- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"The average grocery store must dispose of more than 600 pounds of meats and produce every day when the products pass their sell-by date," Lewis says. "Where does it go? Currently, most waste food from groceries ends up in landfills. This costs grocery stores significantly, and wastes food and energy."
"A start-up company in this area, California Safe Soils LLC, is developing a novel solution to this problem by turning this wasted food into an agricultural product for soil nutrition. Nutrient management is a serious challenge to agriculture in California. Coupled with the need for providing the necessary nutrients to grow crops is the increasing concern of nitrate contamination of ground and surface water that comes from agricultural uses. A new product, called Harvest to Harvest, is in the testing phase as a soil amendment that aids in nutrient management."
"In this seminar, I'll describe the manufacturing of the material, the business plan of the company and the role of agricultural and ecological research in the research and development of this new product."
Of his research, Lewis says on his website: "My research program is wide-ranging in the scope of the questions asked and in the taxa that are studied. There is, however, a common thread to the work that takes place in my laboratory; we seek to understand why and how organisms find, recognize, assess and exploit resources. We ask questions about how insects and nematodes make decisions about resource utilization and what the fitness outcomes of the decisions are. To answer these kinds of questions, we engage in studies of behavior, population ecology, community ecology and evolutionary biology with several groups of insects, nematodes and bacteria. There are also intentional links to more practical pursuits including biological control of crop pests, predicting the impact of crop management on pest and beneficial organisms and restoration ecology. I see no difference between what is traditionally called 'basic' and 'applied' research, thus the links of nearly all of the work in the laboratory to agricultural or environmental concerns is explicit."
Lewis, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 2004, received his doctorate in entomology from Auburn University, Auburn, Ala.; his master's degree in entomology from the University of Missouri, Columbia; and his bachelor's degree in natural resources from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
He served as a post-doctoral research associate for the UC Davis Department of Entomology, Rutgers University, from 1991 to 1994; assistant research professor at Rutgers from 1994 to 1995. He joined the Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, in 1995 as a research associate and then served as an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology, Virginia Tech, from 1998 to 2004 before joining the UC Davis faculty.
A past president of the former UC Davis Department of Nematology, Lewis is active in the Entomological Society of America, Ecological Society of America, Society of Invertebrate Pathology and the Society of Nematologists. His professional service includes editor-in-chief of Biological Control; North American editor of Biopesticides International; and trustee of the Society of Invertebrate Pathology.
Lewis' seminar is the second in a series of spring-quarter seminars hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. All seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs and are coordinated by assistant professor Brian Johnson. The seminars are video-recorded for later viewing on UCTV.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Lewis replaces David Tebeest, University of Arkansas, as editor-in-chief. A member of the editorial board since 2002, Lewis became one of seven editors in 2009. Harry Kaya, emeritus professor of entomology and nematology at UC Davis, is a former editor-in-chief of the journal.
The multidisciplinary journal is described on the web as “an environmentally sound and effective means of reducing or mitigating pests and pest effects through the use of natural enemies. The aim of Biological Control is to promote this science and technology through publication of original research articles and reviews of research and theory. The journal encompasses biological control of viral, microbial, nematode, insect, mite, weed, and vertebrate pests in agriculture, aquatic, forest, natural resource, stored product, and urban environments.”
Topics include:
- Entomology-parasitoids, predators, and pathogens and their use through importation, augmentation, and/or habitat management strategies
- Plant pathology-antagonism, competition, cross-protection, hyperparasitism, hypovirulence, and soil suppressiveness through naturally occurring and introduced agents
- Nematology-predators, parasitoids, and pathogens in biological control through augmentation and/or habitat management strategies and suppressive soils through naturally occurring and introduced agents
- Weed science-vertebrates, invertebrates, and pathogens and their use through classical, augmentative, or bioherbicidal tactics
- Biocontrol of slugs and snails, and others.
“Basically, the journal covers the management of any populations of unwanted organisms through the use of parasites, predators and pathogens,” Lewis said.
Lewis is a member of the Entomological Society of America, Society of Invertebrate Pathology, and the Society of Nematologists. His professional service includes subject editor of the Journal of Nematology and North American editor of Biopesticides International. He is a former chair of USDA Regional Project 1024.
Lewis received his bachelor of science degree in natural resources from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; his master’s degree in entomology from the University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.; and his doctorate in entomology from Auburn (Ala.) University.
After receiving his doctorate, Lewis served as a post-doctoral research associate and then assistant research professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. He worked as a research associate in the Department of Entomology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and as an assistant professor, Department of Entomology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, before joining the UC Davis faculty as an associate professor of nematology and entomology in 2004. He was promoted to professor in 2008.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“This is really an intersection of the work we do in my lab and Ed’s expertise in insect behavior,” said Luckhart, a professor in the UC Davis School of Medicine's Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, and a graduate student advisor with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
“Jose is very creative and independent – he’s a joy to mentor and undoubtedly will continue to do well in whatever career path he chooses,” Luckhart said.
Lewis, professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will be mentoring Pietri and collaborating in the project.
Pietri, who received a bachelor’s degree in cell biology from UC Davis, expects to receive his doctorate in microbiology in 2015.
The insulin-like family of peptides controls a wide variety of biological functions across the animal kingdom, Pietri explained. “In insects, insulin-like peptides are most commonly known as mediators of behavior. This research project seeks to understand how insulin-like peptides produced during malaria parasite infection affect the behavior of infected mosquitoes. Mosquito behavior during malaria parasite infection can drastically affect transmission to human hosts. As such, the researchers will analyze behaviors including but not limited to feeding, general activity, and temperature seeking in a genetically modified mosquito model. These experiments will determine whether insulin-like peptides play a potential role in increasing malaria parasite transmission to human hosts by altering essential behavioral processes in mosquitoes.
Pietri, who grew up in Roseville and is a 2007 graduate of Granite Bay High School, mentors college undergraduates and high school students and aims for a career in academia. “I chose to obtain my doctoral training in microbiology with the hope that I may one day help to develop novel control and treatment strategies for infectious agents,” Pietri said. “I also have strong interests in teaching and scientific outreach. For this reason, I have devoted a substantial amount of time to mentoring undergraduates and high school students in both the classroom and laboratory. Collectively, these experiences have led me to conclude that my ideal career would be one in which I can not only freely pursue my research interests, but also share my love for the sciences with other.”
This year Pietri was selected the recipient of a UC Davis Professors for the Future Fellowship (PFTF), a year-long competitive fellowship program “designed to recognize and develop the leadership skills of outstanding graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who have demonstrated their commitment to professionalism, integrity, and academic service.” Sponsored by Graduate Studies, the program focuses on the future challenges of graduate education, postdoctoral training, and the academy. PFTF Fellows receive a $3,000 stipend.
Pietri is also the recipient of a three-year National Institutes of Health-Predoctoral Fellowship (National Research Service Award), awarded in 2012.
The doctoral student presented his work at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene last November in Atlanta, Ga., and at the Zagava World Malaria Day Symposium, held in April 2013 in Emeryville, Calif.
Pietri has co-authored research papers published in the General and Comparative Endocrinology, Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology, and PLoS Pathogens. One is pending in Microbes and Infection.
One of the papers, co-authored with Luckhart and other colleagues, is “Insulin-like Peptides in the Mosquito Anopheles stephensi: Identification and Expression in Response to Diet and Infection with Plasmodium falciparum,” published in the September 2011 edition of General and Comparative Endocrinology.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“I have had a lifelong love and respect for bees and I spent a lot of my childhood watching them, attracting them with sugar water, catching and playing with them and even dissecting them during a time when I imagined myself to be a junior scientist,” Jamison said. “Back in those days, there was an abundance of bees, usually observed by this kid in her family’s backyard full of clover blossoms—something you rarely see any more due to spraying of pre-emergents and other weed killers.”
So when Jamison became state regent of the California State Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), she adopted the motto, “Bees are at the heart of our existence” and vowed to support research to help the beleaguered bees. Her project resulted in DAR members raising $30,000 for bee research at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, University of California, Davis.
“Every state regent has a fund-raising project; I chose honey bees,” said Jamison, whose first name, Debra, means “bee” in Hebrew. Fresno, in the heart of San Joaquin Valley, is “The Food Basket to the World,” Jamison said, and “a place where we grow a large variety of crops that require bees for pollination.”
“When the California State Society Board of Directors approved this project, we knew that it was an important one,” she told the crowd at a recent ceremony at UC Davis. “However, we did not know just how vital this project would be until we began talking to staff at UC Davis. We hope that our contribution helps provide needed funding for the extremely important research going on at this well-known and well-respected facility.”
Jamison and her state regent project chair, Karen Montgomery of Modesto, presented the $30,000 check to Edwin Lewis, professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and bee scientist/assisant professor Brian Johnson at a ceremony in the department's Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road. More than 125 DAR members from throughout California attended.
Lewis gratefully accepted the check on behalf of the department and noted that his mother, Betty Lewis, is an active member of the DAR Owasco Chapter in Auburn, N.Y. “My mother would definitely approve of this project,” he quipped. Lewis gifted Jamison with a mosaic ceramic figure of a bee, crafted by Davis artist Donna Billick, co-founder and co-director of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program.
The funds will be used in the Johnson lab. His graduate student, Gerard Smith, researches the effect of pesticide exposure in the field on honey bee foraging behavior, and graduate student Cameron Jasper studies the genetic basis of division of labor in honey bees.
Johnson and fellow UC Davis bee scientists Neal Williams and Robbin Thorp discusssed their work and the importance of bees as pollinators. Williams, an assistant professor, researches wild or non-managed bees. Thorp, a native pollinator specialist and emeritus professor of entomology, does research on bumble bees and other bees. Like Lewis, Thorp is closely linked with DAR: his mother, the late Elizabeth Thorp was active in the Algonquin Chapter, Benton Harbor, Mich.
The “Year of the Bee” began when Jamison and her fellow DAR members studied what she called “the amazing history of beekeeping that goes back more than 2000 years.” In doing so," we gained a new perspective on the necessary work these small insects perform” for humankind.
Jamison thanked Fresno beekeeper Brian Liggett and Cooperative Extension specialist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology for helping educate them about the bees. Among the others she acknowledged were Christi Heintz, director of Project Apis m., “who provided information on the plight of bees and helped us get in contact with UC Davis.”
The DAR congregation attending the ceremony included Honorary President General Dorla Kemper of Granite Bay, who held DAR’s highest national office; and Honorary State Regent Leonora Branca of Pebble Beach, who held DAR's highest California office. Jamison's governing board attending were vice regent Carol Jackson, Malibu; recording secretary Midge Enke, Tracy; corresponding secretary Sally Holcombe, Walnut Creek; treasurer Gayle Mooney, Elk Grove; parliamentarian Mary Brown, Westlake Village; librarian Donna Riegel, Pasadena; and chaplain Sandra Orozco, Tehachapi.
The DAR members toured the Laidlaw research facility and the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, which is designed to provide a year-around food source for the Laidlaw bees and other pollinators; to raise public awareness about the plight of honey bees; and to encourage visitors to plant bee-friendly gardens of their own. A six-foot-long ceramic mosaic sculpture of a worker bee, crafted by Billick, anchors the garden.
The Almond Board of California provided packages of almonds for the crowd.
Not missed was the DAR/bee connection: a gift from the nation’s oldest genealogical society to support one of the world’s oldest--and the most beneficial--insect, the honey bee. European colonists brought the honey bee to the Jamestown Colony, Virginia, in 1622, some 153 years before the American Revolution. Native Americans called it “the white man’s fly.” Honey bees did not arrive in California until 1853, transported via the Isthmus of Panama.
The U. S. honey bee population has declined by about a third since 2006 due to the mysterious malady known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), said Mussen, attributing CCD to multiple factors including disease, pests, parasites, pesticides, malnutrition and stress.
Founded in 1890 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., DAR is a non-profit, non-political volunteer women's service organization dedicated to promoting patriotism, preserving American history, and securing America's future through better education for children, Jamison said. Its worldwide membership totals some 170,000 descendants of American Revolutionary War patriots in 3000 chapters. More than 890,000 women have joined DAR since its founding 123 years ago. The California State Society, founded in 1891 and based in Glendora, is comprised of nearly 9,900 members.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The UC Davis Department of Entomology has been renamed the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Carolyn de la Pena, UC Davis interim vice provost for undergraduate education, relayed the message May 28 to interim dean Mary Delany of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The faculty of the Department of Entomology and Department of Nematology had earlier proposed the consolidation of the two departments in response to a recommendation by the College for the elimination of the Department of Nematology. In the interim following consolidation, the name, “UC Davis Department of Entomology,” was used until university administrators approved the new name.
Of the 27 faculty members in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, five are nematologists.
Michael Parrella, professor of entomology, serves as the department chair, and nematologist Edwin Lewis, professor of both entomology and nematology and former interim chair of the UC Davis Department of Nematology, is the department’s vice chair. Professor Steve Nadler served as the last chair of the Department of Nematology.
Said Nadler: “Since approval of the consolidation of our departments nearly two years ago, our nematologists and entomologists have been working together and finding common ground to build upon prior successes. As the state economy improves and the university grows, I believe our newly named department will be successful in adding faculty positions that rebuild core research areas that were lost through faculty retirements.”
The UC Davis Department of Entomology began as an offshoot of the UC Berkeley Department of Entomology, while the UC Davis nematologists were closely linked with UC Riverside nematologists.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology traces its roots back to Oct. 30 1907 when UC Berkeley professor C. W. Woodworth spoke to the State Farmers' Institute in Davisville (now Davis) on the "Whitefly Situation in California." This was a forerunner to the Farmers' Short Courses (three-to-six-week courses) launched in the fall of 1908.
UC Davis established a two-year non-degree program in entomology in 1913 and its first degree in entomology in 1923-24 when Stanley Freeborn moved from Berkeley to Davis to head up this new and expanding program. The Davis campus began its administrative independence from Berkeley under Provost Freeborn (later chancellor) in 1952. R. M. Bohart became vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology in 1957, and the following year, the College of Agriculture instituted the rotating-chair system. In the spring of 1960, entomology settled into its new quarters in Robbins Hall, and in 1971, moved into the newly built Briggs Hall, intended for biological sciences faculty and staff.
The history of the UC Davis Department of Nematology began in 1954 with the establishment of the Statewide Department of Plant Nematology, comprised of the UC Riverside and UC Davis nematologists. The University of California was the first academic institution to recognize nematology as a field of science separate from plant pathology, entomology or parasitology.
In 1962, research competency at the two sites broadened sufficiently for the university to approve of a name change from the Statewide Department of Plant Nematology to the Department of Nematology. In 1962, J. D. Radewald was appointed as a Cooperative Extension Specialist at UC Riverside. In 1965, statewide University administration embarked on a decentralization program, giving the individual campuses greater autonomy.
From 1965 onwards, the two nematology departments evolved independently. In 1969, D. E. Johnson was appointed as a Cooperative Extension Specialist at the San Joaquin Valley Research and Extension Center at Parlier.
UC Davis entomology and nematology faculty have received worldwide recognition for their research, teaching and public service.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, considered the top news and job-information source for college and university faculty members, administrators, and students, ranked the UC Davis Department of Entomology as the No. 1 in the country in 2007. Factors considered were remarkable performances in faculty scholarly productivity, scientific citations per faculty, percentage of faculty with a journal publication, number of journal publications per faculty, and grantsmanship, among other factors. (The rankings have not been updated since 2007.)
UC Davis is No. 1 in the world for teaching and research in the area of agriculture and forestry, according to rankings released this year by QS World University Rankings.