Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Opening session: Project Chair Kristina Freisen called the meeting to order at 8:36 AM on January 11, 2017. Local arrangements coordinator Alec Gerry provided information about the facility, wireless signal access, and registration fees ($70 this year). This was followed by a round of self-introductions. Kristina announced that S-1060 had won the “National Excellence in Multistate Research Award” and that Sonja Swiger had attended the award ceremony in Washington and received the award plaque on behalf of the project. A round of applause followed to recognize Kristina’s work in assembling the award application.

Rick Roeder, the administrative advisor to S1060, reminded us that the annual report is due 60 days after the meeting.   Rick also congratulated the group on the award and said that the experiment station directors had been impressed with the diversity of the membership and the modernity of the techniques being used in the research. There is a $15,000 cash award that must be spent within a year (or request a one-year extension). The money cannot be used to fund research but rather could be used for student travel or for invited speakers for next year’s meeting. He also mentioned that screwworm flies had been detected on the Florida mainland, and Phil Kaufman gave an update on the fly problem in Florida.

Business Meeting: A brief business meeting was held to choose the location for next year’s meeting. Orlando was nominated, voted on, and approved for the 2018 meeting.   Meeting adjourned for the day at 5:30 PM.

Thursday AM:

Nancy Hinkle reminded us that the LIWC this year will be at the Hilton Desoto Inn in Savannah June 26-28, 2017.

Kristina Friesen led a discussion about how to spend the balance of our project’s award ($13,000). Possibilities included funding student travel to next year’s meeting, inviting an outside speaker or two, inviting stakeholders from commodity groups, paying to migrate the UCR website to neutral ground, or sending project members to major commodity meetings like the World Poultry Expo. 

Replacement Project. Kristina led a discussion for developing the replacement project for S-1060. Expanding it to include darkling beetles, ticks and other pests would be nice but it would dilute the focus and could detract from our mission of team science and collaboration. It was decided to keep our current 5 objectives but refresh the sub-objectives. The following shell of a project was developed to form the foundation of writing committees:

• Objective 1 (management): Wes Watson (nominated chair), Brandon Smythe, Jerry Hogsette, Chris Geden, Alec Gerry, Kelly Lofton, Brad Mullens, Gary Brewer.
• Objective 2 (resistance): Jeff Scott (nominated chair), Phil Kaufman, Becky Trout Fryxell, Caleb.
• Objective 3 (microbes): Dana Nayduch (nominated chair), Ludek Zurek.
• Objective 4 (population biology): Dave Taylor (nominated chair), Jerry Hogsette, Sonja Swiger, Becky Trout Fryxell, Kelly Lofton.
• Objective 5 (extension/outreach): Alec Gerry (nominated chair).

Several general topics were discussed, including:

• The desirability of an eartag that would delay the release of the active ingredient.
• Developing a social media presence to deliver information to stakeholders.
• The need for a stronger entomology presence with the EPA so that they are informed about reasonable product testing protocols.

Meeting adjourned after a round of applause for Kristina and Alec (time not noted). 

Objective 1. New technologies for management of biting and nuisance flies in organic and conventional systems.

• Dave Boxler reported on several studies. In the first, he compared horn fly counts on animals treated with nothing (controls), geraniol, permethrin, and geraniol plus permethrin. In 2016 all treatments appeared to be equally effective, though the repellent was only effective for one week. In the second, he looked at efficacy of a C8910 product that is being sold successfully in the horse market. This material only kills flies on contact and provided 77% reduction in fly counts during the first two weeks. Greatest efficacy was during the first few days after treatment. In the third, he reported very high (112 and 288x) levels of permethrin resistance in Nebraska flies. There was a discussion about the need for new chemistry for horn flies. Doug Ross discussed the new Tolfenpro eartag from Bayer. This eartag has a new active ingredient, tolfenpyrad, that inhibits the mitochondrial electron transport system. It was introduced into the market in 2016 but there was some unexpected eye irritation that is being looked at. Finally, Dave reported on a feedlot that has been spraying permethrin, coumaphos and phosmet, every three days for houseflies. Fly testing showed 100x resistance to permethrin and 1000x to coumaphos.
• Nancy Hinkle tested a solar-powered sprayer for horn flies and found that permethrin was effective but only for a short while. Similar results were seen using the VetGun armed with lambdacyalothrin. Abamectin eartags (XP-820) provided several months of control.
• Bill Warner discussed recent changes in EPA’s standards for efficacy testing in which candidate products must meet the 90% control mark. It can take the EPA up to a year to approve a testing protocol submitted by industry. Required methodologies are becoming increasingly stringent. House fly bait tests can no longer be conducted in the field but must be done in 8-ft cube cages. Bed bug testing must be done with F2 colonies from field collections with a minimum of three strains, over a full dose-response range. Testing guidelines are unwritten, ever-changing, and under the purview of people with little or no knowledge and experience working with the insects.
• Brad Mullens discussed several items: 1) he and Amy Murillo have two new poultry IPM book chapters coming out; 2) there will also be an article by Mullens et al. in “American Entomologist” about past and future needs for veterinary entomology; 3) he will soon be publishing a big paper on the work with C8910 and geraniol, both of which were effective; and, 4) Using “cow models” with odors, stable flies responded to both octenol and CO2 but horn flies only responded to octenol. Brad also discussed his recent sabbatical in Tennessee, where he did trapping studies with the H-trap for Tabanus sulcifrons. This species has two forms, early and late, which may turn out to be different species. He also observed male swarming/mating behavior of T. calens and will be coauthoring a paper on this subject with Jeff Freeman that will include some of Jeff’s data from 57 years ago!
• Sonja Swiger has been looking at a Cargill feed additive (Emerald) including extracts of cinnamon and garlic that is thought to be helpful for ruminant nutrition. It is currently being fed to deer, and horn fly counts on animals suggest that it is effective against them. In lab tests she saw little effect when fly eggs were placed on manure pats from treated cattle. She also discussed a concern involving the timing of eartag placement in her state. Texas producers like to put tags on in the spring but horn fly populations don’t peak until August. By this time the tags have lost much of their potency.
• Trisha Dubie evaluated Long Range (Ivomec) injectable and the Corathon (coumaphos and diazinon) eartag. The Long Range product worked very well, perhaps because the formulation has a built-in second wave of release after about 10 weeks. Treated animals had higher weight gain than untreated controls. She also reported on development of an immunomarking technique for flies in which flies are treated with egg white as a marker that can be detected using ELISA methods. Flies retained the mark for 2-3 weeks and the technique is sensitive enough to detect 10-100 ppb of the marker. Finally, analysis of volatiles from animal carcasses showed that composting resulted in significant reductions in dimethyl disulfide emissions; composting also reduced fly numbers.
• Phil Kaufman reported on the evaluation of three semiochemicals individually and as mixtures as adulticides and larvicides targeting stable fly and horn fly. Adult horn flies were more sensitive to the semiochemical-based insecticides than the stable fly. High dose exposure provided significantly increased mortality against only horn fly larvae. No synergism was observed when evaluated as mixtures.
• Jerry Hogsette discussed work with Zyrox fly bait and the EndZone insecticide sticker. EndZone is a sticker that can be stuck on windows and has a surface coated with sugar and acetamiprid. Surprisingly, stable flies fed on these dry baits and were killed.
• Chris Geden described recent attempts to develop a pyriproxyfen (PPF) autodissemination station for house flies. Under field conditions in California and Florida he found that house flies were attracted to a new station design but few actually landed on the PPF-treated surface. Erika Machtinger and he have written a review of fly parasitoid biology and uses in biocontrol for a forthcoming book. They will provide Nancy with a link to the pdf when it comes out.
• Jerry Hogsette reported good results using KnightStick stable fly traps when they were placed within animal enclosures at zoos and protected from animals by hotwires. 

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

• Jeff Scott presented results from recent pyrethroid resistance work, in which he has documented the resistance conferred by the kdr, kdr-his, and super-kdr alleles as well as the fitness costs of these alleles. Resistance alleles that provide the most resistance (super-kdr) also have the highest fitness costs. He set out to see whether any new resistance alleles had emerged in recent decades. After a survey indicated that Kansas was a rich source off resistance allele diversity, he examined different fly populations, conducted selections, and searched for new alleles that could be involved in resistance to 10 pyrethroids. Resistance varied among the strains and five new mutations were found in standard kdr and one for super-kdr. Two new mutations may be involved in the compensation for fitness costs that come with resistance.
• Becky Trout Fryxell is examining seasonality of resistance allele frequencies in stable fly and seeing higher frequencies at the end of the fly season.
• Jeff Scott provided a status report of fly genomics. Thanks to Pia Olafson, the stable fly genome is completed and annotated. With house fly, Andy Clark and Ludek Zurek are looking at genes involved in responding to pathogens and Rich Meisel is investigating sex determination. 

Objective 3. Investigation of the microbial ecology, epithelial immunity, and vector competence of biting and nuisance flies.

• Kristina Friesen made reports on behalf of Ludek Zurek and Dana Nayduch, who were unable to attend the meeting. A poster from Ludek was put on display which documented house fly carriage of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Dana wanted the group to know that there will be a special issue of the “Annals of the ESA” covering filth fly-microbe interactions. Dana also reported that, with some pathogens, there is a difference in the amounts of bacteria that female and male flies carry. Females always have more bacteria on the body surface and deposit more fecal spots that males. Dana is also doing transcriptomes of 2^nd instar larvae of horn fly, house, fly, stable fly, and face fly in the same kind of manure.
• Aaron Tarrone is looking at attraction of Lucilia sericata to volatiles produced by Proteus mirabilis, whose genome has been sequenced.
• Xing Ping Hu discussed the possible role of house flies as a vector of pigeon fever, also known as equine distemper. The disease is caused by infection with Corynebacterium pseudotuberculos and can result in abscesses in horses, sheep and cattle.
• Becky Trout Fryxell reported on an incident at the Plateau Research Center, a facility that has both produce and cattle at the same site. When a problem developed with E. coli on the produce, Becky collected 2500 flies and will now assess them for presence of E. coli and Salmonella. 

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

• Levi Zahn is studying house fly movement patterns. Flies move with a more pointed directionality later in the day than in the morning. Wind does not seem to account very much for fly movement. Levi will be working on using remote sensors that can identify and count fly species and sex using infrared beams and wing beat frequency.
• Amy Murillo is installing backpacks on chickens that will monitor their behavior by tracking their movement, allowing construction of time budgets for items such as walking, feeding, and dustbathing. Using this, she hopes to examine questions such as whether ectoparasites cause birds to spend more time engaged in dustbathing.
• Kristina Friesen provided a progress report of a regional phenology project in which stable flies are monitored in many regions for seasonality and the sex and reproductive status of flies collected at different times of year.   In 2015, collections (from nine states and provinces) were made up of mostly young flies throughout the season in many locations. In Texas and Nebraska, early season flies were older and in a late ovarian condition, and in Manitoba the early season flies were older whereas late season flies were younger. Results in 2016 were rather different, with more older flies overall than in 2015. She has saved and slide-mounted the wings from all of the flies for body size assessment. A discussion followed about the origin of early season flies in different locations and the cause of the late fall peak that is seen in some locations. 

Objective 5. Community and stakeholder involvement.

• Alec Gerry gave an update on the pesticide database that he developed for veterinary entomology http://veterinaryentomology.ucr.edu/vet_pesticides.html. Data from 22 states are now in the database. He would like to see this database migrate from UCR and make it a national (S-1060) database. He encouraged industry to give input to maintain and update the database to keep it current. The website also has an S-1060 blog.
• Phil Kaufman mentioned the series of webinars of narrated PowerPoint presentations by Dan Suiter for continuing education credits for certified pesticide applicators for urban and structural pests. They can be found at www.gtbop.com. Should we develop something along these lines? Phil also mentioned that Keith Waldron has retired and that the New York program will be publishing a Spanish language version of the Pest Management Guidelines for Livestock. 

Having completed the Objectives reports, Aaron Tarrone gave a presentation to the group on genomics and how it could fit into the renewed project. He gave several examples: 1) leveraging work done by Drosophila researchers that could help in predicting what alleles might be involved in possible resistance to fatty acid mixtures such as C8910; 2) examination of ecological adaptations such as migration or adaptation to temperature; 3) examining admixtures/source populations to determine the origins of dispersing populations; 4) improving screwworm strain design for SIT; and, 5) functional genomics, including insecticide resistance and response to pathogens. In summary, Aaron encouraged a more prominent role for genomics in the next iteration of the project.