- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And you'll see arthropods such as jumping spiders (family Salticidae) and scorpions (superfamily Scorpionoidea).
Who is Gwentomologist?
She's 21-year-old Gwendolyn “Gwen” Erdosh, a UC Davis entomology major and undergraduate researcher with 21,900 followers on Instagram, where she shares her fascination, passion and growing scientific knowledge of entomology with the intensity of a moth heading for light.
Erdosh, president of the UC Davis Entomology Club, a scholar in the campuswide Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology (RSPIB), the recipient of a Provost's Undergraduate Fellowship (PUF) research award, and a volunteer at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, brims with enthusiasm.
In a recent post, she related how she “raised this gorgeous female Hemileuca eglanterina (sheep moth) from a tiny caterpillar!! First time successfully rearing these species. I got a male and female, and I was hoping they'd mate but it never happened. Guess they didn't like each other. I have some eggs overwintering, and I hope they make it ‘til the spring!”
“The best way to see the adult is to rear caterpillars,” Gwen noted. “In the past, I attempted to rear the caterpillars and ran out of host plant. With no method of transportation to the high sierras, I had to give them rose leaves, which worked…until it didn't. They all got a disease and died. This time, I had tons of host plant, and was able to return to the mountains in my car to get more (they eat way more than you'd expect). I'm really happy that I was able to raise this species successfully, and hope to do it again next spring! The insect season is coming to a close, but certain species only come out around this time, so I'll be on the lookout.”
In another post, Gwen wrote that “Today I took on a difficult task: identifying a Chrysidid wasp to species! These colorful wasps are commonly known as cuckoo wasps. This is a specimen I collected on July 13 of this year, a few miles south of Lake Tahoe, at Carson Pass.
Gwen went on to describe the wasp as a nest parasite of sand wasps, and detail its characteristics. “The mesopleuron has a projecting lobe, the tegula (on top of thorax at base of wing) is subovoid, meaning it's fairly egg-shaped. The metanotal projection is large and #mucronate, meaning it ends abruptly in a sharp point, not an elongated point; the propodeal angle is shaped like an acute triangle. I was able to find the species by looking at the key combined with location records. Based on both sources of information, I concluded that my specimen was Parnopes edwardsii.”
“On my page, I mainly post my own macro-photographs with detailed captions about the featured insect,” Gwen explained. “My goal is to not only teach others, but also learn a lot myself. I also post fun and engaging videos to encourage others to pursue entomology. Many times, people have told me that my page helped them decide that they wanted to pursue entomology as a career! I love being able to spread the love of insects to others, and will continue to be active on my page.” Additionally, she maintains a YouTube account as “gwentomologist.”
A 2018 graduate of Los Gatos High School, Santa Clara County, and a UC Davis student since 2019, she anticipates receiving her bachelor's degree in 2023. In February 2020, she applied for—and was accepted—into the highly competitive RSPIB program, which aims to provide undergraduates with closely mentored research experiences in biology. She studies with community ecologist and professor Louie Yang, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, one of the three RSPIB founders.
Gwen's interest in entomology began with caterpillars.
“Ever since I can remember, I have always loved caterpillars,” Gwen said. “As a little kid, I would collect any caterpillar I saw and raise it to adulthood.” Amazed that a caterpillar could "magically change” into a moth or butterfly, she decided “to make a book matching every caterpillar to its adult. I did my own research online and in books I had, and soon was quite knowledgeable about Lepidoptera. The summer before 9th grade, I attended Bio Boot camp, the summer camp for kids led by the Bohart Museum, and Tabatha Yang (education and outreach coordinator). “This was the experience that led me to choose entomology as a career. During this camp, I learned everything about entomology and had a chance to meet real entomologists at UC Davis, and do field work. I fell in love with it and kept coming back each summer for the camp.”
Gwen started her own insect collection, inspired by Jeff Smith (curator of the Bohart Museum's Lepidoptera collection). “Since then, I have never doubted my decision to be an entomologist, not even once. My passion only grew once I entered college, and I consider entomology a lifelong journey of discovering everything about these beautiful, intricate, and fascinating creatures.”
“Gwen is one of those students who instantly shows you her enthusiasm and enjoyment of entomology," Smith said, "and it is just this kind of person who we hope will continue in this important field of science. For those of us looking ahead at the oncoming 'golden years' we need to ensure that there will be competent young scientists who will continue the research and who will discover so many more fascinating things about the world of ‘bugs.' Gwen clearly will be one of these, and I am proud to be associated with her.”
Following her UC Davis graduation, she plans “to work abroad for a year in South America doing research. I then want to apply for graduate school in the United States. I may decide to get my masters first in systematics, and then decide if I want to get my PhD in insect ecology or insect systematics. I cannot decide between the two. However, I definitely want to pursue a career as a professor and researcher.”
Some of her role models include Louie Yang, Lynn Kimsey (director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor), Greg Kareofelas (Bohart associate), Jason Bond (UC Davis spider specialist, professor and associate dean), and Jason Dombroskie (manager of the Cornell University Insect Collection and coordinator of the Insect Diagnostic Lab.)
“It is always great to see someone be able to pursue their passion and be successful,” Kareofelas said, adding that Gwen sometimes accompanies him on his many field trips and “she is always welcome. Her enthusiasm, knowledge and energy make these trips a memorable and learning event for both of us! Her photographic skills enable her to record the insects ‘in nature' and as a curated specimen. Her curated specimens are an example of how a collection should be made and how it should look.”
As a 15-year-old high school student, Gwen traveled to the Bohart Museum in 2016 for its annual Moth Night and conferred with many of the scientists.
At age 16, she served an entomology internship at Cornell University, where her work included identifying microlepidoptra in the family Tortricidae; sampling monarch butterflies for Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE) spores; catching and tagging the gray petaltail dragonfly (Petalurid) at a local state park; and collecting, identifying and presenting moths for a Moth Night program at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History.
That was not her first internship. Gwen gained experience at a five-week internship in the summer of 2018 at the Monteverde Butterfly Gardens in Costa Rica, where she studied insects, conducted tours, and cared for the arthropods in the insectarium.
At age 12, while attending Bio Boot Camp, Gwen learned about the UC Davis Entomology Club, advised by forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. “It had always been my dream to be president one day. From the moment I entered UC Davis, I immersed myself in the club, and became extremely active in it.” She attends all the meetings and field trips; the members now include some of her closest friends. Before advancing to president this year, she served as vice president in 2020 and social media coordinator in 2019.
“I'm super passionate about the club,” Gwen acknowledged. “In fact, it's my favorite time of the week during the quarter. The people in the club are absolutely incredible, and we all inspire each other in so many different ways. I feel so grateful that this organization exists at UC Davis, and I'm glad I have a team of officers that really put in the work to make it an inclusive, fun, and educational environment for anyone who wants to join.”
In addition, Gwen is vice president of the UC Davis STEM Careers Club, booking speakers, and inspiring students to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She has also worked as a youth steward for Grassroots Ecology of Central California (removing invasive plants, planting native grasses and trees, and surveying mammals and birds using a motion-activated camera); and as a volunteer counselor at the Walden West Summer Camp, a nature summer camp for elementary-school age youths.
Although sometimes mistaken for a teenager--“I look young for my age and I'm 5' 1”--Gwen doesn't let that stop her. “I now have accepted who I am and I do not let what others think of me affect me or my goals. I am glad that I am unique!”
Tabatha Yang of the Bohart Museum, coordinator of the Bio Boot camps, remembers Gwen as passionate about entomology when she first enrolled as a middle-school student. "She was an enthusiastic camper with applications that were passionate about insects and insect rearing. We were thrilled when she chose to come to UC Davis for entomology. It doesn't surprise me that she is now president of the entomology club."
Gwen's hobbies and interests closely align with her career plans. They include collecting, photographing, and pinning insects; exploring and observing wildlife; traveling; creating art; producing music on FL Studio (digital audio workstation); and spending time with her friends—two-legged friends (people), six-legged friends (insects) and eight-legged friends (arachnids).
Gwendolyn Erdosh, Gwentomologist.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Mola, a U.S. Geological Survey Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow based at the Fort Collins Science Center, Colorado, and a former member of the Neal Williams laboratory, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, authored the research review article with colleagues Jeremy Hemberger, a postdoctoral researcher in the Williams lab; Jade Kochanski of the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Leif Richardson of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation; and UC Davis alumnus Ian Pearse of the Fort Collins Science Center.
Photographer Diego Delso took the cover image showing a Bombus terrestris, a buff-tailed bumble bee that is one of the most numerous bumble bee species in Europe. He captured the image on a pink mulla mulla, Ptilotus exaltatus, in Estonia.
The abstract:
"Declines of many bumble bee species have raised concerns because of their importance as pollinators and potential harbingers of declines among other insect taxa. At present, bumble bee conservation is predominantly focused on midsummer flower restoration in open habitats. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that forests may play an important role in bumble bee life history. Compared with open habitats, forests and woody edges provide food resources during phenologically distinct periods, are often preferred nesting and overwintering habitats, and can offer favorable abiotic conditions in a changing climate. Future research efforts are needed in order to anticipate how ongoing changes in forests, such as overbrowsing by deer, plant invasions, and shifting canopy demographics, affect the suitability of these habitats for bumble bees. Forested habitats are increasingly appreciated in the life cycles of many bumble bees, and they deserve greater attention from those who wish to understand bumble bee populations and aid in their conservation."
They pointed out that "Bumble bee conservation and management has garnered considerable attention because of bees' role as pollinators of economically and ecologically important crops and wild plants. The precipitous decline of several bumble bee species has been documented in the twenty-first century, raising alarm about the viability of these charismatic species (Cameron and Sadd 2020). Because of this, bumble bees have become a focal taxon for understanding and preventing the loss of insect biodiversity more broadly (Goulson and Nicholls 2016, Wagner et al. 2021). Threats to bumble bee populations include habitat loss, novel pathogen exposure, climate change, and pressures from intensive agriculture, such as pesticide applications (Cameron and Sadd 2020). One of the primary tasks for bumble bee conservation is developing a greater understanding of the habitat requirements of species throughout their life cycle and incorporating that knowledge into restoration and management plans." See more here.
An invited participant on the Western Bumble Bee Species Status Assessment Expert Group and the Native Bee Monitoring Research Coordination Network, Mola is also an organizing member (since 2020) of BOMBUSS: Building Our Methods by Using Sound Science.
Mola, who holds a bachelor of science degree in environmental studies from Florida State University, and a master's degree in biology from Humboldt State University, received his doctorate in ecology in 2019 from UC Davis. He presented his exit seminar on "Bumble Bee Movement Ecology and Response to Wildfire."
Mola also was a UC Davis Professors for the Future Fellow, receiving a year of professional development and pedagogical training. His honors also include a 2013-2018 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship of $133,500 and a 2014-2016 UC Davis Graduate Group in Ecology Fellowship of $43,000. He won the graduate student research poster competition at the 2018 UC Davis Bee Symposium for his work on "Bumble Bee Movement and Landscape Genetics."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Both in-person and virtual seminars will be broadcast via Zoom at https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/
The schedule:
Jan. 5, 2022
Randa Jabbour, associate professor, agroecology, University of Wyoming
Virtual seminar
Title: "Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Pest Management Research--My Alfalfa Weevil Stories"
Host: Ian Grettenberger, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Jan. 12, 2022
Sylvia Fischer, Mosquito Study Group, Department of Ecology, Genetics and Evolution, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Virtual seminar
Title: "Recent Expansion of Aedes aegypti Distribution: Are the Populations Adapting to Colder Climate Regions?"
Host: Erin "Taylor Kelly, doctoral student in the Geoffrey Attardo lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Jan. 19, 2022
Megan Meuti, assistant professor, Department of Entomology, The Ohio State University
Virtual seminar
Title: "How Do Mosquitoes Correctly Interpret Environmental Signals into Complex Seasonal Responses?"
Host: Geoffrey Attardo, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Tobin Hammer, postdoctoral researcher, University of Texas, Austin (he will start as an assistant professor in UC Irvine's Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department in January 2022)
In-person seminar
Title: "Diversity and Dynamism in Social Bee Microbiomes"
Host: Rachel Vannette, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Feb. 2, 2022
Simon Niels Groen, assistant professor, Department of Nematology, UC Riverside
In-person seminar
Title: "Plant Toxins and the Evolution of Host-Parasite Interactions"
Host: Shahid Siddique, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Feb. 9, 2022
Vince D'Amico, research entomologist, Communities and Landscapes of the Urban Northwest, U.S. Department of Agriculture
In-person seminar
Title: "Monitoring and Ecological Research in the Forests of the BosWash Megalopolis"
Host: Geoffrey Attardo, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Feb. 16, 2022
Michelle Heck, adjunct associate professor and research molecular biologist, Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, N.Y.
Virtual seminar
Title: Topic to be announced (Her program uses a combination of molecular, genetic, and proteomics approaches to understand how insects transmit plant pathogens and how pathogens manipulate host plants to ensure replication and transmission. A second area of research is the development of new pest management tools to enhance cultural control and to provide new management strategies for insect vector-borne diseases in plants)
Host: Tiffany Lowe-Power, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Plant Pathology
Feb. 23, 2022
Adam Steinbrenner, assistant professor, Department of Biology, University of Washington
In-person seminar
Title: "Plant Immune Recognition of Insect Herbivores"
Host: Shahid Siddique, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
March 2, 2022
Erica Henry, postdoctoral scholar, conservation biology, North Carolina State University
In-person seminar
Title: "Insect Conservation in an Uncertain Future"
Host: Emily Meineke, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
March 9, 2022
Melissa Mitchum, professor, plant nematology, University of Georgia
Virtual seminar
Title: "The Tricks Phytonematodes Use to Modulate Plant Development"
Host: Shahid Siddique, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
For any Zoom technical issues, Siddique may be reached at ssiddique@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Honey bee geneticist and UC Davis alumnus Robert E. Page Jr., will teach a course on "The Social Contract: from Rousseau to the Honey Bee" on Monday, Feb. 7 from 2 to 4 p.m. He is an emeritus professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and a university provost emeritus and a regents' professor emeritus at Arizona State University. A UC Davis alumnus and the 2019 recipient of the UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Award, administered by the UC Davis Emeriti Association, Page has published more than 230 research papers and three books on honey bee genetics and behavior. Course specifics: 213SNR388 $25 Zoom.
Molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and a Chancellor's Fellow, will cover "The Circadian Clock and Chronomedicine" on Wednesday, March 23 from 10 a.m. to noon. Chiu, who holds a doctorate in molecular genetics from New York University, received postdoctoral training at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University. Course specifics: 213SNR383 $25 Zoom.
Social Contract: from Rousseau to the Honey Bee Animals
"Animals that live together in a society, like the social insects, have a tacit agreement, a social contract, that guarantees that their interests are protected in exchange for their social cooperation," Page says. "Like social contracts that bind human societies, this contract isn't written on paper, it is implied, though in humans its enforcement is expressed in explicit written laws and national constitutions. The social contract of insects has been written by natural selection in their DNA over thousands of generations. In this class we will explore elements of the social contract of honey bee societies, its origins and 'laws for enforcement,' and the social services honey bees get as a consequence of being members of a society. Specifically, we will explore their systems of national defense, internal police, public works, public health and border control. Without these features, their society would fail, as would ours. Discover what we can learn about ourselves from studying social insects."
"The circadian clock is an internal body clock that controls all aspects of physiology and behavior in every single one of us. It interprets environmental and metabolic time cues to ensure our body performs at its best," Chiu says. "A sequel to the OLLI course 'What Time is it and Why Does it Matter?,' this course will revisit the very important, yet infrequently discussed physiological machinery that controls sleep- wake cycles, hormone production and immune system. Because disruptions in the circadian clock have been associated with a range of human diseases, we will highlight life-style choices and work schedules that cause clock disruptions. Finally, we will discuss new strategies in the medical field that leverage circadian biology concepts to increase the efficacy of medical treatments."
OLLI is headquartered at 463 California Ave. Davis, CA 95616. Members of the UC Davis Retirees' Association and the UC Davis Emeriti Association are offered a complimentary course credit equivalent to their paid OLLI membership fee.
The annual OLLI membership is $60 for the academic year (Oct. 4, 2021- June 30, 2022). More information on OLLI, which is part of the UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education, is available online or contact (530) 752-9695 or olli@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Newly published UC Davis research in the American Journal of Botany yields some surprising results.
Honeybees are effective pollinators, but when compared to other pollinators, including wild bees, they are rarely the most effective plant pollinators, according to a meta-analysis project led by doctoral candidate Maureen Page and postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson of the Neal Williams laboratory, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Page and Nicholson are the co-leading authors of "A Meta-Analysis of Single Visit Pollination Effectiveness Comparing Honeybees and other Floral Visitors," the cover story of the current edition of the journal, published Nov. 30.
“Although high visitation frequencies make honeybees important pollinators, they were rarely the most effective pollinators of plants and were less effective than the average bee,” said Page. “This suggests that honeybees may be imperfect substitutes for the loss of wild pollinators and ensuring pollination will benefit from conservation of non-honeybee taxa. In the future, we hope other researchers will use the data we have collected to further investigate the factors that influence pollination effectiveness.”
Page and Nicholson began with the premise: “Many animals provide ecosystem services in the form of pollination including honeybees, which have become globally dominant floral visitors. A rich literature documents considerable variation in single visit pollination effectiveness, but this literature has yet to be extensively synthesized to address whether honeybees are effective pollinators,”
The researchers conducted a hierarchical meta-analysis of 168 studies and extracted 1564 single visit effectiveness (SVE) measures for 240 plant species. “We paired SVE data with visitation frequency data for 69 of these studies,” they wrote. “We used these data to ask three questions: (1) Do honeybees (Apis mellifera) and other floral visitors differ in their SVE? (2) To what extent do plant and pollinator attributes predict differences in SVE between honeybees and other visitors? (3) Is there a correlation between visitation frequency and SVE?”
"Surprisingly, honeybees were less effective than other bees as pollinators of crop plants, suggesting that the importance of honeybees as crop pollinators derives largely from their numerical abundance rather than the quality of their floral visits," Page said.
Results. “Honeybees were significantly less effective than the most effective non-honeybee pollinators but were as effective as the average pollinator," they wrote in their results section of the paper. "The type of pollinator moderated these effects. Honeybees were less effective compared to the most effective and average bird and bee pollinators but were as effective as other taxa. Visitation frequency and SVE were positively correlated, but this trend was largely driven by data from communities where honeybees were absent.”
The researchers concluded that “Although high visitation frequencies make honeybees important pollinators, they were less effective than the average bee and rarely the most effective pollinator of the plants they visit. As such, honeybees may be imperfect substitutes for the loss of wild pollinators, and safeguarding pollination will benefit from conservation of non-honeybee taxa.”
Also contributing to the project were Ross Brennan, Anna Britzman, Jessica Greer, Jeremy Hemberger, Hanna Kahl, Uta Müller, Youhong Peng, Nick Rosenberger, Clara Stuligross, Li Wang, and Professors Louie Yang and Neal Williams.
Cover Photo. The cover photo, by Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, shows several species of bees on a sunflower, Helianthus sp. They include a honeybee (Apis mellifera), sunflower bee (Svastra obliqua), and two sweat bees (Halictus tripartitus and Halictus ligatus), as identified by Professor Williams, a pollinator ecologist.
"Honeybees are as effective as the average pollinator, but rarely the most effective pollinators of plants," according to the caption. "Surprisingly, honeybees are less effective than other bees as pollinators of cultivated plants, suggesting the importance of honeybees as agricultural pollinators derives largely from their numerical abundance. Their study confirms a widely held belief that honeybees are not the best pollinators of plants globally and substantiates the growing concern that honeybees may be imperfect substitutes for the loss of wild pollinators."
Charlie Nicholson. Nicholson, a researcher in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology labs of both Professor Neal Williams, and Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño, holds a bachelor of arts degree in biology (evolution, ecology and behavior), 2010, cum laude, from Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York. He received his doctorate in natural resources in 2018 from the University of Vermont, where he was a Gund Institute for Environment graduate fellow. In his dissertation, he examined how landscape and farm management affect the multiple benefits provided by wild bees.
Nicholson joined UC Davis as a postdoctoral scholar in the spring of 2019, and receives funding support from the USDA Invasive Species and Pollinator Health Unit. He recently co-authored a paper, “Natural Hazard Threats to Pollinators and Pollination,” published in the journal Global Change Biology, that analyzed 117 published research papers on natural hazards that threaten pollinators and pollination.
Maureen Page. Page received her bachelor's degree in biology, cum laude, from Scripps College, Claremont, Calif., in 2016, and then enrolled in the UC Davis entomology graduate program, with a career goal of becoming a professor and principal investigator. In 2018, she received prestigious three-year fellowship, a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, for her research proposal, “Promoting Food Security by Optimizing Wildflower Plantings to Support Wild and Managed Bees." Long interested in bee research, Page received a 2013 Scripps Environmental Research Grant to establish a solitary bee monitoring program at the Bernard Field Station in Claremont. She created a reference collection and species list of bee diversity at the field station, gaining experience collecting, pinning and identifying bee specimens. She presented her findings at the Scripps Undergraduate Research Symposium. Page later worked on a project categorizing pollen deposition by the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenkii to California figwort, Scrophularia california.