NEWSLETTER
01/22/96 Entomology and Nematology News - Vol. 1, No. 4
A University of Florida Publication

AWARDS

Denise Johanowicz received the Best Student Presentation Award at the national meeting of the Acarological Society of America. The meeting was held at the Acarology formal conference during the ESA national meetings in Las Vegas. Her presentation was about Wolbachia symbionts in phytoseiid mites and spider mites.

The National Pest Control Association has announced the winners of the Phil Spear Research Scholarships. Chuck Strong was awarded $1,000 for 1st place in the competition for his paper on the effect of cockroach feces on crack and crevice insecticide applications. Dini Miller was awarded $ 500 for 2nd place in the student paper contest for her paper on the enhancement of toxic baits for German cockroach control with aggregation pheromone. Both students are under the supervision of Dr. Philip Koehler.

FES HONORARY MEMBER

Courtesy Professor Dr. Eugene Gerberg recently became an honorary member of the Florida Entomological Society by vote of the FES membership. Congratulations!

FACULTY, STAFF, AND STUDENT NEWS

Dr. Grover Smart was in Dallas, Texas on January 11-12 collaborating with Dr. Robert Crocker on their biological project determining the effect of soil applications of entomopathogenic nematodes on soil arthropods and plant parasitic nematodes. The project is funded for two years by the USDA. Temporary results show that entomopathogenic nematodes do not affect other nematodes in the ecosystem. Biosys said that entomopathogenic nematodes are good for controlling certain genera of plant-parasitic nematodes.

Pauline Lawrence was recently awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The 3-year study will investigate the effects of a symbiotic virus from a parasitic wasp, on the disruption of cellular defense and on mortality of the Caribbean fruit fly, Anastrepha suspensa.

Marjorie Hoy attended the ESA meetings in Las Vegas and presented an invited symposium talk on "Transformation of the phytoseiid Metaseiulus occidentalis by recombinant DNA methods: Progress and problems." She discussed risk analysis of releases of a transgenic arthropod.

VIDEO MANIA

Improve your computer skills by checking out, for up to one week, informative videos on these subjects: CorelDraw 5.0, Excel 5.0, Persuasion 3.0, Photoshop 3.0, PowerPoint 4.0 and Word 6.0. To borrow a videotape, stop by and see Jane Medley or Pat Hope in Room 1023.

ENSO OUTREACH

ENSO has agreed to help promote entomology to the youth of the Gainesville community. To this end, we have set a goal to have direct contact with 1,000 students in 1996.

In addition to school groups, our goal is to reach groups such as daycare centers, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, home-schoolers and any other groups interested in entomology. We try to balance our programs between biology and behavior of insects with the career and course opportunities available in entomology.

The department has made available posters, coloring sheets and insect bookmarks for us to distribute at our tours and programs. Also, Wayne Grush developed an 18-slide show titled "What is an Entomologist?" The program, geared to K-5 students, is available to check out. Contact Wayne at 392-2326.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

Any student who would like to visit grade/middle/high schools to teach about insects, see Denise Johanowicz. She needs help this semester. It's a lot of fun, and a great service to Alachua county.

WELCOME NEW STUDENTS!

The Department welcomes the following new students for the Spring 96 semester: Hugo Aguilar-Piedra (Ph.D.), Juan Alvarez (Ph.D.), Maria Bertorelli (MS), Yasmin Cardoza (MS), William Crow (Ph.D.), Wendy Meyer (Ph.D.), Michael Parsons (Ph.D.), Andrew Rassmussen (Ph.D.), Tina Rivera (MS), Xiaochun Zhang (Ph.D.).

NEW T-SHIRTS

Efforts are underway by ENSO to create a new T-shirt design to represent the Department of Entomology & Nematology. We plan to have the T-shirts available for sale at the Kanapaha Botanical Gardens Festival in early March.

BIOLOGICAL CONTROL

Marjorie Hoy submitted an application for permission to release a transgenic arthropod. The application has been submitted to the USDA-APHIS, BBEP and approved by the University of Florida Institutional Biosafety Committee. The arthropod, a phytoseiid mite (Metaseiulus occidentalis, Acari: Phytoseiidae), is a biological control agent of spider mites. The transgenic mite was produced by injecting the ovaries of female mites with DNA using a tiny glass needle. The introduced gene serves as a molecular marker to allow us to identify and monitor the population in the field. For additional information contact Dr. Marjorie A. Hoy, Entomology & Nematology Dept., PO Box 110620, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620, (904) 392-1901, ext 153, fax (904) 392-0190, mahoy@ifas.ufl.edu.

PUBLICATIONS

Published in the Journal of Nematology: Ecology of Nematodes Under Influence of Cucurbita spp. and Different fertilizer types. D. L. Porazinska, and D. C. Coleman.

FROM UKRAINE

Tom Fasulo received the following from Dr. Victor Fursov. Dr Fursov is the Secretary of the Ukrainian Entomological Society. Dr. Fursov's primary e-mail address is alex@cenos.freenet.kiev.ua another is nnb@iz.freenet.kiev.ua. Dr. Fursov is interested in making contacts with American entomologists and perhaps linking them with Ukrainian faculty and students. He is particularly interested in Internet resources.

DEPARTMENT WWW HOME PAGE

Except for six faculty who didn't have their photos taken, all Gainesville faculty should now have photos included with their data on the Department's WWW home page. Anyone wishing to change information on their pages must print off the page, make the corrections, and give it to Skip Choate. Please don't send him email, call him up, pass him a note, stop him in the hall or otherwise make it difficult for him.

Students are reminded that they also can develop c.v. pages with or without photographs. It is a good way to let other schools and future employers know more about you. See Skip Choate for more information.

NEW MACS IN THE LAB

Two powerful Macintosh computers are now available in the computer lab. Their network names are Beetle (next to the film recorder) and Cricket (next to the printers). Cricket has a shared folder that appears on the desktop on Beetle. This allows a user to move files easily. Users can access the global scratch area on the departmental server and the UF network. For more information contact Steve Lasley (ext 114) or Niklaus Hostettler (ext 189).

Both new computers read and write DOS/Windows floppy disks. Programs installed on both computers include Word Perfect, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Netscape. The statistical programs SAS and Instat are installed only on Cricket, and the graphics and image processing programs are installed only on Beetle.

FILE TRANSLATIONS AVAILABLE

DataViz's Translators allow conversion of nearly all existing word processing documents and many graphics file formats. DeBabelizer can convert all existing bitmap file formats and can also change the resolution and the number of colors in graphics files. Because the Macintosh reads DOS Windows floppy disks, all users can take advantage of this.

HIGH RESOLUTION SLIDES ON THE FILM RECORDER

Exposing scanned images into slides can take a prohibitively long time. MacRascolRIP exposes a 10 MB file in five to 10 minutes.

ZIP DRIVE AVAILABLE

The department has purchased an Iomega Zip drive that can store 100 MB of data. If you need to back up files contact Steve Lasley or Niklaus Hostettler. For personal use you need your own disk. For departmental use $15 per disk will be charged to your account.

MICRO-LIVESTOCK An article in the January 2nd issue of the reports on a "small but energetic group of entomologists, farmers and chefs" who are promoting edible insects, a food stuff better known in academic circles as "micro-livestock."

SNOW KILLS BUTTERFLIES

Snowfall and a cold snap have killed millions of monarch butterflies at their wintering grounds in western Mexico. An estimated 30 percent of the 50 to 60 million monarchs that migrate from Canada and the U.S. perished. The rare winter snow increases pressure on the monarchs, already hard hit by intensive logging that threatens their habitats.

THANKS

ENSO and Dr. Tom Walker would like to thank those students, staff and faculty who participated in the Dec. 2nd, litter removal project in the Natural Area and Teaching Laboratory (NATL): Dept. of Ent. and Nem.: Clay Scherer, John Petti, Dini Miller, Dr. Jim Castner, Phillip Lake, Phoebe Wilson, Gavin Wilson, Dr. Jim Nation, Corey Lewis, Kim Gallagher, Dr. Phil Koehler, Andy Koehler, Tim Koehler, Robin Goodson, Dr. Bettina Moser, Dr. Tom Walker. Environmental Engineering Science: Susan Carstean. Agronomy Soils Club: Lane Selman, Danette Kosola. After four hours of hard work, 150 bags of trash and two truckloads of debris had been collected and removed from the area.


The next newsletter will be published Wednesday, February 15. Deadline for contributions is Friday, February 9.

Editor: Enrique Perez

This version of the newsletter is published for the Web by Tim McCoy.


January 1996. Updated March 2003.