- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
But when she began delivering her first-ever presentation at a scientific conference, “I found it quite fun to present my work and see people's excitement.”
Quayle, a first-year doctoral student in the Jason Bond lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, went on to win first place in the doctoral student competition at the annual meeting of the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA), held recently in Seattle. The organization encompasses 11 Western states, plus Canada, Mexico and U.S. territories.
Quayle discussed her research, “Colorless but Never Dull: Unraveling Population Genetics and Color Evolution in ‘White' Darkling Beetles (Onymacris).”
“It was a really great conference with a lot of interesting talks,” Quayle said, “so I feel very honored to have placed first in the Ph.D student competition.”
“Iris has hit the ground running in all respects," said Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. "Winning the student paper award, the first time ever presenting her research, reflects her exceptional capabilities as a scientist and as a future professor and teacher. Iris comes from a non-traditional STEM background and it is exactly those experiences that will continue to contribute to her success as she evolves as a scientist. I predict that this is only a prelude of things to come.”
Quayle is focusing her dissertation on the evolutionary relationships and color/trait evolution in Onymacris. “This genus displays a lot of phenotypically and behaviorally charismatic traits and I am excited for my dissertation research to expand and grow in the next few years,” she said.
In her talk, Quayle noted that Tenebrionidae (darkling beetles) comprise “more than 80 percent of all known beetle species in the Namib, where the genus Onymacris contains a rarity unexpected from aptly named darkling beetles--the presence of several species with striking ‘white' elytra (wing sheaths).”
“A known history of hybridization, strong inclination towards polytypic taxa, and paraphyletic status with another genus reveals that coloration and speciation in Onymacris is anything but straightforward,” said Quayle, who is examining “the phylogenetic relationships between white Onymacris species to determine whether multiple derivations of pure white elytra is due to convergence or introgression.”
In her population genomic analysis, Quayle extracted DNA from all white Onymacris, using additional specimens for the four species with the largest geographical ranges (O. marginipennis, O. bicolor, O. candidipennis, O. langi cornelii).
“Studying the population structure and genomic components leading to white coloration highlights behavioral and ecological adaptations of organisms to an arid environment which is increasingly vital in the face of global trends towards aridity,” she told the group.
Quayle fielded several questions about the potential ecological pressures that may be driving diverse coloration. She noted that the darkest of white species (O. marginipennis which is brown and striped) is found primarily on vegetated hummocks, while all white species (O. candidipennis and O. bicolor) are found only on sandy coastal dunes with no vegetation.
Quayle served a year as a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Post-Baccalaureate Students (NSF-REPS) in the Bond lab before being accepted into the doctoral program in 2022. “I'm so grateful that I've been able to start this work early in my first year as a Ph.D. student,” she said.
Quayle, who grew up in Paradise, Calif., holds an associate of science degree in biology from Sacramento City College. Formerly known as Iris Bright, she received her bachelor of fine arts degree (creative writing and literature) in the honors program from Emerson College, Boston, Mass., in 2015 before switching to science. Fascinated with insects in her early childhood, she began collecting specimens at age 7. Her grandfather was an amateur entomologist.
Her career plans? Becoming a professor “so I can do further research and also share my passion and interests with the next generations!”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"I just got bit by a brown recluse spider in California."
No, you didn't--unless you recently returned from a state where they are established or handled one shipped from that area. There are no established populations of Loxoceles reclusa in California.
So said doctoral candidates Emma Jochim and Xavier Zahnle of the Jason Bond arachnology lab when they dispelled myths in their 30-minute, family friendly session about arachnids at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, "Many Legged-Wonders," on Saturday, March 18. First-year doctoral student Iris Quayle of the Bond lab moderated the session. Their major professor, Jason Bond, is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Jochim and Zahnle covered scores of myths. Here are their answers (abbreviated and shared here by Iris Quayle)
Myth: Arachnids and myriapods are insects.
Answer: No, they're not insects. You can tell them apart by the number of body segments and legs. Arachnids have two body segments and 4 pairs of legs. Insects have 3 body segments and 3 pairs of legs, and myriapods have lots of body segments with either one or two pairs of legs per segment.
Myth: Millipedes have 1000 legs and centipedes have 100 legs.
Answer: Only one recently (2021) species of millipedes has 1000 legs, actually 1300 plus, and that is Eumillipes persephone from Australia. Many soil centipedes have more than 100 legs.
Myth: Camel spiders can jump 4 to 6 feet straight up and eat the stomachs of camels.
Answer: Most solifugid species are 2-3 inches in length and definitely cannot bite into hard camel hide. They can have a bit of a bite for humans, but have no venom, though.
Myth: These are all daddy long legs (image shown of a harvester, crane fly, and cellar spider).
Answer: This depends on where you are from regionally. They all are referred to as "daddy long legs." Also, the myth of daddy long legs being super venomous is false as being dangerous to humans. Of this group, only the Pholcids (cellar spiders) have venom. The venom of cellar spiders can kill insects but is too weak to bother humans; their venom composition is very weak.
Myth: Black widows get their name because females always cannibalize males after mating.
Answer: That is why they got their name, but they are not the only spiders who do this. It is actually quite common fpr a a male to offer a nuptial gift in the form of a fly or other food source to deter the female from devouring him.
Myth: This creature (image of an amblypygid shown) exists only in the fictional world of Harry Potter.
Answer: Amblypygids are very real and are arachnids, but not spiders.
Myth: You consume eight spiders in your sleep every year.
Answer: It's highly unlikely that you will ever consume any in your sleep.
Myth: Every tick will give you a deadly disease
Answer: Ticks are vectors for lots of diseases. Here in California only the blacklegged tick carries Lyme disease.
Myth: Baby scorpions are deadlier than adults.
Answer: No, they do not produce enough to be deadly.
Myth: Both millipedes and centipedes bite.
Answer: Only centipedes bite and they are venomous.
Statements for the Audience: True or false?
The audience was invited to call out the answers.
Statement: There are spiders that can spit silk out of their mouth.
Answer: True. The family Scytodidae spit silk as well as produce silk though their spinnerets. Used for mating and prey capture.
Statement: Maternal care can be seen in some arachnids and myriapods.
Answer: True. Many arachnids carry their young on their backs, and myriapods will protect their egg clutch.
Statement: The grasshopper mouse is immune to scorpion venom.
Answer: True. Bark scorpions comprise the majority of its diet.
Statement: Some myriapods and all scorpions fluoresce.
Answer: True, main theories for scorpions are that they use this to communicate in the dark or to warn of predators. Main theory for myriapods is that it is to warn of predators. Some myriapods are eyeless (blind).
Bohart Open House. The Bohart Museum open house, held from 1 to 4 p.m., featured displays of arachnids. Visitors conversed with the scientists and held Madagascar hissing cockroaches and walking sticks from the Bohart's live petting zoo. Directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, the Bohart Museum houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus the petting zoo and a gift shop. Located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus, it is open to the public Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m. More information is available on the Bohart website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
Resources on brown recluse spiders (Rick Vetter, UC Riverside)
- How to Identify and Misidentify a Brown Recluse Spider
- Myth of the Brown Recluse: Fact, Fear, and Loathing
- Recluse Spider Map
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Graduate students from the Jason Bond laboratory will showcase spiders, scorpions, centipedes and millipedes, while the Lynn Kimsey lab at the Bohart Museum will display specimens of the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia (nicknamed "the murder hornet" by the news media); and specimens of the state insect, the California dogface butterfly, Zerene eurydice, and its host plant, California false indigo, Amorpha californica.
Bond is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Kimsey, a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, directs the Bohart Museum.
"The arachnid/myriapod section of Biodiversity Museum Day will consist of some live specimens--a tarantula, trapdoor spider, scorpion, and some millipedes, and ethanol preserved specimens of arachnids/myriapods that are pretty common and/or well-known, and a small interactive station where people will be able to use props that mimic an insect flying into a web and learn more about the sensory structures that spiders have to detect those vibration," said doctoral candidate Lacie Newton of the Bond lab, coordinator of the exhibit.
The Bohart section will feature Professor Kimsey sharing her expertise on the Asian giant hornet, and Professor Fran Keller of Folsom Lake College, a Bohart scientist and UC Davis doctoral alumnus will join Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas, naturalist and photographer, in discussing the California dogface butterfly and its host plant.
- Arboretum and Public Garden
- UC Davis Bee Haven
- Bohart Museum of Entomology
- Botanical Conservatory
- California Raptor Center
- Center for Plant Diversity
- Department of Anthropology Museum
- Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology
- Nematode Collection
- Paleontology Collection
- Phaff Yeast Culture Collection
Admission and parking are free, but visitors must adhere to the COVID-19 Campus Ready guidelines. Masks will be required in accordance with campus policies, organizers said. Visitors can also sign up at the Conference Center for limited tours. The collections or museums offering tours:
- The Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane, has scheduled tours at noon, 1 and 2. The Bohart houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, and also a live "petting zoo" and gift shop. "People will sign up at the Convention Center and be chaperoned over approximately 15 minutes before the hour to the attend their tour," said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator. "Tours should last 30 to 45 minutes." Entomologist Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection, will be discussing butterflies and moths.
- The UC Davis Bee Haven, located on Bee Biology Road, next to the Harry H.Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, west of the central campus, will offer tours at noon and 2. Established in the fall of 2009, the Bee Haven is a half-acre demonstration garden operated by the Department of Entomology and Nematology. "We'll focus on how best to observe and identify bees in the garden, as well as suggested bee plants that grow well in our area with low water," said Christine Casey, academic program management officer of the Bee Haven.
- The Arboretum and Public Garden will provide two 30-45 minute tours, "Climate-Ready Tree Project: Texas Tree Trials." Groups will leave the Conference Center at 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. The project mission is to see if trees from west and central Texas will do well in this climate. The project involved collecting seeds, propagating them and planting them in the Arboretum.
- The Phaff Yeast Culture Collection is planning self-guided tours of the UC Davis Brewery, used for teaching and research, according to Kyria Boundy-Mills, curator, Phaff Yeast Culture Collection, Food Science and Technology.
Different yeast strains are used for different styles of beer. These include ale yeast strains, lager yeast strains, and Belgian beer strains that are hybrids of wild yeasts. UC Davis offers an undergraduate major in food science and technology, with an emphasis on brewing science. Training includes chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, quality assurance, engineering, sanitation, packaging, malting and crewing. The program currently includes 18 students studying for their bachelor of science degrees, and three students seeking their master of science degrees. - The Botanical Conservatory is technically not offering tours, says manager Ernesto Sandoval "but we will be open to the public so people can wander through at their own pace and we'll regulate the number of people in the greenhouse at any one time. They can see our revamped succulent and carnivore rooms as well as our Cacao, aka 'Chocolate Tree,' with fruits as well as coffee and a very happy vanilla plant all amongst an incredible diversity of plants from ferns to an assortment of orchids."
The UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day is traditionally held on the Saturday of Presidents' Day weekend. However, last year's event was virtual, and this year's event is centrally located in an exposition. For more information, access the UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day website and/or connect with Instagram,Twitter, and Facebook.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“You're never too far away from a spider; a spider is always watching you," Professor Jason Bond told the crowd at his town-hall presentation at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on arachnids.
“If you look at the statistics, you have a 60 to 75 percent chance there's a spider in your bathroom and a slightly higher percent chance there are spiders in your bedroom," said Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. "They are always there. There are lots of them on the planet. They're absolutely everywhere."
Bond presented a 10-minute, family-friendly talk on spiders, enthralling the crowd. They ranged in age from toddlers to senior citizens.
“Folks are always surprised to hear that there are over 48,000 species of spiders that have been described, and there are probably 250,000 actual species on our planet,” said Bond, who researches terrestrial arthropod systematics, evolution and diversity. "So there's this amazing amount of diversity that's out there. The amazing thing is that there's so much left to discover.”
Bond mentioned a new tarantula species discovered in California in 2015 near Folsom Prison and named for country singer Johnny Cash: Aphonopelma johnnycashi. (One of Cash's signature hits is “Folsom Prison Blues.")
“Spiders are found on every continent on our planet except maybe Antarctica,” Bond related. “But if you go into one of the field stations in Antarctica, you'll probably find a spider there that's been brought in on a ship. Spiders can exist in incredibly harsh environments, including some of the driest places on the planet."
It's interesting to compare the numbers, he said. "Compare the 48,000 species to our planet's 9500 species of birds, 5400 species of mammals and 250 species of primates."
“And spiders are incredibly old, that is, the lineage has been around a long time," Bond said. "Fossil evidence shows that the common ancestor of the spider goes back to somewhere around 350 million years ago."
A spider's relatives include such arachnids as scorpions, whip spiders, ticks, mites, sun spiders and harvestmen, the UC Davis professor said, but what makes “spiders really special are their spinnerets. Spiders have the ability to produce silk from these abdominally placed appendages.”
Folks commonly ask if spiders have superpowers. "If you Google that (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zc472hv), you'll learn that silk as thick as a pencil can stop a passenger jet airline, like a Boeing 747. Silk is incredibly strong.”
Among the "superpowers": spiders can fly, leap and carry heavy weights. Through ballooning, "they can travel thousands of feet in air and travel hundreds, if that not thousands of miles, on air currents," Bond said. "They can leap 50 times their body length. They can carry up to 170 times their weight walking across the ceiling."
"They really are superpowers," Bond told the crowd. "But what really makes them superpowers are the webs they build, the silk they weave. They use silk for all sorts of things--to line their burrows, build trap doors, make things like sheet webs, and entangle prey."
A common misnomer is to call a spider "poisonous." Bond said that "spiders are venomous, not poisonous. Do you know what the difference is? Poisonous is what you eat it make you sick. Venomous means it takes toxin and it injects it into you." Almost all species use venom when they attack and kill their prey.
"Of the 48,000 described species, only about 30 or so are known to be harmful to humans," he said. "There are probably more out there, but most spiders aren't harmful."
Turning to the spider population, Bond estimated that the world spider population weighs 29 million tons. "That's equivalent to 478 Titanics if you were to weigh all these. And the neatest thing about this is they're eating somewhere between 400 to 800 million tons of insect biomass a year. If you took all seven million human adults, and weighed them, that's about 285 million tons. And there's about 70 million tons of children on the planet. So the total weight of humans is about 350 million. If spiders were to consume exclusively humans--they don't consume humans--there would be only enough biomass to sustain spiders for one year."
"Bottom line: Here on planet earth, there are lots of spiders and they're eating lots of things and there's always a spider watching you."
Bohart associates and entomology students Wade Spencer and Lohit Garikipati displayed Spencer's scorpions. Medical entomologist Geoffrey Attardo, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, set up a virtual reality station. Participants marveled at the 40-foot-tall spiders.
Three members of the Brownie Girl Scout Troop 30477 of Vacaville--Kendl Macklin, 7, Jayda Navarette, 8, and Keira Yu, 8--delighted in participating in all the activities. They especially liked the virtual reality station, gleefully holding onto one another for comfort as they viewed the spiders. One Brownie declined to "eat like a spider"--even though fellow participants assured her "It's just applesauce." Mikah Jarvis, 2, of Davis loved "eating like a spider." Said his parents: "He loves applesauce."
Logan Loss, 6, of Rocklin, who attends John Adams Academy, amazed Spencer with his knowledge of scorpions, gained from watching nature documentaries.
The Bohart Museum of Entomology, home of nearly eight million insect specimens, also houses a gift shop and a live "petting zoo," comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas. The museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane. It is open to the public (free admission) on Mondays through Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m.