- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
All 11 seminars will take place both in-person and virtually at 4:10 p.m. on Wednesdays in Room 122 of Briggs Hall except for the Nov. 9th and Dec. 7th seminars, which will be virtual only, she said.
The list of speakers:
Wednesday, Sept. 21
Nicholas Miller, assistant professor, Department of Biology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
Title: "Adaptation in the Cornfield, Research in the Classroom"
Research in the Miller lab focuses on the population genetics and evolution of herbivorous insects. "We mostly study species that are pests of agriculture," he says on his website. "Key areas of interest include: adaptation by insect pests to the technologies intended to control them, including genetically-modified crops and pesticides; the interactions of specialist and generalist herbivores to plant defenses; dispersal and movement of insects and the genes they carry."
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Sept. 28 (Exit Seminar)
Nissa Coit, master's degree candidate studying honey bees
Elina Niño Bee Laboratory, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Title: "Effects of Ethyl Oleate Pheromone on Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Overwintering Physiology” (Exit seminar)
Wednesday, Oct. 5 (Exit Seminar)
Olivia Winokur, doctoral candidate studying how the environment and mosquito behavior affect transmission dynamics of mosquito-borne viruses
Title: "Temperature Drives Transmission of Mosquito-Borne Pathogens: Improving Entomological estimates for Aedes aegypti-borne Virus Transmission Risk."
Christopher Barker lab, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis
Wednesday, Oct. 12
Julian Dupuis, assistant professor, Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky
Title: “Developing Genomics-Based Molecular Diagnostic Tools for Recurrently Invading Tephritid Pests"
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Oct. 19
Filipa Rijo-Ferreira, assistant professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley
Title: "Circadian Rhythms in Parasitic Diseases"
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Oct. 26
Yao Cai, doctoral candidate
Joanna Chiu laboratory, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Title: Exit Seminar: "How Do Flies Tell the Time of Day?"
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 2
Wanhe Li, assistant professor, Department of Biology, Texas A&M
Title: “How Time Flies During Lock-down?--Mechanisms Underlying Chronic Social Isolation-Induced Sleep Loss in Drosophila”
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 9 (virtual only)
Xoaquín Moreira, Biological Mission of Galicia (CSIC)
Title: “Insularity Effects on Plant-Herbivore Interactions: Searching for Biotic and Abiotic Explanatory Variables to Promote Insular Biodiversity Conservation”
Host: Richard "Rick" Karban, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology
Wednesday, Nov. 16
Cynthia Gleason, assistant professor, Department of Plant Pathology, Washington State University
Title: “How Do We Help Potato Growers Combat the Root-Knot Nematode Meloidogyne chitwoodi?”
Host: Shahid Siddique, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Nov. 30 (postponed as of Nov. 28; to be presented at a later date)
Quinn McFrederick, assistant professor Department of Entomology, UC Riverside
Title: To be announced
He specializes in insect-symbiont interactions, particularly the study of wild bees.
Host: Rachel Vannette, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Dec. 7 (virtual only)
Mônica Ulyssea, Universidade de São Paulo Museu de Zoologia
Topic: Ants (title pending)
Expertise in myrmecology, taxonomy, phylogeny, systematics, curatorial practices, and science dissemination
Host: Jill Oberski, doctoral candidate, Phil Ward laboratory, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Meineke, the coordinator of the departmental seminars, joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in March 2020, during the COVID 19 pandemic. She studies how climate change and urban development affect insects, plants, and how they interact with one another. Before accepting her UC Davis appointment, Meineke served as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Herbaria, where she studied how urbanization and climate change have affected plant-insect relationships worldwide over the past 100-plus years. A native of Greenville, N.C., Emily received her bachelor of science degree in environmental science, with a minor in biology, in 2008 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and then went on to obtain her doctorate in entomology in 2016 from North Carolina State University. Advised by Steven Frank and co-advisor Robert Dunn, she completed her dissertation on "Understanding the Consequences of Urban Warming for Street Trees and Their Insect Pests." (See feature story)
For further information on the seminars or technical difficulties with Zoom, contact the coordinator at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Emily Meineke, assistant professor of urban landscape entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, helped launch the project in 2017 when she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Herbaria.
The exhibit in Cambridge, Mass., is “an immersive multidisciplinary experience that marries art and science through a modern artistic interpretation of Henry David Thoreau's preserved plants,” said Bethany Carland-Adams, a public relations specialist with Harvard Museums of Science and Culture (HMSC).
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), naturalist, author and philosopher and a 1837 graduate of Harvard University, is best known for his book Walden. Removing himself from social life, he settled into a cabin by Walden Pond, Concord, Mass., from July 1845 to September 1847 to immerse himself in nature.
The 648 plant specimens that Thoreau donated to the museum form the foundation of the exhibit. "He was prolific in his practice of collecting botanical samples and plants are important indicators of how our world is responding to climate change," Carland-Adams said in a press release.
Meineke, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 2020, served as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University Herbaria from 2016 to 2019, including a National Science Foundation-sponsored fellowship there in 2017. She holds a doctorate in entomology from North Carolina State University (2016), Raleigh, where she wrote her dissertation on “Understanding the Consequences of Urban Warming for Street Trees and Their Pests.”
“Ultimately, we landed on using visual media and portraits to highlight the decline of local plants," Meineke said. "Those art works are now central to the exhibit, as are Thoreau's actual specimens provided by Harvard and descriptions of the discoveries made possible by his work as a naturalist.”
The exhibit includes Meineke's work on insect herbivore-plant interactions over the period of recent climate change as one type of research made possible by Thoreau's plant collections.
“The digitization of the specimens, and others in the Herbaria collection, are now allowing broader access to scholars and citizen scientists, in turn welcoming new domains of scholarship,” Carland-Adams noted. "The exhibition invites visitors to experience emotionally resonant connections to the profound loss of natural diversity caused by human-induced climate change. The exhibition urges us to ask, 'What do Thoreau's findings tell us about what plants are winning, and what plants are losing, in the face of climate change today?'"
Charles Davis, curator of vascular plants at Harvard University Herbaria, teamed with Marsha Gordon, a North Carolina State University professor, and Meineke to frame plans for the exhibit, collaborating with artists Leah Sobsey and Robin Vuchnich, both university faculty members, to shape the vision.
Vuchnich, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, leveraged the digitized specimens to craft an immersive experience in the gallery theater. It includes animations of the herbarium images and soundscapes recorded at Walden Pond.
Sobsey, an associate professor of photography and director of the Gatewood Gallery at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, focused on cyanotype, a 19th-century photographic process that relies on UV light to create a distinctive Prussian blue tone. Sobsey utilized all 648 digitized Thoreau specimens, and created a wallpaper comprised of original cyanotypes and digital imagery, relating a story of the survival and decline of plant specimens.
In the news release, HMSC executive director Brenda Tindal emphasized the significance of Thoreau's observations and his indelible impact on society..."Thoreau's clarion call compels us to intentionally lean into our surroundings and learn from nature—and by extension, the global community to which we all belong.”
Visitors will gain "a deeper understanding of how different plant species respond to environmental factors, within and between species," Carland-Adams shared. "For instance, some plants are sensitive to temperature, while others show less or no sensitivity. This type of data drives the exhibition's animations and directly impacts our daily lives in the context of agriculture and food production."
The Thoreau exhibit may also become a traveling exhibit.
The HMSC mission "is to foster curiosity and a spirit of discovery in visitors of all ages by enhancing public understanding of and appreciation for the natural world, science, and human cultures," according to its website. "HMSC works in concert with Harvard faculty, museum curators, and students, as well as with members of the extended Harvard community, to provide interdisciplinary exhibitions, events and lectures, and educational programs for students, teachers, and the public. HMSC draws primarily upon the extensive collections of the member museums and the research of their faculty and curators."
Resources:
- Harvard Museum of Natural History Website
- Press Release
- Podcast: Listen to the HMSC Connects! featuring host Jennifer Berglund, entomologist Emily Meineke, and artists Robin Vuchnich and Leah Sobsey. (Read the transcript)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"In summary, I aim to use ecoinformatics (ecological big data, aggregated from multiple sources) to examine the impact of global change on agricultural insect populations," Lippey related. "A consistent challenge for researchers working in natural and managed ecosystems is that data available for characterizing insect responses to global change are severely limited across space and time. As a result, we know very little about how insects are responding to global change over time, and to what extent various global change drivers (e.g., climate change, land use change, pesticides) are responsible for documented changes in insect abundance. Here, I will use long-term data collected in agricultural systems for other purposes to bridge this data gap."
"Because field scouts and farmers collect data in a decentralized way, the availability, size, and accuracy of relevant agricultural data are unrivaled," she noted. "This approach will contribute to the emergence of a novel framework using big data to investigate global change questions across larger spatial and temporal axes than ever before. My results will have implications for the impact of anthropogenic pressure on food production stability, biodiversity, and ecosystem health."
Lippey, who received her bachelor's degree in entomology from UC Davis in 2019, is a graduate student of agricultural entomology in the Rosenheim lab, and an urban entomology graduate student in the Meineke lab. She previously did research in the Louie Yang lab, 2018-2021, as an undergraduate research assistant in insect ecology, and as an undergraduate research assistant in ant systematics with the Philip Ward lab.
In the Yang lab, Lippey investigated the effect of stripes on aversive behavior in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), tsetse flies (Glossina), and mosquitoes (Aedes); studied the effect of size and movement constraints on ontogenetic color change (OCC) of swallowtail larvae (Papilio); and co-authored a collaborative review paper, "The Complexity of Global Change and its Effects on Insects," published in 2021 in the Current Opinion in Insect Science.
In the Ward lab, she studied the phenotypic evolution of the Big-Eyed Tree Ant (Pseudomyrmecinae: Tetraponera) and delivered a presentation on the project at the 2019 UC Davis Undergraduate Research Conference.
Lippey presented a poster on "Effects of Surrounding Landscapes on the Fork-tailed Bush Katydid (Scudderia furcata) in California Citrus" at the 2021 Entomological Society of America conference in Denver.
A talented illustrator, Lippey served as an illustrator and author of BuprestidID, an apolyclave identification key for more than 500 genera of Buprestidae (family of beetles known as jewel beetles or metallic wood-boring beetles) in a project headed by USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The 287-member team included urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and marine evolutionary ecologist Joanna Griffiths of the UC Davis Department of Environmental Toxicology.
The research, “Global Urbanization Drives Adaptation in the Plant White Clover,” published March 17 in the journal Science, reveals that “urbanization leads to similar environmental changes across 160 cities throughout the world, which leads to repeated adaptive evolution in the cosmopolitan invasive plant white clover,” said Johnson, the principal investigator (PI) of the 160-city, 26-country project and director of the Centre for Urban Environments at the University of Toronto.
“It is the largest scale study of parallel evolution and urban adaptation ever performed, involving 287 collaborators across 26 countries,” said Johnson, adding “This project would have been impossible without the hard work and dedication of an amazing network of collaborators around the world, people like Emily Meineke and Joanna Griffiths at UC Davis.”
Of the main forces behind evolution--natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow—the white clover's dominant evolutionary force is natural selection, Johnson pointed out.
Team members performed cyanogenesis assays to determine the plant's defense production of a toxin called hydrogen cyanide (HCN). White clover is less likely to produce HCN in colder environments but more likely in rural areas, the research shows. Half of the world's population lives in urban environments, but by 2050, that figure is expected to jump to 70 percent.
“Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution,” the scientists explained in the abstract. “We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban-rural gradients were associated with the evolution of clines in defense in 47% of cities throughout the world. Variation in the strength of clines was explained by environmental changes in drought stress and vegetation cover that varied among cities. Sequencing 2074 genomes from 26 cities revealed that the evolution of urban-rural clines was best explained by adaptive evolution, but the degree of parallel adaptation varied among cities. Our results demonstrate that urbanization leads to adaptation at a global scale.”
Meineke, who holds a doctorate in entomology (2016) from NCSU, designed the sampling effort in Raleigh, collected clover from there, and did cyanogenesis assays.
“Increasingly, it is clear that we are living in a time when humans are the dominant drivers of biotic change globally,” commented Meineke, who joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology in Nematology in 2020 as an assistant professor. “Somehow, we still don't understand how we are affecting the species we see every day, in part because biologists have only recently become aware of our complex effects on species that live in our own habitats.”
“This project sparked my interest because it focuses on the evolution of clover, a plant that I've had under my feet my entire life,” Meineke said. “I remember stepping in clover as a kid and watching bumble bees bob across it during PE class in elementary school. It turns out that kids worldwide have had this experience because white clover is a cosmopolitan plant. Being part of this study gave me the opportunity to be part of a large group studying effects of humans on clover all over the world.”
Griffiths, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC Davis labs of Professors Andrew Whitehead and Nann Fangue, received her doctorate in ecology and evolution (2020) from LSU. She said her LSU team, including Luis Santiago-Rosario and Katherine Hovanes, "collected clovers from Baton Rouge, and my contribution was performing the lab work, that is, I quantified the amount of hydrogen cyanide present in each clover sample from rural Baton Rouge all the way to the city center. Each sample was digested and incubated for a couple hours. (See image of data sheet.) “The cyanide in the sample chemically reacts with the special paper, turning it blue. Thus, a blue spot on the paper indicates that the clover sample had cyanide present.”
Urbanization is a global phenomenon, in which thousands of cities cover up to three percent of Earth's land surface, according to the GLUE Project website. “For an evolutionary biologist, these cities represent an amazing opportunity to study evolution in action.”
The website describes the GLUE project as “an initiative that will provide the largest scale, best replicated test of parallel evolution ever attempted. To do this, we will study the evolution of the production of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in white clover (Trifolium repens). We previously showed that white clover evolves parallel clines in HCN (a potent chemical defense) along urban-rural gradients in eastern North America.”
In addition to lead PI Marc Johnson, the 12-member leadership team included two University of Toronto scientists: co-PI and assistant professor Rob Ness, the second author of the paper; and doctoral student James Santangelo, first author.
The project drew financial support from a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant; Canada Research Chair; and NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“However, the plants that are keeping up with climate change might also experience costs to earlier leaf-out,” said Meineke, lead author of the first-of-its-kind study, Phenological Sensitivity to Temperature Mediates Herbivory.
One of the costs is that “early” species get eaten more in warmer years. “This seems to be because when they leaf out earlier,” she said, “they also lengthen the amount of time herbivores have in a given year to eat their leaves.”
Two plant species that showed higher insect damage due to rising temperatures were two native blueberries: Vaccinium angustifolium, a wild lowbush blueberry native to eastern and central Canada and the northeastern United States, and Vaccinium corymbosum, the northern highbush blueberry, a native North American species and a significant commercial food crop.
The publication is the result of a massive five-year research project involving herbarium specimens collected from the northeastern United States and France from 1900 to 2015. These two areas have warmed more than the global average, Meineke said, and the plants studied are distributed widely across them.
Meineke, an assistant professor who joined the UC Davis faculty in March 2020, launched her research while a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Herbaria, where she studied how worldwide urbanization and climate change have affected plant-insect relationships over the past century.
“This was a true collaboration,” Meineke said. “Each of us was interested in different pieces of the research. Davies and Davis brought the phenology hypotheses and expertise, and I brought an interest in/knowledge of herbivory and how it may change as the climate warms.”
The authors wrote that “both insect and plant development are sensitive to temperature, though the specific cues plants and associated insects use to time life history events may differ and include photoperiod, chilling, ‘forcing' and precipitation. For the vast majority of insect and plant species, the combined and relative contributions of these cues have not been well characterized.”
The specimens studied were selected first on the basis of the availability of previously published phenological sensitivity metrics: flowering sensitivity and leaf-out sensitivity. “We use the general term ‘phenological sensitivity' to refer to the extent to which a particular life event (e.g., for plants, budbreak, leaf-out, flowering, fruiting) responds to temperature from year to year (e.g. days change in phenology per ‘C' warming),” they explained.
The next step? “We are now beginning to look into whether and how herbivory might have shifted over time in California native plants,” Meineke said. “Our focal species so far is the valley oak, Quercus lobata, but we hope to eventually expand these observations to more taxa. We're also looking into other mechanisms that might drive herbivory shifts here in the west, where phenology is driven more by moisture than by temperature.”
A native of Greenville, N.C., Meineke holds a bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina in environmental science, with a minor in biology, and a doctorate in entomology from North Carolina State University where she completed her dissertation, "Understanding the Consequences of Urban Warming for Street Trees and Their Insect Pests.”
The project was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology in a grant awarded to Meineke.
The abstract:
Species interactions drive ecosystem processes and are a major focus of global change research. Among the most consequential interactions expected to shift with climate change are those between insect herbivores and plants, both of which are highly sensitive to temperature. Insect herbivores and their host plants display varying levels of synchrony that could be disrupted or enhanced by climate change, yet empirical data on changes in synchrony are lacking. Using evidence of herbivory on herbarium specimens collected from the northeastern United States and France from 1900 to 2015, we provide evidence that plant species with temperature‐sensitive phenologies experience higher levels of insect damage in warmer years, while less temperature‐sensitive, co‐occurring species do not. While herbivory might be mediated by interactions between warming and phenology through multiple pathways, we suggest that warming might lengthen growing seasons for phenologically sensitive plant species, exposing their leaves to herbivores for longer periods of time in warm years. We propose that elevated herbivory in warm years may represent a previously under appreciated cost to phenological tracking of climate change over longer timescales.