- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Her dissertation proposal also will be virtual. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/99327991233.
“In the proposed research, I will study the effectiveness of both automated precision spray applications and drone-mediated releases of biological control agents for the suppression of lettuce aphid and western flower thrips in several contexts," she says in her abstract. "I hope that the results of the proposed research will contribute to the development of best-use practices to guide the use of both technologies."
"I will generate novel data that fill existing knowledge gaps regarding the use of precision insecticide applications and drone releases of natural enemies in lettuce production systems. This will advance the adoption of these new pest management tools and contribute to a more sustainable integrative pest management system for lettuce."
Addie received her bachelor's degree in molecular environmental biology from UC Berkeley in 2011 and her master's degree in horticulture and agronomy from UC Davis in 2018. Before enrolling at UC Davis, she worked as a researcher under research chemist Spencer Walse at the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) laboratory in Parlier, CA (2019-2021) and the UC Davis Contained Research Facility in Davis, CA (2012-2019), studying postharvest integrated pest management (IPM) of quarantine pests.
Active in the Entomological Society of America (ESA), Abrams received a second-place or runner-up award for her student research presentation at the 2022 ESA meeting, a joint meeting of the Entomological Societies of America, Canada, and British Columbia held in Vancouver, B.C., Nov. 13-16.
In her abstract, she noted that "Commercial lettuce production in California's central coast represents 70 percent of the production in the United States. Recent discoveries of some chemistries in ground and surface water in the Salinas valley region have placed the insecticidal chemistries used by the industry at risk of increased regulation. Automated thinner-sprayers use plant-detection sensors to apply chemical sprays directly to individual lettuce plants, so that the same amount of product to plants as a standard broadcast sprayer while potentially reducing the amount of pesticide applied per acre by up to 90 percent. Field experiments testing this technology for the control of western flower thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis) and aphids, lettuce-currant aphid (Nasovonia ribisnigri) and others, were conducted to compare the efficacy of automated sprays to a conventional broadcast application system. Experiments were conducted in conventionally managed organic romaine lettuce fields using a complete randomized block design. Prior to and at regular intervals after treatment, heads were sampled from experimental and control plots to assess pest pressure. Results from this experiment validate the use of the automated sprayers to apply insecticides for the control of aphid and thrips pests in lettuce and will be discussed in the context of developing best-use-practices for this technology."
At the 2019 Pacific Branch of ESA meeting, Abrams delivered a presentation on Rearing methods for brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys, on live host plants. She has authored or co-authored several publications on stink bugs.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And how do animals use changes in day length and temperature to adapt their physiology and behavior to seasonal environmental changes?
Those are the questions that UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Sergio Hidalgo Sotelo asked himself, and now newly published research that he spearheaded in the laboratory of molecular geneticist-physiologist Joanna Chiu—building on previous Chiu lab research--sheds more light on the topic.
The research article, “Seasonal Cues Act Through the Circadian Clock and Pigment Dispersing Factor to Control EYES ABSENT and Downstream Physiological Changes,” appears in the current edition of the journal Current Biology.
Sotelo, a Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences fellow in the lab of Professor Chiu, vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, collaborated with Chiu and two lab members: Christine Tabuloc, a doctoral candidate, and Maribel Anguiano, now a doctoral student in the UC Davis Neuroscience graduate program and a former member of National Institutes of Health Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP).
“This work,” Chiu said, “certainly helps us progress towards a more complete picture of how animal seasonality is regulated at the molecular and cellular level. Excitingly, it also raises many more interesting questions, which Sergio and our team cannot wait to answer.”
Their summary:
Organisms adapt to seasonal changes in photoperiod and temperature to survive; however, the mechanisms by which these signals are integrated in the brain to alter seasonal biology are poorly understood. We previously reported that EYES ABSENT (EYA) shows higher levels in cold temperature or short photoperiod and promotes winter physiology in Drosophila. Nevertheless, how EYA senses seasonal cues is unclear. Pigment-dispersing factor (PDF) is a neuropeptide important for regulating circadian output rhythms. Interestingly, PDF has also been shown to regulate seasonality, suggesting that it may mediate the function of the circadian clock in modulating seasonal physiology. In this study, we investigated the role of EYA in mediating the function of PDF on seasonal biology. We observed that PDF abundance is lower on cold and short days as compared with warm and long days, contrary to what was previously observed for EYA. We observed that manipulating PDF signaling in eya+ fly brain neurons, where EYA and PDF receptor are co-expressed, modulates seasonal adaptations in daily activity rhythm and ovary development via EYA-dependent and EYA-independent mechanisms. At the molecular level, altering PDF signaling impacted EYA protein abundance. Specifically, we showed that protein kinase A (PKA), an effector of PDF signaling, phosphorylates EYA promoting its degradation, thus explaining the opposite responses of PDF and EYA abundance to changes in seasonal cues. In summary, our results support a model in which PDF signaling negatively modulates EYA levels to regulate seasonal physiology, linking the circadian clock to the modulation of seasonal adaptations.”
Sotelo, who specializes in chronobiology (the study of biological rhythms), molecular genetics and biochemistry, won the 2021 Young Neuroscientist Symposium Award at the meeting of the Chilean Society for Neuroscience, Chile, and received a merit award for his presentation at the 2022 Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) Biennial Conference in Amelia Island, Florida.
A native of Puente Alto, Santiago, Chile, Sotelo joined the Chiu lab as a postdoctoral fellow in the summer of 2020. He is one of 10 post-docs from across Latin America—including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay—to receive two years of funding to conduct research. The fellows work under the mentorship of prominent biomedical scientists, including alumni of the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences.
Sotelo holds three degrees from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile: a bachelor's degree in biochemistry, with distinction (2015), a master's degree in neurochemistry (2017) and a doctorate in cellular and molecular biology, with distinction (2020). Also in 2020, he received a doctorate in sensory physiology and animal. Behavior from the University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Resource:
EYES ABSENT and TIMELESS Integrate Photoperiodic and Temperature Cues to Regulate Seasonal Physiology in Drosophila, published June 15, 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), lead author Antoine Abrieux and co-authors Joanna Chiu, Yao Cai, and Yongbo Xue.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Fettig's seminar also will be virtual. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672
UC Davis doctoral student Crystal Homicz will host him.
"Bark beetles are a major disturbance in western forests," Fettig says in his abstract. "Several recent outbreaks of species such as mountain pine beetle, spruce beetle, and western pine beetle are among the most severe in recorded history. There is strong evidence that climate change has increased the impacts of bark beetles. For example, in California warming and exceptional drought resulted in mortality of more than a 100 million trees from 2014-2017. Much of this mortality was attributed to western pine beetle colonizing drought-stressed hosts. I will discuss observed and projected changes in climate, the direct and indirect effects of climate change on bark beetles and forests, and management actions that increase the resilience of forests to bark beetles and climate change."
Fettig advises Homicz, who began her studies with forest entomologist and chemical ecologist Steve Seybold (1959-2019). Her dissertation research focuses on western pine beetle and red turpentine beetle interactions with forest disturbances, such as drought, wildfire and prescribed fire.
Fettig received his bachelor's degree (1993) and a master's degree (1996) from Virginia Tech University, and his doctorate in forest entomology in 1999 from the University of Georgia.
Of his current research, he writes on the USDA website: "My personal research program has three major emphases: (1) determination of short and long-term implications to forest health of prescribed fire and/or mechanical fuel treatments (silvicultural thinning) used in the large-scale restoration of fire-adapted forest ecosystems, (2) development of chemical, silvicultural and semiochemical-based monitoring and management tactics for Dendroctonus and Ips bark beetles, and (3) determination of the role of semiochemicals in the behavior of bark beetle species of economic importance."
Fettig's most recent publication, "Fire and Insect Interactions in North American Forests," co-authored by Homicz and several other colleagues, appears in a 2022 edition of Current Forestry Reports. Abstract: "Fire has both positive and negative effects on insects. Bark beetle and defoliator epidemics have positive and negative effects on wildfires. Additional study of these relationships is warranted given the effects of climate change on forests and forest disturbances, recent declines in some pollinator species in North America, and interests in restoring fire-adapted forest ecosystems."
The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's winter seminars are held on Wednesdays at 4:10 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. All are virtual. They are coordinated by urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor. (See schedule.) She may be reached at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu for technical issues.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The seminar, hosted by UC Davis doctoral student Crystal Homicz, begins at 4:10 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/
"Only in the last few years have we begun to uncover how bristlecone pines do this," he related. "We use field work, chemical ecology and laboratory assays to understand interactions between long-lived bristlecone pine species (Great Basic Bristlecone pine and foxtail pine), co-occurring limber pine, and the mountain pine beetle (MPB). I will talk about recent and going research examining (1) the plant volatile cues used by host-searching MPBs, (2) the terpene-based phloem defenses used against MPB larvae, and (3) tradeoffs between constitutive and induced defenses across these pine species. Understanding these interactions provides insight into the longevity of bristlecone pines, the implications for these species under climate change, and development of management tool to protect trees from bark beetles."
Runyon, based on the Montana State University (MSU) campus in Bozeman, received his bachelor's degree in biology and mathematics in 1998 from the University of Virginia's College at Wise, Va.; his master's degree in entomology from MSU in 2001; and his doctorate in entomology in 2008 from Pennsylvania State University Park, Pa.
In 2014, at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.
Runyon is also involved in assessing native plants desired by native bees. (See research and news story)
Homicz, advised by research entomologist Chris Fettig of the USDA's Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, began her studies with forest entomologist and chemical ecologist Steve Seybold (1959-2019). Her dissertation research focuses on western pine beetle and red turpentine beetle interactions with forest disturbances, such as drought, wildfire and prescribed fire.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's regularly scheduled Wednesday seminars are at 4:10 p.m. on every Wednesday through March 15. They are coordinated by urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor. (See schedule.) She may be reached at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And it was all about the beetles: "Beetlemania."
Some 500 visitors browsed the displays at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, chatted with scientists, photographed the specimens, engaged in arts and crafts, and then headed over to the petting zoo to introduce themselves to the Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects.
The event took place from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Bohart Museum's headquarters in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane. Bohart personnel greeted the guests: Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum; Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator; Brennen Dyer, collections manager; Brittany Kohler, research associate; Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection; and Greg Kareofelas, Lepidoptera host assistant.
- Beetles from Belize: Professor Fran Keller of Folsom Lake College, a Bohart Museum scientist, and her assistant, Iris Bright, a graduate student in the Jason Bond lab.
- Carabid beetles: Kipling "Kip" Will, associate professor with the UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
- Burying beetles: Tracie Hayes, a doctoral candidate and burying beetle researcher in the laboratory of Professor Louie Yang, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. (She presented a video she created, "A Clearance of Death on Behalf of Life" at https://youtu.be/cGLOE7SrbiU.)
- Bark beetles: Curtis Ewing, a senior environmental scientist with Cal Fire's Forest Entomology and Pathology
- Children's tree-related activities: Jonelle Mason, a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) employee and coordinator of Project Learning Tree (PLT) California, an initiative of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative,
- Tree cores and boring tools: UC Davis graduate student Jennifer Cribbs of the Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management
- Diabolical ironclad beetles: Brittany Kohler, Bohart research associate
- Family arts and crafts: Allen Chew, Sol Wantz and Kat Taylor, all UC Davis undergraduate students
- Petting zoo: Kaitai Liu, undergraduate student in the Jason Bond lab; Veronica Casey, graduate student in Shahid Siddique lab; and Grace Horne, graduate student in Emily Meineke lab
The Bohart Museum, dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," was founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart. It houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus a live "petting zoo," featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas; and a year-around gift shop, stocked with insect-themed books, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, hoodies and more. The museum is open to the public from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays.