor's degree at Cornell, she was involved in studies on darkling beetle control in poultry houses, pan-trapped horse flies, and surveyed mosquitoes in New York state. While working toward her master's degree at North Carolina State University, she studied dung beetle nutrient cycling and its effect on grass growth, effects of methoprene (insect grown regular) on dung beetles in field and laboratory settings, and assisted in a workshop on forensic entomology.