Who's Speaking at Department's Winter and Spring Seminars
Marshall McMunn, Coordinator, Announces the 20 Speakers
Marshall McMunn, coordinator of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminars for the 2025-26 academic year, has announced the list of speakers for the fall and spring quarters.
All seminars will take place at 12:10 p.m. on Wednesdays in 122 Briggs Hall. They also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.
Doctoral candidate Mia Lippey, an entomologist and ecologist who focuses on using "big data" to understand how global change affects agricultural arthropod communities, will present the first seminar, scheduled for 12:10 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 7 in 122 Briggs Hall.
The title: "Winners and Losers of Agricultural Arthropods under Global Change (an Ecoinformatics Approach).”
A 6th-year PhD candidate working with major professors Emily Meineke and Jay Rosenheim (UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus), Lippey received her bachelor's degree in entomology from UC Davis in 2019, where she conducted undergraduate research in the Louie Yang and Phil Ward labs.
"Using an ecoinformatics approach with over 141,000 observations across five major Mediterranean crops in California, the United States and Andalusia, Spain, we tested these predictions in the field," she said. "Our findings reveal remarkable heterogeneity in arthropod responses to both land use and temperature, with both winners and losers emerging among pest and natural enemy populations in response to both drivers of global change. We found partial support for the hypothesis that natural enemies are more vulnerable to elevated temperatures than pests. Laboratory-measured thermal performance traits and other life history characteristics failed to predict arthropod responses to temperature in the field. Together, these results suggest that effective agricultural climate adaptation strategies should prioritize site-specific, intensive monitoring over generalized landscape and trait-based predictions."
Following her talk, the schedule includes:
Jan: 14:
Amanda Hodson, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology hosted by Marshall McMunn, assistant professor
Title: (Pending)
Jan. 21:
Stacy Philpott, professor, UC Santa Cruz, hosted by Emily Meineke, assistant professor
Title: (Pending)
Jan. 28:
Lark Coffey, professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, hosted by Geoffrey Attardo, associate professor
Title: "Reemerging St. Louis Encephalitis Virus in the Western United States and Fitness dynamics in California Culex”
Feb. 4:
Cindy Kron, North Coast IPM Advisor, UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) hosted by Ian Grettenberger, associate professor and agricultural entomologist, Cooperative Extension
Title: "“Adventures of the North Coast Extension Entomologist”
Feb. 11:
Lena Mueller, assistant professor, Salk Institute, hosted by Shahid Siddique, associate professor
Feb. 18:
Ben Nyman, postdoctoral mosquito researcher, UC Riverside, hosted by Carla-Cristina Edwards "CC" Edwards, doctoral candidate
Title: "Ecological Explorations in the Mosquito Surveillance Landscape”
Feb. 25:
Jessica Aguilar, postdoctoral scholar, Stanford, hosted by Rachel Vannette, professor and vice chair of the department
March 4:
Todd Holmes, professor, UC Irvine, hosted by Lisa Baik, assistant professor
Title: “Non-Image Forming Visual Mechanisms Drive Animal Behaviors”
March 11:
Nazzy Pakpour, Yeast Bay Bio, hosted by Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the department
Title: “Curiosity made the Scientist”
March 18 (cancelled):
Crystal Homicz, doctoral candidate, exit seminar (cancelled)
Title: (Pending)
Spring Quarter
April 1:
Adekunle Adesanya, Corteva, hosted by Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the department
April 8:
Mohammad Amir Aghaee, California Polytechnic University, hosted by Frank Zalom, UC Davis Distingushed Professor Emeritus (on recall)
April 15:
Sean Leonard, researcher, Livermore National Laboratory, hosted by Lexie Martin, doctoral candidate, of the Rachel Vannette lab
April 22:
Iris Saraeny Rivera Salinas, Santa Cruz, hosted by Emily Meineke, assistant professor
April 29:
Karthikeyan Chandrasegaran, UC Riverside, hosted by Lark Coffey, assistant professor
May 6:
Lyna Ngor, postdoctoral researcher, Donovan German lab, UC Irvine, hosted by Marshall McMunn, assistant professor
May 13:
Magda Paola Agueta-Guzmán, researcher in Gaiarsa lab, UC Merced, hosted by Louie Yang, professor
May 20:
Bao-Lam Huynh, assistant professor of nematology, UC Riverside, hosted by Shahid Siddique, associate professor
May 27:
David Holway, professor UC San Diego, hosted by Neal Williams, professor
Seminar coordinator Marshall McMunn may be reached at [email protected] for any Zoom issues. Recordings of the fall quarter seminars can be accessed at https://entomology.ucdavis.edu/seminars