- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A first-generation college student, Rajarapu holds two biochemistry degrees from Osmania University, India: her bachelor's degree (2006) and her master's degree (2008). She obtained her doctorate in entomology in 2013 from The Ohio State University, working with Professors Daniel Herms and Larry Phelan. Her dissertation: "Integrated Omics on the Physiology of Emerald Ash Borer."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Sutherland, UC Riverside professor and urban entomologist Chow-Yang Lee, and USDA forest entomologist Lori Nelson want to compare the spring swarming populations of Reticulitermes hesperus with the fall swarming populations.
“A major taxonomic question surrounding western subterranean termites remains unsolved,” said Sutherland, the Urban IPM Advisor for the San Francisco Bay Area. “Most termite species simultaneously swarm over a relatively short period during one season, facilitating genetic exchange during mating. Individuals thought to represent Reticulitermes hesperus, however, have been observed swarming during both autumn (usually on a sunny day after the first autumn rain event) and spring (sunny days when soil is moist) suggesting that there are at least two cryptic species considered within the western subterranean termite complex or that speciation is underway (individuals swarming at different times of the year cannot mate with one another).”
In fact, says Sutherland, USDA Forest Service research by Michael Haverty and Lori Nelson indicates that spring and autumn swarming populations can actually be distinguished by different cuticular hydrocarbons (waxes on exoskeleton).
In the collaborative UC IPM, UC Riverside, and USDA Forest Service research project, “we seek to resolve this question once and for all by comparing DNA microsatellite data and cuticular hydrocarbon data from alates (winged termite swarmers) collected during these different seasons,” Sutherland said.
Residents of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, western Nevada, southern British Columbia, and northern Baja California can help by collecting at least 25 individuals of swarming Reticulitermes and freezing them in a hard-walled container, such as a pill bottle, film canister or a food storage plastic container. Contributors will receive a Common Cockroaches of California poster or another special gift. Contributing pest management professionals will receive a free training opportunity with ‘IPM' continuing education units for California's Structural Pest Control Board licenses.
Sutherland's program will fund the shipping of the specimens. He may be reached at amsutherland@ucanr.edu for further information, such as if the termite specimens qualify.
About Termites and Sutherland's Work
Termites, like cockroaches, are members of the order Blattodea and evolved some 120 million years ago. Structural infestations of subterranean termites are usually not visible, but the annual flights of winged termites (alates) are. This research will help pest control providers and residents understand the most likely swarming periods in their specific region, improving monitoring and control for these important structural pests.
Sutherland, who began researching termites in 2014, says the western subterranean termite, “is the most damaging wood destroying insect in northern California and most other parts of the Pacific Northwest, causing billions of dollars of damage to homes and other structures each year. Conventional treatments use soil drenches or injections of liquid termiticides to create protective barriers around wooden structures.”
One of his research projects seeks to evaluate an alternative management tactic for subterranean termites: bait station systems that use insect growth regulator insecticides to eliminate entire termite colonies. “Bait systems represent reduced environmental contamination as compared to liquid treatments, but adoption of their use in California and other Western states has been slow to progress,” he said, adding that he hopes his research will demonstrate the relative efficacy of baits and increase both demand for and provision of bait services.
Sutherland, who holds advanced degrees in entomology and horticulture from UC Davis and the University of Florida—including a doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 2009-- is a Board-Certified Entomologist (Entomological Society of America certification program). He focuses his research on developing new IPM strategies or adapting and implementing current IPM strategies, in cooperation with other researchers, pest control operators, pest management professionals, public agencies, schools, parks, public housing, and regulatory agencies involved with household, structural, and industrial IPM.
His work includes education about IPM principles, development of IPM programs for clientele, reduction in unnecessary pesticide applications, and mitigation of surface water contamination due to urban pesticide applications.
See more information on termites on the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management (UC IPM) site, Subterranean and Other Termites.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
(Editor's Note: See this March 31st seminar on YouTube at https://youtu.be/z85B0NlmizU)
Robert K. D. 'Bob' Peterson, professor of entomology at Montana State University (MSU), Bozeman, and the 2019 president of the Entomological Society of America (ESA), will speak on "Tigers in Yellowstone National Park: Insect Adaptations to Extreme Environments" at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's online seminar on Wednesday, March 31.
His seminar, hosted by UC Davis distinguished professor James R. Carey, a fellow of ESA, begins at 4:10 p.m. Access this Google document to attend the Zoom event.
The "tigers" are the tiger beetles that live, feed and breed in the thermal pools.
Peterson, with MSU's Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, leads the research, teaching and outreach program in Agricultural and Biological Risk Assessment, a program centered on comparative risk assessment. His other areas of research include insect ecology, plant-stress ecophysiology, and integrated pest management. Peterson teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, including environmental risk assessment, insect ecology and various special-topics graduate courses. He also directs MSU's professional master's degree program in environmental sciences.
A native of Perry, Iowa, Peterson received his bachelor's degree in entomology from Iowa State University, Ames, and his master's degree and doctorate in entomology from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He joined the MSU faculty in 2002 after serving as a research biologist for Dow AgroSciences, Omaha from 1995 to 2001. He has published 123 peer-reviewed journal articles, 15 book chapters, and two books.
Peterson manages the website, Insects of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, an online photographic celebration of the ecosystem's biodiversity. He describes it as a "celebration of the "incredible diversity and abundance of insects in the area." Peterson categorized the site into butterflies and moths; beetles; flies; true bugs; stoneflies; mayflies; net-winged insects; bees, wasps ants and sawflies; grasshoppers, crickets and katydids; and insect relatives. Peterson also hosts a comparable Facebook page, Insects of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
In addition, Peterson is affiliated with two other websites, Insects, Disease and History, devoted to "understanding the impact that insects, especially insect-borne diseases, have had on world history"; and Ag Biosafety, designed to be a "definitive source of scientific, regulatory and educational materials relevant to crop biotechnology and the current debate on the genetic modification of food."
Cooperative Extension specialist Ian Grettenberger coordinates the spring seminars. For technology problems, contact him at imgrettenberger@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A blood plasma biomarker discovered in hospitalized COVID-19 patients may not only predict the severity of adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) but further research may lead to inhibiting the progression, a team of eight University of California researchers announced today.
The UC researchers, primarily from the laboratory of UC Davis distinguished professor Bruce Hammock, found that four compounds in the blood of COVID-19 patients are highly associated with the disease. Their paper, “Plasma Linoleate Diols Are Potential Biomarkers for Severe COVID-19 Infections,” is published as open access in the current edition of Frontiers in Physiology.
ARDS, characterized by fluid build-up in the lungs, is the second leading cause of death in COVID-19 patients, next to viral pneumonia, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
“Different outcomes from COVID-19 infections are both terrifying from a human health perspective and fascinating from a research perspective,” said UC Davis lead author and doctoral candidate Cindy McReynolds of the Hammock lab. “Our data provide an important clue to help determine what impacts the severity of COVID-19 outcomes. Initially, we focused on the immune response and cytokine profile as important drivers in severity, but considering what we now know from our study and others in the field, lipid mediators may be the missing link to answering questions such as why some people are asymptomatic while others die, or why some disease resolves quickly while others suffer from long-haul COVID.”
The compounds, known as leukotoxins and leukotoxin diols, originate from linoleic acid, the body's most abundant dietary fat, said Hammock, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and directs the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NEIHS) Superfund Research Program at UC Davis. “The leukotoxins (also called EpOMEs) are converted to the leukotoxin diols (also called DiHOMES) by the soluble epoxide hydrolase we work on.”
“So the leukotoxins and leukotoxin diols,” Hammock said, “are indicators of respiratory problems in COVID-19 patients as plasma biomarkers. They also present a pathway for reducing ARDS in COVID-19 if we could inhibit the soluble epoxide hydrolase, a key regulatory enzyme involved in the metabolism of immune resolving fatty acids.”
Professor John Imig, director and eminent scholar of the Medical College of Wisconsin's Drug Discovery Center, who was not involved in the study, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that coronaviruses can have deadly consequences. Lung distress is a major reason for death in COVID-19 patients infected with the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). The findings of McReynolds et al. identified lipids called leukotoxin diols in the blood of COVID-19 patients that could act as a biomarker for lung distress. In addition, leukotoxin diols could be responsible for lung distress in COVID-19 patients. Excitingly, this suggest that therapies to lower leukotoxin diols could treat lung distress and prevent death in COVID-19 patients.”
“The findings presented in this paper bring important attention to a role for oxylipin metabolites in COVID-19 infections,” said Professor A. Daniel Jones of Michigan State University's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and director of the university's Research Technology Facility's Mass Spectrometry and Metabolomics Core. “Most notably, metabolites known as DiHOMEs which have been previously implicated in lung inflammation show promise for their potential to predict outcomes in COVID patients and guide therapeutic, and perhaps dietary interventions beneficial to human populations.” Jones, who was not involved in the study, serves as secretary of the Metabolomics Association of North America.
The UC Davis scientists used clinical data collected from six patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and admitted to the UC Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, and 44 healthy samples carefully chosen from the healthy control arm of a recently completed clinical study.
The Hammock lab's 50-year research on soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) and its inhibitors led the professor to found and direct EicOsis Human Health, a Davis-based company that is developing a potent soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor for pain relief. Epoxy fatty acids control blood pressure, fibrosis, immunity, tissue growth, depression, pain, inflammation and other processes.
But more recently, the Hammock lab has turned its attention to using sEH as a means to resolve inflammation associated with COVID-19 and the fibrosis that can follow.
Lipid metabolism researcher Ameer Taha of the UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology pointed out that linoleic acid is an essential fatty acid present in only small amounts in our evolutionary diets. “In addition to nutritional and structural roles of linoleate, minor linoleate metabolites including the leukotoxin diols (also known as DiHOMEs) regulate a number functions including body temperature, cardiac health and vascular permeability. This study cautions that now with dietary linoleate levels at an all-time high, in periods of high stress as with COVID-19, these regulatory functions may become detrimental.”
The paper is the work of Hammock, McReynolds and Jun Yang of the Department of Entomology and Nematology and EicOsis Human Health; Irene Cortes-Puch of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, EicOsis Human Health, and the Department of Internal Medicine's Division of Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine; Resmi Ravindran and Imran Khan of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Bruce G. Hammock of UC Davis Department of Veterinary Medicine, Aquatic Health; and Pei-an Betty Shih of the UC San Diego Department of Psychiatry.
“This study resulted from an exciting collaboration with Imran Khan and Angela Haczku of the UC Davis School of Medicine to identify potential biomarkers for differentiating the severity of COVID-19 diseases,” said Yang, the corresponding author.
The research drew financial support from several National Institutes of Health agencies: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Superfund Research Program and R35 grant, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS),and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Resources:
- EicOsis: Developing a New Approach to Treat Pain
- Bruce Hammock: Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chancellor
- Cindy McReynolds Receives Major NIH Training Grant
- Cancer Team's Research Paper Named Journal of Clinical Investigation's Editor's Pick (Includes Bruce Hammock and Jun Yang)
Contacts:
- Bruce Hammock at bdhammock@ucdavis.edu
- Cindy McReynolds at cbmcreynolds@eicosis.com or cbmcreynolds@ucdavis.edu
- Jun Yang at junyang@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
An “About Me” poster hanging in her childhood home in Concord confirms it: “When I grow up, I want to be an entomologist.”
She did and she is.
“I have been absolutely obsessed with insects my entire life,” she acknowledges, remembering that she “reared tons of praying mantids and katydids that I'd found in the yard, and I had pretty big colonies of ladybugs and soapberry bugs at different times.” At age “three or four,” she remembers looking excitedly through a "kid-friendly microscope” at the Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley.
Now age 22 and a senior majoring in entomology at the University of California, Davis, and a student researcher in the laboratory of UC Davis Distinguished Professor Jay Rosenheim of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, RJ is making incredible strides and inroads in her research on the bizarre Strepsiptera endoparasites that attack their hosts, the Ammophila (thread-waisted) wasps.
But just as one road leads to a highway, and a highway leads to an interstate, her next destination is New York City to the American Museum of Natural History's Richard Gilder Graduate School (RGGS) for a doctoral opportunity few receive.
“Parasitoids are the love of my life,” said RJ, who is scheduled to receive her bachelor of science degree in entomology in June. “I want to focus on everything to do with parasitoid/parasite-host interactions and how these interactions affect the rest of the world.”
Her two-year research project entails studying the Ammophila specimens in the Bohart Museum of Entomology. As larvae, members of the order Strepsiptera, known as “twisted wings,” enter their hosts, including wasps and bees, through joints or sutures.
The Bohart Museum, home of nearly eight million specimens, houses “about 30,000 specimens of Ammophila from multiple continents,” said director Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology. “The majority of the New World ones, which is the bulk, were identified by Arnold Menke.”
Menke, a global wasp authority who received his doctorate from UC Davis in 1965, studying with Professor Richard Bohart (for whom the museum is named), is the author of "The Ammophila of North and Central America (Hymenoptera, Sphecidae),” considered the bible of Ammophila research. (His book may be purchased in the Bohart Museum's gift shop.)
Menke's work generated “a massive data set on comparative parasitism levels,” Rosenheim noted.
“RJ has shown that this one feature explains something like 90 percent of the total variation across Ammophila species in the risk of parasitism,” Rosenheim said. “Ecology virtually never works in such a predictable way; this is one truly exceptional counterexample of nature being highly predictable. Anyway, RJ's work shows that sometimes parental care can be a double-edged sword; we usually think of parental care as providing enhanced protection of offspring from predators and parasites. In this case, it proves to be the reverse.”
Said Kimsey: “RJ is one of those rare students that is focused, task-oriented and simultaneously creative. She was great fun to have working in the museum.”
RJ said she “applied to UC LEADS without knowing for sure that I wanted to go to graduate school, since it still felt out of reach for me at the time, but I got in and started my undergraduate research career for real. UC LEADS was what prepared me for applying to graduate school and helped me understand my potential as a scientist.”
In the beginning, June through September 2019, her work with the Bohart Museum specimens amounted to a full-time job. “During the academic year, it was more like a part-time job where I fit in 10-12 hours working on it as my schedule allowed.”
A dean's honor student with multiple interests, she plays French horn and trumpet in the UC Davis Video Game Orchestra, and for two years performed with the California Aggie Marching Band-Uh. In her home, she tends to a colony of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, a scorpion, tarantula, tailless whip scorpion, and African cat-eye mantis. In her four years at UC Davis, “I've had a colony of millipedes, two other tarantulas, a giant Vietnamese centipede, and five other assorted mantis species. The five-year-old me would also be thrilled about that.”
RJ says that “being able to work with Jay on this project investigating the host-parasite relationship between Ammophila wasps and Strepsiptera was what made me fall in love with this super weird order of endoparasites, and I'm extremely excited to keep learning about them through my own work at the American Museum of Natural History!”
The UC Davis student researcher is now geared toward publishing her work. “Hopefully I can get it submitted for review before I graduate—I've worked out a timeline with Jay, and we're sticking to it. I will be lead author on the paper, which is super neat.”
RJ is the first entomologist in her family but not the first in STEM. Her father, Raul, a BART engineer in Oakland and a UC Davis alumnus, is in STEM. Her mother, Lea, a full-time homemaker, “was a bachelor of arts-English major in the Philippines and won writing awards while there.“ Her sister, Rachel Lee, a UCLA graduate, is a theater stage manager. Her uncles and aunts include three engineers, a biochemist, a dentist and a nurse. Her grandparents pursued occupations ranging from a metallurgist and engineer to an accountant and teacher.
“So I'm the first entomologist in the family, which is fun,” she said, “and I come from a family of STEM and humanities/education combined.”
Enrolling at UC Davis as an entomology major, RJ recalled, “was a natural choice and a dream come true for me. It was also here at Davis where I started really learning about the things I want to study for the rest of my life--parasites and parasitoids--through courses like Entomology (ENT) 10 and ENT 100. The enthusiasm of my teaching assistants during those courses (Brendon Boudinot of the Phil Ward ant lab and Jessica Gillung of the Bohart Museum, respectively) and their willingness to spend valuable time answering my questions and discussing parasites with me was what really made me fall in love with these organisms as a study system.”
Another highlight: her UC LEADS poster, “Parental Care and the Risk of Maternally Vectored Pathogens: Ammophila Transmit Strepsipteran Parasites to Their Young,” won top honors in the March 2021 Koret UC LEADS Symposium poster competition.
Remember the five-year-old who vowed to become an entomologist in her “About Me” poster? Now UC Davis entomologist and RGGS-bound Rebecca Jean Millena can say “This is me.”
And in a few years, “this is me” may be a museum curator. “I am a huge fan of museums,” RJ said, “and have wanted to work at the California Academy of Sciences for ages because my family and I spent a lot of time there when I was younger.”