Feb. 13, 2013
Godfrey will open the all-day session by speaking on "Egyptian Alfalfa Weevil Management" at 8:30 a.m. He will co-lead two sessions in the afternoon with Vonny Barlow on "Insect Identification and Diagnosis."
The conference is geared for pest control advisors, IPM professionals, alfalfa producers and managers and Extension professionals. The focus is on the wide diversity of pest organisms. Experts from California and Arizona will speak. California has more than a million acres of alfalfa in production.
The schedule:
7:30 a.m. Registration
8:15 Welcoming Remarks-Dr. Pete Goodell and Dr. Vonny Barlow
8:30 Egyptian Alfalfa Weevil Management-Dr. Larry Godfrey, UC Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at UC Davis
9:00 Leafhopper Management in Alfalfa-Dr. Vonny M. Barlow, UC Cooperative Extension Advisor in Riverside County, entomology
9:30 Economically Important Plant Pathogens in Alfalfa-Dr. Mike Matheron, Extension Plant Pathologist and Research Scientist, University of Arizona, Department of Plant Sciences
10:00 Nematodes Affecting Alfalfa-Dr. Antoon Ploeg, UC Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Nematology at UC Riverside
10:30 Break (Sponsored)
10:45 Laws and Regulatory Issues Related to Alfalfa Production-Dr. Brian Bret, Regulatory Manager, Dow AgroSciences LLC
11:30 Managing Rodents in Southern California Alfalfa Fields-Mr. Andre Biscaro, UC Cooperative Extension Advisor in Los Angeles County, agriculture and environmental issues
11:45 Weed Control Issues in Desert Areas of Southern California-Mr. Tim Hays, Pest Control Advisor, Wilbur Ellis Co.
12:00 p.m. Lunch (Sponsored)
1:00 Importance of Alfalfa Variety Selection and Stand Establishment to an IPM Program-Dr. Dan Putnam, UC Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, alfalfa and forage
1:30 Bringing it All Together: Year Round IPM Program in Alfalfa-Dr. Pete Goodell, UC Cooperative Extension Advisor at UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Statewide IPM Program
Afternoon sessions
Insect Identification and Diagnostics: Larry Godfrey, Vonny Barlow
Alfalfa Field Diagnostics: Tim Hays and Dan Putnam
4:00 Discussion
4:15 Adjourn
Registration is $80 (until Feb. 21). On-site registration is $100. See details.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
Feb. 12, 2013
“Our project will build expertise through education and create tools and strategies that complement existing methods to limit crop losses due to thrips-transmitted tospoviruses,” said Ullman, associate dean for undergraduate academic programs for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and professor of entomology and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
Thrips are tiny insects that pierce and suck fluids from hundreds of species of plants, including tomatoes, grapes, strawberries and soybeans. The pests cause billions of dollars in damage to U.S. agricultural crops as direct pests and in transmitting plant viruses in the genus Tospovirus, such as Tomato spotted wilt virus. “There are 23 additional approved and emerging tospovirus genotypes transmitted by at least 14 thrips species (Thysanoptera: Thripidae),” said Ullman, who has been researching thrips and tospoviruses since 1987.
Ullman, principal investigator (PI) of the grant, credited the Interdisciplinary Research Support group led by Sheryl Soucy-Lubell in the UC Davis Office of Research, with assistance in developing the multi-institutional grant.
Other co-PIs involved in the five-year project are Scott Adkins of the USDA-ARS U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory, Ft. Pierce, Fla.; Robert Kemerait of the University of Georgia; Tifton, Ga., George Kennedy of North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C.; Martha Mutschler of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; Naidu Rayapati of Washington State University, Pullman, Wash.; and Dorith Rotenberg and Anna Whitfield of Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kans.
“Each investigator brings a unique set of skills to the project,” Ullman said. Adkins and Rayapati will focus on virus ecology, vectors and epidemiology; Kennedy, host plant resistance, virus ecology, epidemiology, extension and outreach; Kemerait, extension and outreach; Mutschler, plant breeding and host plant resistance; Rotenberg, vector/virus interactions and leadership of the educational network, and Whitfield, vector/virus molecular biology.
The team will integrate their efforts through monthly cyber conferences, meetings and workshops at annual APS meetings and by connecting undergraduate and graduate researchers through an educational network.
The project will be further enriched by a diverse group of collaborators. In California, this will include a team of UC Davis researchers and UC Cooperative Extension farm advisors, including Robert Gilbertson, Neil McRoberts, Tom Turini, Gene Miyao, Melissa Le Strange, and Scott Stoddard; educational experts David Rizzo and Gail Martinez; and a range of technical collaborators, including David Tricoli of the Ralph Parson’s Foundation Plant Transformation Facility and Garry Pearson of the UC Davis Core Greenhouse Facilities.
The project will involve faculty, researchers, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergraduate students. “Our educational efforts will train scientists with multidisciplinary skills and strengthen the pipeline of under-represented minorities and women into science,” Ullman added.
“Our research,” she said, “will mine and deploy genome-based resources of plants, thrips vectors and tospoviruses to improve host-plant resistance over multiple cropping systems, mitigate resistance breaking, and further elucidate the etiology of tospovirus-thrips-plant host associations.”
“Our extension efforts include making information accessible via a national, web-based tospovirus risk assessment and management toolbox in the Plant Management Network (PMN), which is hosted by APS. The PMN will provide producers, crop advisors and others a national platform to access information and gain a better understanding of how to manage thrips and the tospoviruses they transmit. In the area of education, we will create and implement a national Thrips-Tospovirus Educational Network (TTEN) to train and mentor students.”
The four-fold specific objectives are to:
- mine, develop, and deploy plant, thrips and tospovirus genetic resources to create new technologies for tospovirus and thrips management;
- explore implications of virus population diversity and evolution on expansion of vector and plant host relationships, including durability of plant resistance and cultural practices;
- develop and implement a national TTEN to recruit, mentor and provide interdisciplinary training for graduate and undergraduate research scholars; and,
- improve and extend existing predictive disease management models, decision tools and management strategies to multiple crops and geographic regions.
“These highly respected experts will assess the program’s progress toward reaching its goals, recommend appropriate adjustments of funding, suggest new research directions, and review the impact of the extension and education program,” Ullman said.
Terry Westover of the UC Davis Center for Education Evaluation Services will work with Rotenberg and Ullman to evaluate all aspects of the educational network. Nathan B. Smith, associate professor and Extension economist, University of Georgia, will evaluate benefits and economic outcomes from research and outreach activities.
Related Link:
Thrips Show Altered Feeding Behavior When Infected with Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
Feb. 1, 2013
According to the website, PHD TV "aims to illustrate and communicate the ideas, stories and personalities of researchers, scientists and scholars worldwide in creative, compelling and truthful ways. We believe there is a gap between scientists and academics and how the public perceives what they do and who they are."
"PHD TV is an offshoot of the online comic strip 'Piled Higher and Deeper' and is made up of a collective of current and former grad students and postdocs."
Shelomi, who received his bachelor's degree in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard, studies with major professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis.
From the PHD TV site:
UC Davis Ph.D. candidate in entomology Matan Shelomi tells us why, when it comes to stick bug research, you should go with your gut.
The Wild World of Insect Digestion
Reflections from Matan Shelomi, Ph.D. Candidate in Entomology at UC Davis
I have been interested in insects for as far back as I can remember. I can't explain why - they're just awesome. So much variety, so many shapes and forms and adaptations. And you don't need to fill out any paperwork when you study them! I knew I wanted to be a scientist since kindergarten, and when I learned that an insect scientist is called an "entomologist" in third grade, I committed the word to memory. It's actually been very convenient to have such a strong passion; it made choosing my major and classes in college much easier, and now I have the pleasure of saying "Yes, I have achieved my childhood dream."
I am originally from New York, did my undergrad at Harvard, and am now at UC Davis for the Ph.D. in Entomology. As much as I loved insects, at first I didn't have a more specific passion that that, and actually got rejected from most of the grad programs I applied to because I couldn't fake enthusiasm for any of their research projects. Whoops. I never even met my current adviser until I got to Davis, but was genuinely interested in the bioprospecting and biodiversity project she was working on in collaboration with Indonesian scientists (free trip to Indonesia, wooo!). Our lab is the Bohart Museum of Entomology (http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/), and we have a collection of live insects and arachnids as a petting zoo for visitors. Among these there are about 6-7 species of walking stick (Phasmatodea), which make great pets. As we have so many and so few people study them, I figured they would make a convenient study organism with a low chance of me being scooped. That's the wrong reason to pick a graduate project, but it worked for me.
My work started as trying to find microbial symbionts in the walking sticks that help them break down cellulose and/or toxic compounds in their food. I also tried looking for the enzymes directly. I should mention that my adviser is a wasp systematist and that my research has nothing to do with anything anyone in the lab is studying, so I've been mostly on my own on this one, seeking collaborators around campus and the globe (free trip to Japan and Taiwan... wooo Wooo!). While trying to use microscopes to look for endosymbiotic microbes, I first noticed the appendices of the midgut. Nobody on campus knew what they were, and the literature wasn't much more helpful, which made me all the more excited. Here was a genuine mystery - a question with no answer - that I could really sink my teeth into. It also helped me figure out that my passions lie in insect physiology, so now I know how to market myself as I look for postgrad jobs and professorships.
The moral of the story is to follow your heart, and everything will work out in the end.
Related Links:
- Matan Shelomi's Shorty Award
- Cutting Bergmann's Rule Down to Size
- Taking a Poke at Pokemon
- Linnaean Team
- NSF Grant
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
Feb. 6, 2013
"Studies of the iconic migration of the eastern North American monarch butterfly have revealed mechanisms behind its navigation using a time-compensated sun compass," Reppert says. "Skylight cues, such as the sun itself and polarized light, are processed through both eyes and integrated in the brain’s central complex, the presumed site of the sun compass. Circadian clocks that have a distinct molecular mechanism and that reside in the antennae provide time compensation. The draft sequence of the monarch genome has been presented, and gene-targeting approaches have been developed to manipulate putative migration genes. The monarch butterfly is an outstanding system to study the neural and molecular basis of long-distance migration." (See lab research.)
Hosts are Joanna Chiu, assistant professor of entomology, and Hugh Dingle, emeritus professor of entomology.
Reppert received his bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, in pre-medicine, and his medical degree from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship in neurobiology at the National Institutes of Child Health (NICHD), NIH, in 1979. He is a professor of pediatrics (neuroscience) at Harvard Medical School (2001 to the present) and since 2000, a pediatrician at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Reppert became the chair of the Department of Neurobiology, UMass Medical School in 2001, the same year he became the Higgins Family Professor of Neuroscience at UCMass Medical School. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Among his publications on monarchs:
Reppert SM, Gegear RJ, Merlin C (2010). Navigational mechanisms of migrating monarch butterflies. TINS 33:399-406.
Heinze S, Reppert SM (2011). Sun compass integration of skylight cues in migratory monarch butterflies. Neuron 69:345-358.
Zhan S, Merlin C, Boore JL, Reppert SM. The monarch genome yields insights into long-distance migration. Cell 2011; 147:1171-1185.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
DAVIS--Professor Steve Nadler of the UC Davis Department of Entomology has been selected to receive the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal, presented by the American Society of Parasitologists (ASP) in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of parasitology.
Nadler will be honored at ASP's 88th annual meeting, set June 26–29 in Quebec City, Quebec. The award, established in 1959, is named for H.B. Ward, the society's first president and founder of the Journal of Parasitology.
Nadler studies the evolutionary biology and molecular phylogenetics of parasites, focusing mainly on nematodes. He joined the UC Davis faculty in 1996, serving as chair of the Department of Nematology from 2005-2011.
A past president of ASP (2007-08), Nadler has published more than 90 journal articles, and co-authored the textbook Foundations of Parasitology. His molecular systematic research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, and his publications have yielded fundamental insights into host-parasite co-phylogeny and the evolutionary biology of parasites.
The UC Davis professor has served as an associate editor or editorial board member for several journals, including Parasitology, Journal of Parasitology, and Systematic Parasitology.
Nadler received his bachelor's degree in biology from Missouri State University, and his doctorate in medical parasitology from Louisiana State University Medical Center. He completed postdoctoral training at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. He was appointed assistant professor of biological sciences at Northern Illinois University in 1990.
Henry Baldwin Ward (1865-1945), a native of Troy, N.Y., is considered “The Father of American Parasitology.” A zoologist, parasitologist and administrator, he was the first dean of the University of Nebraska College of Medicine and later served as professor and head of the Department of Zoology at the University of Illinois until his retirement in 1933.
Founded in 1924, ASP is a diverse group of more than 800 scientists from industry, government, and academia who are interested in the study and teaching of parasitology. ASP members contribute not only to the development of parasitology as a discipline, but also to primary research in such fields as systematics, medicine, molecular biology, immunology, physiology, ecology, biochemistry and behavior.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894