- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The course, set from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and conducted by CAMBP director and Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will cover the scientific "hands-on" portion of the journey level of the CAMBP.
"We will offer the attendees an opportunity to familiarize themselves with dissecting tools and microscopy, examine specimens under the microscope and perform dissections," Niño said. "Participants will explore in detail the anatomy and physiology of the honey bee."
Attendees will learn how to identify and examine distinct parts of external and internal honey bee anatomy, including ocelli, body segmentation and corbicula, as well as honey bee circulatory, digestive, nervous, respiratory, reproductive and glandular systems. They will compare different body parts between different honey bee castes (queen, drone and worker bee.)
Registration for the course is $200. It includes a continental breakfast, snacks, and a catered lunch. Click here to register.
CAMBP also is sponsoring a varroa management course on Saturday, Oct. 13 at the Laidlaw facility. That class is filled. “We will be offering another in May/June 2020,” said CAMBP program manager Wendy Mather. “It's so wonderful to see how serious beekeepers are about varroa mite mitigation. Beekeepers are a caring community."
CAMBP uses science-based information to educate stewards and ambassadors for honey bees and beekeeping. The Master Beekeepers serve as knowledgeable ambassadors who disseminate science-based information about the importance of honey bees, preserving bee health and responsible beekeeping.
"We've just completed our apprentice exams for this year!" said Mather. "In 2019 we have 26 new CAMBP apprentices in San Diego, 34 in Davis, and we are welcoming our first 22 journey level members!"
For more information about the program or the classes, access the CAMBP website or contact Mather at wmather@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“Elvira proves to be indispensable to our student population, being a source of morale, care and resources, said Striley, co-chair of the Staff Assembly's Citations of Excellence Committee. “For the confused or troubled students, she is first and last resort for solution of problems not only of academic or administrative kind but those of a deeply personal nature as well. Elvira has been invaluable as a student advisor.”
Hack won an award in the highly competitive Individual Service Award category. The annual program singles out outstanding staff for their exemplary work in one of four areas: innovation, research, supervision and service. They all receive monetary prizes and certificates.
Lusa Papagni, assistant director of Student Housing and Dining Services, won the Individual Service Award. Hack, a student academic advisor II, received an honorable mention along with Jaqueline Dyson, administrative assistant III in the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.
The animal biology program is part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematolgy.
Hexter commented that often universities describe “faculty achievement as something like the sun at the center of their institutional universe.” Their achievements, he said, are “the most recognizable sign of our excellence in the public eye.”
“It appears as if staff do their work on the dark side of the moon,” he quipped.
“But those of you who hold a staff position or work with staff know very well this is an incomplete picture of what makes a university great, including ours,” Hexter said, adding that "staff at all levels and in all departments are key to advancing institutional excellence, impact and reputation."
“You provide essential guidance for programs, policies and processes,” Hexter told them. “You are in front lines of taking all of these programs, policies and processes from idea to reality and also making sure they work effectively and efficiently. “
Lauding their passion, expertise.professionalism, "steadfast commitment and very hard work," Hexter praised them for their support of students, faculty and leadership and their drive to work efficiently and effectively. “You play a disproportionately large role on making our two campuses (UC Davis and UC Davis Medical Center) a true community in which all members can feel appreciated, supported, respected and included.”
Hexter, who announced Sept. 17 to the campus community that he will be stepping down from campus leadership in 2020, noted that “these are not facts learned by book but direct experience nearly years 9 years as provost. Without the contributions of an extraordinary staff in my work, the university would roll around like with a wagon with one wheel.”
Three affiliates of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology nominated Hack for the award: forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey, master advisor for the animal biology major; chief administrative officer Nora Orozco, her supervisor; and communications specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey.
They wrote that Hack, a 17-year academic advisor at UC Davis, goes above and beyond to advocate for and mentor students. Hack empathizes with the needs of others, an empathy honed by her own life experiences and the desire to “pay it forward.” As a youth--the daughter of farmworkers--she toiled in agricultural fields in Dixon, picking bell peppers and sorting tomatoes. And as a single parent/high school dropout, she cleaned houses for a living. Her life took a sharp career turn when two of her clients, a UC Davis professor and his wife, encouraged her to finish high school and attend business college. They loaned her money for an electric typewriter. Ever since then, Hack, the beneficiary of a good deed never forgotten, has vowed to “pay it forward”--to help others as others have helped her.
“Elvira is likely the best academic advisor ever. Not only is she completely conversant with all the rules and regulations of the major, but understands the latitude of flexibility built into their application in a very human way," Kimsey wrote in the nomination packet. "She is connected with all the administrative functionaries necessary to efficiently accomplish any task in a timely manner. For the confused or troubled student, she is the first and last resort for the solution of problems not only of an academic or administrative kind but those of a deeply personal nature as well. She keeps them on track, outlining their options, helping them decide on their future professions, and the direction their life should take. She has been invaluable to me as the master advisor. She really does care about a student's fate. Moreover we have had great fun doing these tasks together.” (See feature story)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A robber, aided by an accomplice, stole the entomologist's wallet containing his rent money and credit cards, his newly purchased laptop, and an external hard drive containing scientific data.
Syed Fahad Shah, a lecturer in the Department of Entomology, University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan, was without a bike Friday (it had a flat tire), and was heading home from his lab. At 11:30, as he walked along Russell Boulevard, near Lake Boulevard, west of Highway 113, he noticed a car, its emergency lights flashing, parked on the other side of the road.
“I was looking at the car and thought that maybe they have some kind of problem with the car,” the international scholar related. As he continued walking home, a man leaped from behind a tree trunk, pointed his gun at him and cocked it “to let me know it was real."
The suspect, described as about six-feet tall, between 20 and 30 years old, with curly hair and a dark bandanna covering his face, demanded, one by one, his wallet, his cell phone and then his backpack. The culprit then heaved Shah's cell phone into the field, and bolted to the car where his accomplice, the driver, awaited. The car headed west.
Shah described the car as a sedan, “Like a Corolla,” and “dark in in color with rectangular back lights.” He retrieved his phone and quickly dialed the police. “The police arrived within five minutes and recorded my statement,” he said.
His black Armour Hustle backpack contained a laptop computer delivered to him only Monday, Sept. 9 at the Bohart Museum. His most valuable possession, however, was an external hard drive containing all his research data and lectures. It is a Seagate 1 terabyte hard drive.
Shah had not yet backed up the contents. Ironically, while enroute to the United States for his May 15-Oct. 30 research sabbatical on agriculturally important insects, someone stole his laptop at the Dubai airport. “But I was happy that I had the data backed up on my external hard drive, but this time I have no backup,” he said. “I only wish for my hard drive back.”
At UC Davis, Shah is studying parasitoid wasps in the family Pteromalidae under the guidance of Bohart senior museum scientist Steve Heydon.
In an announcement to the Department of Entomology and Nematology, Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology: reported that Shah “filed a police report but that probably won't help get his equipment back. The data is irreplaceable but we hope to help him replace the things stolen, so we have started a GoFundMe page to raise the needed fund."
The GoFundMe account, seeking $2000, is at https://bit.ly/2ldZ3ZF. For more information, contact the Bohart Museum at (530) 752-0493 or Lynn Kimsey at lskimsey@ucdavis.edu or Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator, at tabyang@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Boudinot presented a talk in Germany at the 9th Dresden Meeting on Insect Phylogeny, hosted by the Senckenberg Institute. In his presentation, "Skeletomuscular Evolution of Male Insect Genitalia, with Emphasis on the Endopterygota," he explained the second chapter of his thesis to an international audience of entomologists, spanning phylogeneticists to anatomists.
At the XXIV Simpósio de Mirmecologia in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, Boudinot will present preliminary results from his third and final thesis chapter in a symposium titled "Morphology Reloaded: Conquering the Third Dimension of Ant Evolution and Biogeography." His talk is titled "Altered States: Aculeate Anatomy and the Early Evolution of the Formicoidea."
"While this symposium is focused on the application of scanning technologies, such as X-ray computed microtomography, I will be speaking about the evolution of ant morphology through evolutionary time," Boudinot related. He will be presenting results from combined phylogenetic analysis of genome-scale DNA sequence data and a massive dataset of 576 morphological characters scored for 573 species.
"One of the novel aspects of my study is how many fossils I have included (more than 300)," Boudinot said. "The objective of this particular work is to estimate the geological age in which the ants originated, as well as the physical features of the ancestral ant, which I will then use to trace evolutionary and paleoecological patterns to the modern fauna."
Boudinot received the prestigious John Henry Comstock Award in April at the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA) meeting in San Diego. This is the highest graduate student award given by PBESA, which encompasses 11 Western states, U.S. territories, and parts of Canada and Mexico. Its parent organization, the Entomological Society of America (ESA), will honor the six Comstock award winners--one from each branch--at its Nov. 17-20 meeting in St. Louis.
Boudinot, who was praised for his academic record, leadership, public service activities, participation in professional activities, and his publications, is the sixth UC Davis recipient of the Comstock award:
2019: Brendon Boudinot (major professor Phil Ward)
2015: Mohammad-Amir Aghaee (major professor the late Larry Godfrey)
2014: Kelly Hamby (major professor Frank Zalom)
2013: Matan Shelomi (major professor Lynn Kimsey)
2008: Christopher Barker (major professor William Reisen)
1983: Elaine Backus (major professor the late Donald McLean)
Active in PBESA and ESA, Boudinot received multiple “President's Prize” awards for his research presentations at national ESA meetings. He organized the ESA symposium, “Evolutionary and Phylogenetic Morphology,” at the 2018 meeting in Vancouver, B.C. , and delivered a presentation on “Male Ants: Past, Present and Prospects” at the 2016 International Congress of Entomology meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Boudinot served on—and anchored—three of the UC Davis Linnaean Games teams that won national or international ESA championships. The Linnaean Games are a lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competition on entomological facts played between university-sponsored student teams.
Boudinot has served as president of the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association since 2006, and is active in the campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day; he has co-chaired the department's Picnic Day Committee since 2017.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you're the kin of Emily Bick, you take her to the Broadway stage musical, Beetlejuice, in New York City. They knew she'd be interested because (1) she's an entomologist (2) she enjoys entomology-themed shows and (3) she previously reviewed another play, “An Entomologist's Love Story,” which Entomological Society of America (ESA) published on its Entomology Today website. That piece drew rave reviews.
So, in keeping with her newly acquired “entomological theater critic credentials,” Bick reviewed Beetlejuice. Entomology Today published her piece today (Sept. 20.)
“I entered the experience knowing little about the shop but with high hopes for its entomological potential since its name appeared to reference Order Coleoptera's common name,” wrote Bick, an agricultural entomologist who will begin a postdoctoral position at the University of Copenhagen this fall.
She began with: “Like a caterpillar recently exposed to juvenile hormone, the insect-themed potential for the musical Beetlejuice was high but never quite metamorphosized.”
Bick noted there were several entomological references, including “two Scarabaeidae camouflaged within the black and white stripes” on the playbook cover.
“While writers opted for entomology appropriate spelling in both the title and song, the stage curtain listed the name as Betelgeuse,” she wrote. “This entomologically named character mentions a few throw away references to insects including describing his alarming goal of house haunting—by saying ‘frightened as a fly.'”
One character “was threatened with having teeth transformed into scorpions—an arthropod but not an insect,” Bick pointed out. “The demon-transformed house was decorated with chairs the spitting image of Tortoise beetle larvae (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae, tribe: Cassidini) and a statue that reminded me of many immature Lepidopterans.”
“However, insect references were always used to enhance the macabre theme, rather than as an independent topic. The musical was about death, a subject of which insects have a long association with. This association is likely due to the progression of insect colonization on an animal corpse—a process so predictable, forensic entomology is often used to determine the time of death of the recently deceased. Their correlation was expanded in the era of sideshows which featured insects as bizarre. I found myself wistfully thinking of all the places insects could be used (e.g., every reference to decomposing), rather than simply propping up the ghoulish atmosphere.”
Although the show lacked insect credibility, she found the show incredible. “It was hilarious, clever, attuned to the times, and visually stunning, and the ‘goth' character Lydia (played by 18-year-old Sophia Anne Caruso) completely stole the show. Yet, judged on entomological criterion, Beetlejuice fell short of its potential.”
The Broadway stage musical is based on the film, Beetlejuice, the 1988 American fantasy-comedy-horror film directed by Tim Burton (Pee Wee's Big Adventure). It is about "a deceased couple who try to haunt the new inhabitants of their former home and call for help from a devious bio-exorcist ghost named Betelgeuse (pronounced "Beetlejuice"), who is summoned by saying his name three times," according to Wikipedia.
Bick holds three degrees in entomology: a bachelor's degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and a master's degree and doctorate from UC Davis. She is a Board Certified Entomologist (with specialties in plant-insect and medical and veterinary entomology), awarded by ESA. While at UC Davis, she was active in the Linnaean Games and helped two teams win national championships. ESA describes the Linnaean Games as "a lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competition on entomological facts played between university-sponsored student teams."
(Entomologist-theatre critic Bick may be reached at enb@plen.ku.dk.)