Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Minutes:  Project Chair Alec Gerry called the meeting to order at 8:38 AM on January 13.  Pia Olafson, local arrangements coordinator, provided information about the facility, wireless signal access, and registration fees.  This was followed by a round of self-introductions.  Alec noted that Kristina Friesen will be taking over as chair at the end of this meeting.  Kristina reminded everyone to send her a paragraph summary of progress and a list of publications ASAP for the annual report.  The current multistate project expires on September 30, 2018.  Therefore, we will need to work on the renewal next year.

Rick Roeder, the admiistrative advisor to S1060, reinforced Kristina's call for the information necessary to prepare the annual report, which is due 60 days after the meeting.  The group narrowly missed last year's deadline to submit the nomination package for the award for excellence that is given out by the southern region experiment station directors.  We will try again this year, with Kristina Friesen again volunteering to handle the nomination.  In addition to the annual report info, Kristina asked that we submit information on any grants that people received to support S1060-related research.  Please include grants during all years of the present project as well as those received during its predecessor, S1030.  The nomination application is due in mid-February.  Alec thanks Kristina for her continuing efforts with this undertaking.

Herb Bolton was not able to attend the meeting but provided Alec with a report that will be attached to the minutes.  

Phil Kaufman announced the establishment of a new US-AID Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems that will be administered by the University of Florida.  There will be $50 million in funds over 5 years to support research and capacity building projects in the target countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Nepal.  There will be four "areas of inquiry" for projects to fit under; S1060 members will probably sumbit under the area of Livestock Disease Management and Food Safety.  Multidisciplinary projects will be favored, as will thoase that address certain cultural cross-cutting concerns. An example of these cultural concerns is the feminization of agriculture in Nepal that has resulted from the emigration of men to neighboring India to find jobs.  The RFA will come out in April, with proposals due in August. 

Business Meeting: A brief business meeting was held after concluding Objective 5. Riverside was nominated, voted on, and approved for the 2017 meeting, which will be held Jan 11-12.   Meeting adjourned for the day at 5:15.

Thursday AM: Don Rutz encouraged all members to cc their annual reports to Don and Nancy Hinkle so that they can continue to look for S-1060 outcome information to be developed into 1-page public-ready documents to share with stakeholders and lawmakers. There was a general discussion about what the group might be able to produce as a group accomplishment. Some other multi-state projects have left legacies in the form of identification guides or methodological workbooks. What sort of tangible product could S-1060 produce that would take advantage of the collective expertise in the group?

This concluded the main business of the meeting.  Alec thanked Pia for her hard work organizing the meeting, and an enthusiastic round of applause was sent in Roger's direction for his many years of excellent and dedicated service to our science.  The gavel was passed to Kristina, who said that it was time to start thinking and planning the next 5-year project.  It was suggested that an objective be developed to take advantage of the genomics information that have become available.  After a round of applause for Alec's leadership, the meeting was adjorned at 11:30.  

Objective 1. New technologies for management of biting and nuisance flies in organic and conventional systems (moderator, Wes Watson).

• Wes Watson reported on a horn fly test in 2010-2012 comparing the efficacy of 2% geraniol (125 ml/animal) with the fatty acid mixture C8910 (5% each of C8, C9 and C10 in mineral oil, 250 ml/ animal). Geraniol was a good repellent that had some knockdown activity, but many flies recovered. C8910 produced knockdown without recovery. With repeat treatments (2x/week for 2 weeks), they observed 94% control.
• Wes also conducted a test involving the use of vegetative barriers to modulate dispersal and movement of horn flies. Flies were collected from CowVacs, treated with DayGlow powders and released from different areas. Flies generally moved with or against the wind (if wind speeds were not too high). They moved relatively short distances from the release points and were reluctant to cross a tree line.
• Brad Mullens reported on geraniol and C8910 in California using similar treatments as used by Wes in the study above. He monitored fly counts, defensive behaviors, sex ratio, mating success, fecundity and blood meal size of the flies. He also compared the efficiency of direct visual counts by people with counts made by taking digital photos and making the counts from the photos. The photographic method missed about 20% of the flies actually present and was much more time-consuming than the visual counts. As Wes had observed, flies were knocked down after a direct hit by both products, and recovered from geraniol but not C8910 treatments. Fly counts on treated animals resurged after 2-4 days. Counts on untreated animals within a treated group (embedded controls) mirrored those of treated animals, suggesting toxicity as well as repellency. Defensive behaviors dropped after treatment but were not as good an indicator of horn fly pressure as has been seen with stable flies. The behaviors were triggered by low fly numbers. Blood meal sizes were very small overall (0.3-0.8 microliters) and if anything showed a small increase in response to treatment.
• Brad also reported on tests with Beauveria (Botaniguard) against wild caught horn flies. The treatment killed lots of flies but he was surprised to see that about 5% of the untreated flies developed mycoses. Some of the infected flies showed signs of “summit disease”, anchoring themselves to the screen lids of their containers before dying in a manner reminiscent of what E. muscae causes its hosts to do.
• Dave Boxler presented results from several studies, which are briefly summarized as follows: 1) Weekly treatments of cattle herds with either geraniol, permethrin, or half of the animals in the herd treated with each all had similar effects on stable flies and were lower than counts on untreated animals. 2) A new eartag, Tolfenprol, with an active ingredient in the novel tolfenpyrol class of insecticide provided good horn fly control for up to 10 weeks. The a.i. is a mitochondrial complex 1 electron transport inhibitor. 3) VetGun Vet Caps with permethrin and PBO kept horn flies below the EIL for 3-4 weeks, but are expensive at $2.61 per capsule. 4) Horn fly counts on cattle treated with C8910 eartags stayed below the EIL for 7 weeks, with an overall reduction of 46% compared with controls. 5) Attaching Python insecticide strips to mineral feeders provided moderate control, but not all of the animals visited the feeders. 6) Work is in progress to develop a collar-style dust-dispensing device filled with C8910 dust.
• Emma Weeks reported on three studies involving entomopathogenic fungi and flies: 1) House flies died much faster than stable flies after a 1 hour exposure to conidia on filter paper. Sporulation rates were low, and the BalEnce Beauveria product was not effective against house flies. 2) Oviposition rates of house flies were reduced when oviposition sites were treated with commercial formulations of conidia; stable fly effects were more variable. 3) Mortality of house flies was higher when flies were exposed continually to sugar cubes treated with fungal formulations than when they received a fixed-time exposure. Again, the BalEnce product performed poorly.
• Phil Kaufman reported on attempts to select for faster kill rates using Beauveria against horn flies. To do this he started with a horn-fly-derived strain that was isolated by student Chris Holderman. So far they have passed it through 7 generations of selections, choosing the first dead flies from each passage challenge the next batch of flies.
• Chris Geden discussed assessment of fly parasitoids from different collection sites (FL, MN, NE, CA) to heat tolerance. Muscidifurax zaraptor is more heat tolerant than M. raptor, and S. endius more tolerant than S. cameroni. The populations from different locations varied but showed no overall pattern of higher tolerance in parasitoids from the hottest collection site (near San Jacinto, CA).
• Chris also reported on relative susceptibility of flies and parasitoids to the IGR pyriproxyfen. Parasitoids were either unaffected by this material (Spalangia spp.) or 100-1000 times less susceptible (Muscidifurax) than house flies
• Roger Moon’s program did a winter bedding study in which they compared composted bedding packs with straw in loafing sheds and exposed locations for stable fly production. Flies were highly attracted to both types of bedding but larval production was very low from the composted material. In outdoor sites fly productions was higher when the animals were removed in May than in April. A possible downside of this approach is that the carbon content of the final compost is high and therefore does not provide much nutrition for plants when it is spread on fields. Roger also announced that he is retiring from his position at the University of Minnesota this May.
•  

Objective 2. Insecticide resistance detection and management (moderator, Jeff Scott).

• Jeff Scott has been working on spinosad, imidacloprid and pyrethroid resistance. He presented results from recent pyrethroid resistance work, in which he is comparing the resistance conferred by the kdr, kdr-his, and super-kdr alleles. He compared the effects of these alleles on the toxicity of 18 synthetic pyrethroids as well as PBO-synergized pyrethrins. In general, super-kdr (common in Nebraska) confers the highest resistance, followed by kdr then kdr-his. With some pyrethroids, super-kdr resistance makes it impossible to kill the flies at any dose. However, with other pyrethroids super-kdr flies are less resistant than kdr flies. The multihalogenated pyrethroids such as tefluthrin, fenfluthrin and transfluthrin are “super-kdr busters” that overcome super-kdr resistance. Super-kdr is recessive whereas kdr and kdr-his are dominant, but dominance patterns can vary depending on the particular pyrethroid being examined.
• Phil Kaufman summarized results from three years of the stable fly national resistance survey. Resistance to permethrin remains relatively low and does not show much in the way of regional variation.
• Pia Olafson gave an update on the stable fly genome project. The genome has been sequenced, assembled, and publicly available via the NCBI . The total genome size is Glossina, Lucilia, Musca, Drosophila, and Anopheles gambiae; this will be useful for identifying genes that are unique to stable fly. A current goal is manual curation of the genome to see whether the genes are really there for important processes such as chemosensory, visual, reproduction and development systems, sex determination, detoxification, salivary gland proteins, etc.
• Jeff Scott discussed the importance of leveraging the information that the genomics work is providing. As an example, he cited work being conducted by Andy Clark at Cornell to examine RNA sequences associated with immune responses to pathogens by house fly.
•  

Objective 3. Investigation of the microbial ecology, epithelial immunity, and vector competence of biting and nuisance flies (moderator, Ludek Zurek).

• Ludek Zurek discussed the prevalence of different types of shigatoxigenic E. coli in flies from confined cattle environments. Among house flies, 34.3% carry E. coli from one of 7 shiga serotypes that do not belong to the 0157 group, but only 1.5% were STEC positive. This means that just screening for the 0157 serotype results in substantial under-reporting of the risk for shiga-carrying flies. In contrast, only 1.1% of stable flies were found with non-0157 shiga-producing E. coli, and cell counts were much lower than in house flies. STEC was not detected in stable flies.
• Dana Nayduch reported on recent work on several projects addressing immune responses by flies. She has found that house flies have 10 copies of the gene coding for the anti-microbial peptide defensin. In contrast, Drosophila only have one copy of this gene. This raises several questions. Why are there so many copies in house flies? Are different ones turned on in response to different threats? Are they inducible? Are they tissue- or life-stage-specific?
• Dana also mentioned that she is examining whether adult male and female flies differ in their rate of acquisition of bacteria from manure. They do, but it depends on whether sugar is also presented along with the manure. She is also investigating trans-stadial carriage of bacteria. Some species are transmitted trans-stadially but are lost before adult eclosion whereas others survive all the way to the adult fly.
• Lastly, Dana discussed whether survival of bacteria in flies is dose-dependent. Yes, immune responses are stronger to higher doses of ingested bacteria. The strongest reduction of bacterial numbers occurs soon after ingestion of medium doses of bacteria. But what stimulates the immune response, given that the bacteria cannot pass the peritrophic matrix? It appears that bacterial dimeric peptidoglycans can pass through the peritrophic matrix and can reach receptors in the epithelial cells lining the gut.
• T.C. Crippen, new to this group, has been working on Aphitobius diaperinus as vectors of Salmonella and is applying those techniques to work with flies.  She is also doing behavioral and forensic entomology work on the microbiome of carrion flies and is interested in the movement of pathogens by insects. 

Objective 4. Characterize population biology of biting and nuisance flies (moderator, Dave Taylor).

• Aaron Tarone, also new to the group, introduced himself and his interests in the systematic/genomics of calliphorids.
• Dave Taylor is re-examining Tim Lysyk’s stable fly larval development rate models by rearing larvae under different planes of nutrition and temperatures. He will be measuring development time, survival, and pupal weights under these conditions.
• Kristina Friesen continues to tackle the question of the origin of stable flies in the Spring in Nebraska. Collaborators have been sending Spring flies to Kristina along a transect from Texas to Canada, and she is making wing size measurements and assessments of ovarian condition of the flies. The earliest flies that she has seen for the season in Nebraska were in March; these flies were fairly old and suggests that they were migrants rather than local overwintering individuals.
• Kristina is also studying larval stable fly nutrition by varying the carbohydrate:protein ratio in the diet. The flies can tolerate substantial reductions in protein, but even small cuts in carbohydrates results in significant drops in fitness.
• Bob Pfannenstiel has been characterizing the Culicoides species composition and breeding sites in areas of orbivirus outbreaks. Light trap data indicate a prevalence of 62% C. stelifer, 22% C. haematopotus and 6 % C. crepuscularis. Breeding sites that are associated with cattle are generally dominated by C. crepuscularis, but one dairy pond produced 93.9% C. sonorensis. He also found C. variipennis at Konza Prairie in an area associated with bison.
• Roger Moon reported on the multistate study of stable fly field development. He has found that stable flies have a 379 degree-day requirement, with a lower development threshold of 3.7^oC and an upper threshold of 32^oC

Objective 5. Community and stakeholder involvement (moderator, Don Rutz).

• Alec Gerry gave an update on the pesticide database that he developed for veterinary entomology (http://veterinaryentomology.ucr.edu/vet_pesticides.html ). He gave a demonstration and reminded people to please provide him with updated information as it becomes available so that the database remains current. Alec also said that his VetEnt website at UCR is also a platform for S-1060 project-related educational/extension content. Please send Alex links to other extension content on pest ID, biology, YouTube clips on monitoring, etc. Please also send information related to meetings, events, and funding opportunities. At Roger Moon’s suggestion, the group gave Alec a round of applause in recognition of the enormous effort that Alec has put into these efforts. 
• Keith Waldron announced that NYS-IPM is developing a Spanish-language version the Organic Dairy IPM Guide.  They have also translated the 2000 Pest Management recommendations for New York into Spanish (minus the specific insecticide information). A distance learning program has been launched by IPM and PMEP to provide online credit hours for certified pesticide applicators. Lastly, the Cornell IPM program has developed a set of profiles for 31 active ingredients for 25B pesticides, i.e. those that are exempted from federal registration. The profiles include information on toxicity, environmental fate, efficacy and other items.

Having concluded Objective 5, Alec then had the members form discussion groups to discuss planning for Objectives 1-4 and report back to the main group. Results of those discussions follow:

Objective 1, summarized by Wes Watson: There is a need for new repellents for push-pull programs. Perhaps the 25b list has some candidates. In general, there is not enough “pull” in the push-pull programs. Could animal decoys (such as the deer targets that are sold to hunters) be used to attract target insects? Alec’s “Flyspotter” program will be placed on the 1060 website maintained by him at UCR. Alec will be examining an intriguing detection system that detects air disturbance caused by insects passing through a hoop. Phil will be looking at patented semiochemicals, Wes will continue work with vegetative barriers and corridors, somebody will continue to evaluate Vestergaard insecticide-treated barriers, and Chris will continue looking at heat tolerance of flies and natural enemies.

Objective 2, summarized by Jeff Scott: Phil Kaufman will continue to receive stable flies or provide cooperators with kits to monitor resistance. Kevin Temeyer indicated there may be novel acetylcholinesterase mutants in stable fly populations. Jeff Scott pointed out the need to obtain baseline data on house fly susceptibility to the toxicant (cyantraniliprole) in the new Syngenta bait Zyrox before its use becomes widespread.

Objective 3, summarized by Aaron Tarone: Aaron Tarone will be examining the evolution of bacteria associated with flies. There could be good funding opportunities for this work.

Objective 4, summarized by Dave Taylor: There were two main discussion topics involving collaborations. The first involves work on horn fly dispersal that is being led by Wes. The second had to do with the question of whether Nebraska spring stable fly populations are local or migrants from elsewhere. Collaborators will continue to put out traps, score first appearance of flies, and send the collected flies to Kristina for morphometric analysis.

Barba, M., A. J. Stewart, T. Passler, T. Hathcock, A. A. Wooldridge, E. van Santen, M. Chamorro, R. Cattley, J. A. Hogsette and X. P. Hu. 2015. Experimental inoculation of house flies, Musca domestica with Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis serovar equi. Bull. Insectol. 68: 39-44.

Barba, M., A. J. Stewart, T. Passler, A. A. Wooldridge, E. van Santen, M. Chamorro, R. Cattley, T. Hathcock , J. A. Hogsette and X. P. Hu. 2015. Experimental transmission of Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis serovar equi in horses by house flies. J. Vet. Internal Med. 29: 636-643.

Boxler, J. D. 2015. The horn fly. University of Nebraska- Lincoln, Neb Guide. G1180.

Boxler, J. D. 2015. The face fly. University of Nebraska- Lincoln, Neb Guide. G1204.

Boxler, J. D. 2015. Nebraska management guide for insect pests of livestock and horses. University of Nebraska- Lincoln, Extension Circular. EC-1550.

Davis, T.J, P.E. Kaufman, J.A. Hogsette, and D.L. Kline. 2015. The effects of larval habitat Quality on Aedes albopictus skip oviposition.  J. Am. Mosq. Control Assn. 31: 321-328.

Fowler, F. E., J. Chirico, B. A. Sandelin and B. A. Mullens. 2015. Seasonality and diapause of Musca autumnalis (Diptera: Muscidae) at its southern limits in North America, with observations on Haematobia irritans (Diptera: Muscidae). J. Med. Entomol. 52: 1213-1224.

Fowler, F. E. and B. A. Mullens. 2016. Dividing the pie: differential dung pat size utilization by sympatric Haematobia irritans and Musca autumnalis. Med. Vet. Entomol. (in press).

Friesen, K., D. Berkebile, B. Wienhold, L. Durso, J. Zhu, and D. Taylor. 2016. Environmental parameters associated with stable fly (Diptera: Muscidae) development at hay feeding sites. Environ. Entomol. (in press).

Geden, C. J. and H. Skovgaard. 2014.  Status of Tachinaephagus zealandicus (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae), a larval parasitoid of muscoid flies, in the eastern U.S. and Denmark.  J. Vector Ecol.  39: 453-456.

Geden, C. J., D. Johnson, P. E. Kaufman and C. K. Boohene. 2014.  Competition between the filth fly parasitoids Muscidifurax raptor and M. raptorellus (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae).  J. Vector Ecol.  39: 278--287.

Machtinger, E. T., C. J. Geden, J. A. Hogsette, and N. C. Leppla. 2014.  Development and oviposition preference of house flies and stable flies in six substrates from Florida equine facilities.  J. Med. Entomol. 51: 1144-1150

Machtinger, E. T., C. J. Geden, P. E.Teal, and N. C. Leppla. 2015.  Comparison of host-seeking behavior of the filth fly pupal parasitoids, Spalangia cameroni and Muscidifurax raptor (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae).  Environ. Entomol. 44: 330–337; DOI: 10.1093/ee/nvu063.

Boucias, D., J. Baniszewski, P. Prompiboon, V. Lietze, and C. J. Geden. 2015.  Enhancement of the Musca domestica hytrosavirus infection with peritrophic matrix disruptive chemistries.  J. Invertebrate Pathol. 125: 35-43.

Machtinger, E. T., C. J. Geden, and N. C. Leppla. 2015.  The effect of linear distance on the parasitism of house fly hosts (Diptera: Muscidae) by Spalangia cameroni (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae). PLoS ONE 10(6): e0129105.  doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129105.

Machtinger, E.T., C. J. Geden, P. E. Kaufman, and A. M. House. 2015.  Use of pupal parasitoids as biological control agents of filth flies on equine facilities.  J. Integr. Pest. Manag. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jipm/pmv015  First published online: 23 September 2015

Machtinger, E. T. and C. J. Geden. 2015.  Comparison of the olfactory preferences of four species of filth fly pupal parasitoids (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) in equine and bovine manure.  Environ. Entomol 44: 1417–1424

Machtinger, E. T., C. J. Geden, E. D. LoVullo, and P. D. Shirk. 2015.  Impacts of extended laboratory rearing on female fitness in the parasitoid Spalangia cameroni (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) with an analysis of Wolbachia strains..  Annals, Entomol. Soc. Amer. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aesa/sav118  First published online: 27 November 2015

Machtinger, E. T., E. M. Weeks, and C. J. Geden. 2016.  Sublethal consequences of commercial fungal products on filth flies (Diptera: Muscidae) (in press).

Mullens, B. A., D. Soto and A. C. Gerry. 2016. Estimating field densities of Haematobia irritans (Diptera: Muscidae) using direct visual field counts versus photographic assessments. J. Med. Entomol. 53, doi: 10.193/jme/tjv246.

Müller, G. C., J. A. Hogsette, D. L. Kline, J. C. Beier, E. E. Revay and R. D. Xue.  2015. Response of Phlebotomus papatasi to visual, physical and chemical attraction features in the field. Acta Tropica 141: 32-36.

Solorzano, J. A., J. Gilles, O. Bravo, C. Vargas, Y. Gomez-Bonilla, G. V. Bingham, and D. B. Taylor. 2015. Biology and trapping of stable flies (Diptera: Muscidae) developing in pineapple residues (Ananas comosus) in Costa Rica. J. Insect Sci. 15: 145.

 Soto, D. F. E. Fowler, B. A. Sandelin and B. A Mullens. 2014. Musca autumnalis (Diptera: Muscidae) and the host-specific nematode Paraiontonchium autumnale (Tylenchida: Iotonchidae) in southern California. J. Med. Entomol. 51: 288-292.

Zhu, J. J., G. J. Brewer, D. J. Boxler, K. Friesen, and D. B. Taylor. 2015. Comparisons of antifeedancy and spatial repellency of three natural product repellents against horn flies, Haematobia irritans (Diptera: Muscidae). Pest Manag. Sci. 71: 1553-1560.

Zhu, J. J., Q. Zhang, D. B. Taylor, and K. M. Friesen. 2015. Visual and olfactory enhancement of stable fly trapping. Pest Manag. Sci. doi: 10.1002/ps.4207.