- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The seminar also will be on Zoom. The link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882 849672
"Pollen provides bees their primary source of protein and lipid macronutrients, essential for development, fitness, and resistance to stress," Vaudo writes in his abstract. "Yet, pollen macronutrient quality differs substantially among host-plant species. And thus, bees may be sensitive to their nutritional needs and differentially forage among host plants to obtain appropriate nutrition. In this presentation, I will highlight my research that has linked bumble bee host plant foraging preferences to pollen nutritional quality and individual and colony health. Using this as a theoretical framework, I will present recent research where I show that floral pollen nutritional quality can help explain the structure and patterns of bee-wildflower community interactions among diverse populations; and how this research can inform conservation practices. Finally, I will discuss how the quality of pollen that bees collect may differ between and remain consistent within species populations and help explain their history of floral preferences."
Said host and pollination ecologist Neal Williams, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology: "His work examines nutritional ecology and diet choice in bumble bees. Anthony has been a pioneer in translating macronutrient composition of pollen to foraging choices by bumblebees in controlled experiments to whole landscape contexts."
Vaudo, whose career deals with pollinator ecology and habitat restoration, joined the U.S. Forest Service in January 2023 after serving as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno for four years.
He holds a bachelor of science degree in psychology (2003) from the University of Florida but then switched to entomology. He obtained his master of science degree in entomology from the University of Florida in 2010 and his doctorate in entomology from Pennsylvania State University in 2016. He was advised by Professors Christina Grozinger and John Tooke. Vaudo then served as a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State.
He was awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral scholarship in January 2018, researching "bee-flower interaction networks across different biomes in South Africa."
Seminar coordinator is Brian Johnson, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. For Zoom technical issues, he may be reached at brnjohnson@ucdavis.edu. The list of seminars is posted here.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The fall social, billed as "a place to unwind and indulge," featured a light buffet and beverages.
Professor Chui, a molecular geneticist-physiologist and the outgoing vice chair, is serving a five-year term as chair, effective July 1, 2023. She succeeds nematologist and professor Steve Nadler, who had chaired the department since Jan. 1, 2016.
Chiu thanked Nadler for his exceptional service. "Steve has been an exceptional leader for our department through some very challenging times. He has been fair-minded, compassionate, and has led the department with poise and a clear vision. He has been a great mentor for me personally, and I am positive that the many lessons I have learned from him will come in very handy as I serve as chair. I am very grateful for all the support from the faculty, staff, and students in the department, and most of all, to faculty colleagues who have been stepping up to serve on key positions in department and graduate group committees during this transition. I cannot thank them enough."
Said Nadler: "I'm very pleased that we have a new group of leaders guiding the department as we move forward. I'm confident that Joanna (Chui), Rachel (Vannette) and Louie (Yang) will respond to whatever challenges are ahead."
The department is ranked as one of the top entomology departments in the United States. In November 2007, the Chronicle of Higher Education ranked it No. 1 in the country. (See news story)
Chiu joined the Department of Entomology and Nematology in 2010 as an assistant professor, and advanced to associate professor and vice chair in 2016, and to professor and vice chair in 2021. She was named one of 10 UC Davis Chancellor's Fellows in 2019, a five-year honor awarded to associate professors who excel in research and teaching. The UC Davis Academic Senate honored her with a Distinguished Teaching Award, Graduate/Professional category, in 2022. She most recently received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research.
Chiu co-founded and co-directs (with professors Jay Rosenheim and Louie Yang) the campuswide Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology, launched in 2011 to provide undergraduates with a closely mentored research experience in biology. The program's goal is to provide academically strong and highly motivated undergraduates with a multi-year research experience that cultivates skills that will prepare them for a career in biological research.
Nadler began his five-year term as chair on Jan. 1, 2016, succeeding Michael Parrella, who accepted a position as the dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Idaho, effective Feb. 1, 2016.
Nadler joined the UC Davis faculty in 1996 as an associate professor and associate nematologist, advancing to professor in 2001. He was named chair of the Department of Nematology in May 2005 and held that leadership position until June 2011. Active in the American Society of Parasitologists, Nadler served as the organization's president from 2007 to 2008. (See news story)
The two departments merged in 2011, but the department was not officially renamed the Department of Entomology and Nematology, until May 28, 2013. The department today has some 25 faculty.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology began as an offshoot of the Department of Entomology and Parasitology at UC Berkeley and the two were closely entwined for more than 50 years before the UC Davis Department of Entomology became autonomous on July 1, 1963.
UC Davis offered a two-year non-degree program in entomology, beginning in 1913. The first degree in entomology provided at UC Davis was in 1923-24 at which time Stanley B. Freeborn (for whom Freeborn Hall is named) was transferred from UC Berkeley to UC Davis to head the program.
Resources: History
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"Can Genetically Modified Mosquitoes End Disease?" spotlights the work of Gregory Lanzaro, director of the UC Davis Vector Genetics Laboratory, and a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine's Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, and his "blood brother," longtime fellow mosquito researcher Anthony "Anton" Cornel, a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT) faculty, director of the UC Mosquito Control Research Laboratory, and researcher in the Vector Genetics Laboratory.
The New York Times' feature, written by global health reporter Stephanie Nolen, appears in the Sept. 29 edition.
An earlier news story announcing the $10.2 million grant to the UC Davis Vector Genetics Laboratory, from Open Philanthropy, was posted Jan. 25, 2022 on the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology website. In that story, Lanzaro, former ENT faculty member and former director of the now-folded UC Mosquito Research Program, explained that the research involves "the release of Anopheles mosquitoes engineered to prevent transmission of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum on the islands. We are working in collaboration with the UC Irvine Malaria Initiative, a research consortium including scientists from UC Irvine, San Diego and Berkeley as well as Johns Hopkins University. We are working toward the application of advanced genetic tools aimed at the mosquito vector. It is our belief that this approach, used in conjunction with early malaria treatment and detection, can provide a cost effective, sustainable, and environmentally responsible program to ultimately eliminate malaria from Africa.”
"The malaria situation in São Tomé and Príncipe, an African island nation with a population of 200,000, epitomizes the current challenge in the global struggle against the disease," Nolen wrote. "The country is among the world's least developed, and it has depended on foreign aid to fight malaria. Various campaigns over the past 50 years drove cases down, only to have them resurge worse than ever when the benefactor moved on."
Lanzaro told Nolen that "we've been working on this for 30 years, and from the beginning we said, It has to work, but it also has to be inexpensive, and it has to be sustainable. And we believe we have it...We have got to get going. We can't just keep saying 10 more years, 10 more years. Six million people have died while we've been fiddling around.”
Cornel agrees. In the initial UC Davis news story, he commented: "The fight to reduce and possibly eliminate malaria continues and becomes especially challenging as efforts to reduce malaria morbidity have plateaued since 2015. Therefore, we must seriously consider new tools. One such tool is genetically modifying the major mosquito vector in the Afrotropics so that it cannot transmit malaria. The project aims to use genetically modified mosquito strategy to reduce and eliminate malaria from the Islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, as proof of concept, before using this technology on larger scales on mainland Africa."
The New York Times' story pointed out that "genetic modification is a controversial endeavor. Governments are hesitant, and few in Africa have laws to regulate the use of the technology. Its risks lie in the unknowns: Could the modified mosquito evolve in some way that has harmful effects on the rest of the ecosystem? Could it prompt a dangerous mutation in the malaria parasite, which will find a new way to spread to survive?"
"These fears," Nolen wrote, "are why the University of California team chose São Tomé and Príncipe for its experiment: The island nation is isolated and has limited international traffic. The team has also built in a plan to wipe out the population of its modified mosquitoes if there is a need to end the experiment for any reason."
See the entire news story, Can Genetically Modified Mosquitoes End Disease?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Attardo will discuss “The Mating Biology of Tsetse Flies--Insights into the Morphological, Biochemical, and Molecular Responses to Mating Stimuli in a Viviparous Disease Vector.”
"Research into the reproductive behavior of tsetse flies offers key insights into controlling diseases like African sleeping sickness," he writes in his abstract. "Unique among insects, these flies give birth to live offspring. During mating, males transfer a mix of sperm and other vital substances to the females. This study employs state-of-the-art techniques, including 3D scanning and genetic analysis, to monitor changes in the female fly's reproductive system over a 72-hour period post-mating. Findings indicate that mating sets off a chain of intricate changes in the female, affecting everything from biochemistry to gene activity. These changes prepare her for pregnancy and childbirth. The study opens up new avenues for understanding tsetse fly biology and offers potential strategies for disease control."
The seminar also will be on Zoom. The link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882 849672
The Attardo lab monitors the dynamics of vector insects at the levels of physiology, population genetics and environmental interactions.
Attardo is a global expert on vectorborne diseases, including his groundbreaking work on tsetse flies. He researches the invasive yellow mosquito, Aedes aegypti, which can carry such diseases as dengue, chikungunya, Zika and yellow fever. His work involves predicting insecticide resistance and tracking movements of genetically independent populations of aegypti throughout the state.
Attardo, who holds a doctorate in genetics from Michigan State University, where he researched the molecular biology of mosquito reproduction, joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in 2017 from the Yale School of Public Health's Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases.
He received the 2022 Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology Award from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America, which encompasses 11 Western states, plus parts of Canada and Mexico, and U.S. territories.
For any technical issues regarding Zoom, contact seminar coordinator Brian Johnson at brnjohnson@ucdavis.edu.
Resources:
- Tsetse Fly Research (article featuring Geoffrey Attardo, Feb. 3, 2021, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- A Tsetse Fly Births One Enormous Milk-Fed Baby, Deep Look, featurng the work of Geoffrey Attardo
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
CaraDonna, the first speaker in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's fall seminar series, will discuss "Understanding the Dynamics of Plant-Animal Interactions in a Changing World," at 4:10 p.m., Monday, Oct. 2 in 122 Briggs Hall. The seminar also will be on Zoom. The link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882 849672
Host is pollination ecologist Neal Williams, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who will introduce CaraDonna.
"Plant-pollinator interactions are ubiquitous and play an important role in ecosystem functioning across the globe," CaraDonna says in his abstract. "Critically, plants, pollinators, and their interactions face numerous threats in our changing world, including those related to climate change. However, our understanding of the consequences of these threats to plant-pollinator interactions has been hampered because we lack knowledge of the basic ecology of many of these organisms, and how their ecology responds to changing abiotic and biotic conditions. We will investigate these issues in this seminar."
CaraDonna has served as associate editor of the Journal of Animal Ecology since January 2021. "I'm based at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, and also Northwestern University. The Chicago Botanic Garden is where my lab is based; I teach at Northwestern; and do my field research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory." (See interview on Journal of Animal Ecology website and information on the Caradonna Lab website.)
CaraDonna, who grew up in the Boston area, holds a bachelor's degree in botany from Humboldt State University (2010) and a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona (2016). He accepted a position as GROW Research Fellow for the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen in 2015. GROW is the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide.
A research scientist at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory since May of 2011, CaraDonna joined the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2016. On his LinkedIn page, he says: "My research aims to understand the structure and function of ecological communities and species interactions. In doing so, I explore the interplay among ecological community context, environmental variation, and biological timing (phenology). I ask how these factors influence plant and animal populations, their interactions, and community-level patterns from a basic ecological perspective and under rapid climate change scenarios."
Seminar coordinator is Brian Johnson, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. For Zoom technical issues, he may be reached at brnjohnson@ucdavis.edu. The list of seminars is posted here.