Posts Tagged: seminars

Superorganisms, Mimicry and Aphids

Superorganisms, mimicry and aphids...

Those are some of the topics to be covered at the UC Davis Department of Entomology's fall noonhour seminars, to begin Wednesday, Oct. 17 and continue through Wednesday, Nov. 28 in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Building.

Assistant professors Joanna Chiu and Brian Johnson of the UC Davis Department of Entomology are coordinating the fall noonhour seminars.

All seminars will be held every Wednesday except for Nov. 14. No seminar will be held that day. That's during the Entomological Society of America's annual meeting, which will take place Nov. 11-14 in Knoxville, Tenn.

The good news is that if you cannot attend these seminars, not to worry. Professor James R. Carey is arranging the videotaping of the seminars. They will be be broadcast at a later date on UCTV. Meanwhile, if you missed any of the previous ones, most can be accessed on UCTV.

For free.

The lineup for the fall seminars:

Oct. 17:  Tim Linksvayer, assistant professor, University of Pennsylvania.
Title: "Colony-Level Social Insect Gene Regulatory Networks"
Host: Brian Johnson, assistant professor of entomology 

Oct. 24: Micky Eubanks, professor, Texas A&M University
Title: "Community Ecology of a "Pest": Aphids Rule their World via Powerful Indirect Effects"
Host: Graduate student Billy Kimmel

Oct. 31: Sarjeet Gill, professor, UC Riverside
Title: "Bacterial Toxins in Disease Mosquito Vector Control"
Host: Bruce Hammock, distinguished professor of entomology 

Nov. 7:  Taro Ohkawa, postdoctoral researcher, UC Berkeley
Title: "Baculovirus Manipulation of the Host Actin Cytoskeleton: Roles in Entry and Egress"
Host: George Kamita from the Bruce Hammock lab 

Nov. 14: No seminar this week (Entomological Society of America's annual meeting)

Nov. 28: James Mallet, professor, Harvard University
Title: "Hybridization, Mimicry and the Origin of Species in Heliconius
Butterflies"
Host: Gregory Lanzaro, professor, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine

The first speaker, evolutionary biologist Tim Linksvayer, will focus on superorganisms. Honey bees are considered superorganisms.

"Individuals in insect societies are inextricably linked by social interactions,” Linksvayer writes in his abstract. “Colony-level social networks coordinate individual function and colony homeostasis just as physiological networks coordinate tissue function and homeostasis within individuals. As a result, social insect colonies are often described as ‘superorganisms’ composed of organisms that function together more-or-less as a unit. This characteristic is thought to have led to the remarkable ecological and evolutionary success of the social insects.

"Despite these conspicuous superorganismal properties and the inherent hierarchical organization of life in insect societies (i.e. colony-level, organismal-level), most previous studies of the evolutionary genetic and molecular basis of social insect traits use the same reductionist approaches that have been developed for solitary organisms, where an individual’s traits are only influenced by its own genome. More realistically, in social organisms, an individual’s traits are the property of the genomes of all social group members. I will discuss ongoing integrative research studying how social interactions in ants and honey bees affect the expression and evolution of individual- and group-level traits."

Stay tuned!

Honey bees are considered a superorganism. Here worker bees form a retinue around the queen. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Honey bees are considered a superorganism. Here worker bees form a retinue around the queen. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Winter Wonderland of Seminars

Assistant professors Louie Yang and Joanna Chiu have just announced the UC Davis Department of Entomology's list of seminar speakers for the winter quarter.

And what a list it is!

It's a winter wonderland of speakers. And the good news is, most will be webcast and then posted on UCTV, compliments of a project led by professor James R. Carey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.

The seminars begin Wednesday, Jan. 11 and will continue every Wednesday through March 21. All will be held from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall, Klieber Hall Lane.

One subject that's sure to attract a lot of attention: pollen and pollinators. We're looking forward to hearing  T’ai Roulston, research associate professor and curator, State Arboretum of Virginia, speak Feb. 1 on "Pollen as a Resource for Pollinators: What Governs Quality?"

In fact, we're looking forward to all of the speakers!

Here's the line-up:

Jan. 11: Denise Ferkey, assistant professor, State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, will speak on "Regulation of Chemosensory Signaling in C. elegans."
Hosts: Valerie Williamson, professor of nematology, and Ed Lewis, professor of nematology and entomology and acting chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.

Jan. 18: Anurag Agrawal, professor of ecology at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., will speak on "Evolutionary Ecology of Plant Defenses."
Host: Andrew Merwin of the Michael Parrella lab.
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

Jan. 25: Mary Louise Flint, Cooperative Extension specialist and associate director for Urban and Community IPM, UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, will speak on "Educating the Urban Public about Insect Pests and their Management."
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

Feb. 1: T’ai Roulston, research associate professor and curator, State Arboretum of Virginia, will speak on "Pollen as a Resource for Pollinators: What Governs Quality?"
Host: Neal Williams, assistant professor of entomology.
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

Feb. 8: Damian Elias, assistant professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley, will speak on "Multimodal Communication in Jumping Spiders."
Host: Leslie Saul of the Neal Williams lab.
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

Feb. 15: Jamesina J. Scott, district manager and research director, Lake County Vector Control District, will speak on  "Aedes japonicus -- Tracking an Invasive Mosquito We Knew Very Little About."
Host: Brittany Mills of the William Reisen lab.
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

Feb. 22: Jennifer Thaler, associate professor, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., will speak on "Tri-Trophic Plant-Insect Interactions in Solanaceous Plants."
Host: Billy Krimmel of the Jay Rosenheim lab
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

Feb. 29: Jay Rosenheim, professor of entomology at UC Davis, will speak on "Insect Ecology in Natural and Agricultural Systems."
Host: Kelly Hamby of the Frank Zalom lab.
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

March 7: Candice Stafford, graduate student researcher in the Diane Ullman lab, will speak on "A Virus at the Helm: Infection with Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus Modifies Thrips Feeding Behavior."
Host: Diane Ullman, professor of entomology and associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

March 14: Ulrich Mueller, W. M. Wheeler Lost-Pines Professor of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, will speak on "Ant-Microbe Interaction and Evolution."
Host: Marek Borowiec of the Phil Ward lab.
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

March 21: Stephen Welter, professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley, and associate dean of instruction and student affairs, will speak on "Pheromone Mating Disruption Systems for Management of Insects in Perennial Crops:  New Successes with Old Problems."
Host: Steve Seybold, UC Davis Department of Entomology affiliate
To be webcast and posted on UCTV

Pollen packin' honey bee (red pollen from rock purslane) nectaring on lavender. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Pollen packin' honey bee (red pollen from rockpurslane) nectaring on lavender. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Honey bee covered with blue pollen from bird's eyes (Gilia tricolor). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

From UC Berkeley to UC Davis

The arthropod community at UC Davis--and beyond--has circled the date, Wednesday, Feb. 24.

It's not just the last Wednesday of the month.

That's when insect biologist Rosemary Gillespie,  director of the Essig Museum of Entomology, University of California, Berkeley, and chair of the Berkeley Natural History Museums, will be at UC Davis to speak on "Community Assembly through Adaptive Radiation: Spiders on Islands.”

The seminar, set from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs, Kleiber Drive, is part of the UC Department of Entomology's winter seminar series.  Can't make it to Briggs Hall? It will be Webcast live and then archived on the UC Davis Department of Entomology Web site.

“Remote islands are heralded as 'natural laboratories,' with communities largely comprising species that have evolved within the islands as a result of adaptive radiation,” said Gillespie, who is also the Schlinger chair of systematics and professor of organisms and the environment. “I have been studying spiders to elucidate commonalities underlying patterns of adaptive radiation and how communities are filled in such situations.”

“Overall, this research promises insights into the interplay between selection and the biotic environment in the evolution of species within a community,” she said.

Chris Searcy, graduate student in the Population Biology Graduate Group, Center for Population Biology, will introduce Gillespie.

Ian Pearse, graduate student studying with major professor Rick Karban, is coordinating the winter seminars, which began Jan. 6 and continue through March 10.

All seminars are from 12:10 to 1 p.m. on Wednesdays. On tap March 3 is Moran Segoli, postdoctoral researcher in the Jay Rosenheim lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology. He will speak on The Importance of Predation in Shaping Desert Communities and Trophic Levels."

On March 10, research chemist John Beck of the USDA Agricultural Research Station, Albany, will speak on "The Search for Non-Pheromonal Volatile Organic Compounds Toward Control of Navel Orangeworm, a Major Insect Pest of California Tree Nuts.”

Under a pilot Webcasting program launched by UC Davis entomology professor James Carey,  these entomology seminars are being Webcast by his graduate students, James Harwood and Amy Morice. Not all are Webcast; some speakers requested they not be due to unpublished data.

A Web page lists all the archived seminars. Just click and watch.

Rosemary Gillespie

ROSEMARY GILLESPIE, director of the Essig Museum of Entomology, University of California, Berkeley, and chair of the Berkeley Natural History Museums, will be UC Davis on Feb. 24 to speak on "Community Assembly through Adaptive Radiation: Spiders on Islands.”