- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The Zoom link is https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/8120304398
Homicz focuses her research on the interactions between bark beetles and fire, including the effect of bark beetles on tree mortality after prescribed burning and mechanical thinning in the Sierra Nevada. She is also monitoring increases in fuel loads following a western pine beetle outbreak in the southern and central Sierra Nevada.
Homicz is advised by research forest entomologist Christopher Fettig of the Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, and molecular geneticist/physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair of the department.
Fettig was a colleague of the late Steve Seybold (1959-2019), a Pacific Southwest Research Station research entomologist and a department lecturer and researcher. Seybold, who served as Homicz' first advisor, was one of the pioneering scientists researching the newly discovered thousand cankers disease (TCD), caused by the walnut twig beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, in association with the canker-producing fungus, Geosmithia morbida.
Homicz holds associate of science degrees in biology and natural sciences from Shasta College (2016), and a bachelor of science degree in animal biology, with an emphasis in entomology, from UC Davis (2018). Her practicum (with Seybold as advisor): “Landing Behavior of the Walnut Twig Beetle on Host and Non-host Hardwood Trees under the Influence of Aggregation Pheromone in a Northern California Riparian Forest."
As an undergraduate student, Homicz served in the labs of Seybold and James Carey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. As a graduate student, she has served as a teaching assistant for the Animal Biology major, and Introduction to Evolution and Ecology, and as a guest lecturer (forest entomology) in Introduction to Entomology, ENT 10. She presents her research at Entomological Society of America meetings, and at forest-affiliated conferences.
Homicz taught the fundamentals of forestry, including forest ecology, forest measurements and silviculture, at an eight-week UC Berkeley Forestry Camp in 2019. The camp culminated with a capstone project of developing a forest management plant for a 160-acre stand.
Active in campus and community projects, Homicz is a member of the UC Davis Graduate Student Association (EGSA) and represents EGSA at meetings of the campuswide UC Davis Graduate Student Association. She is also a member and former treasurer of UC Davis Entomology Club, advised by forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey. Homicz assisted with Kimsey's Pacific Deathwatch Beetle Surveys on Alcatraz Island.
As a volunteer at the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology, Homicz sorted and identified specimens and integrated specimens into the museum collection. She also participates in the Bohart Museum outreach activities.
An article she co-authored, "Fire and Insect Interactions in North American Forests," is pending publication in Current Forest Reports. Among her other publications:
- Homicz, C.S., C.J. Fettig, A.S. Munson, and D.R. Cluck. 2022. Western pine beetle. USDA Forest Service, Forest Insect and Disease Leaflet # 1, 16pp. https://www.fs.fed.us/foresthealth/docs/fidls/FIDL-01-WesternPineBeetle.pdf
- Homicz, C.S., J. P. Audley, Y. Chen, R. M. Bostock, S. J. Seybold. 2020. Landing Behavior of the Walnut Twig Beetle on Host and Non-Host Hardwood Trees under the Influence of Aggregation Pheromone in a Northern California Riparian Forest. Agriculture and Forest Entomology.
- Audley, J. P., C. S. Homicz, R. M. Bostock, S. J. Seybold. 2020. A Study of Landing Behavior by the Walnut Twig Beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, Among Host and Non-Host Hardwood Trees in a Northern California Riparian Forest. Agriculture and Forest Entomology
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"In summary, I aim to use ecoinformatics (ecological big data, aggregated from multiple sources) to examine the impact of global change on agricultural insect populations," Lippey related. "A consistent challenge for researchers working in natural and managed ecosystems is that data available for characterizing insect responses to global change are severely limited across space and time. As a result, we know very little about how insects are responding to global change over time, and to what extent various global change drivers (e.g., climate change, land use change, pesticides) are responsible for documented changes in insect abundance. Here, I will use long-term data collected in agricultural systems for other purposes to bridge this data gap."
"Because field scouts and farmers collect data in a decentralized way, the availability, size, and accuracy of relevant agricultural data are unrivaled," she noted. "This approach will contribute to the emergence of a novel framework using big data to investigate global change questions across larger spatial and temporal axes than ever before. My results will have implications for the impact of anthropogenic pressure on food production stability, biodiversity, and ecosystem health."
Lippey, who received her bachelor's degree in entomology from UC Davis in 2019, is a graduate student of agricultural entomology in the Rosenheim lab, and an urban entomology graduate student in the Meineke lab. She previously did research in the Louie Yang lab, 2018-2021, as an undergraduate research assistant in insect ecology, and as an undergraduate research assistant in ant systematics with the Philip Ward lab.
In the Yang lab, Lippey investigated the effect of stripes on aversive behavior in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), tsetse flies (Glossina), and mosquitoes (Aedes); studied the effect of size and movement constraints on ontogenetic color change (OCC) of swallowtail larvae (Papilio); and co-authored a collaborative review paper, "The Complexity of Global Change and its Effects on Insects," published in 2021 in the Current Opinion in Insect Science.
In the Ward lab, she studied the phenotypic evolution of the Big-Eyed Tree Ant (Pseudomyrmecinae: Tetraponera) and delivered a presentation on the project at the 2019 UC Davis Undergraduate Research Conference.
Lippey presented a poster on "Effects of Surrounding Landscapes on the Fork-tailed Bush Katydid (Scudderia furcata) in California Citrus" at the 2021 Entomological Society of America conference in Denver.
A talented illustrator, Lippey served as an illustrator and author of BuprestidID, an apolyclave identification key for more than 500 genera of Buprestidae (family of beetles known as jewel beetles or metallic wood-boring beetles) in a project headed by USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
