Ecologist Sylvain Pincebourde, a research director at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France, will speak on "The Key Role of Microclimates in Modulating the Response of Ectotherms to Climate Change" at the next UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar.

The seminar, virtual only, will be at 4:10 p.m., Pacific Time, Wednesday, March 15. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672

"In a warming world, species may buffer to some extent part of the environmental changes by exploiting the microclimates that are available across space and time," Pincebourde says in his abstract. "My presentation will focus on the role of the leaf surface microclimate, and in particular temperature, in driving the vulnerability of insects to climate change. I will exemplify the framework we apply to investigate this role. Our approach is deeply rooted into a multidisciplinary background, relying on physics, physiology and ecology of both plant and animal sciences. The microclimatic effects can be quite subtle and mechanistic approaches are fundamentally needed to depict the complexity of the interaction between plant, insect and climate."

On Research Gate, Pincebourde explains that his work "focuses on the role of microclimates in modulating the response of ectotherms (mostly insects) to climate change. I use ecophysiological approaching mostly relying to thermal ecology, connected to the biophysical ecology of organisms. I integrate both temporal and spatial issues of thermal variability. My research has connection with conservation biology by identifying novel or unsuspected interactions between (micro) climates and organisms."

Urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor with the UC Davis Department of Entomology andNematology, and coordinator of the department's weekly seminars, will host the seminar and introduce him.

Pincebourde holds a doctorate (2005) from the Institute of Research on Insect Biology (IRBI), France, a joint research unit of the University of Tours and CNRS. He studied for his doctorate with Professor Jérôme Casas. Pincebourde then completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University South Carolina (2006-2007), supervised by Professor Brian Helmuth, and at IRBI (2008-2009), working with Professor Casas's team that studied the ecology of multitropic systems and biomimetism.

Pincebourde joined CNRS as a research scientist, second class, in 2009 and advanced to first class in 2015. Since 2018, he has been in charge of the IRBI's organism-environmental interactions team, known as INOV or the INteractions Organisme-enVironnment.

He has published his work in a number of journals, including Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, Ecological Monographs, Agriculture and Forest Entomology, Functional Ecology, Journal of Thermal Biology, Biotropica, with papers pending in Global Change Biology and Freshwater Biology. He is a member of the editorial board for American Naturalist. 

The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's winter seminars are held on Wednesdays at 4:10 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. (See schedule.) She may be reached at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu for technical issues.

Meadow spittlebugs, once very abundant on plants along the California coastline, are declining rapidly or vanishing from their previous habitats, according to ecologists Richard Karban and Mikaela Huntzinger of the University of California, Davis, co-authors of newly published research in the journal Ecology.

Professor Karban of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, who has maintained a study site at Bodega Marine Reserve in central California since 1982, links the decrease to temperature.

“I've been surveying seaside daisies for spittlebugs at Bodega Bay every spring for the past 35 years and found that the number of these highly visible and previously widespread insects was related to temperature,” Karban said.

However, since the spring of 2006, the UC Davis researchers have found no spittle masses on the Bodega Bay Reserve's coastal prairie. Other researchers have also detailed how sensitive spittlebugs are to environmental conditions.

The meadow spittlebugs, Philaenus spumarius, thrive in cool, moist habitats and suck plant juices, feeding on xylem fluid and excreting most of it as a foamy white mass known as spittle. The mass protects them from desiccation, predation and parasitism. In past years, Karban and Huntzinger found an abundance of meadow spittlebugs feeding onseaside daisy (Erigeron glaucus) and the non-native ice plant (Carpobrotus edulus).

Meadow spittlebugs are vanishing and/or undergoing a population shift, the UC Davis researchers pointed out. “In 1988 and again in 2001, we surveyed various populations of seaside daisies up and down the coast and found that the distribution of spittlebugs appeared to be shifting north, or toward the pole, a pattern that other people have found for many species in response to climate change,” they wrote. “However, we resurveyed these populations in 2017 and 2018 and found instead that they were becoming rare or missing throughout much of this former range.”

The Karban-Huntzinger research paper, “Decline of Meadow Spittlebugs, a Previously Abundant Insect, Along the California Coast,” is especially important in light of alarming research in Germany dubbed “Insect Armageddon.” In that research, published last October in the journal PLOS ONE, German scientists investigated aerial insect biomass across 96 protected preserves in the country. They found that three-quarters of flying insects had disappeared over the past 25 years.

In their Ecology article, the authors published a California coastline map detailing the changing spittlebug distribution and disappearance. In 2001, it appeared that their distribution was mainly shifting northward. By 2017 and 2018, it became clear that they were disappearing over large portions of their range.

The earth's climate is warming at a rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade over the past 30 year, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. California's coast has also experienced climate change; the recent severely hot years in the state have also been severely dry. Models of future climates predict that the warming trend will continue and that variability in conditions, for example, droughts, also will increase in frequency and severity.

“Whether the altered climates we face globally will change our ecological communities will depend on how able individual species are to adapt to the new conditions,” the UC Davis researchers explained. “Since meadow spittlebugs were widespread and abundant, we might have assumed that they would not be threatened by climate change. What we have found is that even this species has not been able to adjust physiologically or ecologically. If the pattern they show is common, we may also see surprising changes in the abundance or distribution of other insects as well. These changes are likely to have dramatic and unexpected effects on the functioning of ecosystems.”

Resource:
Link to the Karban-Huntzinger Research

UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty are among thousands of California university faculty who have signed an open letter to the Trump administration calling for sustained action on climate change and urging the president to honor the country's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions as set forth in the Paris climate agreement. 

In a widely distributed news article released Jan. 31, Robert Sanders of UC Berkeley Media Relations wrote that Aaron Parsons, associate professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley, drafted the letter and asked his colleagues to sign it.  As of Jan. 31, the signatures total more than 2300.

“With some issues, we can hope to recover from a temporary backslide, but climate change is not one of those; we cannot afford to lose these next four years,” Parsons said. “We are treading a thin line on whether it's possible to avert major climate change, and it is absolutely imperative that we do everything we can.”

The United States and 193 other nations, signed the Paris agreement last year, which went into into effect in November.

Parsons noted that President Trump and his cabinet have called climate change a "hoax" and that the administration's position is that limits on greenhouse gas emissions, especially by coal-fired power plants, would stifle the economy.

California Gov. Jerry Brown publicly announced that the state will launch its own satellite if Trump shuts down climate monitoring satellites now operated by NASA.

Parsons advocates empowering scientists and intellectual leaders, urging them to be more active on these issues. "I hope we can build a voting base grounded in science and learning to oppose this anti-intellectualism we are seeing,” he said.

Parsons, through the UC Berkeley Government and Community Relations Office, has also shared the open letter with  California politicians in a call to action.

The letter:

"We the undersigned are calling on you, in the most urgent terms possible, to maintain our country's commitment to meeting the greenhouse gas emission targets set forth in the Paris Climate Agreement. This agreement is the first of a series of steps required to avert substantial climate change. The Earth's climate is entering a state that has not been experienced in human history. Continuing to produce greenhouse gases at current rates will have catastrophic, unstoppable consequences for our environment, our economy, and our country. Bold and decisive action may still avoid the worst scenarios, allow for adaptation to the changes, mitigate the damage, and bring new economic opportunities to our country. To this end, we ask that you ensure America's place as the global leader on climate action.

"With this letter, we aim to express the degree to which the scientists and intellectual leaders of our state, speaking for themselves and not on behalf of their respective employers, agree on the facts of climate change. Despite misleading portrayals, there is widespread consensus in the scientific and academic communities that human-caused climate change is real, with consequences that are already being felt. The science of how greenhouse gases trap heat is unimpeachable. Climate records are being broken as human-caused changes add onto natural oscillations (e.g., El Niño) in the climate system. Fossil records from pre-human times show much higher sea levels and a reorganization of vegetation patterns when greenhouse gases were higher and Earth's climate was much warmer than today. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere set in motion regional variations in weather, weather extremes, the loss of major ice sheets, and declining biodiversity that has been associated with mass extinctions in Earth's past.

"Scientists have warned for decades of the dangers of overreliance on fossil fuels. The world has been slow to respond and, as a result, we run an increasing risk of major damage to America's economy and security. We have had an unusually large number of serious natural disasters in the past decade that are in line with climate change predictions. The Southeast and West suffer from increasing droughts. Miami floods at high tide as sea levels rise. Major cities on the Eastern and Gulf coasts regularly suffer major damage from violent weather. Western forests die because winters are insufficiently cold to prevent insect infestation of drought-stressed trees. Left unchecked, the frequency and severity of these climate change events will increase with time, as will their economic impact. To secure and conserve our way of life, our economy, and our environment, we need immediate action.

"The United States now has a unique opportunity to lead the world in developing innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By investing in and incentivizing clean energy and carbon sequestration technologies now, we position ourselves to be the economic and political leaders of the 21st century.  To do otherwise cedes these opportunities to others and undermines our national security, food security, water security, and the future of our children and grandchildren.  For these reasons, we ask you to maintain and increase our country's commitment to taking action on climate change, beginning with the current Paris Climate Agreement."

Among the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology signing the letter as of Jan. 31:

• Louie Yang, Associate Professor
• Rachel Vannette, Assistant Professor
• Richard Karban, Professor
• Sharon Lawler, Professor
• James Carey, Professor
• Philip Ward, Professor

Further information is available from Parsons at aparsons@berkeley.edu.

Related Links:

• UC Berkeley News Release
• Open Letter to President Trump and signatures

(Editor's Note: Due to inclement weather and a flight cancellation, the seminar of Steven Frank, assistant professor of biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, initially scheduled for noon, Feb. 18, has been cancelled. Plans are to reschedule the seminar.)

DAVIS--Steven Frank, assistant professor of biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, will speak on "Can Forests Take the Heat? Managing Pests and Ecosystem Services in a Warming Climate"
 from 12:10 to 1 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 18 in 122 Briggs Hall.

"Trees help mitigate the urban heat island effect and provide other services to urban residents," Frank says in his abstract. "Unfortunately, herbivores are often more abundant and damaging on urban than rural trees.  We have found that urban warming increases pest abundance directly and indirectly by changing interactions with parasitoids.  Our goal is to determine how urban warming and pests interact to affect tree health and the services they provide.  We want to determine if cities, which have been warming for centuries, may be canaries in the coal mine that can predict the effects of global warming on natural forests."

Frank completed all three degrees (bachelor's, master's and doctorate) at the University of Maryland where he was advised by Paula Shrewsbury and Bob Denno. He spent a year as a postdoc at Texas A&M before joining the faculty of North Carolina State University in 2007. His research focuses on understanding how urbanization and climate change affect tree pests, pollinators, and ecosystem services. He also conducts research on optimizing IPM and biological control in greenhouses, nurseries, and landscapes.

Plans call for video-recording the seminar for later posting on UCTV.

See pending seminars on this page.