- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Her seminar, dealing with insect biodiversity, ecosystem services, and citizen science approaches in urban gardens, begins at 4:10 p.m., Pacific Time. The Zoom link is https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/99515291076.
More than 60 percent of our world's population will live in cities in the next decades, Egerer says in her abstract. "Urban agriculture has great potential to support arthropod biodiversity and thereby potentially enhance ecosystem services such as pollination and pest predation for more sustainable food production. In this talk, I discuss interdisciplinary research on wild bees and natural enemies in urban community gardens in Berlin and Munich, Germany. Specifically, I examine how urban garden management can play an important role in supporting species diversity and the provision of insect-mediated services. Furthermore, I discuss citizen science initiatives that our group uses to engage the public in scientific research on urban biodiversity and ecosystem services."
Egerer, whose research and teaching interests include ecology, biodiversity, agroecology, urban ecology, insect ecology, climate change, and food systems, holds a bachelor's degree in biology (2013) from Kalamazoo College, Mich., and then received her master's degree (2017) and her doctorate (2019) in environmental studies from UC Santa Cruz, studying with major professor Stacy Philpott.
After research work in Australia, Egerer joined the Institute of Ecology at the Technical University of Berlin in 2019 as an International Postdoc Initiative (IPODI) postdoctoral fellow. In 2020, she was appointed to the professorship for Urban Productive Ecosystems in the TUM School of Life Sciences.
Her most recent peer-reviewed publications include:
- Egerer M and Kowarik I. (2020) Confronting the modern Gordian Knot of urban beekeeping, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 1-4.
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Philpott SM, Egerer M, Bichier P, Cohen H, Cohen R, Liere H, Jha S, Lin BB. (2020) Gardener demographics, experience, and motivations drive differences in plant species richness and composition in urban gardens, Ecology and Society
- Buchholz S and Egerer M. (2020) Functional ecology of wild bees in cities: what we know about trait-urbanization relationships, Biodiversity and Conservation 1-23.
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Philpott SM, Lucatero A, Bichier P, Egerer M, Jha S, Lin BB, Liere H. (2020) Changes in natural enemy-herbivore networks along local and landscape gradients in urban agroecosystems, Ecological Applications 0: 1-13.
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Egerer M, Lin B, Diekmann L. (2020) Nature connection, experience and policy encourage and maintain adaptation to drought in urban agriculture, Environmental Research Communications 2: 1-12.
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Egerer M, Liere H, Lucatero A, Philpott SM. (2020) Plant damage in urban agroecosystems varies with local and landscape factors, Ecosphere 11(3): 1-19.
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Egerer M, Fouch N, Anderson EC, and Clarke M. (2020) Socio-ecological connectivity differs in magnitude and direction across urban landscapes, Scientific Reports 10: 1-16.
- Egerer M, Wagner B, Lin BB, Kendal D and Zhu K. (2020) New methods of spatial analysis in urban gardens inform future vegetation surveying, Landscape Ecology 1: 1-18.
- Egerer M, Cecala JM and Cohen H. (2020) Wild bee conservation within urban gardens and nurseries: effects of local and landscape management, Sustainability 12: 1-10.
The Department of Entomology and Nematology seminars are coordinated by nematologist and assistant professor Shahid Siddique, who may be reached at ssiddique@ucdavis.edu for any technical issues.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Host is Extension specialist Ian Grettenberger, who coordinates the department's seminars. Access the Google form link here to attend the seminar.
"Coffee agroforests are great for biodiversity conservation and sustain millions of families and national economies," Jiminez-Soto says in her abstract. "Within these shaded agroecosystems, a complex network of interactions and the availability of resources maintain coffee pests in check, particularly the coffee berry borer, the most devastating insect pest for coffee. Despite the importance of biodiversity conservation and maintenance of shade in these systems, the life of people is often at odds with conservation efforts and management practices, revealing social inequalities and contradictions in plantation-like agricultural systems. In this presentation, I share socio-ecological complexities in the coffee-biodiversity nexus, focusing on ants as biocontrol agents, and the everyday lived experience of farmworkers in Mexican coffee agroforests."
Jiménez-Soto was quoted in a National Geographic piece, "How This Invasive Snail Could Save Your Coffee from Destruction," published on March 10, 2020.
Writer Forest Ray pointed out that "Coffee leaf rust is the most economically significant coffee pest in the world. Since the 1980s, occasional outbreaks of this fungus have crippled coffee production in the Americas, at times doubling or tripling its price. And the problem has escalated since 2008, as have the massive resources invested in fighting it."
Jiménez-Soto, sharing her expertise on both coffee and biocontrol measures, was quoted as saying: "Classic approaches to pest control have often failed to understand this complexity, causing major natural disasters."
She holds a master's degree and doctorate in environmental studies from UC Santa Cruz, receiving her master's degree in 2015 and her doctorate in 2018.
For technical issues involving the seminar, contact Grettenberger at imgrettenberger@ucdavis.edu. A list of the remaining virtual seminars for the winter quarter (with the Zoom links) are here.