- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Graduate student Katharina Ullmann of the Neal Williams lab is the host.
“Many recent studies have shown that enhancing floral resources in intensive agricultural landscapes promotes species richness of flower-visitor communities, but to date, it is not known whether such effects are transient, merely concentrating individuals from across the larger landscape at flower-rich patches,” M'Gonigle says in his abstract. “Long-term data series and use of occupancy models are particularly helpful in determining whether these richness patterns actually reflect true increases in occupancy, or not. Further, such models can also determine whether enhanced occupancy results from decreased extinction rates, increased colonization rates, or both, providing information that is useful for conservation planning. “
“To date, these models have not been applied to the study of pollinators and their response to restoration. Here we present the results from a long-term study chronicling how restoration and subsequent maturation of native plant hedgerows affects occupancy, persistence and colonization of bees and syrphid flies in the Central Valley of California. Using a hierarchical occupancy model, we show that restoration via the introduction of perennial flowering native shrubs promotes the between-season persistence, but not colonization, of both bees and syrphid flies. This increased occupancy has the long-term effect of leading to the assembly of more diverse communities. We also find that, for native bees, hedgerow restoration has a greater impact on floral resource specialists than generalists."
M'Gonigle received his bachelor of science degree in mathematics (honors with distinction) from the University of Victoria in 2005; his master's degree in zoology from the University of British Columbia in 2006, and his doctorate in zoology from the University of British Columbia in 2011.
The recipient of numerous awards, he won the Dan David Prize ($15,000 prize for doctoral work) in 2011 and was named the top teaching assistant in his department (based on student course evaluations encompassing 70 teaching assistants) in both 2008 and 2011. Considered an outstanding speaker, he won “best talk” awards from several scientific organizations.
His most recent publications include:
Frishkoff, L.O., Karp, D.S., M'Gonigle, L.K., Mendenhall, C.D., Zook, J., Kremen, C., Hadley, E.A., and Daily, G.C. Land Use Transforms the Tree of Life. In prep.
M'Gonigle, L.K., Ponisio, L.C., and Kremen, C. Habitat restoration promotes pollinator persistence in intensively managed agriculture. In prep.
Ball-Damerow, J.E., M'Gonigle, L.K., Resh, V.H. Landscape, climate, and habitat factors influencing assemblages of dragonflies and damselflies (Odonata) in California and Nevada. Submitted.
Ball-Damerow, J.E., M'Gonigle, L.K., Resh, V.H. Changes in occurrence, richness, and biological traits of dragonflies and damselflies (Odonata) in California and Nevada over the past century. Submitted.
M'Gonigle's seminar is scheduled to be video-recorded for later posting on UCTV.
(Editor's Note: See remainder of Spring Quarter Seminars, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Those are a few of the hands-on activities that will take place in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's insect booth in the Floriculture Building during the May 8-11 Dixon May Fair. The fairgrounds are located at 655 S. First St., Dixon.
Entomologists, researchers, beekeepers and honey experts will be among those staffing the booth and answering questions from fairgoers.
The interactive exhibit will include a bee observation hive from the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility; specimens and live insects from the Bohart Museum of Entomology; insect posters from the recent UC Davis Picnic Day, and information about the Honey and Pollination Center.
Entomologist Jeff Smith of Rocklin, a 27-year volunteer at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, will be at the fair from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday. Visitors can hold a 22-year-old rose-haired tarantula, one of the most popular insects at the Bohart Museum open houses. Other live insects are scheduled to include Madagascar hissing cockroaches and walking sticks.
Smith worked in pest management for two years and then worked for Univar USA for the next 35, up to his retirement in 2013. Univar is the leading national supplier of the full range of pest control products to the professional pest management industries. Twenty-three of those years were in sales and the last 12 years with the E-business group, creating resources and training on the website PestWeb.com. Smith has written many training manuals and taught thousands of classes in pest management.
Now he fully pursues his passion for Lepidoptera (a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies), with the Bohart Museum of Entomology, where he has managed and improved the Lepidoptera collection for the past 27 years as a volunteer. He studied and collected insects on 10 excursions to Latin American rainforest areas.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, is the global home of nearly eight million insect specimens. Exhibits at the Dixon May Fair will focus on wing diversity; insects of California (10 orders (includes dragonflies and true bugs), butterflies and other insects of the world, and predators and parasites.
Among others scheduled to participate are:
Billy Synk, staff research associate and manager of the Laidlaw facility. He will provide the bee observation hive, where visitors can look through the glass and find the queen bee, worker bees and drones and observe colony activity. He will answer questions from fairgoers from 11 to 4 p.m. Friday, May 9.
Cameron Jasper, a graduate student in the lab of Brian Johnson, assistant professor of entomology. He studies the genetic basis of division of labor in the honey bee. He is scheduled to be at the booth from 4 to 6 p.m., Friday, May 9. Jasper studies the genetic basis of division of labor in honey bee.
Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, headquartered in the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science. She will be at the fair from 1 to 5 p.m., Saturday, May 10 and help youngsters make bee/flower puppets.
The Honey and Pollination Center showcases the importance of honey and pollination s through education and research. The center works with all aspects of the beekeeping industry, including agriculture, grocers and chefs, beekeepers and future beekeepers, urban homesteaders and students.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology was ranked No. 1 in the country, in rankings released in 2007 by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The ratings have not been updated.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The grants, $7.5 million from the National Institutes of Health and $2.2 million from 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.
Dengue virus is an emerging pathogen that has been spreading globally over the last four decades, including parts of United States. Troublingly statistics show that more than half of the world's population is now at risk of infection and the severe, life-threatening disease has increased considerably.
Dengue virus is transmitted by Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that bites during the daytime as people move about in their daily routines.
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 two grants are:
Spatial Repellants for Control of Vector-borne Disease: The $2.2 million grant from Notre Dame University is the first-ever project aimed at dengue prevention. It will focus on studying the potential for spatial insect repellants to reduce exposure to dengue virus in people's homes. The approach has shown promise for reducing malaria infections. “Most exposure to this mosquito takes place in homes; your home or the home of a family member or friend,” Scott said. “The spatial repellant approach, by keeping mosquitoes out of the house, is an innovative approach to reduce risk of infection.” The program, led by Nicole Achee and Neil Lobo at the Eck Institute for Global Health at Notre Dame, includes research on malaria control in Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia.
Quantifying Heterogeneities in Dengue Virus Transmission Dynamics: This five-year $7.3 million Program Project (P01) from the National Institutes of Health received a rare perfect impact score from the review panel who called it “exceptional” and “highly likely to achieve even its most ambitious aims.” In prior research, Scott and his colleagues showed that people play an important role moving dengue virus from one place to another throughout a city (Stoddard et al. 2013 PNAS). The new project aims to quantify how much people, with different degrees of illness, vary in their contribution to virus transmission and spread.
Scott said this is critical information for improving surveillance programs, developing more effective targeted approaches for disease prevention, and designing vaccine deployment strategies. “We have known for a long time that most dengue infections do not make people sick enough to seek medical care or see a doctor,” he said. “What remains a mystery is the contribution of those people with mild or no illness to the spread and persistence of the virus.”
Added Morrison “It is hard finding people who are infected, but not sick because they show signs of illness. After 15 years, our team has developed the experience, infrastructure, and protocols to allow us to find these people and define their role in virus transmission. We are hopeful that our project will revolutionize thinking about dengue and lead to new approaches for its prevention.”
The five-year project is slated to begin in Iquitos later this year. In addition to Scott and Morrison, the leadership team includes Steven Stoddard of UC Davis, John Elder of San Diego State University, Alan Rothman of the University of Rhode Island, and Uriel Kitron and Gonzalo Vasquez Prokopec of Emory University.
Other collaborators on the new grant are:
- Christopher Barker, Alex Perkins, Robert Reiner and Veronica Armijos, all of UC Davis
- Robert Hontz, USA Naval Medical Research Unit Six, Lima
- Louis Lambrechts, Institute Pasteur, Paris
- Kanya Long, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Mich.
- Valerie Paz Soldan, Tulane University Office of Global Health, Peru
- Lance Waller, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.
- Alun Lloyd, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C.
- Moises Sihuincha, Hospital Apoyo, Iquitos, Peru
- Cameron P. Simmons, Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, Vietnam
Related Links:
Dengue Fever Cases Have Been Seriously Underestimated (NPR)
Refining the Global Spatial Limits of Dengue Virus Transmission by Evidence-Based Consensus (PLOS)
Dengue (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Other recipients of undergraduate teaching awards are Emily Albu, Classics; Seeta Chaganti, English; and Susan Keen, Evolution and Ecology.
They and other award winners will be honored at a ceremony hosted by the UC Davis Academic Senate/UC Davis Academic Federation on Tuesday night, May 13 in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre of the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. The 6:15 program will be preceded by a reception.
Carey, an internationally recognized scientist, was praised in the nomination package as “an incredible teacher who eagerly and passionately engages students through his highly successful, innovative and digitally progressive techniques…he is known as a trail blazer, a forward-thinker, and a digital-savvy strategist on the cutting edge of education.“
Carey motivates, encourages and inspires students to learn through creative, innovative ways, such as the student-produced, instructor-directed video productions, “One Minute Entomologist” and “How to Make an Insect Collection (the latter won an award from the Entomological Society of America). Student comments about his classes ranged from “best ever class at UC Davis” to “invaluable” to “unique opportunity.” Another wrote that he comes prepared to each lecture, "excited and passionate to teach.”
Said one student: “Without a doubt, Dr. Carey is the most amazing, creative, inspiring and technologically savvy professor on campus…Dr. Carey encourages classroom discussion, treating all questions with respect, dignity and wisdom; he often follows up with a humorous anecdote. His lectures, course organization, innovation, creativity and mentoring are extraordinary.”
Carey is the pioneering and driving force behind the UCTV Research Seminars and began video-recording seminars in his department several years ago and then encouraged video-recording on all the other nine UC campuses.
Carey originated and launched “One Minute Entomologist,” in which students research an insect or arthropod, outline it, and video-record it. So far, the students have produced more than 125 videos. He and Professors Lynn Kimsey and Edwin Lewis co-teach the course.
Another innovative class is “Terrorism and War,” an online course offered by Carey through the Science and Society program. It was selected one of 27 courses, UC systemwide, to receive grand support ($75,000) from UC Online.
Among his many other projects:
Write Like a Professor; The Research Term Paper, in which he partnered with Assistant Professor Sarah Perrault in the University Writing Program to produce a playlist of 13 videos.
Longevity, a 4-credit cross-listed course that Carey teaches based on his research program in the biology and demography of aging (biodemography). After offering the course to 14 students in 1999, he saw enrollment soar to an initial cap of 200 students and then, due to increasing demand, jump to 250 last year. The course, designed entirely by Carey, provides students with crucial information on aging and lifespan, so that they can become skilled human development and health professionals, informed voters, knowledgeable parents and grandparents, health-conscious citizens, and life-long students of writing. See kinship video.
Carey is active in the Campus Council for Information Technology, which provides advice and recommendations to key UC Davis administration on educational and information technology and its use at UC Davis in support of instruction, research, administration and public service.
Carey brings to the classroom his expertise in many scientific areas. He is considered the world's foremost authority on arthropod demography. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and three books on this or closely related topics, including the monograph Longevity (Princeton, 2003) and the “go-to” book on insect demography, Demography for Biologists with Special Emphasis on Insects (Oxford, 1993). His landmark paper on “slowing of mortality at older ages,” published in Science in 1992 and cited more than 350 times, keys in on his seminal discovery that mortality slows at advanced ages. The UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Science cited this as one of “100 Ways in Which Our College Has Shaped the World.”
Carey recently received the 2014 C. W. Woodworth Award from the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America (PBESA) for his outstanding accomplishments in entomology spanning four decades. He is a fellow of the Entomological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gerontological Society of America, and the California Academy of Sciences. The professor chaired the systemwide UC Committee on Research Policy, served on the system-wide UC Academic Council, and is a former vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology. In addition, he serves as the associate editor of three journals: Genus, Aging Cell, and Demographic Research.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Sandra "Sandy" Vice, financial analyst/supervisor with the UC Davis Department of Plant Pathology and Department of Entomology and Nematology, has just completed the seven-month “UC Davis Administrative Officers for the Future” (AOFTF) Program.
Vice received a certificate, signed by Chancellor Linda Katehi and presented by the chancellor and Provost/Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph Hexter, at a ceremony held recently in the UC Davis Conference Center.
The only participant from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Vice was one of 18 UC Davis-campus staff enrolled in the program, who were selected from a pool of 47. Also chosen were 12 from the UC Davis Health System.
The AOFTE program took place Oct. 1 to April 22 and involved 16 hours a month. It also included some 40 to 60 hours of “home work,” involving individual work and group projects. Vice was assigned to a group researching disability awareness. They teamed to present a Powerpoint to the entire group and special guests. “The objective was to improve the climate of disability among staff,” she said.
Among the other topics they pursued were personal branding, strategic planning, leadership, and management tools. Guest speakers included a number of UC Davis and UC Davis Health System administrators.
Vice joined the UC Davis workforce in January of 1995, when she accepted a purchasing position with the Center for Engineering Plants for Resistance Against Pathogens. She advanced to account manager and then joined Plant Pathology as an account manager.
“Eventually I would like to apply for a CAO (chief administrative officer) post,” Vice said. She also plans to enroll in more leadership and management classes.
A graduate of Vacaville High School, Vice studied business at Solano and Mira Costa community colleges. She and her family, husband James, and son, Luke, 15, reside in Winters. Another son, James, resides in the Bay Area.
Military service runs in the family. Husband James was active in the Marine Corps and is now in the U.S. Air Force Reserves. Son James, who works for United Airlines in communications, is a reservist in the Air Force (he was active- duty Marine Corps but after college joined the Air Force Reserves).
