DAVIS--Matan Shelomi, a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology who is researching the digestive physiology of walking sticks (Phasmids), will be revealing a puzzle he solved when he addresses the 11th International Congress of Orthopterology at its meeting in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China.

Shelomi, who studies with major professor Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, will speak on "Anatomy of the Phasmid Digestive Tract and the Function of the Midgut Appendices” on Wednesday, Aug. 14.

He received $1000 from the Graduate Student Travel Award from the UC Davis Office of Graduates Studies to help fund the trip.

At the conference, Shelomi will present the results from his four-year research, including research he did at the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Japan; Academia Sinica in Taiwan; and some of his most recent findings at UC Davis.

“I have focused on the appendices of the midgut, which are a series of tubes found only
in the walking sticks whose function is unknown,” Shelomi said. This is the same project that resulted in him being named a finalist in PhD Comics' Two-Minute thesis competition.” (See video.)

“I have since almost solved the puzzle of what the appendices of the midgut actually do, and the presentation in China will be the first time I reveal my findings to the scientific community,” he said.

Shelomi recently was named the recipient of the coveted John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Award from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA). He will be one of six John Henry Comstock Award recipients, one from each ESA branch, to be honored at the ESA annual meeting, Nov. 10-13 in Austin, Texas.  Each winner receives an all-expenses paid trip to the annual meeting, a $100 cash prize, and a certificate. Shelomi is a member of the UC Davis Linnaean Team and the UC Davis Debate Team team that will compete at the ESA meeting.

He is also known for a humorous paper on Pokémon phylogenetics in the Annals of Improbable Research. 

In 2012, he won a Shorty Award, the social-media equivalent of an Oscar, for his answer to an insect question. The Huffington Post recently spotlighted one response. Another was printed in the "Best of Quora 2010-2012" book. His Quora posts have also appeared on Slate.

A native of New York, Shelomi graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University in 2009.

Bryony Bonning, a former doctoral research associate at UC Davis in the Bruce Hammock lab who went on to become a noted professor in Iowa State University’s Department of Entomology and director of the National Science Foundation's Center for Arthropod Management Technologies, has been elected a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America (ESA).

Bonning is one of only 10 Fellows elected this year in the 6500-member ESA “for outstanding contributions to entomology in one or more of the following: research, teaching, extension, or administration.”

The 10 will be honored at ESA’s annual meeting set Nov. 10-13 in Austin, Texas. Other 2013 Fellows with UC connections are Jocelyn Millar, entomology professor at UC Riverside, and Jeffery G. Scott of Cornell University, who received his doctorate in entomology and toxicology from UC Riverside.

“Bryony is a star in our department,” said distinguished professor Bruce Hammock of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Hammock was elected an ESA Fellow in 2010.

 “Bryony and I worked together at the NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology at Oxford and she came back to UC Davis with me as a postdoc,” Hammock said. 

Bonning was at UC Davis from 1990 to 1994, working with Hammock in the UC Davis departments of Entomology and Environmental Toxicology on genetic engineering and optimization of baculovirus insecticides.

 “Bryony did amazing work on recombinant baculovirus insecticides working with Susumu Maeda, Sean Duffy and myself,” Hammock said. “She and Kelli Hoover, now a professor at Pennsylvania State University, were partners in my lab.”

Another UC Davis connection: Bonning married Jeff Beetham, a Ph.D. student in the Hammock lab and now a professor at Iowa State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

Bonning joined the faculty of ISU in 1994. She oversees fundamental and applied research on insect physiology and insect pathology with the goal of developing novel, environmentally benign alternatives to chemical insecticides for insect pest management. Her research has included the study of insect hormones and enzymes and insecticidal toxins derived from Bacillus thuringiensis, insect small RNA, the genetic optimization of insect viruses for pest management, insect virus discovery, and the use of viral proteins for development of insect resistant transgenic plants. Recent research has included modification of Bt toxins to target hemipteran pests which typically have low susceptibility to native Bt toxins, and the use of the coat protein of an aphid-vectored plant virus for delivery of insect specific neurotoxins to their target site within the aphid hemocoel.

Bonning is the founding director of the Center for Arthropod Management Technologies (CAMTech), a research center supported by the National Science Foundation, industry, and universities. CAMTech engages scientists at ISU and its sister institution, the University of Kentucky, in collaborative efforts with the world’s largest agricultural and insect pest control companies to better align research conducted within academe with the need of industry for practical pest management solutions. Bonning met the co-director at the University of Kentucky site, Dr. S. Reddy Palli, through a collaborative project while at Davis.

Bonning has mentored more than 30 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and teaches insect pathology and molecular entomology at the graduate level. Over the course of her career, she has authored or co-authored more than 110 scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters, and holds five patents. Her work has been funded by diverse research agencies, including the National Science Foundation and USDA. She has served as associate editor for the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, as council trustee and chair of the Virus Division and program chair for the Society for Invertebrate Pathology, and on the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, Baculovirus Study Group and Dicistrovirus and Iflavirus Study Group. Her accomplishments were recognized by the Iowa Technology Association through the Iowa Women of Innovation Award for Research Innovation and Leadership. She is a fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Bonning received her bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Durham, UK, in 1985, with specialization in entomology and neurobiology, and her doctorate in applied entomology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, UK in 1989.

While enrolled in college in the UK, she did field work on the detection and monitoring of insecticide resistance mechanisms in mosquitoes with the Anti-Malaria Campaign in Colombo, Sri Lanka; she was funded by the Overseas Development Administration. Bonning also did regional monitoring and field trials for biological or chemical control of arthropod and nematode pests in Derbyshire, UK, with the Department of Entomology, Ministry of Agriculture, Fishers and Food,Agricultural Development and Advisory Service.

After receiving her doctorate from the University of London, Bonning worked from 1989 to 1990 as a higher scientific officer with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology, Oxford, in Robert Possee’s lab, where she met Hammock during his sabbatical. She then moved to California to join the Hammock lab as a postdoctoral researcher.

On her last visit to UC Davis, on April 18, 2012, Bonning delivered an entomology seminar on "Novel Toxin Delivery Strategies for Management of Pestiferous Aphids.”

At the time Hammock said. "She is one of our most productive alumni in continuing her work on insect developmental biology and green pesticides based on insect viruses and expanded this dramatically into exciting new areas.  She is advancing fundamental virology while applying this knowledge in production agriculture in both insect control and in blocking transmission of plant diseases by insects.  She clearly is the leader in insect control with recombinant viruses.”

(Editor's Note: News embargo lifts at 4:01 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 6, Pacific Daylight Time. Proceedings of the Royal Society will publish online at 12 midnight, Aug. 6)
See UC Davis News Story

DAVIS--When entomologist James R. Carey accepted a faculty position at the University of California, Davis in March of 1980, little did he know that something would happen three months later that would frame his life’s work.

In early June, multiple Mediterranean fruit fly outbreaks clobbered California. 

Then more.  And more.

The Mediterranean fruit fly, the world’s worst agricultural pest, proved relentless. But so is James R. Carey.

Over the next three decades, Carey observed a prevailing pattern: outbreaks, quarantines, assorted control methods, and finally “eradication” announcements.  Agricultural agencies blamed the reoccurring outbreaks on travelers and cargo bringing in infested fruit.

“Wait,” Carey said. “Let’s look at the science.”

Why, he asked, were many of the outbreaks occurring at the exact same locations year after year and with the same genetics?  Serendipity? No. “The Medfly is established in California,” he argued.

The issue challenged, controlled and consumed him, from his classroom to seminars to research publications to professional gatherings. An article in Science magazine called him “the relentless voice of dissent.” Some tagged him as “passionate”; others,  “courageous.” The opposition warned that his views would adversely affect U.S. agricultural exports and sought to censor him.

On Wednesday, Aug. 7, the “relentless voice of dissent” joined two UC Davis-affiliated colleagues, in publishing a landmark research paper in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The peer-reviewed, data-intensive, described as “the most rigorous analysis ever on the fruit fly invasion in California,” examines the large-scale cryptic invasion of tropical fruit flies in California, totaling 17 different species.  It concludes that at least five—and probably more--are permanent residents of state and cannot be eradicated. 

The paper, “From a Trickle to Flood: The Large-Scale, Cryptic Invasion of California by Tropical Fruit Flies,” is the work of Carey, his former postdoctoral fellow and visiting professor Nikos Papadopoulos, and UC Davis emeritus professor Richard Plant of plant sciences and biological and agricultural engineering.

Carey dedicated the research paper to former UC Davis chancellor Theodore “Ted” Hullar (1987-1994), among the first to believe in him and “the science.”

 “From our first conversation, Jim struck me as a serious-minded guy, with strong ideas and clear focus, pursuing his insights and beliefs no matter the struggle,” Hullar said this week.  “Good science and progress comes from that, making new paths in tough terrain, believing in the power of journey, as well as goal.”

All along, Carey asked that hard science, not politics, drive the issue.

 “Many of my colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) secretly agreed with me, but publicly they would not, could not,” he said. 

“The Medfly history paper is highly relevant to ongoing problems in invasion biology such as control of the apple moth, but it has broader application to science on the value of universities in both fostering research on alternative ideas and in protecting scientists who raise a dissenting  voice,” commented distinguished professor Bruce Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. “At the time of the Medfly crisis, Dr. Carey was exploring a novel approach to studying insect populations.  This approach allowed Jim and later his colleagues, including Richard Plant, Nikos Papadopoulos, and Richard Rice, to see aspects of the problem that were over looked by others.’



“Jim Carey showed extraordinary courage in speaking out against eradication procedures that had great political inertia at the time,” Hammock said.  “Based on his data, the announcements of eradication were scientifically flawed and doomed to failure.  Sometimes in translation of science, even with the best of intentions, one view becomes so dominant that it steamrolls over dissenting opinions and new data.”

Hammock praised Carey's “courage in raising such an alternative view and the university's protection of him in raising this view.  His work has placed the study of invasion biology on a better theoretical basis.”

A respected entomologist, Carey is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gerontological Society of America, the California Academy of Science, and the Entomological Society of America.  He served on the California Department of Food and Agriculture's Medfly Scientific Advisory Panel from 1987-1994, testified on the Medfly crisis to the California State Legislature in 1990, and authored the paper "Establishment of the Mediterranean Fruit Fly in California" (1991 edition of Science). He is also the former chair of the UC Systemwide Committee on Research Policy.

In addition to his invasion biology research, Carey is a world-renowned authority on aging and longevity, directing a multimillion, multi-institutional program funded by the National Institutes of Health. 

“Part of my research is to keep the Medflies alive as long as possible, and the other part is to kill them,” he quipped. "I tell my wife, Patty, that I suffer from a rare professional condition known as Medfly whiplash."

Contemplating the fruit fly invasion, Carey says: “The fruit fly invasion started like cancer, with a tiny tumor enlarging into a mass and then metastasizing. In California, the first fruit fly was detected in 1954.  Today more than 11,386 fruit flies have been found at some 3,348 locations in 330 cities. That’s three out of every four cities.”

Carey traces his interest in Medflies to his early teachings at UC Davis  “The Medfly was in the news so much, that in my  insect ecology classes, I used Medfly examples of demography instruction. This turned into handouts and then a major manuscript.

In 1987, he accepted an invitation from CDFA to join the Medfly Scientific Advisory Panel. “After the first meeting in Los Angeles, I felt something was wrong with the stock explanation that these were being reintroduced,” Carey recalled.

In 1989 Carey and colleague Richard Rice (now deceased) testified before the California State Legislature on the Medfly issue.  “We were grilled,” he said. “I told them what I had been telling my fellow panel members for nearly three years behind closed doors—that the Medfly was established. I had mapped out all the finds from the beginning on large maps and overlay paper.”

After he sounded the clarion call, the opposition targeted him.  “I thought I was putting my career at great risk,” Carey recalled.  

In 1991, his article in Science on the establishment of the Medfly in California “caused a huge uproar and resulted in a blue ribbon panel and 13 submitted letters to the editor, including one from the CDFA director. Many were running for cover except Chancellor Ted Hullar who phoned me frequently to offer his support.”

In 1994, the CDFA replaced Carey on the Scientific Advisory Panel. “They reconstituted it with entomologists who were experts on the sterile insect method,” he said. “They started the $25 million-a-year ‘preventative release’ program that continues to this day.”

In the 1990s-early 2000s, Carey focused his primary research on aging. “I received some funding from the California Citrus Research Board for basic Medfly ecology. But the lion’s share of my research funding was from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institutes on Aging.”

In 2007, the light brown apple moth (LBAM) issue drove him back to the medfly issue.  CDFA announced plans to spray, to eradicate the insect, Carey recalled. “There was zero chance of eradicating LBAM as it was spread over 10,000 square miles.”

Carey says that CDFA and USDA should look at the big picture, not the individual pixels.  Carey agrees that “CDFA needs to continue to respond to outbreaks as they occur, but he advocates long-term planning based on “the science” that the insects are established. This includes heightened monitoring levels for the agriculturally rich Central Valley, an economic impact study, risk management/crop insurance, cropping strategies, fly fee zones/post harvest treatments, emergency/crisis planning, genetic analysis and a National Fruit Fly Program.

“Inasmuch as the Mediterranean, Mexican, Oriental, melon, guava and peach fruit flies have all been detected in the Central Valley, monitoring this incredibly important agricultural region should be increased by 5 to 10-fold in order to intervene and suppress populations and thus slow the spread,” Carey declared.

“These pests cannot be wished away or legislated out of existence. Policymakers need to come to grips with this sobering reality of multiple species permanently established in our state in order to come up with a long-term, science-based policy for protecting agriculture in our state.”

(Editor's Note: See James Carey's website for links to his work.)