Backyard Orchard News
Pourreza wins international prize for HLB detection.
Alireza Pourreza, a newly appointed UC Cooperative Extension agricultural engineering advisor at Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension center, has been awarded the 2016 Giuseppe Pellizzi Prize by the Club of Bologna, an honor presented every other year to the best doctoral dissertations focused on agricultural machinery and mechanization. The Club of Bologna is a world taskforce on strategies for the development of agricultural mechanization.
Pourreza, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 2014, worked on early detection of Huanglongbing (HLB) disease of citrus. HLB, an incurable disease that is spread by Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), has seriously impacted citrus production in Florida. The disease has been found in commercial and residential sites in all counties with commercial citrus. Read more.
Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer
You've heard the expression, "On a wing and a prayer." It apparently originated during World War...
A tattered monarch makes a refueling stop on a Tithonia in Vacaville, Calif. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Wings are shredded and scales slashed, but this male monarch still flies. Here it pauses to soak up some sunshine. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A predator missed--but a miss is as good as a mile. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A migratory monarch, after sipping some flight fuel in Vacaville, Calif. takes off "on a wing and a prayer," heading for an overwintering site along the coast. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The Monarch and the Mantis
If you're rearing monarchs or offering them a “way station” of nectar-producing flowers...
A gravid praying mantis, her abdomen bloated, grabs a migrating monarch nectaring on a butterfly bush. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The praying mantis, perfectly camouflaged, resembles a leaf. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A spiked foreleg circles the monarch's thorax. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The spiked foreleg pierces a wing. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Sometimes The Unexpected Happens
Sometimes the unexpected happens. Take the case of the female praying mantis delivered to the...
UC Davis entomology student Wade Spencer holds the female praying mantis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The female praying mantis exploring. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Marek Borowiec Drawn to Ants, Especially Army Ants
Marek Borowiec's world revolves around myrmecology, the scientific study of ants. Borowiec, who...
This is Lioponera princeps, one of the ants that Marek Borowiec studies. (Image by Marek Borowiec)