Doctoral Candidate Mia Lippey Wins a President's Prize at ESA Meeting

Doctoral candidate Mia Lippey, mentored by UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Jay Rosenheim and assistant professor Emily Meineke, won a coveted President's Prize for her graduate student presentation at the 2024 Entomological Society of America (ESA) meeting, held recently in Phoenix. 

Doctoral candidate and ant specialist Ziv Lieberman of the Phil Ward lab won a second-place award in the highly competitive graduate student presentations.

The ESA meeting drew more than 3,600 scientists who shared their research, networked, collaborated, and "stayed up to date with cutting-edge research in entomology," according to communications manager Joe Rominiecki, senior manager of communications.  Highlights included the Student Competition, the Founders’ Memorial Lecture, the 2025 Strategic Outlook and Member Forum and the Opening Plenary Session with keynote speaker Shawn Otto.

Mia Lippey

Lippey delivered her award-winning 10-minute presentation on "A Big Data Approach to Characterizing Impacts of Climate Warming on Agricultural Arthropod Populations" in the Plant-Ecosystems category, Biocontrol, General 2.

"A growing body of literature warns that climate warming will reduce the abundance and efficacy of insect natural enemies while promoting the growth of pest populations," Lippey wrote in her abstract. "However, comprehensive empirical support for these predictions are lacking, and some recent studies demonstrate that climate warming actually has mixed effects on agricultural insects depending on various factors such as geographic location. Despite these findings, the effects of warming on biocontrol agents and their target pests remain largely unknown, and the dominant narrative remains: warming temperatures will exacerbate pest problems."

"To address this knowledge gap, we applied an ecoinformatics approach, whereby long-term data collected in agricultural systems for pest management were repurposed for scientific research," she continued. "We collated several data streams across California and Spain gathered by independent pest control advisors, and analyzed a subset of the data comprising 30 insect species, six crops, and over 127,834 field-years of detailed observations on insect populations. In our initial analyses, insects at different trophic levels display variable responses to year-to-year and site-to-site temperature variation. In this talk, we will also describe how our study ultimately aims to answer why some insects respond positively to warming temperatures while others respond negatively, and build the foundation for a predictive, trait-based framework that informs integrated pest management as the climate warms."

Her research co-authors: Jay Rosenheim and Emily Meineke. Rosenheim, who retired in June after 34 years on the UC Davis faculty, taught insect ecology, with a focus on host-parasitoid, predator-prey, and plant-insect interactions interactions. Meineke specializes in urban landscape entomology.

Ziv Lieberman

Lieberman presented "Evolution and Classification of the Ant Subfamily Dolichoderinae from the Phylogenomic Perspective" in the  category of Systematics, Evolution and Biodiversity, Phylogenetics. 

The abstract: "The ubiquitous ant subfamily Dolichoderinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is one of the "big four" subfamilies wherein most diversity is concentrated. Its members range from rare and specialized taxa, such as the perplexing subterranean Anillidris, to common and economically significant species such as the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile. However, our understanding of dolichoderine evolution and systematics has never been studied from a phylogenomic perspective; the last molecular phylogeny having been performed over a decade ago, using limited Sanger-sequenced loci and relatively limited taxon sampling. Here, we revisit the phylogeny of Dolichoderinae using a subgenomic ultraconserved elements under maximum likelihood and Bayesian frameworks and a variety of partitioning and coalescent approaches. We more than double taxon inclusion, sampling all but one genera, including several for which sequence data were previously unavailable. Our results partially recapitulate the current tribal and generic classification, while also revealing novel and sometimes surprising relationships, which we corroborate from morphology and address through taxonomic actions. We revise divergence dating estimates under an unresolved fossilized-birth-death model and greatly expanded fossil tip inclusion, and use this chronogram for historical biogeographic inference."

UC Davis doctoral alumni Brendon Boudinot of the Smithsonian Institution and Jill Oberski of Senckenberg Museum and Research Institute, Frankfurt, Hessen, Germany, are research co-authors of the ant project.

Marissa Sandoval 

UC Davis graduate student Marissa Celine Sandoval of the lab of associate professor Santiago Ramirez of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, College of Biological Sciences, took home a President's Prize for her presentation, "Exploring the Chemical Ecology of an Orchid Bee Signaling System." She competed in the Systematics, Evolution and Biodiversity category, Behavior 1.

Her abstract: "Unlike many insects, male euglossine bees, commonly known as orchid bees, do not synthesize their own pheromones; instead they collect odorants from the environment that form a species-specific perfume blend. Such blends are subsequently used for courtship display. Though naturalists have long thought that the perfumes were used for attracting mates, only recently has it been demonstrated in an experimental setting that females prefer to mate with males displaying a perfume compared to those that lack one. Here, we investigate this phenomenon further in the context of mate recognition and choice. We collected perfume from a pair of sister species, Euglossa viridissima and Euglossa dilemma. We then performed no-choice mating assays with Euglossa dilemma males and females. In the no-choice experiments, naive female bees were paired with a male loaded with one of the following perfumes: Euglossa dilemma or Euglossa viridissima. We hypothesized that the species-specific perfume facilitates Euglossa dilemma female mate recognition and choice. Our results may provide valuable insights into how important sexual signals are maintained and how the tribe of orchid bees became so speciose with over 250 species throughout the new world tropics."

Her research co-authors: Santiago Ramirez; and Janosch Dohrs and Thomas Eltz, both of Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. 

EGSA Members

Lippey and Lieberman are active in the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA). Nine other EGSA members delivered presentations at the ESA meeting:

• Lexie Martin: "Microbial Acquisition and Interactions in the Blue Orchard Bee (Osmia lignaria)"
• Briley Mullin: "Evaluating the Use of Predatory Plant Bugs (Hemiptera: Miridae) as Biological Control Against the Invasive South American Tomato Leaf Miner (Tuta absoluta) in California Tomato Fields."
• Madi Hendrick: "Fish are Friends, Shrimp are food: Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) as a Potential Biological Control Agent for Tadpole Shrimp (Triops longicaudatus)." 
• Marielle Hansel Friedman: "Herbarium Specimens Faithfully Capture Changing Plant-Insect Interactions Over Years." 
• Abigail Lehner: "Do Blue Orchard Bees (Osmia lignaria) Exhibit Plastic Behavior in Response to Parasitism by the Non-Native Houdini fly (Cacoxenus indagator)?" 
• Addie Abrams: "Operation Bug Drop: In-Field Drone Releases of Natural Enemies to Control Lettuce Aphid(Nasonovia ribisnigri)and Western Flower Thrips (Frankliniella occidentallis) in California Lettuce."
• Iris Quayle: "A (Finally) Complete Phylogeny for the Charismatic Genus Onymacris Using Ultraconserved Elements."
• CC Edwards: "Resisting Resistance: Identifying Biochemical Biomarkers for Pyrethroid Resistance in Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes."
• Grace Horne: "Environmental Entomology’s People’s Choice Runner-Up: Specialist Herbivore Performance on Introduced Plants During Native Host Decline."

In addition, UC Davis doctoral candidate Christofer Brothers of the Animal Behavior Group--and an affiliate of the Bohart Museum of Entomology--presented "Spine Dining: Leg Spur Morphology Patterns Provide Insight into Adult Dragonfly Foraging Behaviors."

The list of student competition winners is here. 

The 2025 ESA meeting, themed "Entomology 2025: Bridging Generations with Innovation, Legacy, and Passion," will take place Nov. 9-12 in Portland, Ore.