Written by Todd Waters, Agricultural Technician Supervisor

On Saturday April 24 the Entomology Department joined AGNR and UME to participate in UMD Day at the Maryland State Fair. Our Insect Zoo guru, Todd Waters, organized a group of wonderful volunteers to run the tables and Dr. Michael Raupp carried a forward detachment of chitinous friends for an early morning interview on Fox45 Baltimore to advertise the event. We were provided tables in the 4-H and Home Arts Building and arrived before noon with a car full of terraria and arthropods. Before we could even set the first enclosure on the table, we were surrounded by a swarm of curious onlookers squirming in shock and fluttering with excitement. They were but moths, and our exhibit the finest lamp. Dr. Leslie Pick, covered in stick bugs, and Dr. Raupp, with a large tarantula in his hands, flourishingly convinced terrified spectators to hold Malaysian Giant Leaf Bugs, and our illustrious Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula “Rosie,” all of them becoming instant fans. 

Publications
Cato A, ^ Afful E, Nayak MK and Phillips TW. Evaluation of Knockdown Bioassay Methods to Assess Phosphine Resistance in the Red Flour Beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Insects. 2019.
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Finsects10050140

Dively GP, Huang F, Oyediran I, Burd T and Morsello S. Evaluation of gene flow in structured and seed blend refuge systems of non-Bt and Bt corn. Journal of Pest Science. 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10340-019-01126-4

Thompson BM, Bodart J and Gruner DS. Community resistance to an invasive forest insect–fungus mutualism. Ecosphere. 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2609

^Lewis MT, and Hamby K.A. Differential impacts of yeasts on feeding behavior and development in larval Drosophila suzukii (Diptera:Drosophilidae).  Scientific Reports. 2019. (manuscript accepted)

Serrano-Brañas CI, Espinosa-Chávez B and ^MacCracken SA. Teredolites trace fossils in log-grounds from the Cerro del Pueblo Formation (Upper Cretaceous) of the state of Coahuila, Mexico. Journal of South American Earth Sciences. 2019.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsames.2019.102316

Niu K, Xiang L, Jin Y…[& 10 others including Wang J]. Identification of LARK as a novel and conserved G-quadruplex binding protein in invertebrates and vertebrates. Nucleic Acids Research. 2019. DOI:  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz484

Shen C, Zhang Y, Xia D, Wang J and Tang Q. Sensilla on the Antennal Funiculus of the Maize Weevil, Sitophilus zeamais (Motschulsky) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae): A Morphological Investigation. The Coleopterists Bulletin. 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1649/0010-065X-73.2.443

Talks and Presentations
^Abell KJ,  ^Andrade RB,  Duan JJ, Gruner DS and Shrewsbury PM. “Do treated ash trees confer a protective ‘silhouette’ from emerald ash borer for neighboring trees? Joint meeting of IUFRO Working Parties: Population dynamics and integrated management of forest insects, Quebec City, Canada. 2019.

Gruner DS, Rankin EEW,  Knowlton JL, Flaspohler DJ, Giardina CP, and Fukami T. “Does forest fragment size mediate the impacts of introduced rodent predators? Foraging behavior of Hawaiian birds and their arthropod resources.” 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Antananarivo, Madagascar.2019.

^Jayd K, R MacKenzie, M Apwong and DS Gruner. “Mangrove herbivory across a salinity gradient.” Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America, St. Louis, MO.2019.

Pick L. "What is RNA interference, and how will it affect the future of food?" Tech Talk. USDA, Washington DC. 2019

^Tielens EK and Gruner DS. "Insect communities across a space for time chronosequence converge over time: analyzing patterns and drivers of beta-diversity on Hawai‘i." Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, Louisville, KY.2019.

Bold ENTM Faculty; ^ENTM current/former graduate student or post-doc; *ENTM research staff

How is climate change affecting our food supply? What policies and practices can mitigate the impact? Professor Sara Via is among the expert speakers addressing these questions at the upcoming Climate Change & You series, Tuesday, July 16th at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Join the discussion.

https://annapolisgreen.com/event/climate-change-our-food-supply-followed-by-green-drinks/?fbclid=IwAR3RoMbTWhc4zm15E_3i2SzNVmBV636wLCAO8dJUA787nR21aoyQSZ10q6w

​Dr. Karen Rane, Director of the Plant Diagnostic Laboratory​, scheduled to talk ornamentals in the Ornamental Disease webinar series organized by Greenhouse Canada. 

Follow link for more details about the series including registration 
https://www.greenhousecanada.com/news/ornamental-disease-webinar-series-launches-32833

Aliens are invading the forests of the United States! Not the green, bug-eyed aliens from outer space; no we are talking about the, well… green, bug-eyed aliens from Earth. With the globalization of trade, insect introductions leading to invasive pest problems have steadily increased over the last few centuries, causing massive economic and environmental devastation in the systems where these pests permeate. These invaders are especially difficult to manage when they are pests of our native North American forest trees due to the large spatial scale associated with them, making pesticide applications impractical.

having a warmer climate than Connecticut, created an asynchronous relationship between the host (EHS) and the parasitoid (E. citrina) in Connecticut. This means that the scale and parasitoid are developing at different times of year, preventing the wasp from being able to effectively attack the scale in its introduced range. With the colder climate of Connecticut, it was hypothesized that the EHS scales developed more slowly. Wasps, as a result, would have fewer suitable 2nd instar hosts to parasitize. Dr. Abell tested this by observing scale abundance and parasitism by E. citrina at three distinct latitudes in the U.S. (Connecticut [“coldest”], Pennsylvania, North Carolina [“warmest”]), hypothesizing that he would find more parasitoid-host synchrony as he moved further south where warmer temperatures would allow for multiple generations of scales.
 
Ultimately, Dr. Abell did not observe any increase in synchrony between EHS and E. citrina at any of his three field sites. Instead he found continuous reproduction of EHS, and all life stages were present throughout the year. This led Dr. Abell to Japan to better understand how EHS behaves in its native range. While surveying hemlock scales and their associated parasitoids, Dr. Abell found 11 new species attacking EHS in Japan, some of which may have potential as classical biological control agents. 

a wasp that is less than 1mm in length that attacks EAB eggs. Research done by Duan et al. in 2013 indicated that T. planipennisi was effectively established in Michigan and is a strong disperser. However, they observed that there was no parasitism of EAB in larger trees. In a study done by Dr. Abell, it was determined that the bark thickness was preventing this small wasp from attacking the EAB larvae. The ovipositor (egg-laying mechanism) of T. planipennisi is too short to reach the EAB larvae underneath the thick bark.

The bark was also placed in emergence chambers to collect any parasitoid wasps that emerged from the bark remnants that were missed in earlier screening. After two years of testing these methods, Dr. Abell concluded that the bark-sifting method was a more effective way to measure the rate of O. agrili egg parasitism in the field because significantly more parasitoids were recovered with this method. Invasive insects continue to attack our forests today, therefore it is very important to continue to understand and utilize biological control methods to preserve our forests. Dr. Abell continues his work on EAB biological control in the Shrewsbury lab here at the University of Maryland where he is evaluating other introduced and native parasitoids and additionally an integrated approach that combines pesticides with classical biological control methods.

About the Authors:
Olivia Bernauer is a second year Master’s student in Dennis vanEngelsdorp’s bee lab working to better understand the floral preferences of Maryland’s wild, native pollinators. 
 
Jackie Hoban is a second year Master’s student working on emerald ash borer biological control in Paula Shrewsbury’s lab.

Graduate student, Jonathan Wang, advised by Dr. Raymond St. Leger received the 1st place presentation award at the Society of Invertebrate Pathology 48th Annual Meeting held August 9-13, 2015 for his talk entitled " A Genome Wide Association Study of Resistance to Metarhizium anisopliae.

“Actually, Spiderman’s powers have nothing to do with radioactivity,” Dr. Julie Dunning Hotopp clarified to the roomful of entomologists. “It was the transfer of spider DNA into his genome.” While the ability to climb walls or shoot webs out your wrists (or worse) is pure science fiction, the transfer of DNA between two different species does actually occur. Dr. Dunning Hotopp explained that this process, known as lateral gene transfer (LGT), is quite widespread and the advent of genome sequencing (determining the chemical code that make an organism unique) in the last decade has greatly expanded our knowledge on the prevalence and role of foreign DNA in animals

Mike Raupp,  Professor of Entomology and known as the University of Maryland's "Bug Guy" joins Kojo to talk about the emerald ash borer and other insects of spring. Listen to him hear.

Insects lay eggs, right? Well, in aphids, a speciose family of the Sternorrhyncha, females actually have the option of laying eggs or producing live young from embryos (instead of laying eggs). This is an example of reproductive polyphenism. Polyphenism is the ability of some organisms to adapt their phenotypes in response to environmental cues (Figure 1, from Ogawa and Miura 2014).  In aphids the two reproductive strategies are a response to changes in photoperiod (day length) and this polyphenism is observed ubiquitously in these insects.  In their life cycle, after having survived the winter as frost-resistant eggs, founder females reproduce asexually birthing live young that will produce further asexual females. Asexual females are all about high reproductive rates and dispersion. Those asexual females actually exhibit a second type of polyphenism in that some of them can develop wings promoting dispersion when its current location is experiencing crowded conditions. As day length gets shorter, indicating the coming of winter, sexual egg-laying females are produced (Figure 1). But how are those changes mediated by the environmental signals and how does the system switch from sexual to asexual reproduction?

In last week’s colloquium, Gregory Davis illustrated the complexity of deciphering the mechanisms behind reproductive polyphenism using aphids as his model. Much of this work is available in his most recent review paper (Davis, 2012). He believes that such a novelty may have developed because an initial, slight change in morphology may have stimulated a modification of life history, with changes in life history feeding back to further changes in morphology, continuously playing off each other until obvious changes in body structure and development evolve. 

Ecological theories and models that attempt to explain interactions between plant, herbivore, and predator are innumerable. But just how accurate can these theories be? How many factors can be feasibly fitted to a model without making it cumbersome? What major variables are missing from these interaction evaluations? Dr. Rodriguez-Saona cites one key aspect of agro-ecosystems that has often been ignored: anthropogenic effects of crop selection. 

In terms of biological control, there are numerous top-down and bottom-up factors that play a role in the dynamic balance between plants and herbivores. Top-down factors are regulating mechanisms in which herbivore population numbers are controlled through upper trophic level organisms such as predators, natural enemies and parasitoids. In response to a lack of mobility, plants have developed an array of bottom-up mechanisms with which they can resist attack. Bottom-up controls are synergistically balanced with top-down controls in natural systems for overall suppression of herbivore populations. Plants utilize bottom-up mechanisms directly, through chemical and physical features used to resist damage and indirectly, by signaling to predators of an ongoing attack. These cries for help are in the form of volatiles (herbivore-induced plant volatiles, or HIPVs) that predators and parasitoids can respond to, finding food and reproductive hosts while simultaneously defending the plant. The HIPVs influence both bottom-up and top-down controls in this tri-trophic interaction. 

Dr. Ted Schultz has trekked the Americas in search of precious buried treasure; fungus-farming ants. Although these anthropomorphic creatures are not typically what we consider to be of monetary importance, they reveal a wealth of information about coevolution and symbiotic relationships. Fungus farming ants, like human farmers, cultivate their own food in gardens that are remarkably well cared for (Schultz, et al. 2015). However, unlike humans, fungus-farming ants have an obligate mutualism with their species-specific fungus. Imagine if we could only cultivate one type of food and that food could only survive via human agriculture. Dinner as we know it would be an entirely different experience.

Tracking these ants to their colony requires patience and dedication.  To start, Dr. Shultz baits the ants with Cream of Rice and waits for an ant of interest to approach and take a bit of bait to bring back to the colony. Using a white food source makes it easier to spot the ants as they travel through the leaf litter, but it is still a difficult task.  Once the ant leads him to a colony entrance, the digging starts.  Fungus-farming ant colonies may be over 3 meters deep and digging requires several determined entomologists. Walls that cave in and sandy soils are no deterrents when the prize is a sample of the fungus garden and the ants that tend to it. 

The devastation malaria has wrought on humanity cannot be overstated. On the wings of mosquitoes, this disease has long evaded eradication while preying disproportionately on our developing world. Malaria relentlessly suppresses societies in arid environments by exploiting the interplay of human behavior and ecological dynamics that drives poverty in these areas. Dr. Andres Baeza intimately understands the challenges to sustainability in these regions because he spent his formative years basking in the Chilean sun. Visiting from SESYNC, Dr. Baeza described to the Entomology department colloquium how he’s using his expertise to understand and empower disease intervention in the Northwest region of India.

            Dr. Baeza was quick to point out the precedent of his work in Gujarat and Rajasthan, India, with a graph (figure 1) representing fever (malaria) cases as they correlate with rainfall from a 1911 study by Sir Rickard Christophers.