Ph.D. student Samantha Rosa was selected to join the esteemed cohort of NOAA’s Margaret A. Davidson Graduate Fellows! Samantha Rosa is co-mentored with Dr. Anahí Espíndola, As part of the fellowship Samantha will conduct collaborative research with the Heʻeia National Estuarine Research Reserve on the island of Oʻahu. Her research will focus on developing K-12 Community-Driven Science curriculum and programming that draws on Indigenous and contemporary knowledge to empower children and educators to lead biocultural restoration and management of Hawai‘i's cultural and ecological systems. Samantha is excited to contribute her experience as a classroom teacher and ecologist towards enhancing the education programs at the only NOAA reserve formally recognized as an Indigenous and community-conserved area. 

To extend our string of wins, Seth Caban landed an Ernest N. Cory Undergraduate Scholarship for Spring 2024! This scholarship provides up to $1,000 for undergraduate students each semester who are contributing creatively to Department of Entomology research and/or extension efforts. Seth is a double major in Biological Sciences (Ecology & Evolution) and in Animal Sciences, so he can certainly use the financial support for books and fees. Seth is tinkering with ideas for independent research on invasive insects in the region. 
https://entomology.umd.edu/news/congrats-spring-24-cory-award-recipients

In a delightful collaboration with the George Washington University and Georgetown University, our periodical cicada research made it to the cover of Science! John Lill (GWU) and Martha Weiss (GU) began this work during the early dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) in preparation for the big Brood X event in 2021. Zoe Getman-Pickering came aboard as a GWU postdoc in 2021 to lead the effort, which included fieldwork and community science. Former UMD Entomology & Grunerlab student Grace Soltis collected bird foraging data for her Honor's thesis, which was a central component of this research.

In short, we found that more than 80 bird species shifted their foraging to the overwhelming numbers of the cicada emergence, which released caterpillars and doubled their damage to white oaks. Given that the Brood X periodical cicadas emerged in the billions across 15 states, and that there is a different brood emerging somewhere in the Eastern US nearly every year, the indirect food web ramifications are geographically extensive.

>> Perspectives article by John Parker

>> Getman-Pickering et al.

Allison Huysman (left) received her B.S. from Cornell University, and has an M.S. degree in Natural Resources from Cal Poly Humboldt. She worked for three years at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (Washington, DC) before joining the Entomology graduate program for the fall semester.

Samantha Rosa (right) received her B.A. in Geology at the University of Florida, and is currently wrapping her M.S. in Plant Biology at Northwestern University. She also brings extensive experience in K-12 teaching and STEM outreach. To pursue her interests in mangrove pollination systems, she will be co-advised by Dr. Anahi Espíndola in the Biological Sciences: Behavior, Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics graduate program.

Graduate student Ángela Sáenz leveraged the 17-yr periodical cicada Brood X event in 2021 to collaborate with Virginia Tech on wing hydraulics in these exceptional insects. As stated in Salcedo et al. (2023) in Scientific Reports, "insect wings must be flexible, light, and strong to allow dynamic behaviors such as flying, mating, and feeding." The team found that during ecdysis, cicadas pump ~16% of their body mass in hemolymph through wing veins to expand their folded wing pads. Fully expanded wings become even lighter than the wing pads, thus producing strong but lightweight wings in short order.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122354119
With a collaborative interdisciplinary team led by Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the non-profit Island Conservation, our new perspectives article argues that island eradications of invasive mammals such as feral goats, European wild boar, and rats also benefit marine nearshore ecosystems. We need to take cues from indigenous island societies, who managed islands from ‘ridge to reef’, to restore the linkages that benefit flora, fauna, and ecosystems integrity, both on land and in the sea.

At right, Diversity of terrestrial ecosystem changes that have been documented to follow island introduction of invasive mammals such as pigs, rats, and goats. The ecosystem changes are linked to the ecology of the invasive mammal, and some of the stereotyped shifts are captured. Credit: re:wild. (Full article @ Scripps)

Read more from MarylandToday >>

Full open access article from PNAS >>

Two labbies landed Ernest N. Cory Undergraduate Scholarships for Spring 2023! This scholarship provides up to $1,000 for undergraduate students each semester who are contributing creatively to Department of Entomology research and/or extension efforts. Samantha Kowalik is a Microbiology major with an Entomology minor, and Avery Rice is majoring in Environmental Science and Technology with a Sustainability minor. Both support our research on emerald ash borer biocontrol in the lab. 

Alexander Forde studied classic top-down and bottom-up forces in food webs with his experimental study in an unusual ecosystem. On mangrove cays inside the Belizean barrier reef, severe P-limitation on the peat substrates curbs red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) growth within interior ponds. Along the pond fringes, subsidies from wind-blown flocculent microbial biomass transform leaf traits and growth form, creating fine-grained productivity gradients and heterogeneity in arthropod and bird communities. On Twin Cays, Belize, our study leveraged this steep productivity gradient and experimentally excluded insectivorous birds for more than 1 year. Although bird predation consistently disrupted arthropod numbers and reduced their herbivory, microbial detrital subsidies alone explained red mangrove growth dynamics.

Read the article in Ecology >>

View the photo gallery of the Bulletin of the ESA >>

Grace Soltis graduated with her BS in Biological Sciences (Ecology and Evolution) and a minor in Entomology. Grace was the first to enroll as an Entomology minor when the program launched in 2021. Earlier this month, Grace successfully defended her thesis with High Honors in Entomology: "Periodical cicadas emergence triggers dramatic shift in avian foraging” - coming soon to a peer-reviewed journal near you! In the fall, Grace will enroll in the Ph.D. program in Ecology & Evolution at Florida State University with Dr. Nora Underwood.

Congratulations and good luck, Grace!

Read more >>

Stokes Aker publishes first, first-authored paper in the Journal of Economic Entomology. Since the introduction of the emerald ash borer (EAB) to the USA in the 1990s it has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees, and it imperils billions more. Stokes documents that the most recently introduced biological control agent – a specialized parasitoid wasp from Asia, Spathius galinae (Braconidae) – that may hold the most promise for spatial spread to keep pace with EAB.

Read more >>

Update 4/2022: Stokes Aker will begin his bid for a Master’s degree in Entomology this fall at the Penn State University. Good luck, Stokes, we will certainly miss you!

Congratulations to Grace Soltis, one of three awardees of the Fall 2021 Ernest N. Cory Undergraduate Scholarship! This scholarship provides up to $1,000 for undergraduate students each semester who are contributing creatively to Entomology Department research and/or extension efforts. For her Entomology Honors thesis, Grace is researching the impacts of Brood X periodical cicadas on the food webs of Maryland forests, observing changes in bird predation pressures both before and after the cicada 2021 event. Grace is an Entomology Minor also working on emerald ash borer biocontrol research in the Gruner lab. Dominique Desmarattes (Fritz lab) and Molly Jones (Burghardt lab) also earned a scholarship.
​Read more>>

Grace Soltis was featured in the Audubon and WIRED magazines for her senior thesis research on bird foraging on periodical cicadas. The articles feature her work with George Washington University and Georgetown University ecologists, including Dr. Zoe Getman-Pickering pictured with Grace (photo credit: Chris Linder). Grace is studying Brood X impacts on Maryland food webs.
​Read more>>

Madhvi -- ahem -- Dr. Venkatraman defended and filed her dissertation: "What makes a successful invader? Population genomics and adaptation in the invasive Japanese white-eye (Zosterops japonicus)"

Dr. Venkatraman was awarded a prestigious NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology to continue her research in this system, collaborating with Dr. Marty Martin at the University of South Florida and Dr. Rob Fleischer at the Smithsonian Center for Conservation Genomics at the National Zoo.

Fig. from Venkatraman et al. 2021 Genome Biology and Evolution doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evab063

We are pleased to welcome Ángela Soto Sáenz as a Masters candidate in Entomology. Her arrival from Costa Rica was delayed from August 2020 to January 2021 because of the COVID-19 crisis. Ange, we appreciate your patience and perseverence!

​Ángela is interested in biological control and landscape management to attract natural enemies of invasive insects.

Mayda Nathan successfully defended her dissertation, "Plant-insect interactions in a shifting coastal ecosystem: Avicennia germinans and its associated arthropods."

Dr. Nathan seeks opportunities in science policy. Congratulations & best of luck in all your future endeavors, wherever these may take you!