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: 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: 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: 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: 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.

written by: Lasair ni Chochlain

Climate change is something that we are all worried about. But as scientific researchers, linking fields as disparate in focus as evolutionary development and global change is quite a challenge. Dr. Yui Suzuki from Wellesley College is helping to pioneer this interdisciplinary research area by exploring how climate change may shape insect evolution and development. The UMD Department of Entomology hosted Dr. Suzuki for a talk on his research as well as a talk on his experience as a liberal arts professor on August 30, 2024.

By Lasair ní Chochlain and Eva Perry
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Urban trees provide important habitats for insects and other arthropods. Dr. Paola Olaya-Arenas, an adjunct professor at Universidad Icesi, presented the results of her research on Bogotá’s urban trees and associated insect communities to the University of Maryland’s Department of Entomology this April. Dr. Olaya-Arenas and collaborators sampled insects associated with Ficus americana Aubl. located in parks and on sidewalks in three urban areas in Bogotá, Colombia. A diverse and abundant community of herbivores, predators, and parasitoids was sampled, and information about their feeding habits, other host trees, and damage to plant tissue is described in Dr. Olaya-Arenas et al., 2022 bilingual publication “Insects associated with urban trees in Bogotá (Colombia): exploring their diversity and function.” This publication can be downloaded from the following link (Electronic book link), and it is a good guide for citizens and visitors of the city.

 By: Amanda Brucchieri and Helen Craig
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On any given day, Dr. Tanisha Williams might be found exploring the desert in search of bush tomatoes, analyzing historical herbarium samples, or nurturing a vibrant community of Black botanists. What underscores all her work is the elevation and exploration of the relationships between people and plants, especially in the context of human mediated climate change caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases (IPCC, 2013). In her work, Dr. Williams investigated how this change is affecting the phenology and diversity of plants, particularly in the context of climate change and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK).  

written by: Brendan Randall & Angela Saenz

A brisk, foggy morning; the sun rises on a midwest farm. Corn stalks sway for as far as the eye can see, seemingly the only life around. If one looks carefully, however, one will find the farm is teeming with life. Dr. Nate Haan is fascinated by the diversity of organisms on farms and how we can understand their ecology to improve farm sustainability and conservation of native biodiversity. Now an assistant professor in the Entomology Department at the University of Kentucky (UK), he is excited to answer fundamental questions about how farm management practices affect insects. In his seminar talk, Dr. Haan presented various approaches to test his central research question–does management affect insects in agricultural landscapes?​

written by: Jenan El-Hifnawi and Michael Adu-Brew

​​Academic institutions pride themselves on principled support for evidence-based solutions. This support, however, does not always seem to apply to institutional approaches to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) argues Dr. Raul Medina, a professor and member of the Diversity Science Research Cluster at Texas A&M. 

written by: ​Angela Saenz and Eva Perry
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Islands have been the backdrop of considerable scientific research and advancement for centuries, and not just because they tend to double as a nice vacation spot. What makes many islands so special to science and scientists is their isolation from other land masses, limiting the movement of species to and from them. This isolation provides a rare open-air opportunity to study how evolutionary processes shape ecological communities: think Darwin’s finches and the Anolis lizards of the Caribbean, or, in Dr. Natalie Graham’s case, arthropods on the Hawaiian archipelago. 

written by: ​Allison Huysman, Kathleen Evans & Taís Ribeiro 

As entomologists, we are often asked what mosquitoes are good for. These commonly hated insects - which are especially pesty during the summer months - are actually fascinating research subjects. Mosquitoes are extremely diverse, with around 3,500 species, and are also ecologically relevant. Several species are responsible for biological control (by eating other mosquito larvae that cause diseases) and others even pollinate! Unfortunately, some species drink human blood, and some of these are vectors of deadly diseases. Studying these vectors can help improve the prediction of diseases and help to control outbreaks. Here at the University of Maryland Entomology Department, students in the Fritz lab research different ways to predict the spread of Culex mosquitoes (Figure 1) and the viruses they can spread. In their Research in Progress talks, M.Sc student Ben Burgunder and Ph.D student Ben Gregory presented their work modeling the community composition and thermal tolerance of Culex mosquitoes.