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This summer Dr. Megan Fritz, Assoc Prof University of Maryland, flexed her sci-comms skills at the Capitol, joining fellow Entomological Society of America researchers to advocate for continued and increased federal investments in life-science research. https://go.umd.edu/3OV2Kgy
Congratulations to Profs Anahí Espíndola and Macarena Farcuh for being named Runners Up for The Entomological Society of America's Science Communication Award. ESA recognized the pair for their increasingly popular blog, Extension en Espanol.
From ESA's press release: The blog has published more than 100 posts since its creation, offering varied expert information that is inclusive, culturally relevant, accessible, and understandable to its target population. The blog currently reaches more than 9,000 monthly readers and has become a prime extension resource in Spanish for the state and beyond. Help spread the word about your colleagues award and blog by sharing with your networks on social ( X and facebook) and other platforms. UMD Research Scientist, Rafael Barreto de Andrade (Gruner Lab), has been collaborating with European researchers on a pretty big project - consolidating multi-taxon biodiversity databases from more than 3,500 (!) sampling units across Europe, with the aim to inform conservation and management strategies for European forests. This summer their work was published in Biological Conservation.
Thanks Rafael for sharing the results of this very exciting collaboration! To share Rafael's collab further, consider retweeting, liking the mention on FB, shouting across the hall to your colleagues, etc.  Meet one of the "craziest creatures" University of Maryland Professor Emeritus Mike Raupp has ever seen, the hammerhead worm. Not only is this worm aptly named for the shape of its head, it secretes the same neurotoxin found in puffer fish & has cannibalistic tendencies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/22/hammerhead-worms-invasive-poisonous-dc/ https://bugoftheweek.com/blog/2023/7/24/hammer-time-in-the-dmv-hammerhead-worms-bipalium-spp Share this info on the "craziest creature" with friends, family and coworkers via facebook, twitter or other platforms. Postdoctoral position in Fungal-Plant-Insect Associations, St. Leger Lab
Position summary: The St. Leger laboratory, Department of Entomology at The University of Maryland (UMD), invites applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar – Employee position starting when a qualified applicant is found-on a USDA/NSF funded project entitled “Determining the properties required for a genetically engineered biocontrol agent to work safely”. The candidate post-doctoral associate will work on a unique experimental system involving a radiating genus of fungi (Metarhizium spp) which have rapidly diversifying lifestyles that includes associations with plants and insects. The goal is to ask fundamental questions about invasion ecology (including persistence, propagation, potential horizontal gene transfer and biogeochemical impacts), potential adaptation in the field (e.g., divergence in insect and plant associations), mutational capacity (using genomic sequencing) and transgene stability. The project will provide insights into the genetic and molecular underpinnings determining evolutionary shifts in lifestyles that will be generally applicable to pathogens and hosts. Understanding these shifts is critical, especially in light of environmental change, invasive species and the laboratories work on transgenic approaches to controlling vectors of human disease. A combination of experimental approaches will be used, and there will be many opportunities to develop new projects to explore the evolution of lifestyle shifts. Follow link to view full job announcement.  Waters displaying insect to Future Farmers of America participant. It is with great enthusiasm we share that Todd Waters has received the University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Staff Award for his “Extraordinary Public Service to the University & Greater Community.”
Todd has been a leader in implementing the educational and land grant mission of our university, using insects to educate students and the public about STEM. Since 2017, Todd has maintained a blistering pace with the Insect Zoo. The zoo has been featured in approx. 100 events, reaching approx. 10,000 people. In this short time, he has had an immensely positive influence on learners from across academic environments. At UMD, Todd has been instrumental in: the Insect Petting Zoo at Maryland Day, an event that President Pines and UMD’s First Lady eagerly wait alongside community members for their chance to hold an insect; Entomology minor recruitment events on Hornbake Plaza where Todd talks up insects’ impacts on our environment; and classroom visits where Todd and Entomology professors introduce undergrads to the incredible diversity of arthropods. A few examples of the type of impact Todd’s Outreach work has had include: a classroom discussion with a Montgomery College Biology Class about insects as models across interdisciplinary studies; a presentation at Rockview Elementary School on insect anatomy and metamorphosis; and an exhibit in St. Mary's County where attendees learned about the Arizona blonde tarantula, among other fascinating arthropods. Join us in congratulating Todd on this well-deserved recognition!  Undergraduates from across disciplines joined Dr. Bill Lamp & Grad Assistant Amanda Rae Brucchieri for an i-series course ripped from the headlines, “BSCI145 The Insect Apocalypse: Real or Imagined”, a new course that encouraged students to learn more about the natural world and interpret scientific information presented to them. Over the semester students applied their knowledge through hands-on experiences in the classroom, lab and even field trips.
Earlier in May while some of us were scrolling through photos of the coronation across the pond, Prof Emerita Dr. Barbara Thorne was quoted talking about another monarch - the Termite King. She told The New York Times that "“There are some parallels to our monarchy system for humans.” Read article here>>
 Congratulations to Dr. Tammatha O'Brien, Principal Lecturer & Director of The Master of Professional Studies in Applied Entomology Program, for being named among UMD's Women of Influence. Tammatha is an outstanding lecturer who consistently and meaningfully supports women minorities in our community both inside and outside of the classroom. Fellow faculty member Louisa Wu says, “She cares very much about students and her colleagues, and she strongly promotes DEI and civil rights work in her teaching and campus service. I am inspired by all that she does.”
written by: Leo Kerner & Angela Saenz
Imagine a lush, highly diverse field of papaya that requires limited chemical interference to control insect and weed pests. This is the reality of living mulch. Dr. Robin Gomez, an associate professor of Weed Science at the University of Costa Rica, studies sustainable pest control methods in tropical ecosystems. He suggests that the key to successful implementation of sustainable agricultural practices relies on acquiring specialized knowledge of each system. When you see a honey bee buzzing around, or while you spread honey on your toast, have you ever wondered how old the honey bees that are visiting flowers or making honey are? The answer is: it depends. Worker honey bees assume different jobs in their life, and that role changes with age. Young workers take care of the colony, nursing and feeding the larvae. Later they become guards, protecting the hive. When the worker bee is even older, they take on the job of exploring the outdoors and foraging nectar and pollen for the colony. So, a bee pollinating a flower is probably older than the bee that made your honey.
written by: Mariom Carvajal
Insects are critical to the function of ecosystems and provide benefits to humans, such as pollination and biological control. Although many insects hold great economic and cultural value to humans and benefit our lives, some reduce agricultural productivity and others pose risks to human health. To find new ways to manage these pests, some Entomologists turn to the study of invisible cellular processes or insect-microbe interactions. Two research in progress talks presented on March 10th 2023 by University of Maryland researchers, Dr. Anastasia Naumenko and Mr. Brendan Randall, focused on how knowledge of these microscopic processes can be used for the benefit of agricultural and public health systems. By Ben Gregory These days, most Americans don’t worry too much about malaria, the deadly disease caused by the Plasmodium parasite and spread by Anopheles mosquitoes (Figure 1, left). That wasn’t always the case, however. In fact, during the nineteenth century, malaria was one of the leading causes of death in the United States, affecting nearly every corner of the country, but particularly the south (Hong 2008). Fortunately for those of us living here today, malaria is extremely rare. This is thanks to sweeping control and public health measures taken by the CDC and its predecessor organizations in the early and mid-twentieth centuries. But, more recently, another mosquito-borne disease of concern has spread across the country: West Nile fever. [Seminar Blog] Caste-switching jumping ants: studies on the plasticity of reproduction and lifespan5/3/2023
By Megan Ma
Dr. Francisco Carmona-Aldana (he/him), a postdoctoral scholar at the New York University School of Medicine, recently presented his research on “Ants: studies on the plasticity of reproduction and lifespan” which focuses on how ants obtain tradeoffs between reproduction and longevity through caste-switching. In the collaborative projects led by Dr. Danny Reinberg and Dr. Claude Desplan, he and his team study ants of the species Harpegnathos saltator as an experimental model to understand how aging can be regulated. H. saltator ants are peculiar in that workers can become pseudo-queens and take reproductive control of their colonies when a queen is absent. A group of 4 to 6 ants will undergo antennal dueling, a behavioral interaction to determine who will become pseudo-queens, or “gamergates.” These gamergates will have active ovaries, lay eggs, and extend their lifespans to accommodate this reproductive caste-switching. They live for 3 years in comparison to their lifespan as a former worker (1 year) and the maximum lifespan found in queens (5 years). In addition to altering the duration of their lifespans, gamergates have the potential to revert back to their worker states (induced in laboratory conditions). They can return to their original, non-reproductive role to perform their worker duties and no longer produce eggs. Written by: Lindsay Barranco
Dr. Krisztina Christmon has measured approximately 100,000 mites during the course of her PhD studies at the University of Maryland, which may very well be a world-record. She recently presented her research exit seminar entitled “Varroa destructor: abiotic and biotic correlates to body size, and the effects of size and host type on mite tolerance to acaricide exposure” and described how her inquiry into mite size variability began in 2016, as a new PhD student in the UMD Bee Lab. The UMD Bee lab administers the National Honeybee Disease Survey (NHDS), and maintains collected data from large and small-scale beekeepers across the United States in order to detect honey bee disease and monitor for invasive species. Invasive species, particularly varroa mites, pose a serious threat to honey bee health which in turn, potentially impacts the important pollination services honey bees provide to fruit and vegetable growers nationwide. Back in 2021, an exciting entomological event happened in the DMV area. As part of Brood X, millions of periodical cicadas emerged in tandem, providing a unique opportunity for researchers to study these charismatic insects. Mary Salcedo from the Socha Lab of Virginia Tech contacted the UMD Cicada Crew, an Extension and Outreach group led by Dr. Raupp and Dr. Shrewsbury, with the intention of finding cicada emergence hubs to research insect wing expansion, and grad student Angela Saenz, a former member of the Cicada Crew, led the way and helped with their research. As stated in Salcedo et al. (2023), they found that during ecdysis, cicadas pump hemolymph through wing veins to expand their folded wing pads, and after pumping ~16% of their body mass, their fully expanded wings become even lighter than the wing pads. These findings provide new insights into the role of insects' circulatory system in wing expansion.
Post-Doctoral Associate Position in Shrewsbury Lab - Biological Control / IPM
Position Summary: This position addresses the use of natural enemies (including pathogens) in the biological control of the invasive spotted lanternfly (SLF, Lycorma delicatula) in urban environments. The project is part of a collaborative effort with USDA and other university researchers with opportunities for networking and Extension. The incumbent will also participate in the statistical analysis and publication of existing data sets. Click here for more information. The Dept of Entomology is buzzing with excitement as University of Maryland moves closer to bee campus certification. Dr. Hawthorne shares with The Diamondback that obtaining this certification could be beneficial to the well-being of the campus. Not only by enhancing pollinator habitat but by expanding courses on plants, pollinators and their interactions.
https://www.facebook.com/UMDEntomology/posts/pfbid0v6SSeu6pYryeUT6dgT9MMjp6BV57A6jMKVRQM4rfPXJwJUunJq2QL1hzL6r8Hojl https://twitter.com/UMDEntomology/status/1642887187057221635?s=20 written by: Amanda Rae Brucchieri and Robert Joseph Salerno
"The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson. Can this quote be contested? To answer this question, one must consider the way scientific knowledge is continually evolving. The scientific process is self-correcting, meaning the acceptance of ideas should be based on available data. What is often overlooked are the influences of politics, policy, culture, and community in the process of science and the acceptance of scientific data. Dr. Fred Gould, a distinguished professor of Entomology at North Carolina State University whose relationship with the University of Maryland extends back over 30 years, addressed a full hall about this shadowed intersection of science and society. In his talk, Gould dove into the 16-year ban of Mendelian genetics in the Soviet Union and the history that resulted in the ban’s conception.  written by: Lasair ni Chochlain, Eric Hartel
Addressing the varied needs of graduate students as not only learners but also researchers and teachers is a complex job. The University of Maryland and the Department of Entomology are doing their best to tackle this issue head on in 2023. To learn more about how the disabilities of graduate students are accommodated at UMD, we invited the Director of Accessibility and Disability Service (ADS), Tessa Cahill, to come to the Entomology Dept. colloquium to present “Disability Compliance and Accommodations: A Graduate Student Experience.” Tessa is the inaugural director of ADS, which is currently going through a period of growth and expansion to better serve the campus community. These changes are the result of an an external review by the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) and support from UMD’s Administration that has led to ADS hiring more full-time staff and expanding their reach across many departments. By embracing this review and the changes ADS has made, the University of Maryland has been able to provide a significant increase in support. Improved communication between counselors, students, and faculty is also helping to standardize and improve the quality of services offered. Tessa first spoke about “how we got here” on a national level and then about the role and services of ADS on the university level.
Congratulations to Entomology graduate students Katie Reding and Minh Le, from the Pick lab, for their publication "Genome editing of the vermilion locus generates a visible eye color marker for Oncopeltus fasciatus" in Scientific Reports. The study used CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to generate an eye color mutant in Oncopeltus (Of). Bugs homozygous for mutations in the Of-vermillion gene are viable, fertile and have bright red rather than black eyes. This is the first visible, genetic marker for this species, paving the way for development of additional genetic tools in this emerging model system for Hemiptera. In addition, these studies mapped Of-vermillion to the X-chromosome, the first gene to be mapped to a chromosome in this species. Finally, experiments using RNAi showed that knocking down the Oncopeltus ortholog of the rosy gene (encoding xanthine dehydrogenase) in Of-vermillion mutants changed the body color from orange-red to yellow, thus identifying a second candidate gene useful as a visible marker.
Research-In-Progress talks are important opportunities for entomology graduate students to develop the communication skills necessary to become researchers in entomology and related disciplines. At the first research-in-progress talks of the spring 2023 semester, three graduate students presented their research, which cover different subfields of entomology: Theresa Menna, a 2nd-year Biological Sciences-CBBG PhD student in the Fritz Lab, Minh Le, a 2nd-year Entomology PhD student in the Pick Lab, and Max Ferlauto, a 4th-year Entomology PhD candidate in the Burghardt lab.
 Peak bloom at the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC. Photo by Andy He. Every spring, visitors flock to Washington, DC, to see over a thousand Japanese cherry trees in full bloom along the Potomac River. This ephemeral event draws massive numbers of viewers and concludes once the trees have shed their petals, sometimes just a week after blooming. We don’t often think about petals after they’ve fallen, but recent research suggests that these petals are more than just visually pleasing. Dr. Rebecca Hale is an urban ecologist who leads the Watershed Science Lab, a team focused on investigating urban stream dynamics to understand how cities can develop more sustainably. Dr. Hale and her team have recently found evidence that petals from flowering trees can have a tremendous impact on nutrient levels in surrounding water systems. Even in urban settings, these water systems are a foundational component of the ecosystems we rely on.
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