They are pollination ecologist Neal Williams, assistant professor of entomology; Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen, and native bee specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology. They were interviewed by Emmet Brady of Davis, host of the Great Bee Count and founder of the Insect News Network Radio Show, based in Davis.
To listen to or watch the online video broadcast, access http://www.yourgardenshow.com/bees between 8 and 10 a.m., Pacific Time. Other times from other time zones are listed on the page.
The online video broadcast is produced by YourGardenShow.com. Ian Cook will host a question-and-answer session.
The Great Bee Count contributes to the Great Sunflower Project, a national bee census. More than 100,000 people have committed to spending 15 minutes in their backyards and gardens counting bees.
The schedule (Pacific Time), subject to change:
8 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Emmet Brady, host, interview with Gretchen Le Buhn, San Francisco State University (from the first-ever Bee-a-Thon)
Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist, UC Davis Department of Entomology
Robbin Thorp, native pollinator specialist and emeritus professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology
Neal Williams, pollinator ecologist and assistant professor of entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology
8:30 a.m. – 9 a.m.
Gretchen LeBuhn / Great Sunflower Project
Eric Mader – Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Kim Flottum – Editor of Bee Culture journal
Jennifer Berry - Apiculture specialist at the University of Georgia.
9 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
Gretchen LeBuhn / Fred Bove Great Sunflower Project
Kim Flottum – Editor of Bee Culture journal
Jim Fisher – NYC BeeKeepers
Neal Williams, UC Davis Entomology
Robbin Thorp, UC Davis Entomology
Eric Mussen, Extension Apiculturist, UC Davis Department of Entomology
9:30 a.m. – 10 a.m.
Jennifer Berry - Apiculture Specialist at the University of Georgia
Arnold Van Vliet - Biologist at Wageningen University, Netherlands
Stephen Buchmann - North American Pollinator Protection Campaign
Gretchen Le Buhn, San Francisco State University (from the first-ever Bee-a-Thon)
Brady is an innovator in the emerging field of cultural entomology, and the creator of the Insect News Network (.com). His program in Davis airs every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m on KDRT 95.7 FM.
In 2011, Brady hosted the first-ever Bee-A-Thon, a global online marathon dedicated to raising awareness about honey bees and other pollinators. Brady also consults with yourgardenshow.com.
A founding member of the Biomimicry Guild Speakers Bureau, he has lectured in seven universities across India. He co-founded the San Francisco Bay Area Green Tours. He is currently authoring the Wikipedia entry for cultural entomology and a book entitled "Humvees and Honeybees: An Introduction to Cultural Entomology."
His given name, "Emmet," means “ant” in Gaelic.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
The UC Davis Department of Entomology has announced its list of fall seminars.
All the noon seminars will take place from 12:10 to 1 p.m. on Wednesdays, Oct. 17 through Nov. 28 in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Building. The last seminar of the year will be the Leigh Alumni Seminar on Dec. 5 at 6:15 in the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) Ballroom A. Co-chairs are assistant professors Joanna Chiu and Brian Johnson.
Plans call for all the seminars to be videotaped and posted on UCTV under the coordination of James R. Carey, professor of entomology. (See the index of previous Department of Entomology seminars posted on UCTV Seminars.)
The schedule:
Oct. 17: Tim Linksvayer, assistant professor, University of Pennsylvania.
Title: "Colony-Level Social Insect Gene Regulatory Networks"
Host: Brian Johnson, assistant professor of entomology
Oct. 24: Micky Eubanks, professor, Texas A&M University
Title: "Community Ecology of a "Pest": Aphids Rule their World via Powerful Indirect Effects"
Host: Graduate student Billy Kimmel
Oct. 31: Sarjeet Gill, professor, UC Riverside
Title: "Bacterial Toxins in Disease Mosquito Vector Control"
Host: Bruce Hammock, distinguished professor of entomology
Nov. 7: Taro Ohkawa, postdoctoral researcher, UC Berkeley
Title: "Baculovirus Manipulation of the Host Actin Cytoskeleton: Roles in Entry and Egress"
Host: George Kamita from the Bruce Hammock lab
Nov. 14: No seminar this week (Entomological Society of America meeting)
Nov. 28: James Mallet, professor, Harvard University
Title: ""Mimicry and Speciation in Amazonian Butterflies: From Jungle to Genome""
Host: Gregory Lanzaro, professor, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine
SPECIAL SEMINAR
Dec. 5: Leigh Alumni Seminar
Marc Tatar, professor, Brown University
Title: "Integrated Control of Drosophila Aging by Insulin/IGF Signaling"
Host: James R. Carey, professor of entomology
Site: Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) Ballroom A
Wine and Cheese Reception from 5 to 6 p.m.
Presentation at 6:15 p.m.
See news story
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
Jan. 4, 2011
DAVIS--The declining bumble bee population among some species in the United States is alarming, according to a three-year study published Jan. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The interdisciplinary study, led by Sydney Cameron of the Department of Entomology and Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, “uncovered major losses in the relative abundance of several bumble bee species and declines in their geographic range since record-keeping began in the late 1800s,” according to a University of Illinois press release.
“The researchers report that declining bumble bee populations have lower genetic diversity than bumble bee species with healthy populations and are more likely to be infected with Nosema bombi, an intracellular parasite known to afflict some species of bumble bees in Europe.”
“The national analysis found that the relative abundances of four of the eight species analyzed have declined by as much as 96 percent and that their surveyed geographic ranges have shrunk by 23 to 87 percent,” according to the press release. “Some of these contractions have occurred in the last two decades.”
"We have 50 species of bumble bees in North America,” Cameron said. “We've studied eight of them and four of these are significantly in trouble. They could potentially recover; some of them might. But we only studied eight. This could be the tip of the iceberg.” See abstract.
Noted bumble bee expert Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, will be featured tonight (Tuesday, Jan. 4) on KTVU Fox 2, on the declining bumble bee population in the United States.
He was interviewed Tuesday morning by John Fowler, health and science editor of the Oakland-based station about the study, described as the first in-depth national study of bumble bees.
Thorp said the Cameron study looked at three western bumble bees: Bombus vosnesenskii (yellow-faced bumble bee), B. bifarius, and B. occidentalis.
Of those western bumble bees, only B. occidentalis is in decline “and that one only in the western part of its range,” Thorp said.
“Although the study treated B. pensylvanicus as the eastern species in decline, the researchers did not consider its very close western relative, B. sonorus, which used to be very common here and the rest of the Central Valley, but has virtually disappeared here since about 2003,” Thorp said.
"Both these species are doing well from the southern USA down into Mexico, however. This is a curious reversal of what one would expect if global warming might be a cause.”
Bumble bees, commercially reared to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes, peppers and strawberries, pollinate about 15 percent of our food crops, valued at $3 billion, Thorp said.
Thorp has been tracking the now critically imperiled Franklin's bumble bee (Bombus franklini) since 1998. "It has the most restricted distribution range of any bumble bee in North America and possibly the world. Its range is about 190 miles north to south and 70 miles east to west in a narrow stretch between southern Oregon and northern California between the coast and Sierra-Cascade range,” he said.
Its known distribution includes Jackson, Douglas and Josephine counties in Oregon and Siskiyou and Trinity counties in California. It lives at elevations ranging from 540 feet in the north to 6800 feet in the south.
The decline, disappearance and possible demise of Franklin’s bumble bee, is closely linked to the widespread decline of native pollinators in North America, Thorp said, and should concern all facets of society. “The loss of a native pollinator could strike a devastating blow to the ecosystem, economy and food supply.”
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
Jan. 6, 2011
DAVIS--Postdoctoral researcher Rebecca “Becky” Trout-Fryxell, who studies Culex and Anopheles mosquitoes with University of California, Davis medical entomologists Anthony Cornel and Gregory Lanzaro, has received a prestigious award designating her as one of the top young entomologists in the nation.
Trout-Fryxell received one of the five John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Awards presented at the Entomological Society of America’s 58th annual meeting, held recently in San Diego. The Southwestern Branch of ESA selected her at its most outstanding entomology graduate student in a region encompassing Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, plus the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The other four ESA branches—Pacific, Eastern, North Central, and Southwestern Branch—also each selected a recipient.
Trout-Fryxell works with population genetics of the West Nile virus vector Culex pipiens, and does research on the malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae.
Fryxell joined the UC Davis team in April of 2009. Cornel is an associate professor of entomology, with offices and labs at UC Kearney Agricultural Center, Parlier, and UC Davis. Lanzaro is a professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine.
Trout-Fryxell previously won a Isley-Duport Entomology Scholarship and was a member of the 2007 Linnaean Games National Championship team from the University of Arkansas. The Linnaean Games is a college bowl-type competition in students answer questions about insects and entomologists.
She has published her research in Journal of Medical Entomology, Journal of American Mosquito Control, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Medical and Veterinary Entomology, among others, on topics ranging from mosquitoes and ticks to bed bugs.
Trout-Fryxell received her master’s degree in entomology from the University of Kentucky, Lexington, where she studied with major professor Grayson Brown. Her research focused on reducing mosquito populations in the peridomestic environment.
She received her doctorate in entomology from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, last May. Studying with major professors Dayton Steelman and Allen Szalanski, she completed her dissertation on the distribution and occurrence of ticks in Arkansas, also examining tick-host pathogen interactions.
This year's four other winners of the Comstock Awards:
Pacific Branch: Ashfaq Sial, who received his doctorate from Washington State University
North Central Branch: Anna Fiedler, doctoral candidate at Michigan State University
Southwestern Branch: Joe Lewis, doctoral candidate at the University of North Texas
Eastern Branch: Gaylord Desurmont, who received his doctorate from Cornell and is now a postdoctoral researcher there.Among the previous Pacific Branch recipients (2008) was Christopher Barker of the William Reisen lab at UC Davis. The Pacific Branch includes:
In the United States: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming
U.S. Territories: American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Johnston Atoll, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Midway Islands, Wake Island
In Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Yukon
In Mexico: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Sonora
Related link:
Previous Recipients of the John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Awards
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
Feb. 7, 2011
DAVIS--The UC Davis Department of Entomology is sponsoring a series of five lectures on apiculture starting Jan. 31 and continuing through mid-February.
The lectures will either be in 1022 Life Sciences Addition (LSA), or 122 Briggs (see schedule below). The talks are open to the public and will be webcast for archiving and viewing after Feb. 17 on the department website.
The next speaker is Michael Simone-Finstrom, research associate, North Carolina State University, who will speak on "Resin Collection and Social Immunity in Honey Bees" from 4 to 5 p.m., Monday, Feb. 14 in 122 Briggs.
Upcoming lecture:
Thursday, Feb. 17: 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., Juliana Rangel, National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral researcher in biology, Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University. Site: 1022 LSA. Topic: "Collective Decision-Making in Honey Bees During Reproduction: Mechanisms and Fitness Implications."
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894