- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“It's of special interest this year because as of a few days ago the bug was still flying and laying eggs, which will result in non-diapause pupae,” said Shapiro, a noted butterfly expert who researches biological responses to climate change. “Depending on the weather, that could mean an earlier-than-usual emergence. There is even a slight chance the fall brood is not over yet...”
Shapiro, a member of the Department of Evolution and Ecology faculty, has sponsored the “Suds for a Bug” contest since 1972 to determine the first flight of the year in the three-county area of Sacramento, Solano and Yolo. He launched the contest as part of his long-term studies of butterfly life cycles and climate change.
P. rapae is emerging earlier and earlier as the regional climate has warmed, said Shapiro. "Since 1972, the first flight of the cabbage white butterfly has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20."
Shapiro, who has monitored butterfly populations of central California since 1972 and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/, says the point of the contest "is to get the earliest possible flight date for statistical purposes. The rules require that the animal be captured and brought in alive to be verified. That way no one can falsely claim to have seen one or misidentify something else as a cabbage white."
The contest rules include:
- It must be an adult (no caterpillars or pupae) and be captured outdoors.
- It must be brought in alive to the Department of Evolution and Ecology office, 2320 Storer Hall, UC Davis, during work hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with the full data (exact time, date and location of the capture) and the contact information of the collector (address, phone number and/or e-mail.) The receptionist will certify that it is alive and refrigerate it. (If it's collected on a weekend or holiday, it can be kept in the refrigerator for a few days--do not freeze it.)
- Shapiro is the sole judge.
The professor said P. rapae inhabits vacant lots, fields and gardens where its host plants, weedy mustards, grow. The male is white. The female is often slightly buffy; the "underside of the hindwing and apex of the forewing may be distinctly yellow and normally have a gray cast,” Shapiro said. “The black dots and apical spot on the upperside tend to be faint or even to disappear really early in the season.”
Shapiro, who monitors butterfly populations in the field for more than 200 days of the year, usually wins the contest. He has been defeated only four times and those were by UC Davis graduate students. Adam Porter won in 1983; Sherri Graves and Rick VanBuskirk each won in the late 1990s; and Jacob Montgomery in 2016. The first three were his own graduate students.
A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Entomological Society and the California Academy of Sciences, Shapiro is the author of A Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions, illustrated by Tim Manolis and published in 2007 by the University of California Press
Recent Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest statistics:
- 2022: No official contest due to the COVID pandemic, but Shapiro recorded his first-of-the-year P. rapae at 1:25 p.m. on Jan. 19 in West Sacramento, Yolo County
- 2021: No official contest due to the COVID pandemic, but Shapiro collected his first-of-the-year at 1:55 p.m. Jan. 16 on the UC Davis campus, Yolo County
- 2020: Technically, no winner, as Shapiro did not collect the one he spotted in Winters, Yolo County at 11:16 a.m. on Jan. 30 at the Putah Creek Nature Park. "It flew back and forth across Putah Creek and then departed the area, flying out of reach above the trees," he noted. He waited around for 90 minutes to see if it would return. It did not.
- 2019: Shapiro collected the first cabbage white butterfly near the Suisun Yacht Club, Suisun City, Solano County, at 1:12 p.m., Friday, Jan. 25. "It was the earliest recorded in Suisun City in 47 seasons."
- 2018: Art Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2017: Jan. 19: Art Shapiro collected the winner on the UC Davis campus
- 2016: Jan. 16: Jacob Montgomery collected the winner in west Davis
- 2015: Jan. 26: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2014: Jan. 14: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2013: Jan. 21: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2012: Jan. 8: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2011: Jan. 31: Shapiro collected the winner in Suisun
- 2010: Jan. 27: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
Shapiro nets many of the winners in mustard patches near railroad tracks in West Sacramento, Yolo County.
As a caterpillar, the insect is a pest of cole crops such as cabbage. UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) says the cabbageworm is active throughout the year in California. "Cabbageworm larvae chew large, irregular holes in leaves, bore into heads, and drop greenish brown fecal pellets that may contaminate the marketed product. Seedlings may be damaged, but most losses are due to damage to marketed parts of the plant," according to the UC IPM website.
Related Link:
Research Publication on Non-Diapause Overwintering Cabbage White Butterfly and Anise Swallowtail
Non-Diapause Overwintering by Pieris rapae (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) and Papilio zelicaon (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) in California: Adaptiveness of Type III Diapause-Induction Curves by Art Shapiro, published in 1984 in Psyche: A Journal of Entomology (open access article)
First paragraph: "Diapause is generally regarded as a physiological adaptation which increases the probability of surviving the adverse season, and thus of reproducing after it is over. Many insect species show geographic differences in the environmental regimes which induce or inhibit diapause (e.g., critical photoperiod) and in the strength of the diapause induced. Such interpopulational differences are commonly viewed as "fine tuning" to local climates, accomplished by natural selection and reflecting a genetic basis (e.g., Istock, 1981). Intrapopulational differences in photoperiodic sensitivity and diapause strength (e.g., chilling requirement) also occur, and have been interpreted as polymorphisms which "spread the risk" of environmental uncertainty over the population (cf. Bradshaw 1973, Shapiro 1979, 1980a). In multivoltine insects in seasonal climates, offspring produced by the last seasonal generation of adults are commonly induced to enter diapause by specific combinations of environmental factors; in mid-latitudes these are likely to be decreasing photophase/increasing scotophase and decreasing or consistently low night temperatures. Warmer nights tend to shorten the critical photoperiod for a given population, or may effectively inhibit diapause altogether under field conditions." (See more)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The third annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble Bee-of-the-Year Contest will begin at 12:01, Jan. 1. The first person to photograph a bumble bee in the two-county area and email it to the sponsor, the Bohart Museum of Entomology, will receive a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, the bee that Thorp monitored on the California-Oregon border for decades.
Contest coordinator Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum, said the image must be taken in the wild and emailed to bmuseum@ucdavis.edu, with the time, date and place.
The contest memorializes Professor Thorp (1933-2019), a global authority on bees and a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, who died June 7, 2019 at age 85. A 30-year member of the UC Davis faculty, he retired in 1994 but continued working until several weeks before his death. Every year he looked forward to seeing the first bumble bee in the area.
Page photographed a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii.
Fittingly, they both knew and worked with Thorp, a tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation and the co-author of Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University, 2014) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday, 2014).
This marked the second consecutive win for a member of the Williams lab. Postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson of the Williams lab and the Elina Lastro Niño lab, won the 2021 contest by photographing a Bombus melanopygus at 3:10 p.m., Jan. 14 in a manzanita patch in the Arboretum.
Both Page and Nicholson are alumni of The Bee Course, which Thorp co-taught from 2002-2018. Page completed the course in 2018, and Nicholson in 2015. The nine-day intensive workshop, geared for conservation biologists and pollination ecologists and considered the world's premiere native bee biology and taxonomic course, takes place annually in Portal, Ariz., at the Southwestern Research Station, part of the American Museum of Natural History, N.Y.
Page participated in a "Bumble Bee Blitz" organized by Thorp and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service in July 2016 on Mt. Ashland, where, she said, "we searched for Bombus franklini and Bombus occidentalis-- two very rare west coast bee species. We unfortunately did not find B. franklini, which is now recognized as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.”
The prized coffee cup features an image of the bee specimen, photographed by Bohart scientist Brennen Dyer, now collections manager, and designed by UC Davis doctoral alumnus Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake College.
Previous winners are ineligible to win the prize.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
In real life, incarcerated youth in central Africa's Nkongsamba Detention Facility in the Moungo Department of Cameroon, area pitch their agri-business proposals to AgriStars' distinguished panel of experts--including UC Davis distinguished professor James R. Carey of the Department of Entomology and Nematology--for monetary prizes and project mentoring.
AgriStars, a 2022 pilot program of the Agriculture for Africa (A4A), is the brainchild of global scholar Vijitha Mahadevan Eyango, a UC Davis-UCLA alumna and founder of A4A, a U.S. nongovernmental organization.
“AgriStars is a program implementing agricultural education curriculum with one of Africa's most marginalized groups—incarcerated youth,” Eyango said. “AgriStars is patterned after the values and missions of the Future Farmers of America and the 4-H programs.”
The inaugural competition, held in April, drew 100 applicants, with 25 advancing to the semi-finals and 10 named as winners. Their proposals ranged from pig farming to honey (beekeeping).
“For me, the single most interesting part of my involvement withAgriStars and particularly my serving on the judging panel was learning about many aspects of African agriculture, not from corporate perspectives, but directly from the young people who were trying to make a living in Cameroonian villages,” said Carey, who co-designed AgriStars with Eyango. He hatched the shark-tank concept, donated funds from his summer teaching salary, and served as a judge.
“It was truly a learning experience for me as AgriStar participants gave their pitches on a wide range of innovative ideas involving West African agriculture ranging from pig, chicken, and fish rearing to mushroom, honey and wine production," Carey said. "Inasmuch as the pitches were as interesting and entertaining as they were educational and enlightening, we are exploring the future possibility posting selected pitches on YouTube as a crowdfunding and thus self-sustaining enterprise.”
The Eyango Food Company, headed by CEO and Cameroon musician icon Prince Ndedi Eyango (Vijitha's husband), co-sponsored the event with A4A, AgriStars and UC Davis (Carey).
Carey recently participated in the certification of the second cohort of A4A Agripreneurs at the Nkongsamba prison, held some six months after the competition. The program included congratulatory speeches, native dances, a prison sports exhibition, and performances by celebrated singer-musician Prince Eyango, a Cameroonian singer, guitarist, songwriter, and record producer whose titles include “Best Artist of the Year."
“We drew local and national news media coverage, and interest of high-level politicians, the U.S. Embassy and others,” said Carey, who was among those delivering a congratulatory speech. He is a frequent visitor to Africa, where he delivers workshops and seminars as part of the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA).
UCLA distinguished professor Thomas Smith, director of the Congo Basin Institute (CBI), and a core advisor to A4A, introduced the two global educators--Eyango and Carey--in October 2021. “Our introduction jumpstarted a series of intense discussions,” Eyango recalled, “and by January 2022, we had co-designed AgriStars.”
They set out to “build capacity, confidence and business skills of entrepreneurial youth, develop new talents in the agriculture sector and serve as an opportunity to executive a winning agribusiness concept to win an opportunity for a cash prize and mentorship,” Eyango said.
In a UCLA article published June 12, 2022, David Colgan, director of communications for the UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, described A4A as a "program that teaches 25-and-younger incarcerated people in the fertile Nkongsamba region to farm--a skill that can help them stay out of prison once they leave...Resources are limited in Cameroon, which is home to a displaced population of 2 million seeking refuge from war and insecurity in neighboring countries including Chad, Central African Republic and Nigeria. Food insecurity is a big problem, and a root cause of crimes that land many young people in prison."
Core goals of A4A are "to give young people marketable skills to keep them from returning to jail," Colgan pointed out. The participants gain "an improved sense of self-worth, confidence and the ability to see a better future."
Thus, the birth of the A4A offspring, AgriStars.
The inaugural AgriStars' competition was open not only to incarcerated youth, but to all youth in the Nkongsamba, so as not to incentivize stints in prison in order to apply, the organizers said. Most AgriStars participants were serving time for minor crimes, mainly theft.
Eyango credits Carey as being “instrumental in its success and is our UC Davis partner. His institutional commitment enabled A4A to elicit regional and local government and private sector co-sharing a sponsorship.”
A 1987 graduate of UC Davis,Eyango received her bachelor's degree in international relations and affairs. She went on to obtain two degrees atUCLA: her master's degree in African studies and urban planning (1990) and her doctorate (1995) in international and comparative education (1995). As a member of the UCLA faculty, she taught international development studies for 10 years (1995-2001 and 2014-2018). Between 2009-2014 she served as chief of education with UNICEF, Cameroon.
Eyango's career includes administrative positions in UNICEF (United Nations' Children's Fund), USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) and IREX, a nonprofit global development and educational organization. For her global efforts, Eyango received the prestigious Swanee Hunt Award for Advancing Women's Role in Policy Formulation in 2004 from the U. S. State Department. She also won commendation awards from former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and from President Bill Clinton.
Carey, a 42-year member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, is known as an innovative teacher. Over the last decade, he has developed a technological-savvy teaching program, a groundbreaking model for 21st Century instruction using short, concise videos. He teaches administrators, faculty, staff, and students how to create the succinct videos, and how to record seminars. All are geared toward ease of learning and increased knowledge retention.
(For more information, watch the AgriStars video that Carey created.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She's been there. She's doing that.
Charlotte is a wife, a mother of two children under age three with no outside childcare, a research fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), and a talented scientific illustrator and creative artist.
She moved cross-country during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to finish her dissertation, all the while tackling multiple obstacles and health issues.
It's been a 5-year whirlwind: marriage in 2018 to artist George Albert, birth of their son Griffin in April 2020, and birth of their daughter Marceline “Marcy” in October 2022.
“I truly commend Charlotte for her recent publication of the first chapter of her dissertation," said Diane Ullman, UC Davis distinguished professor and a former chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology. “She has overcome many obstacles, and I deeply respect her capacity to balance the science and research she loves, with being a mother of two, a wife and a devoted daughter.”
Now a resident of Silver Spring, Md., Charlotte studies systematics, phylogenetics, insect biotechnology, genomics, speciation, and macroevolution, among other fields. She enrolled in the UC Davis entomology graduate program in 2015, and anticipates receiving her doctorate in "no later than June 2023—hopefully before."
“Charlotte is a fantastic artist, as well as an excellent scientist,” Ullman said. I look forward to watching her as she finishes her Ph.D. and develops her career. My own daughter was born the year after I finished my Ph.D., and I certainly remember the challenge of being a mother, a wife, and taking care of aging parents while working to establish an academic career."
“Without a doubt," Ullman said, "I would not change a thing—I feel enormously grateful for the joy of my family, and for having the opportunity to simultaneously enjoy a full career in the sciences, as well as connecting art and science.”
Alberts' paper, “A New Species of Saropogon Loew, 1847 (Diptera, Asilidae) from Arizona, with a Review of the Nearctic Species North of Mexico,” is her first journal publication.
“This new species of Saropogon (family Asilidae) was a known new species when it was collected for the first time in 1964,” Alberts said. “It wasn't until a community scientist posted pictures of this beautiful ‘fire-like' species to iNaturalist and BugGuide and requested identification that the description of this new species as well as a review of the entire Nearctic Saropogon, north of Mexico, became a priority. Publications like this are a great example of why community scientist and scientist engagement are so important. Websites like iNaturalist and BugGuide are an incredible resource for both and facilitate the finding and describing of new species.”
Alberts praised the work of macro photographer Jeff Gruber of Madison, Wisc., a regular contributor to BugGuide and iNaturalist who provided the Saropogon pyrodes image in ZooKeys, and UC Davis alumna Keely Davies, the illustration. Davies (biognome.art on Instagram) holds a bachelor's degree in animal biology (2019) and a degree in scientific illustration (2021) from California State University, Monterey Bay.
Charlotte's family and friends on Facebook lauded her newly published research: “Wow, what a year you are having. Congratulations!” and “You are just killing it, woman!” and “YASSS, asilid queen! Congrats!”
A native of Plainfield, N.H, Charlotte is a 2015 graduate of St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y., where she majored in conservation biology and developed an interest in assassin flies--and in celebrating World Robber Fly Day every April 30.
Bohart Museum. At UC Davis, she worked on the identification and database of the Asilidae collection at the Bohart Museum of Entomology from August 2015 until June 2021, while also engaged in numerous art projects and serving a year as secretary of the Entomology Graduate Student Association.
Charlotte has collected insects in 16 states and four countries, including Belize, Namibia, and Sweden. She presented a virtual seminar on “Asilidae of Belize” at the 2021 Entomological Society of America meeting.
How difficult is it to juggle so many roles? “I would be lying if I said it was easy,” Alberts said. “Being a mom, a wife, and a graduate student is a significant challenge. Balancing work and life is a skill that no one can teach you and takes a lot of trial and error. Thankfully, with the support and patience from my principal investigator (Diane Ullman), my advisor (UC Davis distinguished professor Rick Karban), my thesis committee (Ullman, research advisor Torsten Dikow of NNMH, and Jason Bond, Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences), my husband, and family, I have been able to continue to work on my PhD through a pandemic, multiple health issues, moving across the country, and having two children. Though being a mom and a graduate student is a lot of work, and exhausting, I wouldn't change it for the world. My family brings so much joy to my life and fuels me to push forward, one step at a time!”
More Flexibility. Alberts noted that being a graduate student “has allowed me more flexibility as a working mom to also care for my children than a typical 9 to 5 job. Instead of putting the kids in daycare, I have chosen to work during nap times, after and before bedtime, for chunks during the day when my husband can take over, weekends, and during my son's preschool, twice a week. Sometimes it's challenging to not have the same routine every day. and there are never enough hours in a day, but I do get to be a part of my children's childhoods, and I am forever grateful for that!”
“Being a mom and a graduate student means that I am learning every day how to be more creative and flexible with my time,” she said. “I've learned how to modify my workspace to be available to my children. One of the many ways that having children has changed me is that I have less anxiety about my work. I used to sit on an email sometimes for days because of the fear of not being good enough or doing something wrong. Or sometimes, I wouldn't ask for help with something or ask how something was done because of the fear of being judged for not being able to do it myself. Since having my children, I've had to push my anxieties and fears aside because I simply don't have the time I used to have to worry about such things. I've learned to accept help from others and that I am not expected to know everything, especially in graduate school.”
Alberts remembers how much she liked interning at NMNH in the summer of 2014 and working with Dikow on identifying specimens of Asilidae to genus. She then won a graduate student fellowship (July-September 2016) at NMNH; Dikow served as her advisor. "I hope to do my postdoctoral fellowship there," she said.
Meanwhile, Charlotte Alberts is geared toward finishing her dissertation while balancing her work-home life. “My family brings so much joy to my life,” she reiterated, “and fuels me to push forward, one step at a time!”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Scheduled Saturday, Feb. 18, is billed as a “free, family friendly educational event for the community where visitors get to meet and talk with UC Davis scientists and see amazing objects and organisms from the world around us,” according to Biodiversity Museum Day coordinator Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Yang today announced that 11 museums or collections on campus will showcase their work on Feb. 18:
- Anthropology Museum, 328 Young Hall and grounds, noon to 4 p.m.
- Arboretum and Public Garden, Habitat Gardens in the Environmental GATEway, adjacent to the Arboretum Teaching Nursery on Garrod Drive, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
- Bohart Museum of Entomology, Room 1124 and main hall of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m.
- Botanical Conservatory, the greenhouses along Kleiber Hall Drive, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- California Raptor Center, 1340 Equine Lane, off Old Davis Road, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Center for Plant Diversity, Sciences Laboratory Building/Esau Science Hall, off Kleiber Hall Drive, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Nematode Collection, Sciences Laboratory Building/Esau Science Hall, off Kleiber Hall Drive, 9 am. to 3 p.m.
- Marine Invertebrate Collection, Sciences Laboratory Building/Esau Science Hall, noon to 3 p.m.
- Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, Rooms 1394, 1371/1275, and main hallway, east end of first floor, Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
- Paleontology Collection, 1309 Earth and Physical Sciences Building, 434 LaRue Road, 12 noon to 4 p.m.
- Phaff Yeast Culture Collection, Robert Mondavi Institute Brewery and Food Processing facility, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (See news story)
The UC Davis Biodiversity and Museum Day is traditionally held during Presidents' Day weekend. The 2022 event took place in the UC Davis Conference Center and drew some 1000 visitors. This year, it's back home to the individual departments where scientists will be on hand to greet visitors and answer questions.
All participating museums and collections have active education and outreach programs, Yang said, but the collections are not always accessible to the public.
Bohart Museum. The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, is the home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens, as well as the live "petting zoo" and an insect-themed gift shop stocked with t-shirts, hoodies, books, posters, jewelry, collecting equipment and more. It was founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart.