Dr. James “Jim” Maruniak, passed on Monday, October 14th, at home surrounded by his family. He is survived by Ale, his loving wife of 24 years, daughter Alina, son Alex and siblings, John Jr., Carole, Joel (Carole), Dan (Donna), and Nick. Dr. Maruniak was a faculty member with us for 36 years where he did research in insect virology and taught several courses. He was a beloved mentor to numerous students, member of the TKE fraternity, advisor for the UF Virology Club, and a passionate lifetime educator. His “open door” policy did not stop at his lab but continued into his everyday life, where he shared his enthusiasm of viruses and vaccines with all. His memorial service was held on October 18th.

Dr. James P. Cuda attended the Fall Meeting of the UF/IFAS Invasive Plant Working Group held in McCarty Hall on September 23rd.

Dr. James P. Cuda and Dr. Carey R. Minteer organized and participated in the Brazilian peppertree biocontrol agent release celebration held at the Adams Ranch in Ft. Pierce, FL, on October 24th. The thrips Pseudophilothrips ichini is the first insect released for biological control of Brazilian peppertree in the continental United States.

Farewell to Dr. Pavan Kumar who has accepted a position at Corteva AgriScience in Johnston, Iowa and to Mariah Kemmerer who has accepted a position at University of Delaware. Both will be leaving the Bonning lab in mid-November.

ABOVE: Dr. Ya Guo, from the Bonning lab, received second place in the Postdoc Poster Competition at the UF Genetics and Genomics Symposium held November 4th and 5th. Her poster was titled Peptide-mediated protection of the honey bee against virus infection. Dr. Rahul Banerjee also presented a poster at the same event on Transgenic citrus plants expressing a Bt toxin for management of the Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri.  

Dr. Chouvenc was featured in Entomology Today, the Entomological Society of America blog for the Halloween 2019 post. Chouvenc talked about various spooky bug facts and cannibalism in termites.

Dr. Bryony Bonning gave the 2019 Charles Chesley Doane Distinguished Lecture titled “Orange juice, psyllids and Bt toxins”, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

The DiGennaro lab would like to congratulate Dr. Gideon Alake on his successful defense of his Ph.D. Dissertation titled Characterization of Soil Communities using Nematode and Microbiome Analytics.

Sara Zlotnik, a graduate student in the Miller lab, headed to South Carolina in October to present her research at the Southeastern Population Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics 45th Annual Meeting. Sara presented her work on feeding facilitation in leaf-footed bugs. Her outstanding presentation was also formally recognized as the best lightning talk at the conference.

ABOVE: Hard working distance student, Larry Stretz studying for an exam at 5:30 am waiting for his flight in the airport. That week, Larry was attending PestWorld in San Diego. He had worked the exhibit booth for Syngenta all week and was getting ready to fly home on Friday morning. He looks like he is really enjoying the class!

ABOVE: Rachel Atchison, graduate student in the Lucky lab, visited Mr. Haught's Environmental Science classes on October 25th to facilitate learning about ant diversity. Using microscopes, students compared morphological characteristics to identify the three different ant species they had collected the previous day on their high school campus.

Masters student, Gisele Nighswander, successfully defended her thesis titled , "Drivers of herbivorous pest resistance in urban ornamental gardens", on October 17th. Gisele's major advisor is Dr. Basil Iannone in the School of Forest Resource Conservation and her minor advisor in Entomology and Nematology is Dr. Adam Dale.

Gabrielle LaTora successfully defended her master’s thesis titled Innovations in Spotted Wing Drosophila Monitoring and Attract-and-Kill for Development of More Targeted Integrated Pest Management Programs on October 24. She and her partner are moving to Atlanta, Georgia in December, where she plans to pursue a career in applied entomology, crop consulting, or Extension.

Simon Yeboah successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis titled Development of IPM tools for managing Anastrepha suspensa and Bactrocera dirsalis (Diptera: Tephritidae) in tropical guava and mango orchards, on November 7th. Simon will return to home to Ghana, where he will continue teaching entomology at his university. ​

ABOVE: Filipe Lemos Jacques is the new visiting Ph.D. student from Brazil that will spend one year working at the West Florida Research and Education Center under the supervision of Dr. Paula-Moraes. He will be involved in several projects, including studying the ecology of fall armyworm in the Florida Panhandle.

From the Outreach Coordinator

The live critters are always a hit with children and adults alike. The critters are available for you to check out should you be leading an outreach event. We have doubles of our most popular critters, as well as various native insect species depending on the time of year. We have large wood and Plexiglas cages for viewing our native orb weaving spiders. There is one travel cage and one larger static cage. Please be sure to contact us and review the protocol on transporting and handling the critters if you are not already familiar with it. If you lead an outreach, be sure to fill out a documentation form so your event can be included in the newsletter and we can log all outreach events.

If you have any questions, please email me.

Thank you —Clayton Bania, Outreach Coordinator.

If you would like to schedule an event or have any outreach questions, go to the Outreach pages on our Bug Club website and contact us.

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