- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The paper appears in the current edition of Journal of Hydrobiologia.
“The water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes, isconsidered the world's most economically damaging aquatic weed,” said Bick, now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
The free-floating perennial, native to the Amazon region of South America, is highly invasive throughout the world. It forms large floating mats when its roots and leaves intertwine. The aquatic weed is a major issue in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in central California.
“This paper is the result of my first dissertation chapter,” said Bick, an agricultural entomologist who received both her master's degree (2017) and doctorate in entomology (2019) from UC Davis. “We aimed to determine if salinity was the reason N. bruchi was not effective at regulating the weed in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta compared with other worldwide locations. The results were not as clear cut as we hoped, as the study was limited in testing only adult weevils. However, the paper makes the case for including salinity as a screening variable for new biological control agents that are candidates for release in the Delta and other partially saline areas. Also, given the thoroughness of the experiments, there is at least one cool modeling paper to come out as a follow-up.”
The paper, titled “Effects of Salinity and Nutrients on Water Hyacinth and its Biological Control Agent, Neochetina bruchi, “was truly an all-hands-on-deck effort,” Bick said. "Specifically, a major project hurdle was the temperature in Davis."
She related that the greenhouse experiments on water hyacinth “weren't producing consistent results due to the high variation—and high heat--in water temperature.” So fellow scientists Danny Klittich, then a UC Davis doctoral student in entomology with the Michael Parrella laboratory, and Bob Starnes, then UC Davis senior superintendent of agriculture, built a giant water bath out of a leftover evaporative cooler from the Parrella lab.
Klittich is now the California Central Coast Agronomist with Redox Chemicals and chief executive officer and founder at HowToGrowRoses.org. Starnes is vice president of agriculture for UAV-IQ (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Intelligence.
In addition to Klittich and Starnes, other co-authors are UC Davis postdoctoral scholar Elvira deLange of the Christian Nansen lab; then doctoral student Cindy Kron of the Frank Zalom laboratory; and undergraduate students Jessie Liu and Derrick Nguyen. Kron, now with UC Cooperative Extension, is the North Coast Area Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Advisor, serving Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties.
The abstract:
“Water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms (Commelinales: Pontederiaceae), is an important aquatic weed worldwide. Previous studies demonstrate that releases of Neochetina bruchi Hustache (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) provide biological control in many locations, but not all. Notably, N. bruchi were unsuccessful at regulating water hyacinth in tidal brackish waters. Abiotic factors, including salinity and nutrients, affect water hyacinth growth, but little is known about the impact of salinity on weevil survival. We hypothesized that N. bruchi has a relatively low salinity tolerance. In a mesocosm experiment, we assessed weed growth in response to a range of salinity and nutrient concentrations. In a laboratory, we assessed adult N. bruchi mortality in response to various salinity concentrations. Results indicate that increasing nutrient concentration increases weed growth. When both nutrient and salinity levels were varied, nutrients increased leaf count, but not biomass, while salinity reduced growth and increased mortality. Increasing salinity concentrations increased adult weevil mortality; required concentrations were higher than that for weeds. Thus, these results did not provide support for the suggested hypothesis. Potential effects of salinity via other exposures to weevils need to be investigated. Elucidating abiotic factors important for weed growth and weevil survival may increase effectiveness of water hyacinth management practices.”
The water hyacinth was introduced in California in 1904. Scientists trace its history in the United States back to 1884 at the New Orleans Exposition. “Samples are said to have been given to fair-goers, and within 4 years, coastal fresh waters were infested from Texas to Alabama. By 1972, the infestation in Florida was estimated to be 200,000 acres,” according to Cornell University. “Large, floating mats of waterhyacinth obstruct navigation, clog irrigation works, disrupt the natural ecology of wetlands in many ways, exacerbate mosquito problems, and are costly to the tourism and recreation industries.”
Two biocontrol agents, weevils N. eichhorniae and N. bruchi, natives of Argentina, and surrounding areas in South America, were released in 1972 and 1974, respectively.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The $6000 grant is designed to support women over a two-month period in the summer as they prepare a solo-authored manuscript.
Bick's application focused on her scientific modeling work that originated from her Ph.D. program: investigating the lygus bug immigration and aggregation in California strawberries. Lygus hesperus, a serious pest of strawberries--as well as cotton, and seed crops such as alfalfa-- causes an estimated $40 million in annual losses to California's strawberry industry.
Bick's application detailed the academic women who supported her career, including one of her mentors, Cornell University entomology professor Laura Harrington. Additionally, women students she mentored while at UC Davis provided letters of support.
“Prior to receiving this good news, my fiancé, Nora Forbes, and I decided to get married in the historic home of the AAUW in St. Paul, Minn.,” Bick said. “We are both aware of AAUW's legacy of supporting women in their academic pursuits since 1881 and wanted to celebrate in a location in line with their pioneering vision.” Forbes is a statistician at the Danish Medtronic office.
Earlier this year, Bick received a $23,000 fellowship from the American Scandinavian Foundation for her proposal, "Designing Pest-Resilient Apple Orchards Using Bespoke Models." The project will start immediately following the AAUW grant.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen, the UC Davis alumnus is a member of Professor Lene Sigsgaard's research team. She received a $244,000 postdoctoral grant from the Danish Innovations Fund to estimate insect population dynamics in relation to FaunaPhotonics's LIDAR insect sensor. LIDAR stands for light detection and ranging.
Emily's entomological journey began at Cornell University, where she received her bachelor's degree in entomology in 2013. She then received two degrees in entomology from UC Davis: her master's degree in 2017 and her doctorate in 2019.
Bick, who specializes in integrated pest management, helped anchor the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's Linnaean Games Team that won the national championship at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) meeting in 2016, and the University of California (UC Davis and UC Berkeley) Linnaean Games Team that won the national championship in 2018. The Linnaean Games, launched in 1983, are lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competitions on entomological facts and played by winners of the ESA branch competitions. The teams score points by correctly answering random questions. (Watch the championship game on YouTube).
While at UC Davis, Bick served as vice president of the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA). ESA honored her as a Board-Certified Entomologist in 2014, and the Student Certification Award in 2018. She served as an emergency medical technician from 2008 to 2017.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
This stipend will help support one year of living expenses while she pursues ecological modeling at University of Copenhagen.
She will be leveraging Professor Lene Sigsgaard's apple orchard data and aiming to add spatial capability to Professor Neils Holst's Universal Simulator. Both professors are supervising the grant.
The abstract of the proposal:
“This proposal aspires to address civilization's greatest challenge: sustainably feeding our global population. Approaching agricultural food production as an ecosystem rather than an industrial process allows for greater sustainability. This systems approach allows farmers to sustainably intensify their agroecosystem using the tool with the greatest impact: redesign. Models can be used to pre-screen designs for optimal pest management. I propose using modelling to design pest-resilient apple orchards. Specifically, the proposal focuses on the combination of pest-attractant crops (Trap Crops), increasing plant diversity (Dilution Effects) for masking crops from pests, and using diverse crops to support natural enemies (Natural Enemy Effects). The combination of modelling and orchard design could result sustainably intensifying apple production in Europe.”
Emily's entomological journey began at Cornell University, where she received her bachelor's degree in entomology in 2013. She then received two degrees in entomology from UC Davis: her master's degree in 2017 and her doctorate in 2019.
Bick, who specializes in integrated pest management, helped anchor the UC Davis Linnaean Games Team that won the national championship at the ESA meeting in 2016, and the University of California (UC Davis and UC Berkeley) Linnaean Games Team that won the national championship in 2018. The Linnaean Games, launched in 1983, are lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competitions on entomological facts and played by winners of the ESA branch competitions. The teams score points by correctly answering random questions. (Watch the championship game on YouTube). She also served as vice president of the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA).
Bick served as an emergency medical technician from 2008 to 2017 and gained her pesticide applicator's license in 2013. She was singled out to receive the Student Certification Award at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) meeting in 2018. In 2014, she was named a Board-Certified Entomologist, a honor bestowed on her at the ESA meeting.
- 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.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Her topic: "Evaluating the Relative Importance of Mechanisms for Diverse Plant Use in Agroecosystem Herbivore Mitigation: an Example in California Strawberries."
"As pest management strategies shift away from agrochemical use, practitioners aim to implement more ecologically friendly practices," Bick writes in her abstract. "One such practice uses diverse crops placed in an agroecosystem to mitigate pest damage. There are many possible mechanisms which facilitate this phenomenon. Knowing a diverse plant's mechanism(s) allows for more efficient field implementation."
"This presentation will evaluate the mechanism of the economic benefit of planting alfalfa in a California strawberry monoculture. Using a novel CO2 based sampling method, spatially explicit samples were taken at three sites over two years. We found that alfalfa did not act, as previously identified, a trap crop, but rather its presence actually increased natural enemies. This work serves as a framework for evaluation of the mechanism for use of diverse plants in agricultural landscapes."
Bick, who has accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Copenhagen, specializes in integrated pest management (IPM). She received her bachelor's degree in entomology in 2013 from Cornell University, and her master's degree in entomology in 2017 from UC Davis.
Bick served as an emergency medical technician from 2008 to 2017 and gained her pesticide applicator's license in 2013. She was singled out to receive the Student Certification Award at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) meeting in 2018. In 2014, she was named a Board-Certified Entomologist, a honor bestowed on her at the ESA meeting.
Bick helped anchor the UC Davis Linnaean Games Team that won the national championship at the ESA meeting in 2016, and the UC (UC Davis and UC Berkeley) Linnaean Games Team that won the national championship again in 2018. She is the former vice president of the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA).