Rob Williams

Texas A&M Entomology Sweeps Awards at ESA National Meeting

November 26, 2019 by Rob Williams

Dr. Jim Woolley, right receiving a plaque recognizing his work as an editor in chief of Thomas Say Publications from 2003-2019. Photo by Entomological Society of America. — Dr. Jim Woolley, right receiving a plaque recognizing his work as an editor in chief of Thomas Say Publications from 2003-2019

Fifteen students, the Sugarcane Aphid Team, and two retired faculty members in the Department were recognized at the 2019 annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America meeting in St. Louis.

The four-day-long event featured speakers from universities across the nation, symposia, and student poster and paper contests, as well as mixers and networking events held at the America’s Center and the Marriott Grand St. Louis Hotel.

Professor Emeritus Dr. Jim Woolley received recognition for being editor in chief of the Thomas Say Publications from 2003-2019 during the Professional Awards breakfast on Tuesday, November 12.

Professor Emeritus Dr. Frank Gilstrap was named 2019 Honorary Member of the ESA for his extraordinary contributions to the ESA through his career while he was with the Department of Entomology, Texas A&M AgriLife Research.

Ph.D student Jocelyn Holt also was recognized as being named the Southwestern Branch recipient of the John Comstock Award for her outstanding research and other contributions in entomology and the ESA.

Thirteen students also received awards for their posters and presentations during the Student Competition for the President’s Prize, including:

Graduate 10 Minute Papers

Mackenzie Tietjen speaking during the paper presentation sessions. Photo by Lauren Beebe

Mackenzie Tietjen: First Place – Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology section, Diversity for her paper titled “Assessing host associated differentiation in Dermacentor variabilis (Acari: Ixodidae)”

Constance Lin – First Place in the Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology – Ecology and Behavior 1 for “Raising the “anty” in decomposition ecology: Effects of vertebrate carrion on fire ant colony performance

Mark Janowiecki – First Place in Medical Urban and Veterinary Entomology – Life History for “Seasonality and spatial distribution of Reticulitermes spp. (Blattodea: Rhinotermitidae)

Blake Elkins – Second place Plant – Insect Ecosystems – Biocontrol of Insects 2 for “Species complex and population variation of natural enemies of sugarcane aphid across gradients of landscape composition and structure”

Jose Santiago – First Place in Physiology, Biology and Toxicology, Insecticide Resistance for “Monitoring the susceptibility of Helicoverpa zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) populations collected in Texas to Cry1Ac, Cry2Ab2 and Vip3Aa using F2 screens”

Ruth Henderson with her poster. Photo by Pierre Lau. — Ruth Harrison with her poster. Photo by Pierre Lau.

Crys Wright – First Place in the Plant – Insect Ecosystems – Biocontrol of Insects 2 “Testing for fecundity compensation in parasitized sugarcane aphids”

Undergraduate 10 Minute Papers

Drew Little – Second Place in the Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity 2 for “Analysis of Stimulus in the phase-related behavior of Schistocerca piceifrons”

Carolina Wilson – Second Place in Plant – Insect Ecosystems for “Effects of fungal endophyte treatment and herbivory on extra floral nectar carbohydrate composition”

Undergraduate Posters

Alex Payne, right, speaking about her poster during the poster session. Submitted photo.

Ruth Harrison – Plant – Insect Ecosystems 1 for “Pollinator assemblages across different levels of landscape development in the Post Oak Savannah ecoregion”

Sabrina Quintanilla – Physiology, Biochemistry and Toxicology for “Lipid preferences in laboratory-maintained colonies of the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta)

Xiaotian Tang with his poster. Submitted photo.

Graduate Posters

Xiaotian Tang – First Place in Plant – Insect Ecosystems, Plant Disease Vectors for “‘Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum’ inhibits apoptosis in Bactericera cockerelli gut to facilitate its acquisition and transmission”

Alexandria Payne – First Place in Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology for “Interspecies virus transmission between ants and honey bees (Apis mellifera)

John Grunseich in Plant – Insect Ecosystems, Biology Control for “A specialist herbivore uses chemical cues from host-plant roots to avoid induced defenses and elevated predation risk”

Pierre Lau, right, receives the La Fage Award from Li-Byerly Hongmei. Photo by Photo by Dr. James Nieh.

Ph.D. student Pierre Lau also received the International Union for the Study of Social Insects, North American Section’s 2019 Jeffery P. LaFage Student Award for Applied Research on Social Insects during a special recognition event.

The Jeffery P. La Fage Student Award for Applied Research on Social Insects recognizes a graduate student for distinguished research and scholarly activity on social insects, with an emphasis on applied projects.

Members of the Sugarcane Aphid Team received the 2019 Plant-Insect Ecosystem Integrated Pest Management Team Award, sponsored by Corteva Agriscience. The team established thresholds and sampling protocols for sugarcane aphids and incorporated aphid resistant sorghum hybrids into management, and identified and evaluated natural enemies for regulating the aphids.

The team includes Brent Bean (United Sorghum Checkoff Program), Robert Bowling (Bayer Crop Science and former AgriLife Extension faculty), Michael Brewer (Texas A&M AgriLife Research – Corpus Christi), David Buntin (University of Georgia), Norman Elliott (USDA-ARS, Southern Plains), Amanda Jacobson (Corteva Agriscience), John Gordy (Syngenta Crop Protection and former Ph.D. student), Ronald Navarrete-Ganchozo (Bayer Crop Science), Nick Seiter (University of Illinois), Jason Thomas (University of Idaho and former M.S student), and Dr. Jim Woolley (Professor Emeritus – Texas A&M University).

Since its creation, the team has published 20 journal articles, 12 Extension publications and developed nine web resources as a result of their work.

Grad Student Wins Jeffery La Fage Award

November 25, 2019 by Rob Williams

Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Pierre Lau as he received the 2019 Jeffery P. LaFage Student Award for Applied Research on Social Insects during the Entomological Society of America annual meeting in St. Louis.

Lau is completing his Ph.D. research at Texas A&M under the direction of Dr. Juliana Rangel where his doctoral work is focused on how to improve honey bee nutrition, with a focus on bees’ preferences for specific ratios of protein-to-lipid within pollen resources.

Lau’s findings so far suggest that bee pollen-to-lipid ratio preferences are substantially different from the ratios found in commercially-available pollen substitutes, which have traditionally been touted as being “high protein” to promote brood rearing.

In addition, Lau has explored variation in the types of pollen collected by bees at different places across the U.S.; characterized bee salt preferences; and developed an artificial honey bee diet that will set the stage for future tests of how bee diet nutrient content affects honey bee fitness.

Lau’s letter writers note that in addition to his critical research work focused on pollen, he is highly enthusiastic about education and outreach, helping beekeepers connect the dots between nutrition and colony health.

Lau holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Systems from the University of California, San Diego.

Tawny crazy ants’ weird genetics may help them thrive in new environments

November 22, 2019 by Rob Williams

Ed Vargo, professor and endowed chair in Urban and Structural Entomology (right), shows ant specimens with postdoctoral research associate Pierre-André Eyer (center), and doctoral student Alex Blumenfeld (left). (Photo by Rob Williams)

by Olga Kuchment, Texas A&M AgriLife Communications

Tawny crazy ants’ pattern of genetic inheritance may have helped the South American species spread in the U.S., Texas A&M AgriLife researchers have discovered. The results could lead to a new way to control this invasive species.

“We might be able to use the mechanism to drive a lethal gene into the population,” said Dr. Ed Vargo, senior investigator of the study and professor of urban and structural entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University.

Also known as Rasberry crazy ants, the species has been spreading in Texas since at least 2002. Crazy ants can kill grass, displace other insects and destroy electrical equipment, causing a lot of damage in urban and rural areas. What’s more, their colonies can evade typical pest control tactics. They can thrive both indoors and outdoors. They ignore baits and create numerous escape routes from their supersized colonies.

Tawny crazy ants were named for their random-looking walk, but the way they pass down genes to the next generation may also be described as crazy.

A nest of genetic diversity

The team investigated crazy ant colonies in Texas and Florida cities.

Vargo and lab members Pierre-André Eyer and Alexander Blumenfeld found that in this species, the females were much more genetically diverse than one would expect from pure chance. Females tend to inherit their mother’s genes, and males tend to inherit their grandfather’s. And, males and females are quite different genetically. The pattern of inheritance seems to be unique among 15,000 ant species.

The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November.

The invasion paradox

Tawny crazy ants’ success as an invasive species represents one solution to the so-called invasion paradox: How can a small number of animals move to a new area and reproduce without suffering from genetic disorders due to inbreeding?

One way that species can fight inbreeding, scientists have hypothesized, is by making use of the differences between males and females.

Battle of the sexes

Scientists have known for a long time that males and females can develop dissimilar genetic traits. Some of these traits cause problems for one sex and help the other. Such traits are normally found in sex chromosomes, such as X and Y in mammals. But ants, and their relatives, bees and wasps, have no sex chromosomes. Instead, a female has two copies of the genome while a male has one.

Scientists have hypothesized that in species where females have two copies of the genome and males have only one, the whole genome can act like a sex chromosome. A gene’s effect might be canceled or masked by another version of the same gene. In this way, a gene can be harmful and recessive in females but favorable and dominant in males, where it can’t be masked by a second copy.

Genetic Diversity, at a steep cost

The researchers analyzed several spots in crazy ants’ genome and discovered that ant colonies have three distinct versions of a certain genetic region. The team called the three versions A, B and C. If ants inherited the genes at random, a male ant could carry version A, B or C. A female could carry any combination of two versions. Instead, the team found something completely different. The vast majority of adult crazy ant females carried A/B or A/C. Adult males possessed only A.

This strategy ensures that each generation is genetically diverse. But it comes at a cost, said Vargo and Eyer. The team found that many female eggs have genetics that don’t fit the A/B or A/C pattern. These eggs seem to disappear from the nest before they can develop. The team hypothesizes that these eggs — almost 40% — either die or are destroyed by ants in the nest.

“There’s something about the genes and their expression that’s harmful to females,” said Vargo.

Back in Brazil

The study “fills a gap in our understanding of the inheritance of traits by males and females and shows how conflicts between the sexes can occur at the genomic level,” Vargo said. “This is a very positive finding.”

Next, the team plans to study whether the same crazy pattern of inheritance appears in the ants’ native Brazil or is just a consequence of being in a new place. Either way, the results would shed light on the weird and powerful adaptability of the tawny crazy ant.

Department Names 2019 Perry Adkisson Distinguished Seminar Speaker Award

November 20, 2019 by Rob Williams

Dr. Andrew Suarez, right, with Dr. Pete Teel, Regents Professor, Interim Department Head

Congratulations to Dr. Andrew Suarez from the University of Illinois on receiving the annual Dr. Perry Adkisson Distinguished Seminar Speaker Award.

Dr. Suarez received the award during a special seminar on November 7 in Room 103 of the Heep Center.

Dr. Suarez is professor and head of the Department of Animal Biology and Professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

One of the world’s leading ant ecologists, Dr. Suarez uses ants as a model system to answer broad ecological questions that span questions in invasion biology and evolutionary biology. According to Google Scholar, Suarez’ works have been cited more than 14,000 times and has been published in journals such as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and Ecology.

Dr. Suarez also has been an instructor for the world renowned “Ant Course,” which is an intensive course for myrmecologists from across the world.

His research and teaching efforts have received numerous awards, including the Department Executive Officer Fellow in 2014, CISRO Distinguished Visiting Scientist in 2015, the University of Illinois Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the LAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2017.

The recognition of Distinguished Speakers is supported through a generous gift provided by Dr. Perry and Frances Adkisson. Dr. Adkisson, former Entomology Department Head and member of the National Academy of Science, became Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. He served as President of the Entomological Society of America and was honored as a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America. His career research discoveries and applications of Integrated Pest Management were of global impact. He became the first recipient of all three of the world’s major prizes in agriculture, the Alexander von Humboldt Award, the Wolf Prize, and the World Food Prize.

Tomberlin Receives Presidential Impact Fellow

November 11, 2019 by Rob Williams

Dr. Jeff Tomberlin at a microscope — Dr. Jeff Tomberlin. Photo by Rob Williams

Congratulations to Professor and Texas A&M AgriLife Research Fellow Dr. Jeff Tomberlin as he received the Presidential Impact Fellow award on November 5.

Tomberlin was among 20 faculty members from the University who were honored at the ceremony for the recognition.

Tomberlin has become a national and international leader in the science and applications of decomposition ecology where his work has made highly significant impacts in animal and food waste systems and forensic science.

One of Tomberlin’s latest discoveries is utilizing the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) to help recycle food waste and produce protein for use as livestock, poultry or aquaculture feed. This research has gained both national and global recognition and was in part responsible for US regulators of animal feed to approve the species for use as feed for salmon fisheries. The policy shift has resulted in creating legislation to prevent food waste from entering landfills and has allowed for the bioconversion industry to grow.

Tomberlin is currently leading a National Science Foundation initiative to develop a National Center on the production of insects for use as human food and livestock feed. Human food and animal feed companies are joining academic communities in the US and EU countries to enhance global recognition and growth of insects human and animal nutrition.

Tomberlin’s forensic entomology research program related to decomposition ecology also has been successful in that he has seen an increase in number of highly qualified visiting researchers, which included seven Fulbright recipients, that have conducted research in his lab.

Tomberlin also has been selected to several key leadership roles within the major forensic associations, including the American Academy of Forensic Science, where he has been elected fellow in of the Pathology/Biology section of the American Academy of Forensic Science.

In addition, Tomberlin’s research program has generated almost half of the current individuals being nationally certified by the American Board of Forensic Entomology and one that is a full-time forensic entomologist in a crime laboratory in the United States. His research efforts have resulted in acquiring several grants, including the National Institute of Justice, and the National Science Foundation.

“I am flattered by receiving such recognition at the university level,” Tomberlin said.

Tomberlin will receive an annual cash stipend for the next three years to help support his research, teaching and service effort. The honorarium helps foster opportunities to collaborate with other leading scholars and create new partnerships and confers the lifetime title of Presidential Impact Fellow.