- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Sparks will discuss "Natural Products – Sources and Inspiration for Insect Control Agents" from 11 to 11:50 a.m. in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Building.
At Dow AgroSciences, Sparks is a research fellow with the Insect Management Group, Discovery Research unit, a position he has held since January 2010.
"Natural products (NPs) have long been used as pesticides and have broadly served as a source of inspiration for a great many commercial synthetic organic fungicides, herbicides and insecticides that are in the market today," Sparks says in his abstract. "In light of the continuing need for new tools to address an ever changing array of fungal, weed and insect pests, NPs continue to be a source of models and templates for the development of new pest control agents. "
"Interestingly, an examination of the literature suggests that NP models exist for many of the pest control agents that were discovered by other means, suggesting that had circumstances been different, these NPs could have served as inspiration for the discovery of a great many more of today's pest control agents. With an emphasis on insecticides, an attempt will be made to answer questions regarding the existence of NP models for existing pesticides, and using the spinosyns as a reference point, what is needed for the discovery of new NPs and NP models for pest control agents."
"Tom Sparks enrolled at UC Riverside to study biological control," recalled Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. “This interest soon took a more physiological and biochemical turn."
“Tom had broad interests even then, ranging from synthesis of juvenile hormone analogs as green pesticides to resistance management, to his thesis work on the fundamental biochemistry of how butterflies and moths undergo metamorphosis.”
Sparks went on to become a professor at Louisiana State University in an academic career spanning from 1978 to 1989. He completed a sabbatical leave at UC Davis in the summer of 1985.
Sparks won the 2012 International Award for Research in Agrochemicals at the American Chemical Society's 244th meeting, in Philadelphia for "research and exceptional accomplishments in applying new technology from a number of disciplines to the discovery of new pest control agents.
“Tom was instrumental in the discovery and development of a new class of insecticides called spinosids,” Hammock said.
In 2009, Sparks was named the 44th Scientist of the Year by the global research and development magazine, R&D. He won that honor via a vote from readers and editors of R&D. Past recipients have included the inventor of the Internet and the first to successfully sequence the entire human genome.
At the time, R&D senior editor Paul Livingstone said: “Tom Sparks is one of the leading entomologists in agroscience and a pioneer in the wave of new green chemistries that are changing the way we control the insects that are a crucial factor in global agriculture." Sparks' research on “green” insecticides led to spinetoram, a highly effective new insecticide chemistry that eliminates toxic side effects in humans and mammals.
Sparks, now a resident of Greenfield, Ind., grew up in California's Central Valley. He received his bachelor's degree in biology from California State University, Fresno, before enrolling in the graduate program at UC Riverside. While at UC Riverside, Sparks won the Outstanding Graduate Student Award from the Entomological Society of America (ESA) and also received a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship.
Both Hammock and Sparks are fellows of ESA.
Livingston said Hammock played an important role in Sparks' development: “While working in the well-known laboratory of Dr. Bruce Hammock, Tom completed key research on hormones that would guide him into the unexplored regions of entomological science.”
More information on the Oct. 16 seminar is available from events manager Jacki Balderama of the UC Davis Biotechnology Program, at jbalderama@ucdavis.edu
Related links:
- Thomas Sparks, First Graduate Student of Bruce Hammock, Wins International Award for Research in Agrochemicals
- Scientist-of-the-Year Thomas Sparks Closely Linked to UC Davis; Bruce Hammock Was His Major Professor
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Chen, an associate project scientist, will discuss the emerald ash borer and the goldspotted oak borer and their interactions with their host plants. His talk is from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall.
Research entomologist Steve Seybold of the USDA's Forest Service and an affiliate of the Department of Entomology and Nematology is the host.
Chen, who holds a master's degree in applied statistics (2010) from Michigan State University, obtained his doctorate in entomology from the University of Georgia in 2007. For his dissertation research, he investigated various effects of nitrogen fertilization on tritrophic interactions among cotton plants, the beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua, and the parasitoid, Cotesia marginiventris. The project integrated ecological, chemical, nutritional, and behavioral elements to evaluate the role of nitrogen in shaping tri-trophic interactions in cotton.
Chen carried out postdoctoral research at Michigan State University's Department of Entomology from 2008 to 2011 on the behavioral, chemical, and nutritional interactions between the invasive emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis, and ash trees. He relocated to UC Davis in July 2011 to lead an effort to improve trapping lures for detection of another invasive pest, the goldspotted oak borer, Agrilus auroguttatus.
In collaboration with research entomologists from the USDA Forest Service, Chen is now working to develop management options for the invasive walnut twig beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, and polyphagous shot hole borer, Euwallacea sp.
Chen's overarching research goals are to build arthropod pest management systems that emphasize naturally occurring pest suppression agents and environmentally friendly tactics, that is, insect sex pheromones and other semiochemicals, in a holistic, ecosystem-based approach. He is also interested in studying pest population dynamics in the context of various pest management tactics, agronomic practices, and abiotic environmental factors (e.g., temperature and precipitation) with mathematical and statistical tools.
Wednesday, Oct. 8
Vaughn Walton
Associate professor and Extension entomologist
Lead investigator, Spotted Wing Drosophila Project
Oregon State University
Title: "Complexities Associated with Two Invasive Pests: Challenges and Opportunities"
Hosts: Assistant professor Joanna Chiu and distinguished professor Frank Zalom, Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Oct. 15
Surendra Dara
Strawberry and Vegetable Crops and affiliated IPM Advisor, University of California Cooperative Extension, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties.
Title: "Thinking Outside the Cubicle to Provide Practical Solutions to the Farmers"
Host: Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Oct. 22
Blaine Cole
Professor, University of Houston, specializing in evolution, ecology and behavior.
Title: "Colony Growth and Fitness in Harvester Ants"
Host: Marshall McMunn, graduate student, Louie Yang lab, Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Oct. 29
Clifford Ohmart
Entomologist and vice president of professional services
SureHarvest, sustainable agriculture
Title: "Sustainable Agriculture: What Is Happening Out on the Farm?"
Host: Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 5
Chuck Fox
Professor, University of Kentucky, specializing in ecology and evolution of life histories; insect-plant interactions; insect behavioral ecology
Title: "Inbreeding-Environment Interactions: Experimental Studies and a Meta Analysis"
Host: Jay Rosenheim, professor, Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 12
Louie Yang
Assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, specializing in ecology
Title: "Pulses, Phenology and Ontogeny: Towards a More Temporally Explicit Framework for Understanding Species Interactions?"
Wednesday, Nov. 19
Ray Hong
Associate professor of biology, California State University, Northridge, specializing in nematology
Title: “A Fatal Attraction: Regulation of Development and Behavior in the Nematode Pristionchus pacificus by a Beetle Pheromone”
Host: Valerie Williamson, professor of nematology, Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 26
Doris Bachtrog, lab
Associate professor, 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
To be announced
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 by Sawyer Brown will be remote broadcast to UC Davis.
Plans call for recording the seminars, coordinated by Professor James Carey, for later posting on the web.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
See Science Express: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/09/10/science.1245993.full.pdf
The paper appears in the Sept. 11 in Science Express, which makes important papers available to readers before they appear in the journal Science. The first-of-its-kind study will appear in a November edition of the journal.
“Evolutionary biology is often overlooked in the study of global challenges,” said lead author Scott Carroll of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the Institute for Contemporary Evolution, also in Davis. “By looking at humanity's problems across the domains of nature conservation, food production and human health, it is clear that we need to strengthen evolutionary biology throughout the disciplines and develop a shared language among them.”
The study, “Applying Evolutionary Biology to Address Global Challenges,” calls attention to how evolutionary biology techniques can be used to address challenges in agriculture, medicine and environmental sciences, said Carroll, noting that these techniques, although seemingly unrelated, work within a similar set of evolutionary processes.
“These techniques range from limiting the use of antibiotics to avoid resistant bacteria and breeding crops with desired benefits such as flood tolerant rice, to less commonly implemented strategies such as gene therapy to treat human disease, and planting non-native plants to anticipate climate change,” Carroll said.
“A particular worry is the unaddressed need for management of evolution that spans multiple sectors, such as occurs in the spread of new infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance genes between natural, human health and agricultural systems.”
Co-lead researcher and biologist Peter Søgaard Jørgensen of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, agrees. “Many of the global challenges we face today have common biological solutions,” he said, “but we can tackle them effectively only if we are aware of successes and progress in all fields using evolutionary biology as a tool.”
In their paper, the nine researchers—two from UC Davis, one from UCLA and six from universities in Denmark, New Zealand, Maine, Minnesota, Washington state and Arizona--crafted a graphic wheel divided into three sectors, food, health and environment and cited the challenges that link them together, including rapid revolution and phenotype environment mismatch in more slowly reproducing or threatened species.
Carroll said the underlying causes of societal challenges such as food security, emerging disease and biodiversity loss “have more in common than we think.”
“Humans, pathogens and all other life on earth adapt to their environment through evolution, but some adaptation happens too quickly and some too slowly to benefit human society,” Carroll said. “Current efforts to overcome societal challenges are likely only to create larger problems if evolutionary biology is not swiftly and widely implementedto achieve sustainable development.”
Society faces two sorts of challenges from evolution, the research team said. “The first occurs when pests and pathogens we try to kill or control persist or even prosper because the survivors and their offspring can resist our actions,” Carroll said. “The second challenge arises when species we value adapt too slowly, including humans.”
Although practices in health, agriculture and environmental conservation differ, each field can better target challenges using the same applications of evolutionary biology, they said.
For example, when a farmer plants a crop that is susceptible to pests, he might actually help the agricultural community as a whole by slowing down evolution of pesticide resistance, the authors said, citing an applied evolutionary biology tactic used in agriculture.
Planting pest-friendly crops has been used in the United States with good results, the team said. Farmers planting these crops slow the evolution of resistance to genetically modified corn and other crops. Pests then reproduce in abundance eating the susceptible plants, and when a rare resistant mutant matures on a toxic diet, it is most likely to mate with a susceptible partner, keeping susceptibility alive. This approach works to suppress the unwanted evolution on the whole, but farmers will have sacrificed a short-term gain for the long-term good.
Similar innovative solutions exist across the fields of medicine and environmental conservation, they said.
“This is an example of how implementing applied evolutionary biology without a plan for regulatory measures may come at short-term costs to some individuals that others may avoid.” Jorgensen said. “By using regulatory tools, decision makers such as local communities and governments play a crucial role in ensuring that everybody gains from the benefits of using evolutionary biology to realize the long-term goals of increasing food security, protecting biodiversity and improving human health and well-being.”
Other co-authors are Michael T. Kinnison, University of Maine; Carl Bergstrom, University of Washington; R. Ford Denison, University of Minnesota; Peter Gluckman, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Thomas B. Smith, UCLA; Sharon Strauss, UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology and Center for Population Biology, and Bruce Tabashnik, University of Arizona.
Carroll is an affiliate of the Sharon Lawler lab, UC Davis Entomology and Nematology. The research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Australian-American Fulbright Commission.
Contact:
Scott Carroll
Email: spcarroll@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 297-6980
Cell: (530) 902-8267
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The award, sponsored by Syngenta Crop Protection, recognizes entomologists who are making significant contributions to agriculture.
Campbell is a research entomologist with the Center for Grain and Animal Health Research Service of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, Manhattan, Kansas.
He received two degrees from Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey: his bachelor's degree in biology in 1988 and master's degree in entomology in 1994. He went on to enroll in the UC Davis graduate program, obtaining his doctorate in 1999. His major professor was Harry Kaya, now emeritus professor of entomology and nematology.
Campbell joined USDA-ARS in 1999 and since then has conducted research focused on the spatial distribution and movement patterns of stored-product insects in food facility landscapes, improving the implementation and interpretation of insect monitoring programs, and determining the impact of different management tactics on pest populations within commercial food facilities.
Campbell honored his major professor during the Harry Kaya Tribute Seminar at the 2011 ESA meeting in Reno.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Hamby received her doctorate in entomology at UC Davis in March 2014, studying with major professor Frank Zalom. She has just accepted a position with the Department of Entomology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Starting in November, she will be an assistant professor of sustainable agroecosystems and will be involved in integrated pest management research, extension, and teaching.
Hamby's expertise includes sustainable integrated pest management strategies for various insect pests. Her dissertation research, titled "Biology and Pesticide Eesistance Management of Drosophila suzukii in Coastal California Berries," covered monitoring, yeast associations, chronobiology, chronotoxicity of insecticides, and the implications of this work to managing a recent invader, the spotted wing drosophila.
The Comstock award is the highest honor given to a graduate student. Hamby will be one of six honored at the national meeting. The others are:
- Eric Bohnenblust, Eastern Branch
- Rebecca Dew, International Branch
- Michael McCarville, North Central Branch
- Amber Dawn Tripodi, Southeastern Branch
- Nathan Lord, Southwestern Branch
Zalom praised Hamby's "established record of excellence in research, mentorship, and leadership." Kelly also received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to study molecular mechanisms of target site resistance to insecticides in this system. In 2011, she was awarded the Lillian and Alex Feir Graduate Student Travel Award in Insect Physiology, Biochemistry, or Molecular Biology from the ESA Pacific Branch.
Hamby received all three of her academic degrees from UC Davis, compiling a near perfect grade point average. While studying for her bachelor's degree in environmental toxicology, specializing in ecotoxicology, she completed the integrated studies honors program and graduated with highest honors, making the dean's honors list.
Hamby has published as a lead author in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals including Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Experimental and Applied Acarology, Journal of Economic Entomology, and PLoS ONE. She co-authored recently published articles in G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics (the open-access journal of the Genetics Society of America), Environmental Entomology, and Acta Horticulturae, and articles submitted to the Journal of Applied Entomology and PLOS Biology.
A member of ESA since 2009, with membership in both the Plant-Insect Ecosystems section and the Physiology, Biochemistry and Toxicolgy sections, Hamby has attended and presented at four ESA annual meetings, and two PBESA meetings. She was invited to present papers in symposia at both the 2012 and 2013 National ESA meetings, and in a symposium at the 2012 PBESA meeting. Hamby has also presented papers at two international conferences including an invited symposium paper at the XXIX International Congress of Entomology in Daegu, Republic of Korea.
Zalom, an integrated pest management specialist and distinguished professor at UC Davis, is president of the 7000-member ESA and will preside over the Portland, Ore., meeting, ESA's 62nd annual meeting.
This is the second consecutive year that a UC Davis graduate student has received the Comstock award. Last year Matan Shelomi, a doctoral candidate who studies with Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis, received the award. The list of UC Davis recipients:
2014: Kelly Hamby
2013: Matan Shelomi
2008: Christopher Barker
1983: Elaine Backus
PBESA is comprised of 11 western states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming), parts of Canada and Mexico, and seven U.S. territories.
The award memorializes John Henry Comstock (1849-1931), an American entomologist, researcher and educator known for his studies of scale insects and butterflies and moths, which provided the basis for systematic classification. Comstock was a member of the faculty of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., for most of his career, except for his service as a chief entomologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1879-81).
