DAVIS--Graduate student Katharina Ullmann of the Neal Williams lab will present a seminar on "Squash Bee Persistence in Agricultural Landscapes: the Role of Connectivity and Disturbance" from 12:10 to 1 p.m., Wednesday, June 4 in 122 Briggs Hall.

This is the last in the series of spring seminars hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. It will be video-recorded for later posting on UCTV.

The squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa) is an important pollinator of squash and pumpkin, Ulmann says. Squash bees collect pollen only from plants in the genus Cucurbita. Like many native bees, they nest in the ground. 

"It is well documented that wild native bees can benefit many crops through increased seed and fruit set, thus providing sustainable pollination alternatives in cases of honey bee decline and increased honey bee rental prices," Ullmann said. "Yet, it is unclear how to best manage crop systems to support wild native bees. Research on enhancing wild native bees has historically focused on field border management. However, to ensure the sustainability of a crop-pollination system, a comprehensive approach should also include within field practices."

"Promoting a whole-farm pollinator management strategy is especially important given that agricultural intensification is associated with practices that negatively impact wild native bees. Whole-farm strategies may provide effective alternatives for growers who are slow to adopt resource-intensive, border-management practices. The proposed project will contribute to our understanding of these strategies by determining the impact of tillage practices and crop rotations on a ground-nesting, native bee that is an important pollinator in a specialty crop system."

Ullmann said that cucurbita crops (including squash and pumpkin) rely on pollinators to set fruit. "The specialist squash bee, Peponapis pruinosa, is an important pollinator of Cucurbita and can reduce grower reliance on rented honey bee colonies. In-field management is particularly relevant for this species given that it nests preferentially below its host's vines. I will use observational surveys and manipulative experiments to identify crop rotation schemes and tillage practices that benefit P. pruinosa. These results provide insights into how species persist in agricultural landscapes, with an emphasis on the roles of connectivity and disturbance."

Ullmann, who is expected to receive her doctorate in entomology in September 2014, researches population persistence in dynamic landscapes, and on-farm beneficial insect habitat enhancements. Her interests also include supporting citizen science, translating research related to pollinator conservation and encouraging dialogue between researchers and farmers.

She developed a native bee YouTube channel aimed at providing a direct line of communication between university researchers, farmers and the general public. In addition, she developed the blog Pollinator Farm and associated social media handles on Twitter and Facebook.

Ullmann  presented her work at the 2013 UC Cooperative Extension Farmer Workshop, 2012 North American Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting, 2011 Entomology Society of America annual meeting and the 2011 Ecology Society of America meeting, and at the 2009 Entomology Society of America annual meeting.  She presented a native bee identification workshop for U.S. Forest Service personnel in 2010.

Ullmann served as the 2010 teaching assistant for Introduction to Sustainable Agriculture and has presented at more than 20 workshops on enhancing habitat for native bees around northern California. In 2007, she attended The Bee Course in Portal, Ariz., a 10-day native bee identification field course organized by the American Museum of Natural History. (One of the instructors is native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis.)

She has served as a volunteer with the Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship (SLEWS) Center for Land-Based Learning  program and U.S. Fish and Wildlife RESTORE. Both programs aim to engage youth by restoring native bee habitat on farms and schools.

Ullmann received her bachelor's degree in biology, with honors, from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland in 2002. She received a graduate student research grant in 2013 from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (WSARE) to study “Best Management Practices that Promote Sustainable Crop Pollination: The Role of Crop Rotations and Tillage Depth."

While at UC Davis, she has also received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program Award, George H. Vansell Scholarship (twice), Teledyne Entomology Scholarship (twice), Jastro Shields Award, and the Robin Magee Memorial Fellowship.

Her publications include:

• Ullmann, K. and N. Williams. 2013. Spatiotemporal connectivity explains bee population density in a dynamic landscape. (in submission)
• Ullmann, K. and N. Williams. 2013. Effects of tillage practices on offspring survival of a ground nesting bee. (in preparation)
• Wilkerson, M, K. Ward, N. Williams, K. Ullmann, and T. Young. 2013. Diminishing returns from higher density restoration seedings suggest tradeoffs in pollinator seed mixes. (in review)
• Kremen, C., K. Ullmann, and R. Thorp. 2011. Evaluating the quality of citizen-scientist data on pollinator communities. Conservation Biology. 25:607
• K. Ullmann and N. Williams. 2010. Bringing native bees and forbs back to agricultural landscapes. Native Grasslands Journal. Summer 2010
• K. Ullmann, M. Vaughan, C. Kremen, T. Shih, and M. Shepherd. 2010. California Pollinator Project: Citizen Scientist Pollinator Monitoring Guide. Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, Portland, OR pp 40 

DAVIS--Andrea Lucky, assistant research scientist with the Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of Florida, and  recipient of a doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, will speak on "From Pavement Ants to Population Genetics: Citizen Science Today and Tomorrow" from 12:10 to 1 p.m., Wednesday, May 28 in 122 Briggs Hall.

Host is graduate student Katharina Ullmann of the Neal Williams lab. Plans are to video-record the seminar for later posting on UCTV.

"Citizen Science is a powerful tool that scientists can use to harness the power of the public," Lucky says. "Public participation in science offers both scientific and educational benefits, including the possibility of massive and openly accessible data. This approach holds the promise of a new way of doing science and a new way of learning science, but also poses challenges of organization, quality control and funding. Two projects, the School of Ants and Backyard Bark Beetles, were developed to address the main concerns with Citizen Science projects, and demonstrate how modern public participation in science can be an effective tool for teaching science and investigating topics including, but not limited to biodiversity, invasive species, population genetics, and systematics."

Lucky describes herself as "an insect systematist and science communicator with a particular interest in ants and citizen science."

Lucky, a graduate of Brown University, Providence, R.I., with a bachelor's degree in biology, with honors, received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 2010, working with major professor/ant specialist Phil Ward.

She joined the University of Florida in 2012 after serving as a postdoctoral researcher and director of the School of Ants citizen science project from 2010 to 2012 in the Department of Biology, North Carolina State University (NCSU). In 2009-10, she worked with Conservation International, Rapid Assessment Program, conducting ant biodiversity surveys in Papua, New Guinea: field collections, specimen sorting, curation and analysis.

Lucky was an invited speaker at the 2012 International Congress of Entomology, Daegu, South Korea, Aug 2012. She has also presented her work at the Entomological Society of America (ESA), and Pacific Branch of ESA and has taught numerous classes, seminars and workshops. At UC Davis, she designed a course on “Insects and the Media,” which she taught in the spring of 2006 and the fall of 2008.

Among her honors and awards:

• Global Change Award, NCSU Global Change Forum/NC Museum of Natural Sciences, 2011
• Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, UC Davis, 2009
• Center  for Population Biology Research Awards, UC Davis, 2007, 2009    
• Australian Biological Resource Study Grant, with principal investigator P.S. Ward, UC Davis, 2007-2008 
• Australian Biological Resource Study Grant, with principal investigator P.S. Ward, UC Davis, 2007-2008
• Jastro-Shields Research Award, UC Davis, 2006, 2007, 2008  
• Center for BioSystematics Research Grant, UC Davis, 2005  
• UC Davis Dept. of Entomology Fellowships, Vansell 2005, MacBeth 2005
• Fulbright Fellow, Quito, Ecuador, 2000-2002   
• William Gaston Premium Scholarship in biology, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2000

Lucky is a member of the Entomological Society of America, Society for Systematic Biology, Society for Conservation Biology, American Association of University Women, Association of Women in Science, and American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Her latest peer-reviewed publications include:

Hulcr, J., Latimer, A.J., Rountree, N.R., Fierer, N., Lucky, A., Lowman, M.D., Henley, J.B. and Dunn, R.R. (Submitted to PLoS One). It's a Jungle in There: Bacteria in Belly Buttons are Highly Diverse, but Predictable.

Guenard, B. and A. Lucky (2011). Shuffling leaf litter samples produces more accurate and precise snapshots of terrestrial arthropod community composition. Environmental Entomology 40: 1523-1529.

Lucky, A. (2011).Molecular phylogeny and biogeography of the spider ants, genus Leptomyrmex Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 59: 281-292.

Lucky, A., E.M. Sarnat and L.E. Alonso (2011). Survey of the ants of the Muller Range of Papua New Guinea. RAP Bulletin of Biological Assessment 60: 45-53.

Lucky, A., K. Sagata and E.M. Sarnat (2011). Survey of the ants of the Nakanai Mountains of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. RAP Bulletin of Biological Assessment 60: 158-157.

Lucky, A. and P.S. Ward (2010). Taxonomic revision of the ant genus Leptomyrmex Mayr. Zootaxa 2688:1-67.

Lucky, A. and E.M. Sarnat. (2010). Biogeography and diversification of the Pacific ant genus Lordomyrma Emery. Journal of Biogeography 37: 624-634.

Lucky, A. 2009.Urb-ants (Book review of Urban Ants of North America And Europe by Klotz et al., 2008). Systematic Entomology 34: 406-407.

Lucky, A. and E.M. Sarnat. 2007.New species of Lordomyrma (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Southeast Asia and Fiji. Zootaxa1681: 37–46 (2008).

 

Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is the recipient of the 2013-14 Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Extension from the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR).

Barbara Allen-Diaz, vice president of UC ANR, announced the recipients of the Distinguished Service Awards  today (May 20). 

Mussen, who will retire in June, was honored for 38 years of outstanding service. He devotes his research and extension activities toward the improvement of honey bee health and honey bee colony management practices.

Mussen, who joined the UC Davis department in 1976, is known throughout the state, nation and world as “the honey bee guru” and “the pulse of the bee industry" and as "the go-to person" when consumers, scientists, researchers, students, and the news media have questions about honey bees.

Since 1976, he has written and published the bimonthly newsletter, from the UC Apiaries, and Bee Briefs, providing beekeepers with practical information on all aspects of beekeeping. 

His nominators wrote that what sets Dr. Mussen apart from his Extension-specialist peers are these seven attributes:

1. His amazing knowledge of bees
2. His excellent communication skills in a diverse clientele, including researchers, Extension personnel, legislators,
   commodity boards, grower organizations, pesticide regulators, students, news media, and beekeeping associations at the national, state and local levels,
3. His eagerness to help everyone, no matter the age or stature or expertise, from an inquiring 4-H'er to a beginning beekeeper to a commercial beekeeper
4. His ability to translate complicated research in lay terms; he's described as “absolutely the best”
5. His willingness—his “just-say-yes” personality---to go above and beyond his job description by presenting multiple talks to every beekeeping association in California, whether it be a weekday, evening or weekend, and his willingness to speak at a wide variety of events, including pollinator workshops, animal biology classes, UC activities and fairs and festivals
6. His reputation for being a well-respected, well-liked, honest, and unflappable person with a delightful sense of humor; and
7. His valuable research, which includes papers on antiobiotics to control American foulbrood; fungicide toxicity in the almond orchards; the effect of light brown apple moth mating pheromone on honey bees; the effects of high fructose corn syrup and probiotics on bee colonies; and the invasion and behavior of Africanized bees. He is often consulted on colony collapse disorder and bee nutrition.

"Without question, Eric is the No. 1 Extension person dealing with honey bees in the nation, if not the world," said MacArthur Genus Awardee Professor Marla Spivak, Distinguished McKnight University Professor Apiculture/Social Insects at the University of Minnesota. "Research colleagues, beekeepers and the public are all very lucky to have him.”

Said Extension Specialist John Skinner of the University of Tennessee: “Eric is one of the most well-respected and influential professional apiculturists in the nation. If I could select one person to represent the apicultural scientific community including research, regulation and extension, I would choose Eric.”

“Those of us in the bee industry who have been privileged to know and work with Eric appreciate his vast knowledge of honey bees and great communication skills," Gene Brandi, legislative chairman of the California State Beekeepers' Association. "Whether addressing scientists, beekeepers, growers, government officials, the media or anyone else, Eric can be relied upon to convey scientifically accurate information about honey bees and the beekeeping industry.”

Said native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis: "He has played an invaluable role as a linchpin between honey bee researchers and the beekeeping industry and the commodity groups which depend on honey bees for pollination of their crops. His knowledge of honey bees and their biology, management and colony health is highly valued by his colleagues and clients. Eric is not only our state expert on all topics relating to honey bees, but is sought after by national level organizations to participate on committees dealing with the most important concerns of the beekeeping industry." 

Highly honored by his peers at the regional, state and national levels, Mussen received the prestigious American Association of Professional Apiculturists Award for Apicultural Excellence, and scores of other awards. He's served as the president of numerous organizations and keynoted their conferences.  

A native of Schenectady, N.Y., Mussen received his bachelor's degree in entomology from the University of Massachusetts (after turning down an offer to play football at Harvard) and then received his master's degree and doctorate in entomology from the University of Minnesota in 1969 and 1975, respectively.

His doctoral research focused on the epidemiology of a viral disease of larval honey bees, sacbrood virus.  "During those studies I also was involved in studies concerning sunflower pollination and control of a microsporidian parasite of honey bees, Nosema apis," Mussen recalled.  "Now a new species of Nosema has displaced N. apis and is even more difficult to keep subdued."

"I am basically all pro-bee,” Mussen told the American Bee Journal in a two-part feature story published in the September of 2011. “Whatever I can do for bees, I do it...It doesn't matter whether there is one hive in the backyard or 15,000 colonies. Bees are bees and the bees' needs are the bees' needs.”

Mussen credits his grandfather with sparking his interest in insects. His grandfather, a self-taught naturalist, would take his young grandson to the woods to point out flora and fauna.

The UC ANR Distinguished Service Awards are given biennially for outstanding contributions to the teaching, research and public service mission of the Division, Allen-Diaz said.

The 2013-2014 award recipients:

• Outstanding Extension – Eric Mussen, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at UC Davis for bees.
• Outstanding Research – Mark Battany, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara countiesfor viticulture.
• Outstanding New Academic – David Doll, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Merced County for nut crops.
• Outstanding Team – Ken Tate, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, and Rob Atwill, director of Veterinary Medicine Extension at UC Davis, are the recipients of the Outstanding Team Award. Since 1994, Tate and Atwill have collaborated on a series of projects assessing the potential risk to rangeland surface-water quality and human health from livestock associated pollutants. 
• Outstanding Leader – Pamela Geisel, former director of the statewide UC Master Gardener Program. Although Pam retired recently, since this nomination package was very strong, I believe it's appropriate and important to give Pam this much-deserved award. 
• Outstanding Staff – Michael Yang, UCCE agricultural assistant in Fresno County for small farms.

Each of the individual award recipients will receive $2,000 and a certificate. The team award recipients will receive  individual certificates and share $5,000.

The Academic Assembly Council Program Committee, chaired by Joe Grant, reviewed the DSA nominations and presented their recommendations to Allen-Diaz. Committee members were Rachel Surls, Becky Westerdahl, Scott Oneto and Jennifer Heguy. 

(News embargo lifts at noon Monday, May 19, 2014, Pacific Time)

UC Davis Researchers Lead International Team in Making the Most Precise Estimates of Dengue Transmission Rates Ever, Casting New Light on Why Interventions to Prevent Dengue Fever Are Unsuccessful

Listen to Video, Robert Reiner (YouTube, Created by Professor James Carey)

DAVIS--Newly published research involving a 12-year study of dengue infections in Iquitos, Peru—an international team project led by researchers at the University of California, Davis—helps explain why interventions are frequently unsuccessful in efforts to prevent the mosquito-borne disease.

The research, headed by Professor Thomas Scott of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is published May 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Defining variation in the risk of dengue transmission has been a roadblock to understanding disease dynamics and designing more realistic and effective disease prevention programs,” said Scott, noted dengue researcher and a senior author of the paper, “Time-Varying, Serotype-Specific Force of Infection of Dengue Virus.”

“This study is an important step toward overcoming that obstacle,” Scott said. “We hope our results will help reduce the burden of this increasingly devastating disease."

Dengue, a mosquito-borne virus infecting nearly 400 million people a year, “is difficult to model not only because the majority of all infections are hidden, but also because there are four distinct serotypes, or versions, of dengue that each have unique characteristics,” said lead author Robert Reiner, a Research and Policy for Infectious Disease Dynamics (RAPIDD) postdoctoral fellow in Scott's Mosquito Research Laboratory. RAPIDD, affiliated with the Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., is designed to improve standards in infectious disease modeling to better inform policy decisions.

“Typically, most infections go unnoticed and as such, measuring and modeling transmission intensity is problematic,” Reiner said.

Dengue virus is transmitted by Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that bites during the daytime as people move about in their daily routines.

Over the 12-year period, from 1999 to 2010, the researchers periodically tested individuals for dengue virus infections, even if they never felt sick. “We created a new modeling approach that was able to leverage the resulting 38,416 blood samples to create time-varying, serotype-specific estimates of transmission intensity, which we measured as the force of infection, or the rate at which susceptible individuals became infected,” Reiner said. “By accurately estimating the force of infection within and between years, we were able to demonstrate that current control strategies that are typically based on one-time estimates of transmission intensity are underestimating the effort needed to eliminate this disease. This may help explain why most interventions are not successful.”

“Our work suggests that certain serotypes can infect up to 33 percent of the susceptible population in a single year and that 79 percent of the population of Iquitos would need to be protected from any further infection to eliminate transmission. Further, our estimates form a detailed description of virus transmission dynamics that provides a basis for understanding the long-term persistence of dengue and for improving disease prevention programs.”

Reiner, who holds a doctorate in statistics from the University of Michigan, joined the Scott lab in September 2011. He has just accepted a position as assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Among the 21 co-authors are two Scott lab scientists: second author Steve Stoddard and Amy Morrison, based in Iquitos. Others represent the U.S. Naval Medical Research in Lima and Iquitos, Peru; University of Vermont, Burlington; North Carolina State University, Raleigh; Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Mich.; Tulane University, New Orleans; and San Diego State University; Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool; Emory University, Atlanta; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga.

“The marked variation in transmission intensity that we detected indicates that intervention targets based on one-time estimates of the force of infection (FoI) could underestimate the level of effort needed to prevent disease,” the authors wrote in their abstract. “Our description of dengue virus transmission dynamics is unprecedented in detail, providing a basis for understanding the persistence of this rapidly emerging pathogen and improving disease prevention programs.”

Scott's world-class dengue research program recently received two new research grants totaling nearly $10 million to study the mosquito-borne, viral illness that infects 400 million people worldwide each year. The grants, $7.5 million from the National Institutes of Health and $2.2 million Notre Dame University will help fund the program for the next five years, said Scott, director of the Mosquito Research Program and the principal investigator of the dengue research program.

“There is no vaccine nor drug that is effective against this virus,” said Scott, who has studied dengue more than 25 years and is recognized as the leading expert in the ecology and epidemiology of the disease.

While vaccines are under development, it is not clear how they can be best applied when they are available, including in combination with other interventions like mosquito control, Scott said. “New disease prevention tools, in addition to vaccines, and an improved understanding of virus transmission dynamics, which will enhance surveillance and epidemic response, are needed to reduce the global burden of dengue.”

The work was supported by the RAPPID program of the Science and Technology Directory, Department of Homeland Security, and Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health; Innovative Vector Control Consortium; U.S. Department of Defense Global Emerging Infections Systems Research Program Work Unit; Military Infectious Disease Research Program Work Units; Deployed Warfighter Protection Program, Department of Defense; and a Wellcome Trust.