Grad Student News

Grad Students Honored with Awards During Seminar

February 25, 2016 by Rob Williams

Carl Hjelmen, right, receiving the Outstanding Ph.D. Student Award from Entomology Department Head Dr. David Ragsdale, left. Photo by Rob Williams — Carl Hjelmen, right, receiving the Outstanding Ph.D. Student Award from Entomology Department Head Dr. David Ragsdale. Photo by Rob Williams

COLLEGE STATION, Texas –The Department of Entomology would like to congratulate two of our grad students as they received top honors during the department’s spring seminar series on February 18.

Ph.D. student Carl Hjelmen received the Outstanding Ph.D. Student while Devin Beach Tillman received the Outstanding Masters Student Award during the special presentation.

Hjelmen is advised by Dr. Spencer Johnston and is currently researching the evolution of genome size in Drosophila species. Hjelmen is a member of the Graduate Entomology Student Organization, where he is serving as the organization’s vice president. He also has served as the chair of the Southwestern Branch of the Entomological Society’s annual Photo Salon for two years and was Social Activities Chair of the EGSO for a year.

He has been active in several outreach programs, including Creek View Elementary, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences tailgate, and the Boonville Days at the Brazos Center. Hjelmen also has 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.

Hjelmen was a participant in Texas A&M Research Experience for Undergraduates – Expanding Scientific Investigation Through Entomology (REU-EXCITE) during the summer of 2012.

“Carl is the best student I have had the pleasure of directing and is very deserving of this year’s outstanding graduate student award,” Johnston said.

Tillman is mentored by Dr. Cecilia Tamborindeguy and is researching the interaction between sugarcane aphids and sorghum plants.

Tillman has been a teaching assistant for several classes, including ENTO 201 (General Entomology) and Applied Forensic Entomology courses (ENTO/FIVS 432), and the Dominica Study Abroad program. She also served as a Texas A&M transfer ambassador in 2012 and a Blinn Ambassador in 2011.

She also was a member of the TAMU Department of Entomology Scholars Society, where she has represented the Department during different activities and has been a liaison between faculty, staff, students, and prospective students.

Tillman was an active member of the Undergraduate Entomology Student Organization and the Forensic and Investigative Sciences Student Organization. She has served as the treasurer of the Undergraduate Entomology Student Organization from 2010-2014, Activities Coordinator for AFIS from 2013-2014 and Vice President from 2012-2013.

Tillman received numerous awards and scholarships during her college career, including the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Diversity Excellence Award, the Perry L. Adkissson, Roger Meola Memorial Scholarship and the COALS International Studies Scholarship.

“Devin has managed an incredible task, she has excelled in every single objective she has set up for her future, and that includes also a good balance between her professional and personal life,” Tamborindeguy said. “Devin will be an amazing role model for our future students.”

Ph.D. Student Receives Award from Beltwide Cotton Conference

February 2, 2016 by Rob Williams

James Glover, center, with co-advisors Dr. Greg Sword, left, and Dr. Michael Brewer, right. Photo by Nichole Taillon.

The Department of Entomology would like to congratulate Ph.D. student James Glover for receiving the Best Ph.D. oral presentation prize in the Insect Management category at the Cotton Beltwide Conferences in New Orleans on January 5-7.

Glover received the award for his talk titled, “Comparing Boll Injury and EILs for Species of a Boll-Feeding Sucking Bug Complex (Hemiptera: Miridae and Pentatomidae) on South Texas Cotton.” Texas A&M AgriLife Research professor and co-mentor Dr. Mike Brewer said that Glover’s research is on the injury of cotton plants from a species complex of boll-feeding sucking bugs represented by one species of plant bugs and two species of stink bugs.

During his research, field collected stink bugs and verde plant bugs were used to infest cotton plants that were maintained free of insect injury. The plants were caged in different insect densities, including 0 for the control, 1 bug per cage, 4 bugs per cage and 8 bugs per cage. Each treatment was replicated 12 times across two bloom specific periods mid and late bloom.

Glover said that the bugs remained caged on the plants for 7 days then were terminated. After the infestation period, the plants or bolls were allowed to mature inside the cages. The response from the bolls, he said, included external and internal boll damage in the form of warts, galls, lint deterioration, and boll rot. The bolls were rated at harvest on a 0 to 4 scale, which corresponded to the number of damaged locules and the boll rot was scored by the visual presence or absence of diseased locules.

He said that significant boll injury differences were detected across species and yield and that insect density relationships were used to calculate and compare economic injury levels.

Brewer said that his research also included the assessment of economic damage and collaborative work with Gino Medrano of the USDA-ARS, about the insects’ transmission of cotton boll rot.

“James did a great job balancing the components of what makes for a solid field crops entomologist: he knew his cotton, he knew his science, and agricultural relevance to the topic,” Brewer said. “His work has direct implications in improving management of this pest complex in cotton grown along the Texas Gulf Coast, and contributes to understanding why ‘outbreaks of damage’ occur.”

Glover’s co-mentor Dr. Greg Sword also was proud of him and that he was the fourth person out of his lab to receive an award from the conference in the past four years.

“James is very thorough as a student, and that is reflected in the research his conducting. The work he presented at the Beltwide Conference to win this award was a well-designed field project that provides valuable information to help manage key sucking insects pests in Texas cotton.”

Grad Students Receive High Awards for Presentations at National Meeting

December 3, 2015 by Rob Williams

Ph.D. student Carl Hjelmen speaking to an audience at the Graduate Student Forum

MINNEAPOLIS– Congratulations to Ph.D. students Carl Hjelmen and Liz Walsh as they were given awards for the Graduate Ten Minute Paper Presentation Competition at the Entomological Society of America’s annual meeting on Monday, November 16.

Hjelmen’s paper received first place in the SysEB – Citizen Science, New Methods, and Physiology section and was titled “Phylogenetic basis for understanding genome size evolution in Drosophila.”

In his paper, he is looking at the evolution of the genome size in the Drosophila species of flies. In his research, he is utilizing phylogenetic comparative methods to uncover the best fitting hypothesis for genome size changes in the species, given the wealth of sequence data and ease of size estimation for the group.

Hjelmen then compared the quantitative DNA differences consequent to the formation of heteromorphic sex chromosomes to understand how sex influences genome size evolution, specifically through a process called chromosomal degradation.

The comparative methods, he said, would provide a novel and useful way to understanding the genome change between species. Also, he said that the development of the methods would allow the researchers to apply the technique to a variety of other organisms.

Liz presenting — Liz Walsh speaking about her research at a recent meeting. Photo by Rob Williams

Walsh received second place in the 10-minute paper competition in the PBT (Physiology, Biochemisty, and Toxicology) section for her paper titled “The effects of in-hive miticides on honey bee, Apis mellifera, queen retinue response and mandibular pheromones.”

Her research examines some of the sub-lethal effects of the presence of the miticides that are currently being used to treat hives, especially the effects miticides have on the queens when pesticides are already present in the wax in the area where the queens mature.

Walsh explored whether the presence of the chemicals coumaphos and fluvalinate in the queen-rearing beeswax environment had an effect on queen attractiveness to workers by raising queens in miticide-free beeswax or beeswax with miticide.

Walsh said she measured each queen’s retinue and conducted cage experiments whereby five-day-old workers were exposed to mandibular gland extracts of two queen types. She said that the comparisons of both the average worker retinue size per queen type and the number of workers attracted to the gland extracts showed that the queens reared in miticide-free beeswax attacted a significantly larger retinue than the queens reared in the miticide-laden beeswax.

Walsh found that the exposure to miticides during queen development did severely alter the retinue behavior by impacting the queen’s pheromones. The pheromones, she said, are what the queens use to attract her retinue. The results have a very important implication in how in-hive miticides could affect the overall colony health.

Hjelmen is advised by Dr. Spencer Johnston and participated in the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program previously hosted by the department in 2012. Walsh is advised by Dr. Juliana Rangel and participated in the REU program in 2013.

“I am incredibly proud of Liz’s accomplishment as she received second place for the 10 minute oral presentations in her section,” Rangel said. “This award also helps bring out the research that’s being done at Texas A&M University regarding honey bee biology.”

Ph.D. Student Receives USDA-AFRI Travel Grant

September 18, 2015 by Rob Williams

Congratulations to Wenqing Zhou on receiving a USDA – AFRI travel award to attend the Entomological Society of America’s annual meeting in Minneapolis this November.

The travel grant award is funded by USDA-NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Program on Plant-Associated Insects and Nematodes. It was created to provide financial support to graduate students for new networking, presentation, and research opportunities at the meeting that will be held on November 15-18.

Zhou is a Ph.D. candidiate currently being mentored under Professor and Charles R. Parencia Chair in Cotton Entomology, Dr. Greg Sword. Her research interests include plant-herbivore-microbe ecological interactions and their mechanistic explanations.

She received her BS in crop protection from Northwest A&F University in China in 2007, and earned her MS in Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2010, studying the molecular phylogenetic reclassification of the parasitoid family Eulophidae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea).

Her current dissertation project focuses on exploring interactions between endophytic fungi and plant parasitic nematodes/insect herbivores in cotton, along with their potential use as tools in Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

She has broadened her interdisciplinary experience by working with nematologists, Dr. James Starr and Dr. Terry Wheeler, conducting both lab and field experiments. Beginning with a project on endophyte-associated plant-nematode interactions belowground, she expanded her study to above ground insect-plant-endophyte interactions.

The main goals of her research are to develop fungal endophytes as novel pest control agents against insects and nematodes, explore plant-endophyte-nematode interactions in agroecosystems, and explain the mechanisms underlying endophyte-mediated plant-fungus defensive mutualisms. She is currently writing her dissertation.

“Wenqing has worked hard to develop a very unique data set that illustrates many previously unknown and certainly under-appreciated effects of fungal endophytes in cotton,” Sword said. “Her dissertation work, which is near completion, includes a combination of greenhouse and field trials that clearly demonstrate negative effects of fungal endophytes on both insects and plant parasitic nematodes. Working on nematodes attacking plants below-ground as well as insects attacking plants above-ground is a very novel aspect of her approach.”

Sword was very proud of her accomplishments and said the award will help Zhou share her research with her peers nationwide.

The USDA-AFRI support to attend the 2015 Entomology meeting will allow her to share her exciting work with the scientific community and continue to network to advance her career,” Sword said.

Chong Chin Heo Receives Top TAMU Awards For Research Excellence

September 3, 2015 by Rob Williams

COLLEGE STATION, Texas—Chong Chin Heo’s research has been recognized at the higher level as he recently received the Vice President for Research’s Excellence Award and the Sigma Xi Interdisciplinary Award for his outstanding research efforts.

Heo is a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Jeffery Tomberlin’s FLIES lab and received his Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Sciences and Masters in Parasitology from the National University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Heo’s interest in research started when he learned about the devastating impacts of parasites and insects to human and animal health globally. Heo is wanting to focus mainly on the application of insects in helping criminal investigations.

With his research, Heo is studying the ability of ecosystem recovery, called resilience following disturbance. Heo is using carrion, or decaying animal flesh, as his model system to determine the resiliency in nutrient cycling where blow fly colonization is delayed for an extended period of time, similar to events in nature, such as weather or concealment.

Heo is specifically studying the impact that events in nature on associated microbial metabolism, insect composition and succession, soil nutrient shifts and soil mite population dynamics. His ultimate goal is to understand how ecosystems respond to disturbances and how fast they recover as the ability to recover is the most fundamental process in food production and resource sustainability. Heo’s findings can be used to develop novel techniques or indicators for forensic investigations, such as determining the time and location of death.

Heo also received first place in the Oral Presentation section of the Plant Sciences, Animal Sciences, Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Entomology, Agriculture and Ecological Restoration category during the Student Research Week competition in March. Heo tied with Carl Hjelmen for first place in the same category.

“I felt very happy for receiving this award and I think it is an encouragement for me to excel in academic and research in my future career,” Heo said. “My advisor, Dr. Jeff Tomberlin and lab members are the key supporters and I would like to thank all of them for creating a conducive research environment for everyone’s success.”

Tomberlin was very proud of Heo for his hard work and dedication to the lab and his research.

“I am very proud of Chin and his accomplishments,” Tomberlin said. “He has done a tremendous job bridging multiple disciplines to explain the nature of decomposition and nutrient recycling. Chin has a very bright future in academia!”