NEWSLETTER
04/15/97 Entomology and Nematology News - Vol. 2, No. 8
A University of Florida Publication


BUGGY PROVERB

This a Slovenian insect proverb was taken from the arthropod proverb web compilation made by Dr. Don Hall:

"An ant is over six feet tall when measured by its own foot-rule."

AWARDS

Kevina Vulinec received a certificate of merit designation from the Lindbergh Foundation Board of Directors in the 1996 Grants Program. Certificates of Merit are awarded for proposed projects which, while not receiving funding, are considered particularly worthy of recognition. Kevi's project is entitled "Dung beetles, rainforest conservation, and biological control of dung-breeding pests in Rodonia, Brazil."

Dr. John Strayer is the recipient of the 1997 Gamma Sigma Delta Senior Faculty Award. The Senior Faculty Awardee is highly competitive and is based on a comprehensive peer review of the nominees' career accomplishments. Dr. Strayer was honored at the Gamma Sigma Delta Banquet on March 31.

Juan Villanueva received the Presidential Recognition for Outstanding Achievement Award Thursday, March 4, for his involvement in the creation of the Gainesville's Mexican Student Association, of which he is president. Juan was also invited to a cocktail party at Dr. John Lombardi's house later that evening.

Julieta Brambila received a certificate of recognition at the Multicultural Student Leadership ceremony held April 8 at the J. Wayne Reitz Union.

Congratulations to the winners of the Graduate Student Forum presentation awards. Claudia Riegel, second place, and Dorota Porazinska, third place in Biological Sciences (BSc) I; Dina Richman, second place, and Cecilia Ritzinger, third place in BSc II; Rejane Moraes, second place in BSc III and John Petti, second place in BSc IV.

Juan Alvarez, Janet Brito and Juan Huang received the Academic Achievement Award given by the International Studies Office. This award is given to students who maintain a 4.0 GPA.

CONGRATULATIONS

We are happy to announce that we have two brand new additions to our Entomological and Nematological families. Alina Maruniak was born, 6 lbs and 20 inches, to Drs. James and Alejandra Maruniak. Fernando Pratta Ritzinger, 8 lbs and 20 inches, was born to Cecilia and Rogerio Ritzinger. Both babies came on March 2, 1997. Congratulations to the proud parents!

Naji Al Kattan, Wayne Grush, Jon Morehouse, Clay Scherer and Chuck Strong have all successfully defended their theses and passed their final examinations. We all look forward to attending their exit seminars.

Dr. Julio Arias has accepted a job with the Department of Agronomy of the Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica (ITCR, Costa Rica's Institute of Technology). He will take the position of coordinator for the Center for Research and Development on sustainable Agriculture for the Humid Tropics (CIDASTH). His new address is:

Julio M. Arias-Reveron, Ph.D. Coordinador Centro de Investigacion y Desarrollo de Agricultura Sostenible del Tropico Humedo (CIDASTH) Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica Sede Regional San Carlos Apdo. 223-4400 Ciudad Quesada, San Carlos, Costa Rica Ph. (506)475-5033 x 241 Fax. (506)475-5083 JMArias@sol.racsa.co.cr

KANAPAHA SPRING FESTIVAL

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the members of the department that pitched in to help staff our departmental tent at the Kanapaha Spring Garden festival. Our tent received third place ribbon for best informational booth despite the fact that everything was thoroughly saturated as our tent was blown down by wind and rain for the second year in a row! Unfortunately we had not yet dried out as the judges passed through.

Our setup crew consisted of Hugh Smith, Van Sherwood, Doug Burkett and Jason Squitier. Our tent was staffed by Hugo Aguilar, Doug Burkett, John Capinera, Yasmin Cardoza, Yong Zeng, Juan Huang, Jim Castner, Avi Eitam, Elke Fulton, Tim McCoy, Dini Miller, Dina Richman, Clay Scherer, Van Sherwood, Alonso Suazo and Pieter VanEssen.

Also due thanks are the individuals that helped take the tent down and pack everything away until next year: Doug Burkett, Jim Castner, Tim McCoy, Dina Richman, Clay Scherer and Pieter VanEssen.

A special thanks to Doug Burkett and Jim Castner for working a shift on both days, and to Tim McCoy for his assistance in coordinating this event. - Jason Byrd

GRADUATE STUDENT COUNCIL

Thanks to the coordination of Dorota Porazinska and the participation of graduate students, particularly from the Entomology and Nematology department, this year's Graduate Student Forum was a success! There were four biological sciences sessions and our department was represented in all of them. Drs. Robert McSorley, Carlyle Brewster, Steve Valles and Jim Maruniak served as judges. Maria Bertorelli, Hugh Smith, Yasmin Cardoza and Jaw-Ching Liu helped moderating some of the sessions.

The graduate student Council (GSC) has announced that it will be paying Baby Gator Childcare to look after graduate students' children during finals week. Contact Dorota Porazinska for detailed information.

FES SCHOLARSHIPS AND MINI-GRANTS

This year's Florida Entomological Society application deadlines are June 16 for the scholarships and mini-grants and May 9 for the student paper competition. The applications should be submitted to the Student Affairs Committee chair, Dr. Heather McAuslane. Please contact her in room 2109 if you need further information.

UPCOMING EVENTS

April 17

Paper slips for ENSO officers, teacher of the year and advisor of the year nominations will be in your mail box Monday, April 14 in the morning. They are due in Clay Scherer's mailbox by Thursday, April 16 in the afternoon.

April 19

The Kanapaha Moonlight Walk will be 7 - 11 pm. You can come out and enjoy the night air and beautiful flora of Kanapaha Botanical Gardens. Stroll candlelit walkways, gaze at the stars through a telescope provided by the Astronomy club, or enjoy a picnic, which guests are encouraged to bring. Dr. Lloyd will be providing a firefly exhibit. They may have a moth attractant area and there will be a band for your listening enjoyment. Children are welcome. Admission is $4 for adults and $3 for children.

April 25

The Final ENSO meeting for this semester will be held. Officers and Teacher/Advisor of the year will be announced. As always free pizza will be provided.

April 26

The Entomology and Nematology Spring Picnic will start at 12 noon Saturday at Lake Wauburg. ENSO will provide hamburgers, hotdogs, drinks and condiments. You are invited to share your favorite salad, dessert or side dish. Bring your student or faculty ID as well as boating, swimming and volleyball attire.

ON THE ROAD

Dr. Tom Sanford is on sabbatical in southern France. In addition to studying beekeeping he has made several entomological posts to the Entomo-L discussion list. One had to do with a local exhibit by a French insect collector. Another concerns seeking the "black gold" of France, truffles: Instead of using a trained pig or dog, truffles can also be found by looking for a special fly associated with the mushroom. Getting back to bees, Dr. Sanford has given his first talk in French to a beekeeping organization in Frejus. He will be in Spain at the big beekeepers meeting at Castilla la Mancha just outside of Madrid.

On March 28 Dr. Jim Lloyd gave a seminar at the University of Kentucky. Topics covered fireflies, sex and poetry. He then competed in an informal session of the Linnean Games and attended a potluck dinner.The conversation was said to be invigorating but the roast beef was a bit tough.

April 12 - 14 found Dr. Lloyd at the Buffalo New York Museum of Science giving another scholarly presentation followed by a less-formal conference with some of the elementary school teachers of the region on ways to incorporate insects in the classroom as teaching tools.

Also in April Dr. Lloyd was featured in a three-page article in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel's Sunday magazine. The article appears to have been well received and Dr. Lloyd reports an increase in subscription requests for the Fireflier.

Speaking of the Fireflyers, the current and alumni members held a weekend long event at Camp McConnell April 4 -6. Thirty-four people and a dog named George attended. Capture-the-flag was played and a good time was had by all.

ATTENDED MEETINGS

Drs. Jorge Pena (SWREC), Jerry Stimac and Julio Medal (Gainesville) attended the Brazilian Entomological Congress, which took place March 2 - 7 in Salvador, Bahia.

Thomas Fasulo and Philip Koehler attended the Certified Pest Control Operators annual meeting in Davie, FL. Koehler was part of a roundtable discussion with other structural pest control industry experts and Fasulo demonstrated the department's insect knowledgebases and tutorials in the exhibit hall. They ate dinner both nights at The Rustic Inn in Fort Lauderdale, the "best place for garlic crabs in the world!"

Dini Miller has just returned from beautiful Vancouver, B.C., where she was the guest of the Public Health Department. Dini was invited to present a two-day workshop on German cockroach control in multi-unit residences. The goal of the workshop was to educate property managers, public health officials and pest control operators about how human activities, including current control methods, were contributing to the cockroach problem. In addition, a new integrated pest management program was presented including the use of hydramethyl non-baits and IGRs. The workshop turned out to be a major media event. The news that B.C. had cockroaches was so shocking that Dini was interviewed by CBC radio, CBC television (both English and French) and UTV.

NEW E-MAIL PROGRAM

MailDrop, a new free e-mail program for Baylor University. The difference from Eudora is that the mail resides on the server, IFAS VAX for us. This makes it possible to access the mail from home or office. Furthermore, it can be configured for computer-lab use so that the settings can be changed but not saved. It is installed in the computer lab on the two Macs. The program, version 1.2, is still under development, and does not have all the bells and whistles of Eudora Pro. There is currently no PC version. Contact Nik Hostettler if you would like further information.

MISSSING JOURNAL ISSUE

While processing journal issues donated to the ENY Reading Room for shipping to the bindery, a missing issue of the journal Ecology was noted. If you borrowed Ecology, vol. 77, #3 (1996) from the Reading Room, please return it ASAP. Thanks!

CIVITAN'S BLOOD DRIVE

Which would you prefer? It takes less than 30 minutes to donate a pint of blood in the Civitan Bloodmobile. It would take a much longer time to give a pint of blood to about 80,000 mosquitoes. Civitan will process the blood to help other people. Mosquitoes will process the blood to produce more mosquitoes. How do you want your blood to be used? The choice is yours. The Civitan Bloodmobile will be in the Entomology/Nematology parking lot Wednesday, April 15, 1 - 4 pm. Contact Dr. Butler if you'd prefer to feed the mosquitoes.

NATURAL AREA TEACHING LAB (NATL) NEWS

The Stormwater Ecological Enhancement Project (SEEP) for the NATL retention basin is underway. The $65,000 project, described in the last newsletter, has been funded by the combined contributions of College of Agriculture, College of Engineering, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Office of the Provost, and St. Johns River Water Management District.

UF's Physical Plant Department is in charge of implementing SEEP and has hired engineering firm Blum, Schu-macher & Associates to do the design and supervise construction. If all goes well, the engineers will complete the design and write the construction documents in time for digging to start during the first dry spell this fall or winter.

A grant request to the Dunn Foundation for a NATL nature trail that starts at Powell Hall (Florida Museum of Natural History) includes $20,000 for a boardwalk and interpretation of SEEP.

The other big NATL news is that the fence along its south and east boundaries is complete except for a 250' section which must await settlement of a boundary dispute between UF and the owner of the Insurance World property. IFAS Facilities Operations will clean up the big debris next to the apartments along the south NATL fence, but picking up the hundreds of bottles and cans will have to be by volunteers. Anyone want to help?

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Z.X. Chen, D.W. Dickson, L.G. Freitas, and J.F. Preston. 1997. Ultrastructure, morphology, and sporogenesis of Pasteuria penetrans. Phytopathology 87:273-283.

Li, J and M.A. Hoy. 1996. Adaptability and efficacy of transgenic and wild-type Metaseiulus occidentalis (Acari: Phytoseiidae) compared as part of a risk assesment. Exp. Appl. Acarol. 20: 563-574.

McDermott, G.J. and M.A. Hoy. 1997. Persistence and containment of Metaseiulus occidentalis (Acari: Phytoseiidae) in Florida: Risk assessment for possible releases of transgenic strains. Florida Entomologist 80: 42-53.

Presnail, J.K., A. Jeyaprakash, J. Li, and M.A. Hoy. 1997. Genetic analysis of four lines of Metaseiulus occidentalis (Acari: Phytoseiidae) transformed by maternal microinjection. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 90: 237-245.

ELECTRONIC JOURNALS

The Florida Entomologist began publication on the Internet in 1994, and all its authors now receive unlimited "electronic reprints." The small extra cost ($2.40/page) of electronic publication is taken from the page charges that the authors pay. The Florida Center of Library Automation, which produces LUIS, posts the Florida Entomologist articles without charge, at modest cost to FCLA, at http://www.fcla.ufl.edu/FlaEnt/fehmpg.htm. Other journals are beginning to move toward e-publication. Most noteworthy are these journals published by CAB International: Bulletin of Entomological Research, Biocontrol News and Information, Review of Agricultural Entomology, and Nematological Abstracts. The last two are literature indexes with abstracts that can be searched online.

Access to these journals is free to those with Internet addresses that match a library that subscribes. You should be able to log on without impediment at http://pest.cabweb.org/.

Also noteworthy is that authors in all Entomological Society of America journals will soon have the opportunity to have e-reprints of their articles posted (in perpetuity!) on WWW at prices comparable to what they now pay for 100 paper reprints. Academic Press has put its 175 journals on line, but FCLA has not yet paid for access for Florida's universities. Among the titles are Animal Behavior, Biological Control, Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, Journal of Molecular Biology, and Virology.

The tables of contents and abstracts for many journals are now on WWW in searchable format. For example, all the Academic Press journals, the 160 Oxford University Press journals, and all Annual Reviews are included.

Elsevier, which publishes Journal of Insect Physiology, Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and International Journal of Insect Morphology and Embryology, encourages persons to register to receive via e-mail the tables of contents of their journals free of charge.

The next newsletter will be published Tuesday, May 20. Deadline for contributions is Friday, May 16.

Edited by: Yasmin Cardoza and Tim McCoy


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


April 1997. Revised March 2003.