- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you're an ecologist-artist like Tracie Hayes, a doctoral candidate in the laboratory of Professor Louie Yang, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, you research the yellow-bellied burying beetle, Nicrophorus guttula, at the Bodega Marine Reserve, and intricately draw the insect and its environment.
Hayes will be among the scientists participating in the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on beetles from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 22 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
"We have about a million beetle specimens in our global collection of eight million insect specimens," said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology.
The event, open to the public, is free and family friendly. The arts-and-crafts activity will be to color a drawing of a carrion beetle, genus Heterosilpha, the work of Hayes.
N. guttula, described by Russian entomologist Victor Motschulsky, belongs to the order Coleoptera and the family Silphidae (carrion beetles).
“Burying beetles are really very similar to us,” said Hayes, noting that the male and female meet, pair up, engage in building their home, and help feed the offspring. “They find a good carcass to settle down with; a pair gets to know each other by stridulating back and forth; and then they will prepare their home by burying the carcass and building a nice nursery chamber. After eggs are laid and larvae hatch, both parents will help feed the offspring.”
“I became interested in burying beetles when I was exploring potential field sites during my first year (of graduate school), and came across some carrion beetles, Heterosilpha ramosa, at the Bodega Marine Reserve,” said Hayes, who grew up in Charlotte, N.C., received two degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and joined the UC Davis population biology graduate program in 2019. “I was captivated by their abundance and movement across the landscape and started reading the literature about carrion beetles generally.”
“I came across a lot of cool experiments with these important scavengers and realized they could be a useful system for asking questions about resource scarcity in space and time,” Hayes related. “Later that summer I set out mice carcasses across the reserve to see if I could find burying beetles (carrion beetles in the genus Nicrophorus), and I was lucky enough to catch multiple Nicrophorus and witness their fascinating behaviors in the field.”
At the open house, Hayes will present a video she created, "A Clearance of Death on Behalf of Life" at https://youtu.be/cGLOE7SrbiU, and field questions about the insect and her research.
Hayes presented a research poster on “Moisture Modulates Ephemeral Resource Patch Quality for Burying Beetle Reproduction” at two 2022 scientific meetings: the Entomological Society of America Joint Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, an also at the 2022 American Society of Naturalists Meeting, Pacific Grove, Calif.
What sparked her interest in entomology? “I like working with insects because they usually come at a scale amenable to ecology experiments, they are super diverse, leading to a diversity of potential questions, and because they are beautiful--especially my charismatic Nicrophorus!” Hayes said.
“Also, burying beetles serve as a model system for studying organisms that specialize on resources that are rare in space and time. These ‘ephemeral resource patches'-- in this case, small carcasses--act as epicenters for interesting ecological interactions.”
A highlight of her research: “Last summer, using experimental chambers in the field, I measured reproductive output across a range of conditions. I found that pairs require a fresh carcass over a dry one in order to reproduce successfully, and competition from the generalist carrion beetle Heterosilpha reduces total offspring count. Both competition and carcass moisture affect the quality of the carcass as perceived by these beetles. Under shifting environmental conditions and species interactions under climate change, burying beetles, as specialists of ephemeral resource patches, may serve as indicators of how organisms will respond to change in general.”
Hayes received a $138,000 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (GRP) in 2019, and in 2022, was awarded a $25,000 Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Bodega Marine Laboratory Fellowship.
A 2017 alumna of UNC-Chapel Hill, with the highest distinction, Tracie holds a bachelor of science degree in biology with honors, and a bachelor of arts degree in studio art, with highest honors. Her work experience includes lab manager for the Echinacea Project, Chicago Botanic Garden; research intern for the Dell Ecology Lab, National Great Rivers Research and Education Center, Alton, Ill.; and undergraduate researcher for the Hurlbert Lab, UNC-Chapel Hill.
Engaged in teaching, outreach and science communication at UC Davis, Hayes served recently as a teaching assistant for the course, Entomology 001 “Art, Science and the World of Insects,” and as the communications facilitator, mentor, and workshop leader for the UC Davis Evolution and Ecology Graduate School Preview Program. She created a Bohart Museum of Entomology specimen display drawer, “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Insects that Use Ephemeral Resources,” in 2022.
In the art-communications world, Hayes gained experience as the 2013-2016 managing editor, design editor and writer for the Carolina Scientific magazine, UNC's premier undergraduate science journal, and as the 2014 - 2015 artist-in-residence and arts editor, for Event Horizon magazine, a literary and graphic arts periodical at Chapel Hill.
Her career plans? “I hope to keep doing ecology and get a faculty position eventually,” Hayes said. “I would also like to work across disciplines and incorporate art-making into my research and future career as much as possible.”
Beetle Scientists
Folsom Lake College professor Fran Keller, a Bohart Museum scientist and a UC Davis doctoral alumna of entomology, will discuss the beetles she and other scientists collected in Belize. "In November I started working in the Natural History Museum London Coleoptera collection, working on Belize Cerambycidae to facilitate identification and then catalog specimens for the Belize National Insect Collection," Keller said. "I worked with Larry Bezark, via the internet/email/Google Drive, who is retired from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. There were 28 new country records for Belize and two new species to science that Larry will describe."
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. In addition to its global collection of eight million insect specimens, it houses 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 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And with an exclamation point!
That's the theme of the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, set from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 22 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
It's free, family friendly and open to the public. Scientists will display scores of beetle species, ranging from burying beetles and darkling beetles to dung beetles and lady beetles (aka ladybugs).
Among the presenters will be Tracie Hayes, a doctoral student in the laboratory of Professor Louie Yang, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. She researches burying beetles, genus Nicrophorus, at the Bodega Marine Reserve. She will show a video she created, display specimens, and answer questions. Burying beetles, as the name implies, are known for burying the carcasses of small vertebrates, such as mice, squirrels and birds, and using them as a food source for their larvae. The American burying beetle, Nicrophorus americanus, endemic to North America, is a critically endangered species.
Folsom Lake College professor Fran Keller, a Bohart Museum scientist and a UC Davis doctoral alumna of entomology, will discuss the beetles she and other scientists collected in Belize.
"In November I started working in the Natural History Museum London Coleoptera collection, working on Belize Cerambycidae to facilitate identification and then catalog specimens for the Belize National Insect Collection," Keller said. "I worked with Larry Bezark, via the internet/email/Google Drive, who is retired from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. There were 28 new country records for Belize and two new species to science that Larry will describe."
Scientists from the California Department of Food and Agriculture also will be a key part of the open house.
Beetles, belonging to the order Coleoptera, the largest insect order, total some 400,000 species. They make up "about 40 percent of all insect species so far described, and about 25 percent of all animals," according to Wikipedia.
Beneficial beetles include the lady beetle, aka ladybug, which devours aphids and other small soft-bodied insects. Another beneficial beetle: the dung beetle, which feed on feces. Serious pests include the boll weevil, the Colorado potato beetle, the coconut hispine beetle, and the mountain pine beetle.
The family arts-and-crafts activity at the open house will be coloring a burying beetle, art that's the work of Tracie Hayes.
The Bohart Museum, dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," is directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. Founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart, it houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens; 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 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Among previous recipients: Shawn Christensen of the Rachel Vannette lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, for research on how nectar microbes induce pollen germination to access scarce nutrients. (See Bug Squad blog)
Three to five grants of up to $2000 will be awarded for field-oriented botany projects in taxonomy, evolutionary biology, ecology, and/or floristics; or research projects related to the cultivation and propagation of succulents (or horticultural materials of these groups).
As part of the requirement of the funded projects, it is expected that plant voucher specimens and/or population samples will be obtained during the field component of the project and deposited in the UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity Herbarium or the UC Davis Conservatory as a return contribution, said Kate Mawdsley, chair of the Davis Botanical Society Student Grants Committee.
Grant recipients need to contact herbarium staff for information on the proper collection, preparation, and documentation of voucher specimens. Grant proposals must include the following information:
- Cover page. This page should include the project title, applicant's name, applicant's current position, UC Davis campus address, telephone number, and e-mail address. The applicant should also include the name of their faculty advisor and provide contact information. Collaborators, if any, should be identified on the cover page and their roles in the project briefly described.
- Proposed project description. The project description should include a statement of significance of the research, objectives, hypotheses to be tested, materials and methods, anticipated results, expected completion date, and plans for collection and disposition of voucher specimens. The project description should be no longer than three typewritten pages, single-spaced (12-point font size, one-inch margins).
- Applicant's qualifications to carry out the proposed research. Briefly explain why you are well-prepared to complete this project with a good chance of success. If the applicant has received a previous award from the Davis Botanical Society, a one-page summary of the results and an accounting of the funds are required.
- Proposed budget. Grant funds are intended only for travel expenses, appropriate and necessary equipment, and expendable supplies. The funds are not for salaries. Please include name and e-mail address of the accounts manager in the applicant's home department so the funds can be distributed properly.
- Letter of recommendation. If the project is being carried out under the guidance of a faculty advisor, the advisor should be identified and asked to submit a letter of recommendation directly to the selection committee at the e-mail address below. Otherwise, a letter of recommendation should be sought from a researcher familiar with the applicant's abilities and proposed research, and submitted by the letter writer to the e-mail below.
Application materials (except for the letter of recommendation) must be submitted electronically as a single PDF document titled with the Applicant's Last Name and DBS Proposal 2023 by 5 p.m., Monday, March 6, 2023. Please send to the chair of the Davis Botanical Society Student Grants Committee, Kate Mawdsley, as an e-mail attachment to wfm-kfm@pacbell.net. Applicants will be notified by early April if they are a grant recipient.
The Davis Botanical Society is the support organization for two UC Davis botanical collections that benefit all Californians: the UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity and the Botanical Conservatory. Membership benefits include a subscription to the semi-annual newsletter, Lasthenia (name relates to the goldfields in the botanical family Asteraceae). Membership benefits also include invitations to talks, field trips, and other events, as well as a substantial discount on the price of field trips and classes.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
De Grassi spotted—and videoed--a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, foraging on a prized ceanothus plant on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 8 in her backyard in Davis.
She recorded the video on her cell phone at 12:32 p.m. to win the third annual contest, sponsored by the Bohart Museum of Entomology and memorializing global bee expert Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), a distinguished emeritus professor of entomology. (See her YouTube video)
De Grassi, a former director of federal policy, livestock, animal health and welfare for the California Farm Bureau Federation, credits the storm, the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, and her working relationships with bee scientists, including Thorp, as having a hand in either her find and/or her interest in plants and pollinators.
The three previous winners (2022 was a tie) each photographed a bumble bee in the 100-acre UC Davis Arboretum. Ironically, de Grassi bought her prized ceanothus at an Arboretum plant sale.
“I was doing clean-up in my backyard after Saturday night's rain and a 50-plus mile-per-hour windstorm,” said de Grassi, now an agricultural policy consultant. “The wind had subsided to a breeze by then. As I walked past my Ray Hartman ceanothus—which I purchased from a UC Davis Arboretum plant sale years ago when I did a garden makeover to be pollinator-friendly—I noticed some extra-long ceanothus branches that needed to be pruned, including some with super-early blooming flowers.”
De Grassi returned with her pole trimmer and started cutting. It was then she noticed a bumble bee foraging on her ceanothus--and when she remembered the “friendly Bohart Museum contest” inviting folks to find and photograph the first bumble bee in the two-county area of Solano and Yolo.
De Grassi knew Thorp from her professional work with the California Farm Bureau Federation and from her friendship with bee scientists Timothy Lawrence and Susan Cobey, formerly of UC Davis. “Tim and Sue were active in the California Farm Bureau's statewide Bee Advisory Committee that I managed,” she said. Lawrence is now a Washington State University Extension county director (Island County) and Cobey, a WSU bee breeder geneticist.
“(The late Extension apiculturist) Eric Mussen was the UC Cooperative Extension liaison to that same committee,” de Grassi remembered, “so as native pollinator topics would arise during committee work, Robbin's name and research naturally became relevant to the discussion. A fond memory I have of Robbin is from a Bohart Museum open house (2017) when I told him about seeing a 1/2 black and 1/2 gold carpenter bee in my front yard. I'd never heard of a gynandromorph until he told me that that's what I saw. He asked me to capture one if I ever saw another.”
“I love documenting nature's cool stuff and especially the surprises we uncover when we pause long enough to notice,” de Grassi commented. The caterpillars she discovered eating her coral fountain (aka “firecracker plant,” Russelia equisetiiformis) led to UC Davis distinguished professor Art Shapiro documenting it as a butterfly larval host.
“Gardening for pollinators has become my passion pastime. I like to give native and managed bees pesticide-free forage.”
As her prizes, de Grassi will receive a coffee cup decorated with a the Franklin's bumble bee, and handmade bee gifts (including a zippered bee-motif bag and bee-motif soaps) from Teresa Hickman of Vacaville, owner of "Handmade by Teresa."
De Grassi holds two degrees from UC Davis: a bachelor's degree in agricultural science and management and a master's degree in animal science. She is a former chair of the UC Davis Department of Animal Science Development Board, and a former member of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association Board and the UC Davis Foundation Board of Trustees.
Postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson of the Neal Williams lab and the Elina Lastro Niño lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, won the 2021 contest by photographing a B. melanopygus at 3:10 p.m., Jan. 14 in a manzanita patch in the Arboretum.
UC Davis doctoral candidate Maureen Page of the Neal Williams lab and horticulturist Ellen Zagory, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, tied for first in the 2022 contest by each photographing a bumble bee foraging on manzanita (Arctostaphylos) in the Arboretum at 2:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 1.
Page, who now holds a doctorate in entomology, photographed a B. melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, B. vosnesenskii.
Thorp, a 30-year member of the UC Davis faculty, and a tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, retired in 1994, but he continued working until several weeks before his death on June 7, 2019 at age 85. In 2014, he co-authored two books: Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University,) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday). Every year he looked forward to finding or seeing the first bumble bee in the area.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The seminar, set for 4:10 p.m., Pacific Time, will be virtual only, announced seminar series coordinator Emily Meineke, an urban landscape entomologist and assistant professor.
The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.
His abstract: "Because they vector pathogens to humans, mosquitoes impact millions of people every year. The global strategy for the management of mosquito-borne diseases involves controlling vector populations, to a large extent, through insecticide application. However, vector-borne diseases are now resurgent, largely because of rising insecticide resistance in vector populations and the drug resistance of pathogens. In this context, the Vinauger Lab studies the molecular, physiological, and neural basis of mosquito behavior. We rely on a collaborative, integrative, and
multidisciplinary approach, at the intersection between data science, neuro-ethology, molecular biology, and chemical ecology. Our long-term goal is to identify targets to disrupt mosquito-host interactions and reduce mosquito-borne disease transmission."
On his website, Vinauger elaborates: "The ability of mosquitoes to detect, process, and respond to olfactory information emitted by their hosts can affect disease transmission. The magnitude of their responses to host and plant odors varies drastically throughout the day, but, despite their clear epidemiological relevance, the neural and molecular mechanisms acting at the circuit levels to control mosquito behavior remain to be determined. In the lab, we employ an interdisciplinary approach combining behavioral assays, electrophysiological recordings, transcriptomic analysis, and CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, to characterize rhythms in odorant detection, perception, and olfactory behavior, thereby identifying the genetic basis of the temporal plasticity in mosquito-host interactions."
Molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology and a Chancellor's Fellow, will serve as the host. "I have very high regard for Dr. Vinauger's integrative and multidisciplinary research into the biochemical and neurophysiological basis of insect behavior," Professor Chiu said. "His research program is innovative and rigorous, leveraging techniques in quantitative behavioral analysis, bioengineering, neurobiology, and computational methods to address exciting and important questions in mosquito biology and behavior."
The Vinauger lab "studies the molecular, physiological, and neural basis of mosquito behavior," according to its website. "We are a group of experimental biologists, relying on a collaborative, integrative, and multidisciplinary approach, at the intersection between data science, neuro-ethology, molecular biology, and chemical ecology. Our long-term goal is to identify targets to disrupt mosquito-host interactions and reduce mosquito-borne disease transmission."
The Vinauger lab's latest publication, "Visual Threats Reduce Blood-Feeding and Trigger Escape Responses in Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes," appears in the Dec. 9, 2022 edition of Scientific Reports.
The abstract:
"The diurnal mosquitoes Aedes aegypti are vectors of several arboviruses, including dengue, yellow fever, and Zika viruses. To find a host to feed on, they rely on the sophisticated integration of olfactory, visual, thermal, and gustatory cues emitted by the hosts. If detected by their target, this latter may display defensive behaviors that mosquitoes need to be able to detect and escape in order to survive. In humans, a typical response is a swat of the hand, which generates both mechanical and visual perturbations aimed at a mosquito. Here, we used programmable visual displays to generate expanding objects sharing characteristics with the visual component of an approaching hand and quantified the behavioral response of female mosquitoes. Results show that Ae. aegypti is capable of using visual information to decide whether to feed on an artificial host mimic. Stimulations delivered in a LED flight arena further reveal that landed Ae. aegypti females display a stereotypical escape strategy by taking off at an angle that is a function of the direction of stimulus introduction. Altogether, this study demonstrates that mosquitoes landed on a host mimic can use isolated visual cues to detect and avoid a potential threat."
Vinauger joined the Virginia Tech faculty in October 2017, after serving as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Washington, Seattle. Educated in France, he received his bachelor of science degree in biology/biological sciences in 2006 from the University of Orléans; his master's degree in 2008 from the University of Tours, France; and his doctorate in 2011 from the University of Tours, Research Institute on Insect Biology.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology seminars are held on Wednesdays through March 15. (See schedule.) Eight of the 10 will be in-person in 122 Briggs Hall, and all will be virtual.
