|
|
ALUMNI NEWS
FROM
UMASS AMHERST ENTOMOLOGY
(#3, December 18, 2002)
Edited by Dave Ferro and Roy Van Driesche
Dear Alums:
In this issue, we have decided to do some in depth catching up with three
of our own alums: Bernie Roitberg, who worked with Ron Prokopy in the
early 1980s and is now a professor at Simon Fraser University in British
Columbia and is very well respected in insect behavior and evolution circles;
Jorge Hendrichs, also a student of Ron Prokopy in the late 1980s, who
now works for FAO and is an internationally known figure in sterile insect
technology, and Mark Hoddle, who worked with Roy Van Driesche in the early-
to mid-1990s and is now a tenured professor at UC Riverside working on
biological control of avocado thrips and other pests. As a Department,
we are honored to have such prominent entomologists among our alums. The
editors thought their stories would be of interest to all of our alums,
as well as an inspiration for current students.
GENERAL DEPARTMENTAL NEWS
Remodeling in Fernald Hall
One of the comments of our returning alums has always been that the physical
setting in Fernald Hall is timeless. We are starting on some remodeling
that hopefully will change some of that. Specifically, we are renovating
one of the two teaching laboratories (H-1) in the building, to provide
internet access at each student station, replace the tables with better
ones, and upgrade the microscopes and lights. We plan to begin this process
despite the worst economic year in MA since the 1930s (at least in terms
of state budget deficits). If you want to help us with this project, any
contributions you might care to make can be sent to the Department
of Entomology c/o Roy Van Driesche, Fernald Hall, UMass Amherst, Amherst,
MA, 01003. Make checks out to the University of Massachusetts and
indicate in your note that it is an unrestricted gift for the Fernald
modernization project. Thanks.
ALUMNI PROFILES
Bernie Roitberg
Ph.D. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1982
Currently at Simon Fraser University, BC, Canada
My post-graduate education "career" started at Fernald Hall
in the spring of 1982, just after finishing my PhD with Ron. I had just
started a post-doc with Ron
Prokopy when I noticed an ad for an Insect Ecologist at Simon
Fraser University at Vancouver, Canada. My initial response was "this
ad was written for me" (of course it wasn't). SFU was looking for
someone who could do theory and experiments, basic and applied work in
agricultural settings. I wasn't the only one who thought I fit the profile;
four copies of that same ad showed up in my mailbox within two days of
the posting. With that kind of omen I figured it was worth a shot. I mailed
off my CV, headed for Europe where I attended a meeting and promptly forgot
about the application. One day after my return from The Netherlands I
received a phone call inviting me to Vancouver to interview; I accepted.
With 2 years and 10 months post-doc security in my pocket, I spent 2 low-pressure
days in Vancouver figuring at worst I would get much needed experience
for when it came time to seriously look for a real job, The interview
must have gone well because two days after I returned to Amherst, SFU
offered me a tenure-track position. Suddenly I had to ask myself if I
wanted all the responsibility of running a lab, teaching courses, applying
for grants and on and on. On the other hand Vancouver was a pretty nice
place and the sushi was plentiful…
Flash ahead 8 months and here I am teaching my first class in BISC 407
Population Dynamics. Those poor students! Not only had I never taught
a course before but I had never taken a course in population dynamics.
That spring I learned a lot about myself, in particular how little I knew.
I survived the humiliation and 20 years later I still teach Population
Dynamics but things have improved dramatically. However, I still see hundreds
of knuckles turn white every time I show a differential equation but I
now have a whole kit of tools that I developed to help students connect
the math to the biology. I am pleased that my students almost always rate
my courses highly despite complaints that I grade too hard.
At SFU, I joined the Pest Management Centre (PMC) where I teach classes
in Pest Management and Population and Evolutionary Ecology. I also helped
found the Behavioral Ecology Research Group (BERG). Membership in PMC
and BERG allows me to maintain a balance between fundamental research
and applications. Over the years I have sat on committees of students
studying a wide range of organisms including firebrats, stingrays, wolverines,
honeybees, harlequin ducks, bark beetles, cockroaches, osprey, thrips,
sharks, rats and nematodes.
My research program has focused on the interface between individual behaviors
and higher-level processes (e.g., population and community level dynamics).
I study behavior from both theoretical and experimental contexts. My typical
approach is to develop theoretical models from first principles of evolutionary
biology and then test predictions from the theory in either the laboratory
and/or field. This approach has made me a much better experimental biologist
than I would have been without the guiding theory. For example, in two
oft-cited works, we used theory to develop protocols for studying suicide
in aphids and response to barometric pressure in parasitoid wasps, Nature
328: 797-799 and Nature 364, respectively. I can't imagine having come
up with those designs out of thin air.
I have worked on several different organisms including tephritid and
drosophillid fruit flies, predaceous midges, predaceous bugs, mosquitoes,
aphids, ladybirds, bark beetles, parasitoid wasps, spiders, mites, thistles
and fireweed. It may be a weakness of my program that I have wandered
so widely but my explanation (excuse, rationalization) is that first I
focus on questions and then look for appropriate systems to explore these
questions. Some of the subjects that I have worked on include: egg laying
decisions, emigration decisions, population dynamics of predator-prey
and omnivore-prey systems, evolution of diet breadth, behavior as a maternal
effect, misinformation as a prey defense tactic, sugar and blood feeding
decisions in mosquitoes, masting in trees, plant mating "behaviour"
and management of pests in orchards and greenhouses.
Much of my current effort is devoted to evaluating the impact of mosquito
behavior on malaria epidemiology. In particular, I ask whether phenotypic
plasticity of blood and sugar feeding mitigates or exacerbates heterogeneity
of bites among hosts. This work involves development of dynamic, state-dependent
models of behavior, game theory, manipulative experiments and empirical
measures of resources for mosquitoes. In a nutshell, I am exploring ability
and opportunity in an ecological context. I find the work very demanding
but rewarding but I remain cognizant that the epidemiology of diseases
like malaria is as much a function of social policy as of biological and
evolutionary processes.
My philosophy in guiding students is to help each individual achieve
their personal best. One way in which this can be achieved is to identify
a project that is exciting to that individual and doable. That often means
that students complete projects that I would not necessarily have chosen
for myself but I have no regrets. My students are my young colleagues
not my data slaves. Another way that I aid my students is to run a weekly
lab session in which we work as a group to solve some problem that is
not the primary focus of our work. In that way students get to see how
others solve problems, develop new skills and learn how to work in a group.
Some tangible results of these exercises can be seen in Evol. Ecol. 12:
701-715; Ent. exp Appl. 91: 187-194. Finally, I have been blessed with
good students and am very proud of the success they have achieved. At
last count 13 different individuals from my lab have landed faculty positions
in various countries (Canada, US, Britain, Israel) and 2 others are scientists
in federal labs.
During the past few years I have accepted a number of administrative
roles both at my university and within the scientific community at large.
Recently, I served as chair on a national grant panel; over three years
I dealt with > 500 proposals. I also serve(d) as grant appeals advisor,
member on an evaluation panel for a new national endowed chairs program,
and member of an NSF/NIH panel on infectious diseases. Currently, I also
serve as president of the Entomological Society of Canada. In fact, I
am writing this article at 12,000 m as I fly to our annual general meeting
in Winnipeg. Do I enjoy doing this kind of work? Not really. On the other
hand the scientific community has treated me very well and this is my
way of paying back for all the benefits that I have reaped. I never volunteer
for administrative jobs but I rarely say no when asked to serve.
The other great aspect of being a biologist is the opportunity to travel
and present ideas at a variety of venues. I've given well over 100 invited
lectures in many different countries including: Indonesia, France, Sweden,
China and Israel. At the end of this month, I will fly to Korea as an
Honorary Scientist to present a series of lectures and tour facilities.
I really enjoy these opportunities and the friendships that arise from
these visits.
I consider myself lucky to have been associated with several excellent
mentors. At University of British Columbia Judy Myers was my senior supervisor,
ditto for Ron Prokopy at UMass. Marc Mangel (UC Santa Cruz) was a very
influential colleague in the early stages of my attempts to develop evolutionary
models of behavior. I also benefited greatly at UMass from discussions
with Joe Elkinton,
Pedro Barbosa and Al Kamil (Psychology).
Oh yeah, a few words about my personal life. I live with my partner Carol,
daughter Gabriela and Nova Scotia Duck Toller Retriever, Hemlock, in a
5 level (modest sized) house perched up on a big rock, surrounded by large
hemlocks and cedars, 100 meters from the Pacific Ocean in the little village
of Deep Cove. You've probably seen Deep Cove if you watch films or TV
because our neighborhood is very popular with the film industry.
Jorge Hendrichs
Ph.D. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1990
Currently with FAO/IAEA in Vienna, Austria
It was great to receive the Entomology-UMass newsletter and to read about
alumni and current developments at the Department. I would like to thank
Roy Van Driesche
and Dave Ferro
for this initiative, and also for the invitation to write a longer note
on my activities and interests since leaving UMass.
At UMass I was a Ph.D. student with Ron
Prokopy and at the same time my wife Marti was completing her
B.Sc. Even though this was a challenging period, we have very fond memories
of our time in Amherst. Our daughter was one year old when we arrived
and our son was born in Massachusetts, so also for them New England represents
a special chapter in their life.
After obtaining a B.Sc. in Monterrey, Mexico and Cornell University (thesis
on bark beetles), I worked the first six years of my career for the Mexican
Ministry of Agriculture, as part of a team that started an areawide medfly
program involving the USA, Mexico and Guatemala governments. Medfly had
invaded Costa Rica in the 1950s and gradually invaded the other Central
American countries, reaching southern Mexico in 1977, thus threatening
its medfly-free status. The US announced it would close its border to
Mexican fruits and vegetables if medfly crossed the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
As a result an emergency program was launched, integrating suppression
tools with the first large-scale application of the sterile insect technique
(SIT) against this pest.
This multinational effort, the Moscamed Program, was successful above
expectations, managing to stop the northward spread of medfly through
the establishment of a barrier of sterile flies. It has been in operation
during the last 24 years, maintaining throughout this period northern
Guatemala and Mexico (and indirectly the US) free of medfly, thereby protecting
hundreds of thousands of jobs and trade in fresh agricultural commodities
amounting to various billion US$ a year. Currently the program produces
over 2 billion sterile medfly males a week, some of which are also exported
to the USA to avoid medfly establishment in California and Florida.
Early in the program, in view of the importance of understanding medfly
behavior for SIT effectiveness, I became increasingly fascinated by the
sexual selection aspects related to sterile fly quality assessment. In
1978 I had the good fortune to work with Ron Prokopy in Guatemala, where
we carried out the first description and quantitative assessment of medfly
lekking behavior. Both of the above experiences, the strategic/operational
aspects related to directing an areawide control program, and the applied
R&D simultaneously required to continue increasing effectiveness of
applied programs, strongly influenced my future career.
During a 15-month interruption in 1980/81 I obtained an M.Sc. from the
University of Florida, doing my research on sexual selection in Caribbean
fruit flies. Three years later I left the Moscamed program to work for
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Egypt, this time to gain
experience in the complex and often difficult field of international development.
Following this second working experience I was happy to return once more
to school and research, and was very fortunate that Ron Prokopy had an
opening for me at that time. At UMass from 1987-1990, I was involved in
studying the food foraging behavior of apple maggot and medflies.
In 1991 we moved to Austria, where I worked until 1994 as a researcher
at the FAO/IAEA Agriculture and Biotechnology Laboratory at Seibersdorf,
involved in improving medfly mass rearing and assessing the behavioral
and production performance of genetic sexing strains. These are strains
in which females are eliminated early in development to allow a more cost-efficient
production, transport and release, and an increased sterile male effectiveness
in the absence of sterile females. Most medfly mass rearing facilities
in the world (there are over ten), including USDA ones, are now mass rearing
the genetic sexing strains developed at the Seibersdorf Laboratory.
Since mid-1994 I have been in Vienna, heading the Insect Pest Control
program of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and
Agriculture. This is quite a challenge, following in the footsteps of
E. S. Knipling, D. Lindquist, W. Klassen and other prominent entomologists.
This joint program, involving funding from two UN organizations, FAO and
IAEA, as well as multilateral funding from various donor countries, has
three major components: a normative one, R&D activities and technical
cooperation program. On the R&D side this includes the activities
of the Entomology Unit of the Seibersdorf Laboratory as well a coordinated
research program that funds research networks in which scientists from
developed and developing countries focus on selected research topics.
The technical cooperation program involves the implementation of areawide
field projects that are implemented in FAO and IAEA Member States and
whose objective is socioeconomic impact rather than just technology transfer
(for ongoing activities see our web page http://www.iaea.org/programmes/nafa/d4/index.html
and/or request being placed on the listing for the semiannual newsletter).
We have been particularly interested in promoting an areawide integrated
approach to pest management. In 1998 we organized in Malaysia an International
Conference on Areawide Control of Insect Pests, which was attended by
over seventy countries. Most insect pest control, even when integrating
methods, largely underestimates pest movement and is generally applied
in an uncoordinated field-by-field approach. A more effective pest management
strategy is to control entire populations of insects in a coordinated
effort in both crop fields and surrounding marginal host areas, and with
the active organization of growers. With the lower density of an entire
pest population, more selective, and less reactive and insecticide-reliant
management tactics become feasible. To cope with current environmental,
economic and global trade challenges, commercial producers increasingly
have to collaborate, a trend that strongly encourages the participation
of farmers in areawide approaches to IPM.
One of the areawide management methods that we are developing and helping
FAO and IAEA Member States to apply against selected key pests is the
SIT. The demand for integrating SIT with other methods is increasing because
it is a specially environment-friendly method: i) unlike classical biological
control, which introduces exotic organisms into a new environment (with
the risks this entails), SIT introduces only non-exotic or endemic organisms
to deal with pest organisms already present in that ecosystem; ii) unlike
biological control agents whose mode of action is often not species-specific
and which under certain conditions may become harmful, autocidal control
is by definition intra-specific and therefore cannot affect other species;
and iii) unlike biological control agents that are released as fertile
organisms and thus become established over time and space in a new environment,
sterile insects cannot become established in the environment because of
their sterility.
In over 40 years of applying SIT in various regions of the world there
have been no reports of impact on non-target organisms. On the contrary,
sterile insects have been successfully used in many parts of the world
to protect crops and livestock from huge economic damage. First SIT application
against the New World Screwworm (NWS) resulted in the eradication of this
pest from the USA and Mexico and during the last decade from Central America,
reaching the Panama-Colombia border in 2001. This campaign, with a total
cost over the past 40 years of about 1 billion US dollars, compares with
the economic benefit to the cattle industry amounting to over 1 billion
US dollars each year. Using SIT, NWS was also eradicated in the early
1990s from Libya, and from where it threatened to expand to the whole
Mediterranean basin. We foresee an increasing role of SIT as an important
tool to eliminate similar outbreaks of alien invasive species to avoid
their establishment in new geographical regions.
A second group of insect pests of major SIT application is fruit flies,
notorious quarantine pests because of their extremely wide range of hosts
they attack. Following the first large SIT program to prevent the spread
of medfly into Mexico, this technology has been applied over the last
decade for similar fruit fly programs in various other parts of the world.
In Chile, after various decades attempting to eradicate the pest using
insecticides, medfly eradication was achieved with SIT in 1995, estimated
to result in opened markets for fruit exports of up to US$ 500 million
per year. Japan eradicated the melon fly from its territory and Australia
eliminated the Queensland fruit fly from Western Australia.
Allowing the establishment of medfly in California would result in the
loss of $US 1 billion a year and result in a drastic increase of insecticide
use. Since 1995 ca. 400 million sterile medflies are released every week
over the Los Angeles basin, as a preventive measure to avoid the establishment
of the medfly in California. This activity costs around US$ 15 million
per year, saving US$ 1.5 billion per year in direct damage to fruits and
vegetables and in quarantine restrictions that would be imposed by importing
countries in case the pest would become established. Florida is following
a similar approach in high-risk areas.
The development of the above mentioned genetic sexing strains has resulted
in reduced SIT costs and greater effectiveness, opening the possibility
of using SIT for routine medfly suppression rather than in the past only
for eradication or barrier programs. As a result, no quarantines need
to be established and sterile male releases can be used routinely to replace
aerial insecticide sprays with the environment-friendly aerial release
of sterile males. The development of male-only strains has resulted in
medfly SIT programs in various stages of development in various parts
of South and Central America, the Mediterranean basin, the Near East,
Australia and South Africa.
One of our important successes is in the area of tsetse, a problem at
the root of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, where technical breakthroughs
culminated in 1997 in eliminating the vector from the island of Zanzibar.
In spite of intensive monitoring during the last five years no tsetse
have been found and cattle are free of trypanosomes. The elimination of
the trypanosomosis problem on Zanzibar is resulting in significant gains
in the livestock sector with the introduction of more productive cattle
breeds, and the use of cattle for mixed farming. As a result of this highly
visible project, preparations are under way for a number of SIT pilot
tsetse projects in isolated areas on mainland Africa. The potential for
successful integration of SIT with conventional methods against tsetse
flies has been significantly advanced by further improvements in mass
rearing and aerial release techniques.
The Joint FAO/IAEA program has played a significant role in promoting,
developing and supporting the implementation of many of the above and
other SIT projects (also various moth SIT projects). As the application
of this technology often involves coordinating transboundary action over
various countries, it is appropriate for international agencies such as
FAO and IAEA to play this role, and in view that there are no other institutions
or organizations which deal specifically with SIT and areawide insect
pest management, and there still are no commercial enterprises selling
sterile insects.
I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share our exciting activities
with current UMass entomology students and alumni. Based on current trends
we foresee increasing public pressure to reduce insecticide use and residue
levels in food. The cost of insecticide development will probably continue
to rise because of increasingly stringent standards imposed by regulatory
agencies. At the same time, the economic feasibility of biologically-based
methods such as SIT, applied as part of an areawide approach, will become
increasingly apparent, with more realistic accounting of the negative
environmental effects of insecticide applications, and further improvement
in the cost-effectiveness of these methods.
_________________________
Dr. Jorge Hendrichs
Head, Insect Pest Control Section
Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture
P.O. Box 100, A-1400 Vienna
AUSTRIA
E-MAIL: J. Hendrichs "at"
iaea.org*
FAX: (+43-1) 26007
TEL: (+43-1) 2600-21628
http://www.iaea.org/programmes/nafa/d4/index.html
Mark Hoddle
Ph.D. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1997
Currently Extension Specialist in Biological Control, University of California,
Riverside
My five-year Ph.D. program over 1992-1997 in the Entomology Department
at UMass was the most formative experience of my life. I was very fortunate
to have Roy Van Driesche
as my major advisor and our work on the biological control of whiteflies
with parasitic wasps on poinsettias in greenhouses was very productive,
and resulted in around 13 publications on this system. The training I
received at UMass, in particular, Insect Taxonomy (taught by Doc. Peters)
and Joe Elkinton's
Insect Ecology Class were invaluable and I regularly draw on information
taught in these lessons.
I joined the faculty at UC Riverside in March 1997 as an extension specialist
in biological control. This is an unbelievable position as there is absolute
freedom to pursue any research goals that take your interest and there
is no teaching commitment. Currently, our lab has three technicians, two
post-graduate researchers, and one Ph.D. student working on several different
projects. The work we are doing is very varied. The mainstay of our work
has been the development of control programs for two damaging avocado
pests, the persea mite, Oligonychus perseae, and the avocado thrips, Scirtothrips
perseae. Both of these insects are native to Mexico. Regular foreign exploration
trips to Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica have been made to delineate
the home ranges of these pests and to locate and identify potential natural
enemies for release in California.
The glassy-winged sharpshooter (GWSS), Homalodisca coagulata, is native
to the southeast USA and arrived in southern California on ornamental
plants imported from the southeast about 12 years ago. This insect spreads
a xylem inhabiting bacteria, Xylella fastidiosa, that clogs the xylem
of susceptible host plants killing them. Several major crop plants, including
grapes and almonds, and some ornamental plants (e.g., oleanders) are very
sensitive to Xylella infections. In southern California, there have been
massive die offs of grapes and oleanders, which are attributable to inordinate
numbers of GWSS vectoring Xylella. Currently, GWSS is not under effective
biological control in California but is under excellent regulation in
its home range. We are importing mymarid egg parasitoids for GWSS, running
host specificity tests, and establishing suitable parasitoids in California
in an attempt to reduce GWSS densities and to retard its spread into the
premier wine production regions of Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino Counties
in Northern California.
The other main research focus has been assessing the fitness of transgenic
mosquitoes and comparing their demographic statistics to untransformed
wild-types. Aedes aegypti, a vector of yellow fever, has been transformed
at UCR to express the green fluorescent protein from a jellyfish. Transformed
mosquitoes glow bright green under UV light and this marker gene may ultimately
be hooked up to a strategic gene that interferes with disease transmission.
Our data have shown that the reproductive potential of transgenic mosquitoes
is woefully inferior to wild-types. We are now pursuing research to determine
the cause of this inferiority. We are examining the effect of the position
of the foreign genetic material in the mosquito's genome, bottlenecking
after transformation, and the "toxicity" of individual elements
of the construct that is micro-injected into developing mosquito eggs.
Finally, my own personal research interests have led me into three different
areas: (1) investigating the validity of claims that the Levuana moth
(Levuana iridescens), a pest of coconuts in Fiji has gone extinct because
a biological control program that released a parasitic fly (Besa remota)
in 1926. (2) Thrips taxonomy (morphological and molecular identifications),
and (3) assessing the needs for the use of biological control in support
of conservation projects and ad vocation of extension of biological control
technology to non-traditional target species such as invasive aquatic
invertebrates.
*The use of "at" rather than the traditional @ is an attempt
to keep spam "spiders" from harvesting our email addresses.
|
|
|
