written by: Carter Dierlam

​Professor Akito Kawahara is a Professor, Curator, and Director of the McGuire Center located in Gainesville Florida. The McGuire Center serves as a primary hub for Lepidoptera (Moths and Butterflies) and biodiversity research in the US. Dr. Kawahara studies the evolution and diversity of Lepidoptera. His lab focuses on answering key questions, such as how growing cities and their light pollution affect nocturnal moths, how different moth species fend off bat attacks, and other aspects of their development. A PhD graduate of the University of Maryland, Dr. Kawahara recently visited and presented to the UMD Entomology department to discuss some of his interesting findings. Specifically, he shared his research on the various adaptations moths use to fend off bat attacks. 

written by: Robert Salerno & Helen Craig
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Have you ever applied a pesticide to control a pest problem in your yard, garden, or farm? If so, have you thought about where the pesticide may end up or the impacts it will have on the environment? If you answered yes to these questions, you may be relieved to know this is the job of environmental risk assessors at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There, they ask important questions like what are the potential effects of a pesticide, how does it move through the environment, how are different organisms in the environment potentially exposed, and what is the likelihood of harmful effects occurring when a pesticide is applied? The answers to these essential questions are what make up an ecological risk assessment. Before a pesticide can be registered, the EPA needs to obtain or produce evidence that the pesticide “will not generally cause any unreasonable risk to man or the environment.”
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Recently, Annie Krueger, a consultant from Compliance Services International, spoke to the UMD entomology department about the past, present, and future of pesticides and the Endangered Species Act. She highlighted how ecological risks are assessed for a pesticide, described how threatened and endangered species are protected from pesticides, and shared how different groups are working towards the coexistence of pesticides in agriculture and protected species. Her talk shed light on the complex balancing act between protecting biodiversity and supporting agricultural production: a challenge that continues to shape the future of pesticide regulation.

written by: Benjamin P Gregory

​Over the past few years, a number of reports have shaken the entomology world by indicating that insect populations are declining globally at an unprecedented rate. Dubbed the “insect apocalypse” by the media, this decline in insect population raises a number of serious concerns for the biosphere. Insects make up the foundation of many food chains, and are fundamental to ecosystems all over the world.
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So why is this decline happening? Among many drivers, pesticide use is very significant. Pesticides can be helpful tools for reducing populations of harmful insects, like those that feed on our crops or spread diseases. But for all of their strengths, pesticides often lack precision, and their broad application kills all insects, including beneficial species that provide important ecosystem services.

written by: Makayla Harrison

​​We often forget about the vibrant and essential world that lives beneath our feet, which includes microorganisms and soil arthropods. While farms often use machines and chemicals, the benefit of working with the world underground often goes unnoticed. Robert Salerno – a graduating master’s student and member of the Lamp lab– discussed his thesis work exploring the response of soil arthropods to ecological intensification in agricultural forage systems during a recent colloquium with the Entomology department. Forage systems are used to feed livestock, and they are managed in many different ways. While some systems are managed in a conventional manner, using heavy machinery and chemical inputs, other systems use the ecosystem's natural functions to support and regulate the land. The method of using the natural functions of the ecosystem to sustainably produce agricultural goods is called ecological intensification. 

written by: Maggie Schaefer

When you drive through the suburbs, you often see nothing more than barren, empty lawns. These yards are voids for senses, both for us and for other life. Nancy Lawson’s yard is the exact opposite. With an explosion of signals between the native plants she has cultivated and the animals they have brought, she observes every day just how important a conservation garden can be.
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Lawson, a certified Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional, master naturalist, and University of Maryland journalism alumna, recently presented her talk “A World of Discovery: Blending Science and Heart in the Sensory Wildscape.” Starting with journalism work for an animal protection organization, she felt most drawn to stories on urban wildlife. Now, she pursues that passion for wildlife writing as a full-time career, giving talks, writing books, and compiling her writings and photographs at The Humane Gardener. 

written by: Ben Burgunder 
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​Many of us are fascinated by insects and their stories. We are amazed by the transformation of the earth-bound caterpillar to the glorious butterfly. But before a caterpillar can become a butterfly, it first must hatch from the egg. How much do we know about the building blocks that allow a tiny egg to become a caterpillar in the first place? A largely unexplored world of genetic machinery tirelessly works to form the developing embryo beneath the egg’s shell. With advanced genetic tools, researchers can tinker with the embryological building blocks that shape caterpillars and begin to reveal this hidden world.

written by: Allison Elizabeth Huysman
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​Mosquitoes are well known as both irritating and as vectors of dangerous diseases. In parts of the world like Africa, southeast Asia, and South America, mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles spread the life-threatening disease malaria. Public health measures to control disease transmission by mosquitoes include physical prevention with bed nets and chemical prevention using insect repellents. However, the effectiveness of chemical measures depends on the mosquitoes not developing a resistance to them.

written by: Amanda Rae Brucchieri
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​Back in the UMD Entomology Department where she previously earned her Master’s degree, Dr. Morgan Thompson is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Burghardt Lab. Upon returning to the department, she shared some interesting findings from her doctoral research. At this week’s Colloquium, Dr. Thompson told three stories: undercover operation, eavesdropping plants, and phytochemical diversity. Altogether, these research tales earned her the prestigious title of PhD from Texas A&M University. 

written by: Jillian Stewart

What do you do with a drunken crayfish? If you’re in the Herberholz lab, you quantify how long it takes for the crayfish to get well and truly sloshed, and use it to model the impacts of social isolation on the nervous system.
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Crayfish are a valuable model for the nervous system, with which researchers are quite familiar. Their relatively large neurons are easy to work with and can survive outside the animal for several hours. The crayfish nervous system has been well mapped and the roles of individual nerves are often known (Venuti et al, 2021).

In addition to their nervous systems, crayfish exhibit simple social behaviours. Crayfish form linear social hierarchies by dueling with each other. These hierarchies last for about seven days, after which the crayfish forget who won and duke it out again. Dr. Herberholz and his lab at UMD’s Department of Psychology used these social systems to model how isolation affects the nervous system’s response to alcohol. They placed individual crayfish, some socially isolated for seven days and others communally housed, in a tank of water with alcohol in it.

Crayfish exhibit distinct phases of intoxication: for the first ten or fifteen minutes, they are unaffected. Then, they start to stand up tall on their tip-toes. Next, they perform an escape maneuver by flipping their tail repeatedly (image 1). Finally, the crayfish lands on its back and is unable to right itself. At this point, the crayfish is returned to fresh water and recovers in a couple hours. 

written by: M. Rho Ma

​Insects are both essential to ecosystems and a source of challenges for human health and agriculture. They pollinate crops, serve as food for other species, and contribute to nutrient cycling, but they can also act as vectors for diseases or suffer population declines due to human activity. Striking a balance between conserving beneficial insects and managing harmful ones is a pressing concern in entomology. The following research-in-progress talks by graduate students demonstrate how entomological research bridges the gap between ecological understanding and practical solutions, focusing on pesticide impacts, mosquito adaptation, and disease surveillance.  

written by: Michael Adu-Brew and Leo M Kerner
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​The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was instituted in 1970 and is tasked with matters of environmental protection. Its mandate is to provide clean air, land, and water, reduce environmental risk based on science, administer and enforce federal laws protecting human health and the environment, and promote environmental stewardship1 . As part of the UMD Department of Entomology seminar series, Mr. Keith Sappington – a Senior Science Advisor at EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs – provided an overview on December 6 th , 2024 of the agency’s procedures for pesticide ecological risk assessment and how these procedures are used to assess risk to insect pollinators and endangered species.

The Hamby Lab works to encourage the use of Insect Pest Management (IPM) in agroecosystems, aiming to improve management tactics and create more sustainable alternatives. Their latest study, “Preventative insecticides reduce seedling injury, but do not increase yield in Bt and non-Bt corn grown in the mid-Atlantic” demonstrates that while preventive tactics, like neonicotinoid seed treatments and in-furrow pyrethroids, effectively manage pests, consistent pest pressure is needed to justify their use. 
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After evaluating the effectiveness of these preventative insecticide treatments in field corn production, their study finds that while damage can be reduced using these early season preventive measures, at the end of the season yield is not significantly increased. The take-home message from the study: These preventive measures do not pay off in all situations and insecticide use could be reduced. A more effective IPM approach incorporates pest pressure, using preventative insecticides where pests consistently occur and foliar insecticides for sporadic issues that spring up. Multiple non-chemical prevention strategies should also be used before resorting to chemical treatments.

This semester we welcome aboard two new lecturers to the Department of Entomology, Drs. Chloe Garfinkel and Jessie Mutz. 
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Chloe Garfinkel joins us after wrapping up her appointment as Assistant Teaching Professor of Biology at Loyola University Maryland, where she taught Environmental Biology and Insect Biology. Between her instruction at Loyola and her teaching assistantship at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she earned her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Chloe brings 7+ years of instructional expertise and experience back to UMD. We say, “back to UMD” because, excitingly, Chloe is a Terp alum, earning a B.S. in Biological Sciences: Ecology and Evolution, 18’, with honors in Entomology under the advisement of Dr. Lamp.  This Spring Chloe will bring her professional career full circle, teaching some of the very same courses she took as an undergrad student.
Fun facts about Chloe: Chloe has a 9-year-old orange male cat named Chompy. She is an avid crafter (crochet, card making, painting, etc.) and proud owner of a Cricut (the craft cutting machine, not a pet insect) that you would be welcome to borrow.
Jessie Mutz earned her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Florida State University, focusing on the evolutionary ecology of herbivorous insects. While earning her degree she taught courses in Ecology, Evolution, and Experimental Design. Most recently, she completed a USDA Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, using experiments and modeling to investigate how plant inducible defenses influence plant-herbivore population dynamics. We are excited to have Jessie bring her in-depth scientific knowledge and decade of instructional experience to the classrooms of UMD.  
Fun facts about Jessie: Jessie performed in a band during grad school and has written fan-favorite folk rock songs about turtles and spider ballooning. Her dog, Tito, is a total sweetie but probably the wrong combination of too big and too excitable to make regular on-campus appearances (bummer).

Please join us in giving Chloe and Jessie a warm welcome to Entomology! You can meet up with them in person at their offices (PLS 3142 & PLS3146). Alternatively, catch up with them via email at ([email protected] & [email protected]).

Congratulations to the recipients of the Fall 24 Ernest N. Cory Undergraduate Scholarship, recognized for their extraordinary efforts in Entomology.

Veronika Valverde Jimenez is a senior at the University of Maryland majoring in Cell Biology and Genetics. She has been working in the Pick Lab since summer of 2023, with a focus on assessing the function of the ebony gene in Oncopeltus fasciatus with the help of Dr.  Katie Reding, work she continued this fall semester.In the Pick Lab she is learning to perform procedures such as RNAi and CRISPR injections. Afterwards, she plans to pursue genetic counseling, saying that “research has provided me with beneficial knowledge that will prepare me for this career.”

Margaret Kato is a junior majoring in Biological Sciences with a minor in Computer Science. Since June of 2023, she has worked as a lab technician in Krishnan Lab, helping with projects related to insect toxicology and how non-target species are impacted by pesticide application. She is also working on an entomology honors thesis about Coleopteran sensitivity to the major insecticide classes. Margaret says, “I am grateful for the hands-on experience offered by the Entomology Department and hope to use the skills and knowledge I have gained in my future career!”

Yasmine Helbling is an Ecology and Evolution Major, with an Entomology minor and Entomology honors student. She started off working in the Burghardt Lab dabbling in urban ecology research collecting insects off native red maple trees and invasive Norway maples. She currently works in the Lamp lab where she is embarking on her first independent research project which looks into whether host-plant resistance is reducing biological control, thereby allowing secondary pests to thrive. This semester she attended the Entomological Society of America’s annual meeting to present, “Does host-plant resistance inadvertently increase secondary pest populations by reducing biocontrol?”

written by: Jillian Stewart 
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There’s something smelly down in Texas. These odors are produced by plants under attack by insects. Plants react to their insect attackers by producing specific blends of odor compounds. These responses to pests, and how they differ between plants was the topic of Dr. Emily Russavage’s Doctoral thesis, which she presented at UMD recently. She tested the reaction of different cultivars of sorghum when the sorghum aphid -a major, destructive pest- arrived and started sucking their juices.

written by: Allison Huysman
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​What do entomologists and stage actors have in common? We both speak in front of crowds of people. We may not think of scientific presentations as performances, but according to Drew Barker, University of Maryland Performing Arts Librarian, we should. Drew Barker grew up in the theatre and teaches oral communication through the Theatre department at UMD. At a recent seminar, he shared tips from the world of performing arts that scientists can use to make their presentations more engaging.

 written by: Makala Nicole Harrison 
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The looming threat of climate change highlights the importance of developing agricultural systems that can stand against the forces of pest arthropods, especially insects, and extreme weather. As part of the UMD Department of Entomology seminar series, Dr. Anna Wallingford – a USDA research scientist in the Invasive Insect Biocontrol & Behavior Lab in Beltsville, Maryland – discussed how the use of high tunnel systems can protect crops and increase their productivity. High tunnel systems, also called “hoop houses” consist of metal hoops covered in plastic or fabric to create a greenhouse-like structure (Fig. 1). High tunnel systems protect crops from rain and extreme weather, both being consequences of climate change, which increases the shelf-life and marketability of the produce while decreasing the occurrence of fungal diseases. While widespread use of high tunnels is fairly recent in the United States, the structures are used worldwide [1]. The structures can utilize varying levels of technology, some have electricity that powers automatic rolling side walls and air conditioning, while others are simple structures that require the farmer to roll up the sides manually. When the tunnels are equipped with passive heating and cooling systems, they are able to extend the growing season by staying warm into the cooler winter months. The tradeoff for using high tunnel systems is that unique pest control issues can arise. 

written by: Pick lab
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Visible features of organismal body plans are often highly conserved within large taxa. For example, different species of birds have wings and beaks. For insects, segmentation is a shared and defining feature of the body plan.  Screens in the model insect Drosophila previously identified genes responsible for the development of body segments and one might have thought that different insects would all utilize the same genes, given that they all are segmented. In a paper published from the Pick lab in Science Advances, Reding et al. show that this is not the case: different insects use different genes to achieve the same outcome – formation of body segments. Studying the milkweed bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus, graduate student Katie Reding undertook a challenging screen to ask if novel genes control segmentation in this species. Collaborating with scientists at the Institute for Genome Science, University of Maryland School of Medicine, she analyzed the sequences of genes expressed at time points during embryonic development when segmentation is established. She then analyzed the expression patterns of over 50 of these genes and identified one, Blimp1, expressed in a pattern expected for a role in segmentation. She followed this with RNA interference experiments that suggested a role for Blimp1 in generating segments. To stringently test Blimp1’ s function, Katie used CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, a technique she had previously developed in the Pick lab, to generate a mutation in the newly identified gene. This mutation showed a Drosophila-like segmentation phenotype, although Blimp1 is not required for segmentation in Drosophila. This exciting result demonstrated genetic diversity underlying the highly conserved feature of segmentation in insects: during evolution, regulatory genes have changed function dramatically but without any impact on phenotype or morphology. Thus, organisms are even more diverse than their phenotypes show us: even for a shared feature, the genes controlling it may be wholly different in different species - an invisible layer of biodiversity in animal systems. 

written by: Robert Salerno
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​Have you noticed throughout the past few decades that the windshield of your vehicle rarely seems to receive smudges from collisions with insects anymore? Is it because the aerodynamics of your vehicle have improved so much so that the insects glide right by unscathed; or are there other forces at play?
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​This decrease reflects a larger problem. Studies around the world have revealed declines in insect abundance, diversity, and biomass throughout the past 20+ years1. It should come as no surprise that insects are facing a multitude of anthropogenic threats including habitat loss, climate change, pollution, and the introduction of invasive species (just to name a few). If these anthropogenic influences weren't severe enough on their own, combining them leads to interactions and synergies which have the potential to wreak havoc on insect communities.

written by: Ben Burgunder
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Across Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic United States, fall is rapidly approaching. But as the weather chills and pumpkins appear on porches, yard-owning Americans have a big choice to make: should they remove fallen leaves or let them rest? Every year, trees in urban America drop an estimated 37 million tons of leaves (Nowak & Greenfield, 2018). When homeowners elect to remove their fallen leaves, what happens to the spiders, caterpillars, beetles, and other insects that rely on decaying leaves for food and shelter? While it had been determined that removing leaves was bad news for soil-dwelling arthropods (Ober and DeGroote, 2014), inspiring campaigns to “Leave the Leaves” (AP News, Xerces Society), no one had yet tested this for aboveground insects and spiders.

Dr. Max Ferlauto (Fig. 1), the state entomologist of Maryland and recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s Department of Entomology, was up for the challenge. Over two years, he experimented with the fallen leaves of 20 pesticide-free suburban Maryland yards to work out the hidden effects of leaf removal on insects and the ecosystem. He set up experimental and control square meters across the lawns. In the experimental squares in ‘high maintenance’ spaces, areas of yards that were regularly raked, he added leaves. In the ‘low maintenance’ experimental squares, located in areas of the yard where leaves were historically left to rest, he removed the leaves. In the spring, he set up traps that captured insects emerging from these squares, which allowed him to sample the tens of thousands of pollinators, predators, herbivores, and decomposers that dwell in yards.

written by: Amanda ​Brucchieri​

​You’re standing in front of a wall of mosquito repellent. You need to choose the best product, or you are going to be itchy and rather miserable. An ad for some obscure product interrupts the music from the store's speakers and you know you are running out of time to decide. What bottle do you reach for? Dr. Chris Potter, a researcher and professor from Johns Hopkins may have some useful information that will have you choosing the right product for you. 

written by: Margaret Ann Schaefer

​In her talk “Working at the Intersection: Reflections on public engagement in science,” Dr. Holly Menninger, Executive Director of the Bell Museum in Minnesota, discussed her path into a career of science communication.
 
Although Dr. Menninger is now deeply involved in public engagement, it was not her original plan when she started at the University of Maryland as a student of Dr. Margaret Palmer. She also states she “never had an ah-ha moment” where she suddenly realized that was what she wanted to do – her career has been a journey in different areas of engagement (including science policy and extension) that ultimately led her to the museum field. While she was at UMD, she studied the effect of the nutrient pulse from the 2004 Brood X cicada emergence (and subsequent input to many streams) on stream metabolism. These periodical cicadas took flight across the Washington DC Metro area after seventeen years of feeding on tree roots as nymphs. When they came out and generated interest in the public, Dr. Menninger – as part of a group of grad students known as the “Cicadamaniacs” -- found herself the spokesperson. She noted that she had her first foray in media outreach live on CNN’s American Morning because Dr. Mike Raupp, the ‘Bug Guy,’ was appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America.