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August 23, 2019

Research

Bad Roommates: Study Tracks Mice to Nests, Finds Ticks Aplenty

Posted on
Entomology Today

Noted: Susan Paskewitz, Ph.D., professor and chair of the of the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and senior author on the study, says checking out mouse nests was a logical choice. “We were developing an agent-based model that explored mouse behavior and blacklegged tick numbers on the mice,” says Paskewitz, who conducted the research alongside Wisconsin graduate students Ryan Larson and Tela Zembsch and research associates Xia Lee, Ph.D., and Gebbiena Bron, Ph.D. “The model suggested that mice spend so much time in nests during the day that ticks should be detaching and ending up in that environment at greater rates than we had suspected. So, we decided to look in nests, which turned out to be more difficult than you might imagine.”

SciFri Book Club: One For The Birds

Posted on
Science Friday

Noted: We close out the summer’s birdy nerdery with a celebration of some of these bird geniuses, and learn how researchers are investigating their minds through experimentation and observation. UCLA pigeon researcher Aaron Blaisdell and University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Lauren Riters join Ira and producer Christie Taylor to talk about the brightest minds of the bird world, and the burning questions remaining about avian brains.

Larval Bees are Omnivores, Shows New Study

Posted on
Sci-News

Quoted: “Bees actually require the non-plant proteins of these pollen-borne symbionts to complete their growth and development — which makes them omnivores,” said Dr. Shawn Steffan, a research entomologist with the Vegetable Crops Research Unit of the Agricultural Research Service in Madison, Wisconsin and the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In the study, the Dr. Steffan and his colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University and Hokkaido University used isotope- and gas chromatography-based methods to calculate the ratio of nitrogen in two types of amino acids (glutamic acid and phenylalanine) in the tissues of adult bees and in beebread.

Surprise: Bees Need Meat; Microbes in flowers are crucial to bee diets, and microbiome changes could be starving the insects

Posted on
Scientific American

Noted: Prarthana Dharampal of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Shawn Steffan, who works jointly at the university and the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), assessed 14 different bee species in six of the seven bee families. They found that bees eat substantial amounts of microbes, enough to change how they fit within food webs. Scientists use a scale to categorize where organisms belong in that web: those that make their own food, such as plants, register at so-called trophic position 1 (TP 1), herbivores register at TP 2 and carnivores do so at TP 3, or even higher if they eat other carnivores.

What Happened to All the Walleye up Here?

Posted on
WXPR-FM

Matt Chotlos is an undergraduate student at UW-Madison. For the last two summers, he’s been waking up at UW-Madison’s Trout Lake Station in Boulder Junction five days a week with a group of other researchers and driving to McDermott Lake in Iron County, where he traps bass and other sunfish–up to 2,000 a day–with the goal of removing every last one. By the end of this July, he had helped remove a total of 150,000 fish.

The M List 2019: Evolutionaries

Posted on
Madison Magazine

The Loka Project: Finding solutions to environmental crises around the world seems insurmountable, but local scientists and educators are exploring how faith leaders could ignite a global movement to address climate change.

Higher Education/System

Campus life

Photos: Remembering the UW-Madison Sterling Hall bombing 49 years ago

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Early in the morning of Aug. 24, 1970, four anti-Vietnam War radicals — Karleton Armstrong, his brother Dwight Armstrong, David Fine and Leo Burt — used a van filled with almost a ton of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil to bomb UW-Madison’s Sterling Hall, killing researcher Robert Fassnacht and injuring three others.

Community

Arts & Humanities

Adolph Rosenblatt’s “Oriental Pharmacy Lunch Counter” is on display at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Chazen Museum of Art on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is home to a huge collection that includes post-revolution works from the former Soviet Union, paintings by Wisconsin artists that have a magical realism twist and a pair of large and provocative — some might say X-rated — ceramic goats that were once hidden behind screens.

Health

Athletics

UW Experts in the News

Trump’s offer to buy Greenland

Posted on
BBC

President Donald Trump’s offer to purchase Greenland from Denmark earlier this week bewildered many, Assistant professor of Scandinavian studies Claus E. Andersen spoke to BBC radio about the impact on relations between the U.S and Denmark. Cue to the 17 minute mark to hear his thoughts.

Number Of Mosquitoes Is ‘Average’ In Wisconsin So Far This Year, Professor Says

Posted on
WPR

It’s been a wet summer in Wisconsin and wet summers are often filled with mosquitoes. But that isn’t how 2019 has played out so far, according to a Wisconsin scientist.

Lyric Bartholomay, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies infectious disease agents such as mosquitoes and ticks, told WPR’s “The Morning Show” Thursday that the state has seen average numbers of mosquitoes so far this year.

UW-Madison Related