- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The Equity in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Entrepreneurship (ESTEME) facilitates the after-school science program for middle school students.
The students, representing fifth to eighth grades, and ranging in age from 10 to 14, learned about insect science, the importance of insect collections, and played “Bug Bingo.”
In Bug Bingo, the students answered such questions as:
- A bug that eats other bugs
- A bug that migrates
- A bug that lives in water
- A bug that is hairy
- A bug that is a pest
- A bug that you think looks silly
- A bug that is a pollinator
- Two bugs that look alike
- A bug you don't like
“Once they got Bingo, they won a prize,” Edwards said.
Each student also "invented" a bug, pinned it with toothpicks, and labeled it. Edwards and Lippey also shared insect collections borrowed from the Bohart Museum of Entomology, home of eight million insect specimens.
Edwards studies with medical entomologist-geneticist Geoffrey Attardo, associate professor of entomology, while Lippey's major professors are insect ecologist Jay Rosenheim, UC Davis distinguished professor, and urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor.
ESTEME, established in 2017, is sponsored by the UC Davis Student Recruitment and Retention Center and the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences' Initiative. Diversity, Equity and Justice (DEIJ Grant.
CC Edwards. In her graduate studies, Edwards investigates the physiological mechanisms underlying pyrethroid resistance in Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito. She was a McNair scholar at Baylor University, where she completed her undergraduate degree in cell and molecular biology in May 2021. "I got interested in the mosquito field through my undergraduate research of studying the sensory and oviposition responses of Aedes aegypti in relation to the compound geosmin," she says on the Attardo lab website. "I went on to do my masters at Texas Tech University under the advisement of Dr. Corey Brelsfoard. I graduated in the summer of 2023. I investigated the effects of microplastics in relation to the mosquitoes Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus (the Asian tiger mosquito)."
"Though my research interests are broad," Lippey writes, "they generally center around the complexity of global change ecology and how insect interactions have responded to a rapidly changing world in the Anthropocene. I'm specifically intrigued by changes in ecological processes over various spatial and temporal scales, and how multiple simultaneous spatial and temporal dynamics further complicate the changes we observe across insects."
In her graduate studies, Lippey is exploring "insect responses to interactions between multiple global change drivers such as land use change (agricultural intensification and urbanization) and other anthropogenic drivers like warming climate, extreme climate events, and pesticide use."
Lippey was recently featured in a UC Davis article titled "Scientists and Their Science Tattoos" in which UC Davis professors and graduate students shared their tattoos with science news intern Malia Reiss of UC Davis Strategic Communications. Lippey's tattoos include Japanese rhinoceros beetles, a centipede, backwimmer, Madagascar hissing cockroach, cicada (emerging), a worm and a Darwin moth. "I did the worm myself," she said.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event begins at 5:45 with pizza and continues until 7 p.m.
Presenting their work are:
- Jasen Liu of the Santiago Ramírez lab, a member of the Graduate Group in Population Biology, who will discuss “Evolution of Floral Volatile Composite Across a Specialized Pollination System”
- Ashley Grupenhoff of the Hugh Safford lab, a member of the Graduate Group in Ecology, whose topic is “Plant Community Response to Increased Fire Frequency in Northern California Chaparral”
- Reed Kenny of the Dan Potter lab, a member of the Graduate Group in Ecology, who will cover "A Phylogenetic Analysis of the Placement of Juncus Sections Caespitosi and Graminifolii"
Jasen Liu. "Jasen went to UC Santa Barbara for his undergraduate studies, where he worked in the Mazer and Hodges labs studying mating system evolution and variation in floral pigmentation, both within and across species. He is fascinated by floral evolution, particularly through the lens of plant-pollinator interactions, and joined the Ramirez lab in 2019 through the Population Biology graduate group. Jasen is interested in investigating macroevolutionary patterns of scent production in euglossine-pollinated plants, in addition to the role of microevolutionary processes on generating reproductive isolation."
Ashley Grupenhoff. "Ashley's research is aimed at examining the consequences of altered disturbance regimes on species composition and ecosystem function. She is particularly interested in the effects of prescribed fire in shaping plant species, populations, and communities and is currently working with CalFire to implement a long-term monitoring program of prescribed fire in California. Before coming to Davis, she has conducted fieldwork across multiple taxa in Ecuador, American Samoa, and the western United States. Ashley obtained her BS in Biology at Virginia Commonwealth University."
Reed Kenny. "I am broadly interested in plant evolution and biodiversity. My past work has focused on plant taxonomy and floristics. My current interests are in the systematics of the genus Juncus. My ongoing projects include using molecular systematics to confirm the non-monophyly of the genus, resolve subgeneric relationships and study biogeographic patterns in the genus."
The Davis Botanical Society awards research grants to graduate and undergraduate students at UC Davis to help defray the expenses of independent study or other research projects. The student projects are field-oriented and related to plant taxonomy or plant evolutionary biology and ecology. A previous recipient was Shawn Christensen of the Rachel Vannette lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
The Davis Botanical Society is the support organization for the UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity and Botanical Conservatory. Membership includes subscription to the semi-annual newsletter, Lasthenia, as well as invitations to talks, field trips, and other events.
For more information, contact the Center for Plant Diversity Herbarium at (530) 752-1091 or Teri Barry, collections manager, at tcbarry@ucdavis.edu.