DAVIS--Patrick Abbot, an associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, will speak on “Cooperation and Conflict at the Plant/Insect Interface” at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar on Wednesday, Nov. 6 from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs.

He will be hosted by assistant professor Brian Johnson, co-coordinator of the noonhour seminars with assistant professor Joanna Chiu.

Abbot’s abstract: “A history of antagonistic interactions within and between species can provide trait variation on which social and mutualistic evolution can subsequently act. Insects that feed on plants provide many examples of cooperation-out-of-conflict, and thus illustrate important principles about the evolutionary process. I will discuss how two groups of gall-forming insects have evolved social and mutualistic interactions on plants. In one, lateral gene transfer may have facilitated a mutualism between gall midges and phytopathogenic fungi on their host plants, Solidago spp. In the other, a gall-forming aphid, the ability to secrete factors that disrupt the immune responses of natural enemies may be a key innovation that facilitates sociality in this group.”

The lecture will be recorded for later viewing on UCTV.

Abbot received his bachelor’s degree in biology from the Department of Zoology, University of Georgia; his master’s degree in behavioral ecology from the Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University; and his doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the Department of Evolution and Biology, University of Arizona. He then served as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow from 2002 to 2003 at the University of Texas, Austin, in microbial evolution.

His research expertise centers on molecular ecology, evolution and genomics of herbivorous insects and their symbionts. “I have a particular interest in gall-forming insects, and have worked on aphids, flies and ants.” His lab focuses on social evolution and insect diversification.

Abbot has published in ecological, microbiological and evolutionary journals on research that utilizes techniques from animal behavior, molecular ecology and genomics.

 See list of upcoming seminars hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

UC Davis evolutionary ecologist Leslie Saul-Gershenz, who researches how blister beetle nest parasites cooperate to mimic the sex pheromone of a digger bee, will headline the next meeting of the Northern California Entomology Society, set Thursday, Nov. 7 at the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District conference room, 155 Mason Circle, Concord.

Her one-hour talk, “Meloid Parasites of Solitary Bees,” begins at 9:30 a.m. The Nor Cal Entomology Society meets three times a year: Sacramento, Davis and Concord.

Saul-Gershenz, a graduate student in the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and a co-founder of SaveNature.Org, researches a solitary ground-nesting bee, Habropoda pallida and its nest parasite, a blister beetle, Meloe franciscanus, found in the Mojave National Preserve.

The meeting begins at 9:15 a.m. with coffee and registration for club members and their guests. The remainder of the meeting will be devoted to the future of the society, with president Bob Dowell of the California Department of Food and Agriculture moderating the discussion.

Saul-Gershenz is the lead author of “Blister Beetle Nest Parasites Cooperate to Mimic the Sex Pheromone of the Solitary Bee Habropoda pallida (Hymenoptera: Apidae)," co-authored by professor Jocelyn G. Millar and staff research associate J. Steven McElfresh, both of UC Riverside. The peer-reviewed research was published in the April 2012 edition of the Mojave National Preserve Science News.

The solitary bee is the first native bee to emerge in the spring on the Kelso Dunes in the Mojave National Preserve, said Saul-Gershenz.  “The adult beetles emerge on the dunes in the winter months at Kelso Dunes and feed exclusively on the leaves of Astragalus lentiginosus, which leafs out in January."

The bee's emergence is generally synchronized with the onset of blooms of the Borrego milkvetch, which is the sole host plant of adults of the blister beetle at Kelso Dunes.

The UC Davis ecologist said the larvae of the parasitic blister beetle produce a chemical cue or a pheromone similar to that of a female solitary bee to lure males to the larval aggregation. The larvae attach to the male bee and then transfer to the female during mating. The end result: the larvae wind up in the nest of a female bee, where they eat the nest provisions and likely the host egg.

The work of Saul-Gershenz, Millar and McElfresh appears in a newly published academic book, Sensory Ecology, Behaviour, and Evolution (Oxford University Press) by Martin Stevens.  Another book, pending publication in December, also will contain their work: the second edition of Pheromones and Animal Behaviour (Cambridge University) by Tristram Wyatt.

Previously, three other books summarized their research:

• Keeping the Bees: Why All Bees Are at Risk and What We Can Do to Save Them by Laurence Packer and published in 2011 by HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd.

• Cuticular Hydrocarbons: Biology, Biochemistry and Chemical Ecology by editors A. Bagnères-Urbany and G. Bloomquist and published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press.
• The Other Insect Societies by James T. Costa, and published in 2006 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Following her talk, beginning at 10:45 a.m., the Nor Cal Entomology Society members will discuss the future of the organization.

“We have reached a critical juncture in the existence of the organization,” secretary-treasurer Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and a co-founder of the society, wrote to the members in an email. “At its beginning, the society served as the meeting place for entomologists mostly from UC Berkeley and UC Davis, as well as other members who appreciated their lively discussions of research and pest control. Representatives from industry and regulatory establishments also participated. A revolving system of society chairs was instituted and membership was good.”

“Over time, the climate has changed. UC Berkeley no longer has an entomology department or hardly any entomologists anymore.”

Mussen, one of the most active members of the group, will be retiring from the university in June 2014.

Those planning to attend should contact Mussen at ecmussen@ucdavis.edu or telephone him at (530) 753-0472 by Nov. 1. The lunch will be catered by Kinder’s Meats.

DAVIS--Two representatives from the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology will speak at the California State Beekeepers’ Association’s 124th annual convention, set Nov. 18-22 at Harrah’s, Lake Tahoe. 

They are pollinator ecologist/associate professor Neal Williams and Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen.

Williams, co-director of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis, will deliver the research luncheon talk on Wednesday, Nov. 20. His topic is “Honey Bees and Pollination: New Things We Now Know.”

Mussen will discuss “The Most Interesting Time in Beekeeping” on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 21. Mussen has served as the Extension apiculturist since 1976 and will be retiring in June 2014. He wears several hats on the CSBA board: apiculturist, parliamentarian and a delegate to the American Beekeeping Federation.

Among those speaking at a bee forage session are Gordon Wardell of Paramount Farming; Christi Heintz of Project Apis m; Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota; Kathy Kellison of Partners for Sustainable Pollination; Peter Berthelsen of Pheasants Forever; and beekeeper/researcher Randy Oliver of Grass Valley.

Other topics will include scientific updates, bee laws, almond pollination, sustainability, and “A Bug for Every Bug,” the latter by Steve Godin and the California Citrus Research Board.

Among the other speakers is Robert Curtis, associate manager for agricultural affairs, Almond Board of California. He just received the "Friend" award from the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at its 25th annual College Celebration.

President of the association is John Miller of Newcastle. The mission of CSBA is to educate the public about the beneficial aspects of honey bees, advance research beneficial to beekeeping practices, provide a forum for cooperation among beekeepers, and to support the economic and political viability of the beekeeping industry.

DAVIS--Bruce Hammock, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology with a joint appointment at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, has received a high honor for his role in showing how fish oil benefits health.

Hammock was named the recipient of the 2013 William E. M. Lands Lectureship Award in Nutritional Biochemistry at the Department of Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor.  He lectured Oct. 8 on “Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Inhibitors of the Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase Block Angiogenesis, Tumor Metastasis and Tumor Growth.”

Hammock and postdoctoral researcher Guodong Zhang and their team made national news when they discovered a key mechanism by which dietary omega-3 fatty acids (fish oils) could reduce the tumor growth and spread of cancer, a disease that kills some 580,000 Americans a year.

“Bill Lands has long been one of my heroes in science,” Hammock said, “because he carried out excellent fundamental biochemistry and then applied this work to having a dramatic effect on diet and health worldwide.

Lands, a world-renowned nutritional biochemist, discovered the beneficial effects of balancing the effects of excess omega-6 fatty acids with dietary omega-3 fatty acids.  One of the world's foremost authorities on fish oils and the author of the book, "Fish, Omega-3 and Human Health,” Lands is best known for his seminal studies demonstrating the benefit of reducing omega-6 and increasing dietary omega-3 lipids. He is a 1951 graduate of the University of Michigan and served on the faculty from 1955-1980.

Some of the top nutritionists in the country have lectured on the biochemical of essential nutrients at the Lands Lectureship, but this year was particularly relevant. Hammock was selected because his laboratory has shown one of the biochemical mechanisms by which omega–3 lipids reduce blood pressure, inflammation and pain.  

The work was also timely in that Hammock’s laboratory, in collaboration with Kathy Ferrara at UC Davis and Dipak Panigrahy at Harvard recently demonstrated a biochemical pathway by which omega-3 fatty acids can reduce the growth and metastasis of breast and lung cancers.  The work was recently published (April 3) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Hammock lab researcher Guodong Zhang, now an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science, University of Massachusetts.

The UC Davis researchers demonstrated that the omega-3 fatty acid is converted into bioactive metabolites that reduce hypertension, inflammation and pain.  

While at the University of Michigan, Hammock also delivered a keynote address at the Fall Symposium on Lipid Mediators, a one-day scientific conference highlighting biomedical research involving lipid mediators. Hammock described how an omega-3 rich diet coupled with a drug candidate developed at UC Davis with researchers Bora Inceoglu and Karen Wagner can control chronic neuropathic pain such as that associated with diabetes.

“Now that the fundamental work can be translated, Alonso Guedes of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine is well underway in trials of a drug to relieve pain and inflammation in horses, cats and now dogs,” Hammock said.

The omega-3 lipid project is part of the effort carried out by the UC Davis Foods For Health Institute, directed by Bruce German.  The work has been in progress for a number of years in the Hammock laboratory. John Newman, former postdoctoral researcher in the Hammock lab and now an adjunct professor in nutrition, received the John Kinsella award for his Ph.D. work developing a mass spectrometry method for regulatory lipids. More recently Angela Zivokvic, former postdoctoral researcher in the Hammock lab and now associate director of scientific development and translation, has led a team using a later version of this mass spectrometry method to predict patients most likely to benefit from an increase in omega-3 dietary lipids.

“As Professor Bill Lands often says, ‘Nix the 6 (Omega-6) and eat the 3 (Omega-3,’ Hammock quipped.

 Hammock directs the campuswide Superfund Research Program, National Institutes of Health Biotechnology Training Program, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Combined Analytical Laboratory. He is a fellow of the Entomological Society of America, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of the 2001 UC Davis Faculty Research Lecture Award and the 2008 Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching.