(Editor's Note: This seminar initially set for Wednesday, May 2 at 4:10 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall has been cancelled.)
Tory Hendry, an assistant professor of microbiology at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, will present a seminar on bacteria that infect and kill pea aphids at 4:10 p.m., Wednesday, May 2 in 122 Briggs Hall, as part of the weekly spring seminars hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Her seminar is titled “Life and Death in the Phyllosphere: Epiphytic Bacteria Influence Aphid Survival and Behavior.”
“She will be talking about some of her new and very cool work on insect vision and pathogen avoidance,” said co-seminar coordinator Rachel Vannette, assistant professor of entomology. “Her website is here, but briefly, she works on bacterial genome evolution and plant-microbe-insect interactions, and other microbial symbioses.”
In her abstract, Henry writes: “Several diverse strains of plant epiphytic bacteria, such as Pseudomonas syringae, are able to infect and kill pea aphids. P. syringae can be pathogenic to plants, but is also widespread in the environment and a common eipipye. We have found the P. syringae can easily infect aphids and be highly virulent to insects. This interaction is fairly broad, both across P. syringae strains and across hemipteran insect species, suggesting that infection by these bacteria may be common in nature. Aphids may use varied non-immunological defenses against bacterial infection, in particular they are able to avoid feeding when highly virulent bacteria are present on a leaf. We found that up to 80 percent of aphids avoid leaves painted with epiphytic bacteria in favor of feeding on control leaves."
"This interaction is fairly broad, both across P. syringae strains and across hemipteran insect species, suggesting that infection by these bacteria may be common in nature. Aphids may use varied non-immunological defenses against bacterial infection, in particular they are able to avoid feeding when highly virulent bacteria are present on a leaf. We found that up to 80 percent of aphids avoid leaves painted with epiphytic bacteria in favor of feeding on control leaves."
However, says Hendry, "aphids do not avoid all strains, rather avoidance is correlated with strain virulence such that mainly highly virulent strains are avoided. We determined that production of the fluorescent siderophore pyoverdine by P. syringae was necessary for aphid avoidance, and the evidence suggests that aphids use vision to detect the fluorescence of this molecule. Pyoverdine is not responsible for virulence itself, but aphids may use it as a reliable cue of virulence.”
Hendry received her doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Michigan. She held a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Arizona, working with David Baltrus, and was a fellow with USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, working with Nicholas Mills and Steven Lindow at the UC Berkeley.
Co-coordinator of the weekly seminars are Brendon Boudinot, doctoral candidate in the Phil Ward lab, and Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño.
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