Texas A&M Entomology Research Network

Grad Student News

Carl Hjelmen and Richelle Marquess Named Outstanding Graduate Students

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Carl Hjelmen, right, with Entomology Department Head Dr. David Ragsdale. Photo by Rob Williams.
Carl Hjelmen, right, with Entomology Department Head Dr. David Ragsdale. Photo by Rob Williams.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas–The Department of Entomology recently named Ph.D. student Carl Hjelmen and MS  student Richelle Marquess as the newest Oustanding Graduate Students at a special recognition seminar on Thursday.

Hjelmen is advised by Dr. Spencer Johnston and is researching the evolution of genome size in Drosophila species. During the past year, Hjelmen has prepared and submitted a manuscript titled “The mode and tempo of genome size evolution in the subgenus Sopophora” and was a contributing author of another paper titled “The effects of natural selection and repetitive elements on genome-size evolution in North American Fireflies.”

Hjelmen has served on two leadership roles during his grad school career, including President and Vice President of the Entomological Graduate Student Organization. He served as the social activities chair and was chair of the Southwestern Branch Entomological Society of America’s Photo Salon for 2 years. Hjelmen currently is a team member of the graduate Linnaean Team which took first place during the Linnaean Games at the Southwestern Branch meeting in 2016 in Tyler.

He also has volunteered at various outreach programs at various local elementary schools and at the university, as well as at Boonville Days at the Brazos Valley Natural History Museum. Hjelmen also represented the Department at the Entomological Society of America meetings, as well as the Ecological Integration Symposium and Texas A&M’s annual Student Research Week.

Richelle Marquess, right, with Entomology Department Head Dr. David Ragsdale. Photo by Rob Williams.
Richelle Marquess, right, with Entomology Department Head Dr. David Ragsdale. Photo by Rob Williams.

Marquess recently graduated in December 2016 with her Master of Science in Entomology and is currently working with Dr. Spence Behmer’s laboratory part-time as a research technician on projects related to her thesis titled “The role of food protein-carbohydrate content on nutrient regulation strategies and wing morph determination in the wing polymorphic cricket Gryllus firmus.”

During her time at A&M, Marquess has been involved in various outreach activities including insect presentations at Rock Prairie Elementary’s STEM Night, Greens Prairie Elemantary’s Open House, and at a local children’s camp in Millican. She also has served as a teaching assistant for the General Entomology course (ENTO 201) in 2015 and 2016.

“Richelle’s passion for entomology is contagious, and it shows when she is doing outreach activities. It is when she is truly in her element. I can also honestly say that Richelle has taught me much about how to handle live insects/arthropods,” Behmer said.  “I predict her passion and enthusiasm for all things insects will be greatly missed in the department when she eventually moves on to her next position.”

Alex Payne Wins Award for Her Research at National Conference

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Alex Payne in front of a mural. Photo by Rob Williams
Alex Payne. Photo by Rob Williams

GALVESTON, Texas—Congratulations to Ph.D. student Alex Payne as she recently received an award for Best Student Paper from the American Association of Professional Apiculturists for her talk at the organization’s annual American Bee Research Conference in Galveston in January, 2017.

Payne is mentored by Dr. Juliana Rangel. Her talk at the symposium was titled “The effects of honey bee (Apis mellifera) queen insemination volume on colony growth”.

Her presentation looked at how the volume of semen in a queen who was artificially inseminated affects the overall growth of a honey bee colony over time by comparing hives led by high-inseminated queens to hives with low-inseminated queens.

In her research, Payne wanted to determine if the insemination volume of the queens had any effect on a colony’s growth over time. She said the results of the study concluded that insemination volume did not have an impact on the growth and productivity of the colony. Payne also said that the information from her study helpsqueen breeders and commercial beekeepers when they evaluate the quality of their queens.

Payne enjoyed presenting her research to the audience during the conference and was excited to receive the award from the organization.

“There were a lot of great student presentations at the conference, so I was surprised but happy to learn that I had won an award,” Payne said.

Grad Students Receive Top Awards at Nineteenth Annual Forum

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Award winners from Graduate Student Forum
Winners of the Nineteenth Annual Graduate Student Forum. From left to right are: Pierre Lau and Derek Woller (tie) Third Place, Jocelyn Holt – Second Place, and Tyler Raszick – First Place. Photo by Rob Williams

Four students received top awards during the Department of Entomology’s Nineteenth Annual Graduate Student Forum on August 25.

Tyler Raszick received first place for his talk titled ”Boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis) population genomics as a tool for monitoring and management” and Jocelyn Holt received second place for her talk “The sugarcane aphid in the continental US”

This year’s competition ended up with a tie, with both winners receiving awards. The winners were Derek Woller for his presentation titled “Exploring the functional frontiers of genitalia morphology via synergistic imaging technologies (Orthoptera: Acrididae: Melanoplus rotundipennis)” and Pierre Lau for his talk titled “Palynological analysis of pollen collected by honey bees (Apis mellifera) in developed areas in four regions of the United States”.

The forum allows the Department’s graduate students to present their latest research and to give them an opportunity to practice speaking in public and helps students to improve their skills in preparation for the Entomological Society of America/International Congress of Entomology meeting in September.

“I really appreciate all the hard work from all of our students,” Department Head Dr. David Ragsdale said. “I am proud of all of you and the tremendous amount of hard work you have done in all of your presentations.

Forum chair Dr. Cecilia Tamborindeguy was impressed with the amount of talent in this year’s speakers.

“I am extremely proud of all of this year’s presentations,” she said. “They all have been excellent. Congratulations to all of you!”

Grad Student Assists In Rediscovery of Grasshopper Species Not Seen in Almost 60 Years

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Melanoplus foxi - live male
A live Melanoplus foxi grasshopper on a leaf. Photo by Derek Woller

For almost 60 years, scientists thought that Melanoplus foxi Hebard, 1923, a flightless grasshopper endemic to Georgia, was possibly extinct until Ph.D. student Derek Woller and Assistant Research Professor JoVonn Hill at Mississippi State University recently re-discovered the species in May of 2015 after nine years of active searching.

Woller became aware of the species in the first place because, for his dissertation, he is examining the evolutionary history of the 24 species that make up the Puer Group (Acrididae: Melanoplinae), which includes M. foxi. He said that inroads towards finally rediscovering the species came about when he needed to collect fresh specimens to extract DNA from in order to finish reconstructing a phylogenetic tree for the group.

Members of the Puer Group are very small and have tiny wings, but are flightless. The grasshoppers are mainly located in the southeastern United States and are associated with xeric habitats, which are habitats that lack moisture.

“There are many reasons why this species flew under the radar for so long, the primary reason being that they are quite difficult to find unless you’re actively looking for them. But, habitat degradation also played a significant role,” Woller said.

A modern county map of Georgia overlaid with historical and current georeferenced data of the <em>Melanoplus foxi <em>species. Photo by Derek Woller.
A modern county map of Georgia overlaid with historical and current georeferenced data of the Melanoplus foxi species. Photo by Derek Woller.

According to the publication, much of Georgia’s habitat has been changed from historically large areas of longleaf pine forests to mostly agricultural and urban landscapes, which has possibly led to the decline of the species over the years.

Woller said they searched for any sign of the species at more than 101 unique sites across Georgia with no luck, including four that contained M. foxi in the past according to the locality data from museum specimens.

Additionally, prior to its rediscovery, only four U.S. collections (University of Michigan Museum of Zoology’s Insect Division, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, the Florida State Collection of Arthropods, and the North Carolina State University Insect Museum) possessed specimens of the species, and only 35 specimens in total.

During his dissertation research, Woller discovered that there were actually 71 more specimens of M. foxi hidden away in a drawer of unidentified grasshoppers in Michigan’s museum collection. The locality data on the specimens were linked to the field notes of three scientists from Michigan who collected grasshoppers, along with many other insects, in Georgia in the fifties.

Woller said most of the detailed notes described all new locations to search in within a single county in Georgia near the Spring Creek area, but he and Hill had a difficult time relating these locations with modern-day maps.

However, the breakthrough came when a historical map loaned from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources helped them translate the original sites into modern locations. The dates on the notes also suggested that searching within June and July might yield the best results.

Once they knew where to look specifically and when, they headed into the field in May of 2015 and were finally successful, finding many nymphs and a few young adults.

“As it turns out, the main reason this species is so hard to find is that it appears to be mainly active in late spring and summer, and then it dies out quickly,” Woller said. “This is an excellent reason why it pays to try to understand the life history of organisms of interest and why it’s important to have good specimen representation of a species in a museum.”

The new label data from the museum specimens and field notes led to two other re-discoveries, both further northeast from the first point of rediscovery (and on the same trip): one within a state park and one in roadside habitat  that was seemingly left untouched for almost 60 years.

“Other difficult-to-find and possibly-extinct species benefit from a success such as ours because, first and foremost, it brings hope for more successes,” Woller said. “Also, our rediscovery truly demonstrates the importance of museum specimens and their associated field locality data because, without them, we may have been still out there searching for M. foxi, just like the classic needle in a haystack.”

The publication can be found at the ResearchGate website at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292722433_Melanoplus_foxi_Hebard_1923_Orthoptera_Acrididae_Melanoplinae_Rediscovered_After_Almost_60_Years_Using_Historical_Field_Notes_Connected_to_Curated_Specimens

Linnaean Teams Win First and Second Place at Southwestern Branch Meeting

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The Graduate Linnaean Team vs the Undergraduate Linnaean team during the final round. Photo by Juliana Rangel
The Graduate Linnaean Team vs the Undergraduate Linnaean team during the final round. Photo by Juliana Rangel

TYLER, Texas–The Department of Entomology’s graduates and undergraduate Linnaean Teams came out big during the annual Linnaean Games quiz bowl competition at the Southwestern Branch of the Entomological Society meeting during the last week of February.

The Graduate Linnaean Team received first place after defeating the Texas A&M undergraduate team in the final round of play. Both teams also competed other teams, graduate and undergraduate, from Oklahoma State University.

The graduate team consisted of Pierre Lau, Freddy Ibanez, Adrian Fisher, and Carl Hjelmen while the undergraduate team included Shelby Kilpatrick, Andrew Graf, Dayvion Adams and Bret Nash.

According to the Entomological Society of America website, the Linnaean Games are a lively question-and-answer, quiz bowl style competition on entomological facts played between university-sponsored student teams. Each team is comprised of four members and members score points for the team by answering questions correctly.

Linnaen Games - inside page
The Undergraduate Linnaean Team, right, facing off against the Oklahoma State team. Photo by Andrew Graf.

The two teams will advance to the national ESA Linnaean Games competition, as well as participate in the International Congress of Entomology meeting’s competition that will be held in Orlando in November.

“I was very excited to be participating in this year’s games, especially because we finally got first place at the meeting,” Hjelmen said. “Oklahoma historically has been a very difficult opponent and in previous years we have only achieved second. These games were especially exciting because the TAMU undergrad team was also able to beat both Oklahoma teams in order to get to second place.”

Hjelmen said that with the graduate team taking first place and the undergraduate team taking second helped them to get both undergraduate and graduate representation when they go to Orlando later this year. He also attributed the hard work to his teammates and Rangel for her great coaching.

“Needless to say, both teams have barely been able to contain their excitement for these games. This couldn’t have been achieved without all of the countless hours spent by the teams and our coach, Juliana Rangel, in practices and studying outside of the practices and games,” he said.  “All of this studying allowed us to easily answer the tricky historical entomology questions, sometimes with my personal favorite answer “C.V. Riley.”  There were really way too many difficult questions to count and it is always surprising when people know the answers!”

Undergraduate team member Shelby Kilpatrick was looking forward to going to Orlando for the national ESA Linnaean Games, as well as the International Congress of Entomology’s Linnaean Games. The national ESA meeting will be held in conjunction with the ICE meeting in Orlando, Florida.

“I am very excited about the opportunity to participate in the National Linnaean Games at the Entomological Society of America,” she said. “It will be my first time to attend a national ESA meeting and this is a historic year since it’s being held in conjunction with the International Congress of Entomology. I am very proud of my team and looking forward to the national contest in September.”

She said the hardest questions were the ones about toxicology while the easiest were the questions that included photos or about taxonomy and insect classification.

“One of my favorite things about entomology is that there will always be something new to learn,” she said.

This was Lau’s first time to participate in the Linnaean Games this year since he was an alternate during last year’s competition. He said that being an alternate helped him to know what to expect during this year’s competition.

“I thought the games this year were much better than the last because we won first and second place,” Lau said. “It has been a while since the graduate team won first at the meeting.”

Linnaean Team coach Juliana Rangel was very proud of both teams and was impressed by the amount of hard work and dedication they had put in before and during the competition.

I am extremely proud of the performance of both teams, dedication during practice rounds and their homework really had paid off,” Rangel said.

She was extremely proud of the undergraduate team because of their dedication and the depth of entomological knowledge, and their courageousness during the hardest parts of the games.

“I am extremely proud of the undergraduate. They were courageous enough to beat the graduate team from Oklahoma State University, despite the nervousness you usually get facing other teams in a competition.”

“Overall, I’m extremely proud of both teams and I’m also proud to be their coach,” she added.