- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“He received what is perhaps the greatest honor one can receive from close colleagues, a special symposium honoring him and his contributions to the field of bee biology and pollination,” said coordinator and pollination ecologist Neal William, professor of entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Several of the leading bee biologists in western North America assisted with the symposium.
“It was known as The Robbin Symposium and colleagues old and new gathered the hear a supercharged line up present current research that has been directly impacted by Robbin Thorp,” Williams said. "We designed the symposium to honor the impact of Dr. Thorp, on the field of bee biology and conservation, but at the same time present innovative research that brings together bee and pollination biology researchers."
The symposium featured scientific contributions from leaders in the fields of bee ecology, conservation and pollination, all who worked with or were influenced by Thorp:
- Claire Kremen, University of British Columbia, formerly of UC Berkeley
- James Strange, USDA's Agricultural Research Service Heidi Dobson, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash.
- Gretchen Lebuhn, San Francisco State University
- Richard Hatfield, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
- Terry Griswold, USDA's Agricultural Research Service
- Neal Williams, UC Davis
- Leslie Saul-Gershenz, UC Davis
- Gordon Frankie, UC Berkeley
Hatfield, a senior conservation biologist with Xerces' Endangered Species Program presented him with a drawing of Bombus franklini, the work of artist April Coppini of Portland, Ore. An authority on Franklin's bumble bee, Thorp has monitored the bumble bee population since 1998 in its narrow distribution range of southern Oregon and northern California. He has not seen it since 2006 and it is feared extinct. In August of 2016 a documentary crew from CNN, headed by John Sutter followed him to a meadow where Thorp last saw Franklin's bumble bee. He wrote about Thorp, then 82, in a piece he called "The Old Man and the Bee," a spinoff of Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." (See more on Franklin's bumble bee at https://xerces.org/franklins-bumble-bee/)
“Robbin has done so much for me over the years,” Hatfield said. “I'm pleased to give back even a small fraction.” Hatfield blogged about him during Earth Week. https://xerces.org/2019/04/24/robbin-thorp-earth-week/.
At the social event that followed, attendees shared their gratitude with Thorp "for his lifetime of work, mentoring and friendship,” Williams said.
"It was great to see Robbin interacting and enjoying the conference and the company," Frankie said. "We all have learned much from him over the years, and this was a good occasion to say thanks and acknowledge Robbin's many contributions."
Thorp, a member of the UC Davis entomology faculty for 30 years, from 1964-1994, achieved emeritus status in 1994 but has continued to engage in research, teaching and public service. In his retirement, he co-authored two books Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University, 2014) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday, 2014).
A tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, Thorp is known for his expertise, dedication and passion in protecting native pollinators, especially bumble bees, and for his teaching, research and public service. He is an authority on pollination ecology, ecology and systematics of honey bees, bumble bees, vernal pool bees, conservation of bees, contribution of native bees to crop pollination, and bees of urban gardens and agricultural landscapes. He is active in research projects and open houses at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Every summer from 2002 to 2018, Thorp volunteered his time and expertise to teach at The Bee Course, an annual workshop sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and held at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz. The intensive 9-day workshop, considered the world's premiere native bee biology and taxonomic course, is geared for conservation biologists, pollination ecologists and other biologists who want to gain greater knowledge of the systematics and biology of bees.
Thorp was named a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco in 1986; recipient of the Edward A. Dickson Emeriti Professorship of UC Davis in 2010; and recipient of the UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Award in 2015. Other honors include: member of the UC Davis Bee Team that won PBESA's Team Award in 2013. In addition, he is a past president (2010-2011) of the Davis Botanical Society, and former chair (1992-2011) of the Advisory Committee for the Jepson Prairie Reserve, UC Davis/Natural Reserve System.
Since its inception, Thorp has been involved in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee garden on Bee Biology Road operated by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, installed in 2009. To establish a baseline, he began monitoring the site for bees in 2008. He has since detected more than 80 species of bees.
In a letter of support for his nomination as distinguished emeritus professor,Kremen wrote:
"I have had the privilege of working with Dr. Thorp as a close colleague since 1999. I can definitely say that without his contributions, I could never have developed as extensive and impactful a research program on pollinator conservation and pollination services. It is even more noteworthy that Dr. Thorp's contributions to this research program have all occurred since his 'retirement'– he has had a very active retirement indeed."
"Dr. Thorp has contributed in three main ways. First, he has provided expert input into the design of protocols for the research, including assays for pollinator effectiveness, developing citizen science methods, rearing experimental bumble bee colonies, monitoring bumble bee colony properties in the field, and developing pollinator survey methods. Second, he has provided expert taxonomic services, including personally identifying over 100,000 native bee specimens that we have collected during this work, and working with us to develop a bee traits database. Third, he has trained numerous field assistants and graduate students from my lab in different aspects of bee biology. He's spent long hours with many of my graduate students helping them learn to identify bees. He also helped us develop methods and information sheets for teaching field and lab teams to recognize key generic and family characters for identifying bees in the field and sorting them in the lab. He's advised many of my graduate students on different aspects of their work.
"Collectively, Dr.Thorp's contributions have impacted 35 publications that have emerged from this research program to date, with many more either submitted or nearing the submission stage. He has also been a co-author on a number of these publications. Not only has Dr. Thorp had such a significant effect on the work of my lab, but he conducts his own primary work documenting the status of rare bumble bee species like Bombus franklini and B.occidentalis and contributes at a similar level to other research labs such as with his long-time collaborators Dr. Gordon Frankie and Dr. Neal Williams. It's really quite amazing how he manages to do it all."
"He also teaches regularly in The Bee Course, a field course held in Arizona each year by the American Museum of Natural History, frequently gives talks and workshops that educate our state agencies and the public about the importance of pollinators, and works with conservation organizations like the Xerces Society to promote pollinator conservation."
In another letter of support, Ullmann, director of the UC Davis Student Farm, Agricultural Sustainability Institute, who received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, wrote:
"I met Robbin Thorp in 2007 and assumed that he was an active professor because of his continued contribution to the field of entomology, teaching activities, publishing in peer-reviewed journals and vocal support of pollinator conservation efforts. For these reason I considered asking if I could join his lab. I remember telling someone my plan and they said 'That probably won't work. Robbin is retired.' He does so much in the field of pollination ecology that I didn't even realize he was retired.
"Since then I've had the privilege of interacting with Robbin as a field technician, a graduate student in the Department of Entomology at UC Davis, a student at The Bee Course, a co-presenter at a bee identification course for US Forest Service staff, and as a co-author on a peer-reviewed paper. The entire time that I've known Robbin I've been impressed with (1) his depth and breadth of knowledge about bees and crop pollination, (2) his willingness to share what he knows, and (3) how approachable he is. It doesn't matter if you're a MacArthur Genius or a field technician just learning about bees, Robbin always makes time to talk with you and answer your questions.
"Robbin is one of the few people in North America who can identify bees down to the species level. As a result he's in high demand and has identified thousands of specimens for numerous lab groups since his retirement. However, he doesn't just identify the specimens. Instead, he's willing to patiently work through dichotomous keys with you so that you can learn those skills."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Judges were Tom Seeley, professor at Cornell University, the symposium's keynote speaker; speaker Santiago Ramirez, assistant professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, and native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor at UC Davis. Master beekeeper/journalist Mea McNeil of San Anselmo served as the timer and coordinator for the panel.
“In conservation biology and ecological study, we must know the distances organisms travel and the scales over which they go about their lives,” Mola said of his work. “To properly conserve species, we have to know how much land they need, how close those habitats need to be to each other, and the impact of travel on species success. For instance, if I'm told there's free burritos in the break room, I'm all over it. If the 'free' burritos require me traveling to Scotland, it's not worth it and I would spend more energy (and money) than I would gain. For pollinators, it's especially important we understand their movement since the distances they travel also dictates the quality of the pollination service they provide to crop and wild plants."
Second place of $600 went to Maureen Page, a second-year Ph.D. student in Neal Williams lab for her research, “Impacts of Honey Bee Abundance on the Pollination of Eschscholzia californica (California golden poppy).”
Page presented her research on the impacts of honey bee abundance on native plant pollination. “While honey bees are economically important, they are not native to North America and may have negative impacts on native bees and native plant communities in certain contexts,” she related. “My research is ongoing, but preliminary results suggest that honey bee abundance may negatively affect the pollination of California poppies.”
In her abstract, Page wrote: "Many studies support the claim that introduced honey bees compete with native pollinators. However, little is known about how honey bee introductions will affect native plant communities and plant species' persistence."
Page received her bachelor's degree in biology from Scripps College, Claremont, Calif. in 2006, cum laude. She seeks a career as a professor and principal investigator.
Two graduate students tied for fourth place and each received $250: doctoral student Jacob Francis of the University of Nevada, for his “A Sweet Solution to the Pollen Paradox: Nectar Mediates Bees' Responses to Defended Pollen” and Katie Uhl, a master's student, UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology, for her “Determination of Volatile Organic Compounds in Mono-Floral Honey Using HS-SPME/GC/MS." Francis studies with major professor Anne Leonard of Ecology, Evoluiton and Conservation Biology. Uhl's major professor is Alyson Mitchell.
Also honored was Kimberly Chacon, a doctoral student in the UC Davis Geography Graduate Group who studies with Professor Steve Greco for her “A Landscape Ecology Approach to Bee Conservation and Habitat Design." She received $150.
The annual Bee Symposium, themed "Keeping Bees Healthy, " is sponsored by the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, headed by director Amina Harris, and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, chaired by nematologist and professor Steve Nadler.
Harris and Professor Neal Williams of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, who serves as the center's faculty co-chair, emceed the symposium. The symposium drew a crowd of 250 from across the country.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So begins the introductory chapter in the newly published book, Bumble Bees of North America: an Identification Guide (Princeton University Press, 2014).
Described as a comprehensive guide to North American bumble bees, it's the first publication of its kind in more than a century.
Co-author Robbin Thorp, a native pollinator specialist and emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, says bumble bees have been around for more than 100 million years but their distribution and diversity are not well known. Bumble bees are just one of the some 20,000 species of bees that populate the world. Of that number, however, only about 250 species are bumble bees, and they all belong to the genus Bombus.
Some 46 different species of bumble bees reside in North America, north of Mexico, Thorp said.
In their book, lead author Paul Williams and co-authors Thorp, Leif Richardson and Sheila Colla provide detailed information about bumble bees and their history, plant favorites, distribution maps, up-to-date taxonomy, and extensive keys to identify the many color patterns of the species.
The book is drawing accolades. “A better team of scientists couldn't have written this amazing new book on bumble bees,” said Stephen Buchmann of the University of Arizona. “Readers will want to get out and find bumble bees, observe them, and learn what they can do to conserve them.”
Like many pollinators, bumble bees are in trouble as their habitat decreases and their health issues increase, Thorp said.
Wrote the co-authors: “Bumble bees have specific habitat requirements for nesting and overwintering, and a third aspect of habitat, forage, is even more important."
- farms and gardens with a diversity of flowering crops and herbs
- hay fields
- roadside ditches
- windbreaks with good abundance and diversity of “weedy” flowering plants, such as clovers and vetches
- wetlands and wet meadows
- hardwood forests
- mountain meadows, and
- urban parks and gardens
UC Davis campus and the surrounding Yolo County are not a real hot bed for bumble bee diversity,” Thorp said. “There are six species that have been recorded from the county, and one that's rarely seen.”
The primary species found in Yolo County are:
- Yellow-faced bumble bee, now known as the Vosnesensky bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii
- Yellow bumble bee, Bombus californicus, now known as Bombus fervidus
- Black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, formerly known as Bombus edwardsii. This is the first to fly in the winter and spring.
- Crotch bumble bee, Bombus crotchii, a short-tongued species
- Van Dyke bumble bee, Bombus vandykei, a medium long-tongued species
A bumble bee that Thorp has been trying to find for nine years is also included in the book: Franklin bumble bee, Bombus franklini. Its known distribution is a small geographic range in southern Oregon and northern California. The species declined sharply in 1999 and is feared extinct. Thorp last saw it in 2006.
Thorp, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 1964, retired in 1994 but continues to maintain his bee research, based at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road. His research involves the role of native bees in crop pollination, the role of urban gardens as bee habitat, and declines in native bumble bee populations. He is also heavily involved with the Jepson Prairie Reserve, researching the specialist bees in the vernal pool ecosystems.
Thorp and Coville, along with bumble bee enthusiast Gary Zamzow of Davis and UC Davis communication specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey, were among the more than 60 photographers providing photos for the book.
“Bumble bees are gentle and charming creatures,” said Zamzow, who photographs bumble bees on travels throughout the country. “They're fun to watch and photograph. The best way to find bumble bees is to look for flowering plants. When photographing bumble bees, try to photograph as many views of the bumble bee as possible—front and back.”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It will be recorded for later posting on UCTV.
“Whether in natural or agro-ecosystems, researchers are increasingly viewing positive interactions such as pollination in a broader context rather than as isolated pair-wise interactions,” Gillespie says. “In natural ecosystems, my research has explored how incidence of parasites and diseases of native bumble bees may affect pollination of plants in old-field meadows in Massachusetts. High incidence of certain parasites reduced pollination of bumble bee-dependent wild plants, suggesting that parasitism may impact pollination service to native plants and crops.”
“In a more applied context, I examined the effects of field management decisions, including pesticide use and irrigation practices, on pollination service in onion seed production in California. High insecticide use, even pre-bloom, as well as reduced irrigation negatively impact pollinator visitation in this crop, highlighting the importance of considering the indirect effects of management on the pollination process in agro-ecosystems.”
Gillespie, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis since 2011, received her bachelor’s degree in biology from Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her doctorate, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was a joint degree in organismic and evolutionary biology, and entomology. Her doctoral dissertation, with major professor Lynn Adler, “sought to understand whether mutualisms can mediate trophic cascades, and whether the occurrence and strength of such cascades is affected by the interdependence between mutualists. I examined the context and mechanisms by which parasitoids and parasites of bumble bees can have indirect effects on pollination service to plants using a range of approaches, including field surveys, laboratory manipulations and theoretical modeling.”
As a postdoc in the Williams lab, she is applying these techniques to examine the mechanisms behind yield declines in hybrid onion seed production in California, with the goal of developing sustainable recommendations for producers.
Gillespie and Adler co-authored “Mutualisms in Trophic Cascades: Parasitism of Bumble Bees and Pollination Service to Plants,” pending publication in Ecology.
Her research on “Factors Affecting Parasite Prevalence among Wild Bumble Bees,” was published in Ecology Entomology, 2010. She has also published her work in the American Journal of Botany (“Variation in the Timing of Autonomous Selfing among Populations that Differ in Flower Size, Time to Reproductive Maturity, and Climate,” 2010) and Annals of the Entomological Society of America (“Laboratory Rearing of North American Tiger Beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae: Cicindelinae,” 2011).
Pending publication in the Journal of Economic Entomology: “Insecticide Use in Hybrid Onion Seed Production Affects Pre- and Post-Pollination Processes,” by Gillespie, Neal Williams, Rachael Long and Nicola Seitz.
A recipient of several nationally competitive and specialty grants, Gillespie received a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant in 2008, and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Post-Graduate Award in 2007. The California Garlic and Onion Growers’ Association awarded her a research grant in 2011.
Gillespie presented a seminar on “Indirect Effects of Insecticides on Pollination in Hybrid Onion Seed Production” at the 2012 meeting of the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America. In 2009, her graduate student presentation on “Factors Affecting Parasitism in Bumble Bees” at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of Canada and the Entomological Society of Manitoba won her the President’s Prize award for the best student talk.
April 17, 2013
The seminar will take place from 12:05 to 1 p.m. in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Addition, corner of Hutchison and Kleiber Hall drives. Assistant professor Neal Williams will host him.
“Bumble bees are major contributors to pollination of crops and wildflowers throughout the temperate northern hemisphere,” Goulson said. “any species have declined, contributing to fears that we might face a 'pollination crisis.' I will discuss the main causes of their declines, which probably vary between regions. In Europe, the primary driver is thought to be habitat loss and other changes associated with intensive farming. In the Americas, declines of some species are likely to be due to impacts of non-native diseases.
“I will then turn to possible links between poor bee health and pesticides, particularly a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids. A controversy is currently raging on both sides of the Atlantic; I will give my view on the evidence for environmental impacts of these pesticides.”
Goulson received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Oxford University, followed by a doctorate on butterfly ecology at Oxford Brookes University. Subsequently, he lectured in biology for 11 years at the University of Southampton, before moving to Stirling in 2006, and then to Sussex in 2013.
Goulson works mainly on the ecology and conservation of bumble bees. He has published more than 200 scientific articles on the ecology and conservation of insects, with a particular focus on bumblebees. He is the author of Bumblebees; Their Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation, published in 2010 by Oxford University Press, and of A Sting in the Tale, a popular science book about bumble bees, published in 2013 by Jonathan Cape.
Goulson founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006, a charity which has grown to 8,000 members.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
