- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Alumni News
Professor Bryony Bonning of Iowa State University, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Bruce Hammock lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, has accepted an endowed chair position at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Effective in February, she will be the Eminent Scholar (Davies, Fischer and Eckes Endowed Chair), in the University of Florida's Department of Entomology and Nematology. The position will encompass both research (80 percent, Florida Agricultural Experiment Station) and teaching (20 percent, Entomology and Nematology Department, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences). The endowed chair position currently includes an endowment of $2.3 million.
Bonning, who joined the ISU faculty 22 years ago, serves as the founding director of the National Science Foundation's Center for Arthropod Management Technologies (CAMTech), and oversees cutting edge research on insect physiology and insect pathology with the goal of developing novel, environmentally benign alternatives to chemical insecticides for insect pest management.
“Bryony is a star in our department,” said distinguished professor Bruce Hammock of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. “Bryony and I worked together at the NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology at Oxford and she came back to UC Davis with me as a postdoc.”
“Bryony did amazing work on recombinant baculovirus insecticides working with Susumu Maeda, Sean Duffy and myself,” Hammock said. Another UC Davis connection: Bonning married Jeff Beetham, a Ph.D. student (biochemistry) in the Hammock lab; he recently retired from a faculty position in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University.
“Dr. Bonning brings an outstanding record of accomplishment and cooperation, and we are confident she will work tirelessly to develop solutions for citrus pest management,” said Blair Siegfried, chair of the UF/IFAS entomology and nematology department in a news release. “Her combined experience and achievements make her ideally suited and deserving of the position.”
A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Bonning was elected a fellow of the Entomological Society of America in 2013 and received the Nan-Yao Su Award for Innovation and Creativity in Entomology that same year. She is the 2016 recipient of Iowa State University Outstanding Achievement in Research Award.
The author of more than 110 papers in high-impact journals, Bonning holds five patents related to insect control technologies. She is developing novel methods for controlling the Asian citrus psyllid, the vector of citrus greening.
Bonning received her bachelor of science degree in zoology from the University of Durham, UK and her doctorate in entomology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, UK. She went on to postdoctoral appointments at the Natural Environment Research Council Institute of Virology in Oxford, UK and at UC Davis.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The seminar is from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. Assistant professor Brian Johnson will host and introduce her.
"The evolution of highly cooperative, eusocial behavior from solitary ancestry represents one of the major transitions in the evolution of life," says Toth, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Department of Entomology. "Thus, understanding the evolution of insect eusociality can provide important insights into the evolution of complexity. Recently, with the advent of the genomic era, there has been great interest in understanding the molecular underpinnings of social behavior and its evolution. Several hypotheses about how eusociality have been proposed; these ideas can be roughly divided into two camps—one proposes that eusociality involved new (novel, or rapidly evolving) genes, and the other, that old (deeply conserved) genes took on new functions via shifts in gene regulation."
In her seminar, Toth will provide an overview of recent research in her laboratory aiming to address the genomic basis of social evolution in insects, with a focus on gene expression. "Utilizing a comparative approach involving multiple species and lineages of bees and wasps, as well as de novo sequencing of genomes, transcriptomes, and epigenomes, our work aims to trace the types of genomic changes related to the evolutionary transition from solitary to eusocial behavior," she said.
Toth will present results from several lines of research mainly focused on primitively social Polistes paper wasps, that have led to the following insights:
- Relatively minor shifts in gene expression patterns may accompany earlier stages of social evolution
- Convergent evolution of social behavior in different lineages involves similar gene expression patterns in a small set of key pathways, and
- Epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation are variable across species and evolutionarily labile.
"Although more data on additional solitary and social species, and on novel genes, are needed, the emerging picture is that earlier transitions from solitary to simple eusociality involved relatively small changes in gene expression and regulation," she said.
Toth said she is especially interested in the mechanisms and evolution of insect sociality, using paper wasps and honey bees as model systems.
Toth received her bachelor's degree in biology in 2006 from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York and her doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology in 2006 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she was advised by major professor Gene Robinson. She did postdoctoral work with Christina Grozinger at Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pa. where she was a USDA postdoctoral fellow. She focused on uncovering conserved molecular pathways for social insect reproduction and social behavior. Earlier she was a postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Entomology and Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, where she studied with advisor Gene Robinson. Her work centered on genomic analyses of insect social behavior.
Plans call for recording her seminar for later posting on UCTV.
Upcoming noon-hour speakers in 122 Briggs Hall are
May 20
John Hawdon
Topic: "Molecular Mechanisms of Hookworm Infection"
Research Center for Neglected Diseases of Poverty, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine, The George Washington University
Washington, D.C.
Nominator/host: Steve Nadler
May 27
John "Jack" Longino
Title of Seminar: "Project ADMAC: Ant Diversity of the Mesoamerican Corridor"
Professor of Biology
Adjunct Curator of Entomology, Utah Museum of Natural History, University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Nominator/host: Phil Ward, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
June 3
Mike Singer
Title of Seminar: "One Butterfly, Six Host Shifts"
Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, College of Natural Sciences
Specialty: Butterfly ecology and behavior
(Formerly with University of Texas, Austin, Texas)
Nominator/host: Meredith Cenzer, graduate student, Louie Yang lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology