- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
DAVIS--Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will present a seminar on "To Antarctica and Back: The Search for Belgica antarctica Jacobs, 1900 (Diptera; Chironomidae)" from 12:10 to 1 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 28 in 122 Briggs.
Parrella spent the first three weeks in January at the Julio Escudero Research Station operated by the Chilean Antarctic Institute on King George Island – part of the South Shetland Islands in the Antarctic Peninsula. This area is known for some of the greatest biological diversity in Antarctica.
The purpose of the trip was bio-prospecting for microbes and secondary plant metabolites that may have agricultural and medical utility. This is related to ongoing research in his laboratory with Pseudomonas antarctica (n. sp) – a bacteria purported to increase overall plant health. A second objective of this trip was to document the presence of arthropods in the vicinity of the research station. Both will be covered in this seminar.
Parrella will also convey his overall Antarctica experience via slides and a short video presentation.
King George Island (named for King George) is the largest of the South Shetland Islands, lying 75 miles off the coast of Antarctica in the Southern Ocean.
Parrella received his bachelor of science degree in animal science from Rutgers-State University of Cook College, New Brunswick, N. J., and his master's degree and doctorate in entomology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA.
He joined the faculty of UC Riverside's Department of Entomology in 1980, and then the UC Davis Departments of Entomology and Environmental Horticulture in 1988. A professor in the Departments of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology) and Plant Sciences since 1991, he served as associate dean, Division of Agricultural Sciences, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences from 1999 to 2009.
The list of seminars for the winter quarter, all held on Wednesday noon in 122 Briggs Hall, is on this web page.
Link:
Watch seminar

- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event takes place from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. Meredith Cezner, graduate student in the Louie Yang lab, is the host and will introduce him. Matute researches the genetics, behavior, and ecological context of reproductive isolation in the genus Drosophila.
His abstract: "Gene flow between species has been thought to oppose the divergence process, but there has been no systematic treatment of how species persist in the face of gene flow in secondary contact. Furthermore, while hybridization is known to generate new species in plants and fungi, it is not known how prevalent is the creative role of hybridization is in animal speciation. An approach to address the relative importance of hybrid speciation is experimental evolution. Our results test the possibility of hybrid speciation at different phylogenetic scales as a formal test of the likelihood of hybrid speciation. This project constitutes the first experimental approach to test the possible role of hybridization in generating new animal species."
Much of Matute's work examines the interactions between island endemics and cosmopolitan species in the Seychelles archipelago, where natural zones of secondary contact allow for the study of hybridization and reproductive isolation in the field. He received this year's Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution, an award recognizing “the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding young evolutionary biologist."
Matute obtained a dual degree in biology and microbiology at Universidad de Los Andes in Columbia in 2005. He completed his doctorate in ecology and evolution with Jerry Coyne at the University of Chicago in the spring of 2010.
One of his research papers, "Macroevolutionary Speciation Rates are Decoupled from the Evolution of Intrinsic Reproductive Isolation in Drosophila and Birds," was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The abstract:
"The rate at which speciation occurs varies greatly among different kinds of organisms and is frequently assumed to result from species- or clade-specific factors that influence the rate at which populations acquire reproductive isolation. This premise leads to a fundamental prediction that has never been tested: Organisms that quickly evolve prezygotic or postzygotic reproductive isolation should have faster rates of speciation than organisms that slowly acquire reproductive isolation. We combined phylogenetic estimates of speciation rates from Drosophila and birds with a method for analyzing interspecific hybridization data to test whether the rate at which individual lineages evolve reproductive isolation predicts their macroevolutionary rate of species formation. We find that some lineages evolve reproductive isolation much more quickly than others, but this variation is decoupled from rates of speciation as measured on phylogenetic trees. For the clades examined here, reproductive isolation—especially intrinsic, postzygotic isolation—does not seem to be the rate-limiting control on macroevolutionary diversification dynamics. These results suggest that factors associated with intrinsic reproductive isolation may have less to do with the tremendous variation in species diversity across the evolutionary tree of life than is generally assumed."
See more of his research publications.
The remainder of noon-hour seminars for the winter quarter:
Jan. 21
George Dimopoulous
Title of Seminar: "Exploiting Infection Bottlenecks in the Mosquito to Control Human Disease"
Director of the Parasitology Core Facility
John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Professor, Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
Baltimore, Md.
Nominator/host: Jiawen Xu, graduate student, Bruce Hammock lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Jan. 28
Michael Parrella
Title of Seminar: "To Antarctica and Back: The Search for Beligica antarctica (Diptera; Chironomidae)”
Professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Feb. 4
Jay Evans
Title of Seminar: "What's It Like Inside a Bee? Genetic Approaches to Honey Bee hHealth"
Research entomologist
USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA/ARS)
Beltsville, MD.
Nominator/host: Marin County Beekeepers
Feb. 11
Amro Zayed
Title of Seminar: "Bee Genes, Behavior and Adaptation"
Professor, Department of Biology
York University
Toronto, Canada
Nominator/host: Brian Johnson, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Feb. 18
Steven Frank
Title of Seminar: "Can Forests Take the Heat? Managing Pests and Ecosystem Services in a Warming Climate"
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, N.C.
Nominator/host: Michael Parrella, professor and chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
March 4
Brian Wiegmann
Executive Director of Genome Research Laboratory
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, N.C.
Nominator/host:Steve Nadler, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
March 11
Thomas Eltz
Title of Seminar: "Perfume Making and Signalling in Orchid bees: New Light on an Old Enigma"
Chemical Ecologist
University of Bochum
Bochum, Germany
Nominator/host: Santiago Ramirez, faculty member, UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology
Coodinating the seminars is Professor Steve Nadler at sanadler@ucdavis.edu.

- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Fox, a leading evolutionary ecologist, specializes in insect genetiics and behavior and evolutionary ecology. Host is Professor Jay Rosenheim of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
One of Fox's research subjects is a beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, commonly known as the cowpea weevil or cowpea seed beetle. A member of the leaf beetle family, Chrysomelidae, it is a common pest of stored legumes. The beetle is found every continent except Antaractica.
Fox received his bachelor's degree in zoology in 1987 from UC Davis, and his doctorate in 1993 from UC Berkeley through the Department of Integrative Biology. While in graduate school, he worked at UC Davis for three years (1991-1993) with Hugh Dingle, now emeritus professor of entomology.
Fox joined the University of Kentucky's entomology faculty in 1999. Previously he worked at Fordham University, New York, his first faculty position (1996-1999).
He completed postdoctoral research at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina (1993-1996), working in the laboratory of Timothy Mousseau.
Fox lists his research interests as:
- Ecology and Evolution of Life Histories
- Body Size, Sexual Size Dimorphism
- Egg Size
- Phenotypic Plasticity
- Aging and Senescence
- Maternal Effects
- Inbreeding Depression
- Insect-Plant Interactions
- Diet Evolution
Adaptation to Host Plants - Insect Behavioral Ecology
- Egg Laying Decisions
- Sexual Selection on Body Size / Sexual Dimorphism
Some of his recently published papers on inbreeding depression:
Reed, David H.; Fox, Charles W.; Enders, Laramy S.; et al. 2012. Inbreeding-stress interactions: evolutionary and conservation consequences. Year in Evolutionary Biology, Book Series: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1256:33-48.
Fox, C. W.; Xu, J.; Wallin, W. G.; et al. 2012. Male inbreeding status affects female fitness in a seed-feeding beetle. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 25:29-37.
Fox, Charles W.; Reed, David H. 2011. Inbreeding depression increases with environmental stress: an experimental study and meta-analysis. Evolution 65:246-258.
Fox, Charles W.; Stillwell, R. Craig; Wallin, William G.; et al. 2011. Inbreeding-environment interactions for fitness: complex relationships between inbreeding depression and temperature stress in a seed-feeding beetle. Evolutionary Ecology 25:25-43.
His seminar will be recorded for later viewing on UCTV.
Upcoming seminars:
Wednesday, Nov. 12
Louie Yang
Assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, specializing in ecology
Title: "Pulses, Phenology and Ontogeny: Towards a More Temporally Explicit Framework for Understanding Species Interactions?"
Wednesday, Nov. 19
Ray Hong
Associate professor of biology, California State University, Northridge, specializing in nematology
Title: “A Fatal Attraction: Regulation of Development and Behavior in the Nematode Pristionchus pacificus by a Beetle Pheromone”
Host: Valerie Williamson, professor of nematology, Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 26
Doris Bachtrog, lab
Associate professor of integrative biology, UC Berkeley, specializing in evolutionary and functional genomics
Title: "Numerous Transitions of Sex Chromosomes in Diptera"
Host: Michael Parrella, professor and chair, Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Dec. 3
To be announced
Wednesday, Dec. 10
Sawyer Fuller
Postdoctoral researcher, Harvard University
Title: "RoboBee: Using the Engineering Toolbox to Understand the Flight Apparatus of Flying Insects"
Host: James Carey, distinguished professor of entomology
This seminar is being remote broadcast to UC Davis via internet
Plans call for recording the seminars, coordinated by Professor James Carey, for later posting on the web.

- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"The average grocery store must dispose of more than 600 pounds of meats and produce every day when the products pass their sell-by date," Lewis says. "Where does it go? Currently, most waste food from groceries ends up in landfills. This costs grocery stores significantly, and wastes food and energy."
"A start-up company in this area, California Safe Soils LLC, is developing a novel solution to this problem by turning this wasted food into an agricultural product for soil nutrition. Nutrient management is a serious challenge to agriculture in California. Coupled with the need for providing the necessary nutrients to grow crops is the increasing concern of nitrate contamination of ground and surface water that comes from agricultural uses. A new product, called Harvest to Harvest, is in the testing phase as a soil amendment that aids in nutrient management."
"In this seminar, I'll describe the manufacturing of the material, the business plan of the company and the role of agricultural and ecological research in the research and development of this new product."
Of his research, Lewis says on his website: "My research program is wide-ranging in the scope of the questions asked and in the taxa that are studied. There is, however, a common thread to the work that takes place in my laboratory; we seek to understand why and how organisms find, recognize, assess and exploit resources. We ask questions about how insects and nematodes make decisions about resource utilization and what the fitness outcomes of the decisions are. To answer these kinds of questions, we engage in studies of behavior, population ecology, community ecology and evolutionary biology with several groups of insects, nematodes and bacteria. There are also intentional links to more practical pursuits including biological control of crop pests, predicting the impact of crop management on pest and beneficial organisms and restoration ecology. I see no difference between what is traditionally called 'basic' and 'applied' research, thus the links of nearly all of the work in the laboratory to agricultural or environmental concerns is explicit."
Lewis, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 2004, received his doctorate in entomology from Auburn University, Auburn, Ala.; his master's degree in entomology from the University of Missouri, Columbia; and his bachelor's degree in natural resources from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
He served as a post-doctoral research associate for the UC Davis Department of Entomology, Rutgers University, from 1991 to 1994; assistant research professor at Rutgers from 1994 to 1995. He joined the Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, in 1995 as a research associate and then served as an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology, Virginia Tech, from 1998 to 2004 before joining the UC Davis faculty.
A past president of the former UC Davis Department of Nematology, Lewis is active in the Entomological Society of America, Ecological Society of America, Society of Invertebrate Pathology and the Society of Nematologists. His professional service includes editor-in-chief of Biological Control; North American editor of Biopesticides International; and trustee of the Society of Invertebrate Pathology.
Lewis' seminar is the second in a series of spring-quarter seminars hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. All seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs and are coordinated by assistant professor Brian Johnson. The seminars are video-recorded for later viewing on UCTV.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's what moderator Michael Klein, The Ohio State University, said when he introduced Harry K. Kaya, emeritus professor of entomology and nematology, at a special seminar in his honor at the 2011 Entomological Society of America meeting.
The seminar, "Entomopathogenic Nematodes: Their Biology, Ecology, and Application. A Tribute to the Dynamic Career of Harry K. Kaya," took place Nov. 15 at the ESA's 59th annual meeting, held in the Reno/Sparks Convention Center.
Organizing the event were Lynn LeBeck, executive director, Association of Natural Bio-Control Producers (ANBP), Clovis; Ed Lewis, professor of entomology and nematology and acting chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology; and David Shapiro-Ilan, research entomologist, USDA's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS).
Michael Klein, adjunct associate professor at The Ohio State University, moderated the seminar. Kaya worked on international research projects with Klein, who recently retired from the Horticultural Insects Research Laboratory, part of the USDA/ARS Application Technology Research Unit, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster, Ohio
LeBeck echoed the feelings of the attendees when she praised Kaya as a top-notch researcher and as "a warm human being." She recalled the "many years of fun times and great research experiences with him."
LeBeck was one of dozens of people paying tribute to him and/or presenting a lecture at the special seminar.
Internationally recognized for his contributions to insect pathology and insect nematology, Kaya specialized in the utilizations of nematodes for biological control of insect pests; interaction between nematodes and other biological control agents; and general insect pathology (protozoan, viral and fungal diseases of insects).
One of the founders of the journal Biological Control, Kaya is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America (2007) and the co-editor of the first and second editions of Field Manual of Techniques in Invertebrate Pathology, Application and Evaluation of Pathogens for Control of Insects and other Invertebrate Pests.
Scientists billed on the tribute program were:
- Parwinder Grewal and Ruisheng An, The Ohio State University, "Cooperative Endurance and Pathogenesis: a Story of the Nematode and Bacteria Partnership"
- Don Strong, UC Davis"Top Down Islands in a Bottom-Up Foodweb Sea: Native EPNs and Rootfeeders of Lupine"
- Mary Barbercheck, Pennsylvania State University, "Hunter and Hunted: Entomopathogenic Nematodes in the Soil Food Web"
- Larry W. Duncan, University of Florida, "Ecology and Conservation of Entomopathogenic Nematodes in Florida Citrus Groves"
- Davis Shapiro-Ilan, USDA-ARS and Edwin Lewis, UC Davis, "Putting the Worms to Work: Application Technology for Entomopathogenic Nematodes"
- James F. Campbell, USDA-ARS, Edwin Lewis of UC Davis and David Shapiro-Ilan, USDA-ARS, "Entomopathogenic Nematode Infection Behavior: from Mechanism to Adaptive Value"
- Ho Yul Choo, Southern Forest Research Center, "Practical Use of Entomopathogenic Nematodes against Greenhouse Insect Pests"
- Ramon Georgis, Brandt, "Commercialization of Entomopathogenic Nematodes: an Industry Perspective."
Kaya later said he was overwhelmed the outpouring. He sent the following note to the organizers: "I thank the organizers, Drs. Lynn LeBeck, Michael Parrella, Michael Klein, Ed Lewis, and David Shapiro-Ilan, for putting together this special symposium for me. I know it took a lot of effort in organizing the symposium, inviting speakers, and having a reception afterwards. I appreciate their efforts very much. I must say, however, that the speakers gave me too much credit when it was my students, post-doc, visiting scientists and collaborators who did the research and often came up with the research ideas and concepts. I was most privileged in having such dedicated students, researchers, friends, and colleagues around me and always having the great support of the department."
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Harry K. Kaya
Kaya received B.S. and M.S. degrees in entomology from the University of Hawaii, and a Ph.D. in insect pathology from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked briefly as an entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (New Haven) before accepting a professorial position in the Department of Nematology and Department of Entomology at the University of California, Davis in 1976.
He served as chair of the Department of Nematology from 1994-2001, and was treasurer (1992-1996), vice president (2000-2002) and president (2002-2004) of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology (SIP). He is especially proud of his students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting international scientists, who have excelled in entomology, insect pathology or nematology.
He is one of the founding editors of the journal Biological Control, and is currently Editor-in-Chief. Dr. Kaya has received a number of awards from ESA, SIP, and the Society of Nematologists. (From the Entomological Society of America website on his selection as an ESA Fellow, updated October 2007)
