- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The occasion: the college's Award of Distinction dinner and ceremony, held Nov. 3 in the Activities and Recreation Center Ballroom.
Page, considered by his peers as the world's leading honey bee geneticist, traces his "bee biology roots" to UC Davis. He drew a standing ovation.
Page received his doctorate in entomology in 1980 from UC Davis, studying with Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., and went on to join the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty in 1989 and chair the department from 1999 to 2004. He then transitioned to emeritus and was recruited by Arizona State University (ASU) to be the founding director of its School of Life Sciences. His career at ASU led to a series of top-level administrative roles: from founding director of the School of Life Sciences (2004-2010) to vice provost and dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013) and then to University Provost, 2014-2015.
"Rob is a pioneering researcher in the field of evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees, and a highly respected and quoted author, teacher and former administrator,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
While at UC Davis, Page worked closely with Laidlaw, "the father of honey bee genetics." Together they published many significant research papers and the landmark book, “Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding” (Wicwas Press, 1998), considered the most important resource book for honey bee genetics, breeding, and queen rearing.
For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a UC Davis honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.
Since his retirement from UC Davis, Page has published 65 research papers, eight major reviews and two scholarly books, many using his UC Davis affiliation. He authored “The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution” (Harvard University Press, 2013) and the “Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies” (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Now residing near Davis, Page continues to focus his research on honey bee behavior and population genetics, particularly the evolution of complex social behavior. His continuing academic activities bring credit to bee biology and UC Davis, Nadler said. “His large number of publications and citations continue to be an important component of the high national rating of our entomology department.”
To date, Page has published more than 250 research papers and articles, edited or authored five books, and is listed as a “highly-cited author” by the ISI Web of Knowledge, representing the top 1/2 of one percent of publishing scientists.
Page continues to work closely with UC Davis professors and students, offering advice, helping them with grants, and editing manuscripts. A few years ago, he held an international workshop at the Laidlaw facility. He teaches courses (including “The Social Contract: from Rousseau to the Honey Bee,” and “The Song of the Queen: Thrilling Tales of Honey Bee Mating Behavior”) for the UC Davis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).
“Not surprisingly, Dr. Page humbly considers his most far-reaching and important accomplishment, the success of his mentees, including at least 25 graduate students and postdocs who are now faculty members at leading research institutions around the world,” Nadler wrote. “He also built two modern apicultural labs (in Ohio and Arizona), major legacies that are centers of honey bee research and training. He has trained many hundreds of beekeepers. His public service now extends to working as a Fellow with the California Academy of Sciences.”
Among Page's many honors:
- Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize - the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists)
- Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Elected to the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences (the longest continuing academy in the world)
- Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
- Fellow of the Entomological Society of America
- Awardee of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowship
- Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences
- Fellow, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, Munich, Germany, September 2017-August 2018
- Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- James Creasman Award of Excellence (ASU Alumni Association)
- Regents Professor, Arizona State University
- UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
His talk, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the UC Davis Emeriti Association and the UC Davis Retirees' Association.
“Honey bees exhibit complex social behavior that rivals our own,” Page says. “It is fundamentally bound within a social contract much like ours that makes the basic social structure inescapable, a consequence of living together in family groups. Social structures evolve by natural selection operating on the final product, the colony as a reproductive unit. The structures themselves are reverse engineered.”
“I will show how selection on the economy of the colony shapes structures from nest and social architecture to gene networks.”
Page is a UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor, an honor awarded in January; and a Regents Professor Emeritus and University Provost Emeritus from Arizona State University, Tempe. He retired from UC Davis in May 2004 after chairing the Department of Entomology, now the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Born and reared in Bakersfield, Kern County, Rob received his bachelor's degree in entomology, with a minor in chemistry, from San Jose State University in 1976. After obtaining his doctorate from UC Davis in 1980, he served as assistant professor at The Ohio State University before joining the UC Davis entomology faculty in 1989 as an associate professor. He began working closely with Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., (the father of honey bee genetics) for whom the university's bee facility is named. Together they published many significant research papers.
Page chaired the Department of Entomology from 1999 to 2004, when Arizona State University recruited him to be the founding director of the School of Life Sciences of Arizona State University (ASU). His ASU career advanced to dean of Life Sciences; vice provost and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and university provost.
Page is known for his research on honey bee behavior and population genetics, particularly the evolution of complex social behavior. One of his most salient contributions to science was to construct the first genomic map of the honey bee, which sparked a variety of pioneering contributions not only to insect biology but to genetics at large.
At UC Davis, he maintained a honey bee-breeding program for 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. They discovered a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.
Page and his lab pioneered the use of modern techniques to study the genetic basis of social behavior evolution in honey bees and other social insects. He was the first to employ molecular markers to study polyandry and patterns of sperm use in honey bees. He provided the first quantitative demonstration of low genetic relatedness in a highly eusocial species.
His work has garnered a significant impact in the scientific community through his research on the evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees. He was the first to demonstrate that a significant amount of observed behavioral variation among honey bee workers is due to genotypic variation. In the 1990s, he and his students and colleagues isolated, characterized and validated the complementary sex determination gene of the honey bee; considered the most important paper yet published about the genetics of Hymenoptera. The journal Cell featured their work on its cover. In subsequent studies, he and his team published further research into the regulation of honey bee foraging, defensive and alarm behavior.
Page has authored than 250 research papers, including five books: among them “The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution,” published by Harvard University Press in 2013. He is a highly cited author on such topics as Africanized bees, genetics and evolution of social organization, sex determination, and division of labor in insect societies. His resume shows more than 18,000 citations.
Highly honored by his peers, Page is a fellow of a number of organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the California Academy of Sciences, the Entomological Society of America, and organizations in Germany and Brazil. He received the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, known at the Humboldt Prize, the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists. He received the 2018 Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
The UC Davis Retiree Center periodically holds noon educational seminars ("BrainFood Talks") featuring timely speakers. For more information, contact the UC Davis Retiree Center at (530) 752-5182 or retireecenter@ucdavis.edu.