College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley

[the stick insect Epidares nolimetangere from the rainforests of northwest Borneo, taken by Yu Zeng, a student in IB]

Instead of a big fuzzy panda bear beckoning as the symbol of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), how about the giant flower-loving fly, or better yet, the California night-stalking tiger beetle? Images of iconic creatures such as the panda are commonplace in our society, and like many of our most venerated animals (think dinosaurs, puppies, and birds), they are vertebrates. But when’s the last time you heard of a “Save the Bugs” campaign, or a movie about a cartoon millipede? Why this bias against the spineless? It could be because it’s a lot easier to cuddle with a cat or dog than a hairy pine borer (it’s a beetle), or because we ourselves are vertebrates, and, well, we like us and things similar to us. Whatever the reason, Berkeley’s entomology students are on a mission to gain a little respect for the insects and other arthropods that dominate the earth, and their first salvo is the creation of a no-spines-allowed seminar series.

If popularity was measured in terms of pure diversity, the insects would be prom queen. With 1 million documented species and an estimated 9 million more awaiting discovery and description, insects comprise half of all the known biodiversity on Earth. The University of California’s own Essig Museum of Entomology houses over 5 million of the Berkeley Natural History Museums’ 12 million specimens. One of these museums, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), runs a highly successful seminar series dubbed “MVZ Lunch” on Wednesday afternoons, drawing guest speakers from around the world to discuss their research on ecology and evolution. And while the entomology students enjoy attending these talks, they have decided to answer with a seminar of their own in order to bring a little taxonomic parity to the table.

Starting Friday, November 13, and continuing on the second Friday of every month, the Essig Museum will host “Essig Brunch,” a seminar covering the ecology, evolution, and conservation of all arthropods (insects, spiders, snails, and other spineless wonders). The seminar will run from 10-11 in the Museum of Paleontology’s “fishbowl” (1101 VLSB, at the feet of the giant T. rex skeleton), is open to everyone, and will have coffee and other refreshments. Talks will run about 30 minutes, with time for mingling beforehand and questions afterward. The series opens with a talk from ESPM professor Kip Will on 11/13 titled “How Feronista got its upside-down genitalia and more of Kipling’s (Just So?) stories of pterostichine ground beetles.”

While all of Berkeley’s natural history museums enjoy close camaraderie, a little friendly competition can’t hurt, right? So does the upstart Essig Brunch have a chance of unseating MVZ Lunch as the premier meal-related seminar on campus?

“No way,” said MVZ Director Craig Mortiz. “But I look forward to them trying,” he added with his trademark grin.

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 10:00 PM | Permalink

If the climate is not quite right, birds will up and move rather than stick around and sweat it out, according to a new study led by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The findings, to be published the week of Sept. 14 in an online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that 48 out of 53 bird species studied in California's Sierra Nevada mountains have adjusted to climate change over the last century by moving to sites with the temperature and precipitation conditions they favored.

The few species, including the Anna's Hummingbird and Western Scrub-Jay, that did not pack up and leave when the climate changed were generally better able to exploit human-altered habitats, such as urban or suburban areas, the researchers said.

In order to conserve biodiversity in the face of future climate change, we need to know how a species actually responds to a warming climate," said study lead author Morgan Tingley, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management and at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley. "Comparing past and present ranges of species that experienced climate change is one of the best ways to gain this knowledge. Understanding how species will respond to climate change allows us to take steps now to restore key habitats and create movement corridors that will help them respond to the changes we have coming."

Continue reading "Sierra Nevada birds move in response to warmer, wetter climate " »

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 8:51 PM | Permalink

From Bay Nature:

Gordon Frankie is a UC Berkeley professor and a native bee expert. Bees are his unmitigated passion. But before you walk out the door to talk to him, drop anything you think you know about honey-making hive-dwellers. For him, the most important bees are the ones you probably see every day--but have never heard of.

Turns out that none of the 1,600 known species of native California bees are anything like these transplants from across the Atlantic. Our homegrown bees can be green, black, or even red. They range in size from giant bumblebees to some that are barely visible to the naked eye. Some are as furry as a Sasquatch. Others are smooth and metallic. They mostly live alone or in small groups, sleeping in burrows or bivouacking on flowers at night. They are roughly split between male and female, they don't have queens, their stingers don't get stuck in your skin, and, lastly, they don't make honey....

Read "In the Key of Bee" at BayNature.org

Posted by Susan Sabry at 1:46 PM | Permalink

Ask biologists how many species live in a pond, a grassland, a mountain range or on the entire planet, and the answers get increasingly vague. Hence the wide range of estimates for the planet's biodiversity, predicted to be between 2 million and 50 million species.

A new way of estimating species richness reported this month in the journal Ecology Letters by ecologist John Harte and colleagues, will make such estimates more precise for habitats of all sizes and types, from deserts to tropical rainforests.

"We know how to census the number of species in a square-meter plot or within an acre, but a major problem in conservation biology and ecology is estimating the diversity of biota at very large spatial scales, such as in the Amazon," said Harte, professor of environmental science, policy, and management. "This theory provides a much more accurate means of doing that."

Continue reading "Theory provides more precise estimates of large-area biodiversity" »

Posted by Susan Sabry at 3:22 PM | Permalink

A University of California, Berkeley, project to catalog nearly every living thing on the Polynesian island of Moorea is enlisting the help of the island's 5th graders and showing them that science is not for foreigners only.

While conducting research for his thesis and for the Moorea Biocode Project, ESPM graduate student Brad Balukjian has been teaching 5th graders at the Paopao Primary School about biodiversity and introducing them to the scientific study of the plants and animals they see every day.

The biocode project, run by UC Berkeley and French researchers and funded by a $5.2 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, aims to build a comprehensive inventory of all non-microbial life on the island by 2011.With samples taken from the mountaintops to the ocean depths, it would be the first complete inventory of a tropical ecosystem.

At an end-of-year science fair on June 25, Balukjian's students proudly presented their collections of Moorean insects and plants to parents and fellow students. Each student had also collected a specimen specifically for the Moorea Biocode Project database, so that its DNA profile could be entered along with the student collector's name.

"They are immortalized in the biocode database," Balukjian said.

Continue reading "Growing young scientists in Tahiti" »

Posted by Cyril at 3:22 PM | Permalink

ESPM postdoc James Russell and his colleague Reinhard Klette discuss the use of pattern recognition technology to identify the geographical distributions of species, by using tracking cards and tunnels. Their research, just published in the journal Ecology, represents a cheap and non-labour intensive way of assessing the spatial patterns of species in their environments.

Posted by Cyril at 3:55 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

University of California scientists have received a five-year, $4 million grant to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a southeast Asian island threatened by the loss of biodiversity in its tropical forests.

An international team of collaborators will conduct biodiversity surveys, screen microbes and plants for applications to human health and energy needs, recommend strategies to conserve endangered species, and develop and encourage local conservation. The project is organized into six associate programs -- five led by UC Davis scientists while one program, focusing on discovery of human health solutions is being led by Len Bjeldanes, professor of toxicology at CNR.

The grant is funded by the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program, a multi-agency program led by the National Institutes of Health with contributions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation.

Posted by Cyril at 10:01 PM | Permalink

by Sarah Yang

The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The results, to be published online by early March 2006 in the journal Conservation Biology, suggest that feeding further down the food web may have played a role in low levels of reproduction observed in contemporary murrelet populations, and has likely contributed to the seabirds' listing as an endangered species, the researchers said.

Read the full story

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:21 AM | Permalink

by Jeannette Warnert

Kent Daane, Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Berkeley, has been appointed the University’s research liaison with the California Raisin Marketing Board and the California Table Grape Commission effective July 1.

In this role, Daane consults with the commodities’ research advisory boards, which provide guidance on grant requests that have been submitted by researchers. The California Raisin Marketing Board disburses about $200,000 annually and the California Table Grape Commission disburses about $550,000 annually to fund research in the crops grown by their members. Daane’s work as research liaison will be in addition to his current duties.

Daane has studied pest control strategies for California crops since 1990 at the UC Kearney Research and Extension Center in Fresno County. He and his research staff focus on the development of ecologically based pest management systems. Programs are developed to help farmers achieve economic success while farming using environmentally and socially sustainable practices.

In recent years, Daane has focused on vineyard pests, studying natural enemies of vine mealybug and leafhoppers; and he has worked to enhance the vineyard environment to support pest enemies such as spiders. While Daane’s research centers on biological control, it has included studies with the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis and pheromones, which help conserve natural enemies in the farm ecosystem. Daane also investigates insect-plant interactions that influence pest or natural enemy densities, the economic impact of pest populations and the biology and ecology of pests and natural enemies. Daane’s other projects focus on insect pests in orchard crops (pistachio, olive, almond and stone fruit), and glassy-winged sharpshooter biology in the San Joaquin Valley.

“Good, solid research, which combines basic and applied science, will always be the foundation of improved pest management systems,” Daane said. “Having a good line of communication with the agricultural community has particularly helped direct my research program toward relevant issues and pest problems.”

In 2000, Daane was appointed Cooperative Extension specialist in the Division of Insect Biology at the Berkeley campus. He maintains laboratories and staff at both locations – with the Berkeley lab allowing opportunities for close collaboration with campus-based faculty and the Fresno County location ensuring a strong working relationship with farmers, Cooperative Extension farm advisors and researchers at the Kearney Research and Extension Center.

“Because Dr. Daane has significant research activities both at UC Berkeley and at the Kearney Ag Center he is especially qualified to facilitate the research-to-farm continuum,” said Maxwell Norton, UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources program leader for agricultural productivity. “He has an intimate knowledge of the many problems facing raisin and table grape farmers and packers and they will greatly benefit from him participating in this role.”

Contact Jeanentte for more information at 559-241-7514 or jwarnert@ucop.edu.

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 10:48 AM | Permalink