- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Native to Asia, the agricultural pest is a worldwide threat to the berry production industry, which includes raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. The tiny insect, about 1/12 to 1/8 inch long, invaded the continental United States in 2008.
“All of the papers were by invitation of the co-editors of the special collection—Jana Lee, Cesar Rodrigue-Saona, and me,” said journal editor-in-chief Frank Zalom, a UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus and recall professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology. Zalom's research includes the spotted-wing drosophila.
Lee, formerly with the UC Davis laboratory of the late chemical ecologist Steve Seybold, is a research entomologist with the Horticultural Crops Research Unit, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Corvallis. Rodriguez-Saona, who received his doctorate from UC Riverside, is an Extension entomologist with the Department of Entomology, Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey.
In addition to Zalom and Lee, the UC Davis-linked authors include Joanna Chiu and Antoine Abrieux (Joanna Chiu lab); Zain Syed and Kevin Cloonan (Walter Leal lab); Gregory Loeb (Rick Karban lab); and Kelly Hamby, Hannah Burrack, Fatemeh Ganjisaffar, Brian Gress, Nicole Nicola and Mark Demkovich (Zalom lab).
Overall, the Special Collection includes authors from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States that represent perspectives from universities, federal and state laboratories, growers, and pest product companies, according to the editors.
UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology communication specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey provided the cover photo of the spotted-wing drosophila feeding on a raspberry.
Since 2008, "D. suzukii has become a key economical pest of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and cherries in the United States and worldwide," the editors wrote in their introductory remarks. "Not surprisingly, the number of publications has proliferated from 29 publications as of 2010 to 978 additional publications between 2011 and 2021 from a Web of Science search for ‘Drosophila suzukii.' While many publications are available, this special collection will highlight advances in D. suzukii pest management since its U.S. invasion. We solicited papers by open call and received 66 abstracts, and selected 14 papers covering: 1) review, 2) monitoring and risk, 3) behavioral control, 4) biological control, 5) cultural control, and 6) chemical control."
The editors pointed out that “Given that 14 years of research has accumulated since the continental U.S. invasion, it was fitting to include two reviews that provide a different scope than was covered in prior reviews on D. suzukii biological control (Lee et al. 2019, Wang et al. 2020), trapping (Burrack et al. 2020), cultural control (Schöneberg et al. 2021), and chemical ecology (Cloonan et al. 2018). This special collection is anchored by Tait et al. (2021), a review of the most promising methods as part of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy against D. suzukii across the world since 2008. The effectiveness, impact, sustainability, and present stage of development and implementation are discussed for each of the considered techniques, and insights for continued development are presented.”
“A second review in this special collection by Garcia et al. (2022) summarizes the history and current status of D. suzukii in Latin America. The authors first provide a history of the D. suzukii invasion through Latin American countries, which started in 2011 in Mexico, and is now present in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. They describe the host plants where D. suzukii has been found as well as advances in monitoring, biological control, chemical control, cultural control, and in the sterile insect technique. The authors posit that this information can serve as the basis for developing sustainable area-wide management programs in Latin America.”
The researchers related that the pest is a significant threat to California's berry production industry, which the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) valued at more than $2.8 billion in 2019. Caneberries, in particular, "are a preferred host of D. suzukii, and California accounts for 89.4 percent of all production in the United States, with the Monterey Bay region producing about half of the state's raspberries and blackberries (CDFA 2020). This pest has now spread to all major berry and cherry growing areas of the United States."
The collection is meant to serve "as a key reference point for entomologists across many institutions (e.g., academia, government, and industry) on important advances in D. suzukii pest management," according to the Entomological Society of America. "The articles in this collection will also provide scientists information on potential research gaps that will help guide future research directions on this important pest. The goal is to preserve and catalog articles on various aspects of D. suzukii pest management, i.e., monitoring, cultural control, chemical control, behavioral control, and biological control, that will be shared among entomologists."

- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The authors and their paper, “Drones: Innovative Technology for Use in Precision Pest Management,” will be recognized at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) meeting, set Oct. 31-Nov. 3 in Denver.
"On behalf of our team, first author Fernando lost Filho, a doctoral student in entomology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and a former UC Davis exchange student, will deliver the presentation at the ESA meeting," said de Lange, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Christian Nansen laboratory at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and now of The Netherlands.
Other co-authors are remote sensing expert Wieke Heldens of the German Aerospace Center, Wessling, Germany; and engineer and drone communication expert Zhaodan Kong, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
“Drones can be equipped with a range of attachments, such as sensors, pesticide sprayers, and natural enemy releasers, and can therefore contribute to more sustainable agriculture in various ways,” said de Lange, who assembled the team and serves as the corresponding author.
“They are highly versatile," she said, "and have great commercial potential.”
Their paper, one of the first-of-its-kind to summarize scientific literature on the use of agricultural drones for pest management, covers the use of drones with remote sensing equipment to detect pest problems from the air. It calls for the increased use of actuation drones, to provide solutions such as spraying pesticides and releasing biocontrol organisms.
JEE Award. Every year the editors-in-chief and editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Entomology (JEE) and Environment Entomology along with ESA and Oxford University Press, select outstanding research publications for special recognition. The categories include Editors' Choice, Readers' Choice and Reviewers' Choice.
For the JEE Editors' Choice award, the editors-in-chief nominate papers based on citation, readership and Altmetric scores. The winners are determined by a vote of the JEE subject editors. JEE co-editors-in-chief are Frank Zalom, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology; Mike Brewer, entomology professor, Texas A&M University; and Nan-Yao Su, distinguished professor of entomology at the University of Florida. JEE is ESA's largest journal by publishing volume and the most-cited journal in entomology. (See ESA website.)
ESA announced the awards online. All of the winning papers are currently online.
Improving Crop Monitoring Procedures. “Early outbreak detection and treatment application are inherent to effective pest management, allowing management decisions to be implemented before pests are well-established and crop losses accrue,” the authors wrote in their abstract. “Pest monitoring is time-consuming and may be hampered by lack of reliable or cost-effective sampling techniques. Thus, we argue that an important research challenge associated with enhanced sustainability of pest management in modern agriculture is developing and promoting improved crop monitoring procedures.”
Drones can target pest outbreaks or hot spots in field crops and orchards, such as Colorado potato beetle in potato fields or sugarcane aphid in sorghum, the scientists pointed out. “Pests are unpredictable and not uniformly distributed. Precision agricultural technologies, like the use of drones, can offer important opportunities for integrated pest management (IPM).”
De Lange, who holds a doctorate in chemical ecology from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, joined the Nansen lab in 2016. Her research interests include plant-insect interactions, integrated pest management, chemical ecology and precision agriculture. She focused much of her research on California strawberries.



- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The review paper, “Drones: Innovative Technology for Use in Precision Pest Management,” is one of the first of its kind to summarize scientific literature on the use of agricultural drones for pest management.
In advocating the need for more research, the authors said that drones are becoming an important part of precision pest management, from detecting pests to controlling them.
“We propose extensive communication and collaboration between scientists from various disciplines, extension agents, industry professionals, and commercial growers to reach drones' optimal potential to help with pest management and control,” said De Lange, the corresponding author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Christian Nansen lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology who assembled the team of authors.
The paper covers the use of drones with remote sensing equipment, to detect pest problems from the air. It calls for the increased use of actuation drones, to provide solutions such as spraying pesticides and releasing biocontrol organisms.
“Most literature concerns remote sensing,” said de Lange.
"Drones became indispensable for IPM programs in Brazil, specially for Biological Control," said lead author and entomologist Fernando Iost Filho of the Department of Entomology and Acarology, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. "They are currently being used for releasing parasitoids in thousands of acres of field crops, such as sugarcane and soybean,
said Filho, a former exchange student at UC Davis. "Their use for monitoring crop health is also expected to increase in the Brazilian fields in the next few years."
“Early outbreak detection and treatment application are inherent to effective pest management, allowing management decisions to be implemented before pests are well-established and crop losses accrue,” the authors wrote in their abstract. “Pest monitoring is time-consuming and may be hampered by lack of reliable or cost-effective sampling techniques. Thus, we argue that an important research challenge associated with enhanced sustainability of pest management in modern agriculture is developing and promoting improved crop monitoring procedures.”
Drones can target pest outbreaks or hot spots in field crops and orchards, such as Colorado potato beetle in potato fields or sugarcane aphid in sorghum, the scientists pointed out. “Pests are unpredictable and not uniformly distributed. Precision agricultural technologies, like the use of drones, can offer important opportunities for integrated pest management (IPM).”
De Lange, noting that drones are increasingly used in agriculture for various purposes, commented: “They are often equipped with remote sensing technology, for yield predictions, evaluation of crop phenology, or characterization of soil properties.”
“There are myriad possibilities for use of drones in pest management,” she said. “Sensing drones, equipped with remote sensing technology, could help detect pest hotspots. Pests are often small and hard to find, so indirect detection, through changes in how plants reflect light, has the potential to find the pest earlier, treat earlier, and keep damage in check.”
“Furthermore, actuation drones, equipped with precision spray rigs or dispensers of biocontrol organisms, could apply localized solutions. Pesticide sprays exactly where needed would reduce the needs to spray an entire field. More efficient distribution of biocontrol organisms would make them a more competitive alternative to pesticides.”
“Remote sensing equipment,” she added, “can also be placed on manned aircraft and satellites. However, drones fly lower, increasing images' spatial resolution, and making clouds less of an issue. They are generally cheaper and can be flown more frequently. Compared to ground-based devices, drones can cover much more ground in a shorter period of time.”
The authors said that drones could also be used to distribute sterile insects and mating disruption, and contribute to pest outbreak prevention, rather than provide only solutions to existing problems.
De Lange, who holds a doctorate in chemical ecology from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, joined the Nansen lab in 2016. Her research interests include plant-insect interactions, integrated pest management, chemical ecology and precision agriculture. She does much of her research on California strawberries.

- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The ESA Governing Board today announced that Zalom will succeed John Trumble, distinguished professor of entomology at UC Riverside. Trumble, editor-in-chief for 20 years, informed ESA in late 2017 of his intent to leave the role in 2018. In January, the journal's editorial board launched a widespread search for his successor.
A 43-member of ESA and the 2014 president, Zalom will serve a five-year term as editor-in-chief. The journal publishes research on the economic significance of insects. It includes sections on apiculture and social insects, insecticides, biological control, household and structural insects, crop protection, forest entomology, and other topics.
"Dr. Frank Zalom's career can be viewed as a model of applied entomology derived from an understanding of basic biology, and he is an ideal choice to be the new editor-in-chief of the Journal of Economic Entomology (JEE)," said ESA President Michael Parrella in an ESA news release.
"His unparalleled and broad expertise will serve to continue the journal's growth as the publication of choice for applied entomological research and to build upon the legacy of Dr. John Trumble," said Parrella, dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Idaho State University and former professor and chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Zalom's 40-year career intersects entomological research, teaching, and application. He served 16 years as director of the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) and is the only entomologist in the UC system to receive a simultaneous appointment in teaching, research, and extension. His focuses his research on IPM of agricultural crops.
"I couldn't be more pleased to be selected the next editor-in-chief of the Journal of Economic Entomology," Zalom said. "I have spent the last 40 years of my career trying to solve economically important problems caused by arthropods using an IPM approach, and this journal, as well as ESA's other journals, have always served as a primary foundation and outlet for research conducted in my lab. As I approach the end of my career, I hope to be able to dedicate my efforts to enhancing our Society's influence on science and its application to addressing some of the most important entomological challenges that affect communities worldwide. JEE is uniquely positioned to do exactly that."
Zalom joined the UC system in 1980, serving in roles ranging from extension IPM coordinator to professor to vice chair of the department to advisor of the UC Davis International Agricultural Development Graduate Group. He has authored more than 335 journal articles and book chapters. including "Food, Crop Pests, and the Environment" published by APS Press.
His career includes serving as major professor for 12 Ph.D students and seven master's degree students.
Zalom is a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Entomological Society, and ESA. Among his numerous honors: a Fulbright Senior Research Scholarship (1992-93), the ESA Achievement Award in Extension (1992), the ESA Recognition Award (2002), the James H. Meyer Award from UC Davis for teaching, research and service (2004), the Entomological Foundation IPM Team Award (2008), the Entomological Foundation Excellence in IPM Award (2010), Outstanding Mentor Award from the UC Davis Consortium for Women and Research (2013) and the C. W. Woodworth Award (2011), the highest award given by the Pacific Branch of ESA (PBESA).
More recently, Zalom received a lifetime achievement award, presented at the 9th International IPM Symposium, held March 19-22 in Baltimore. Last month he played a key role in a U.S. Congressional briefing held in the Rayburn House Office Building to raise awareness for and increase understanding of areawide integrated pest management (AIPM) and the benefits of a comprehensive pest management policy, particularly as it relates to invasive species.
In addition to serving as president of the 7000-member ESA in 2014, Zalom served as the PBESA president (2001), and president of the Entomological Foundation in 2015. He continues to serve as a member of the Entomological Foundation board of directors and ESA's Science Policy Committee.
Zalom, who received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1978, holds two degrees in zoology and ecology from Arizona State University (bachelor of science, 1973, and master's degree, 1974).
Founded in 1889 and headquartered in Annapolis, Md., ESA is the world's largest organization serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and people in related disciplines.