Fayette Master Gardeners Featured in Article

Jim Essman and seven additional Master Gardeners from Fayette County are taking part in the Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz this year. Jim (shown above) will collect lady beetle data from the Fayette County Phenology Garden. We posted an article about the Fayette County Master Gardeners and the Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz on our website.

MYSTERY insect bonus!

Try and guess what insect these parts belong to!

New Grant for ALE Lab!

We found out this week that a proposal we submitted to study insects in urban landscapes was selected for funding by the North Central IPM Center. This is a project I started last year that we will expand given this new funding. The study will focus on the community of beneficial insects found in community gardens and urban farms. We will study not only the diversity and abundance of species but also the biological control and pollination services they provide. We will measure how the amount and quality of green space in the surrounding landscape influences beneficial insects and their services. We will be working with several collaborators on this project including Dr. Parwinder Grewal and Kevin Power (shown above) and Dr. Michel Walton of Cleveland State University.

Working in urban gardens is a ton of fun, not only do we get to meet the gardeners and collect interesting data, but the ice cream is delivered on-site!

Aphids Watch Out!

These are some soybean aphid pan traps that we are testing out for this spring. As part of our study on the invasive shrub common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), we will be sampling for soybean aphids very soon as they migrate into soybean fields. These simple traps are made of tomato cages and food storage containers. We will fill them half way with propylene glycol and add a green tile which will attract the aphids. So far this week, these prototypes have withstood all the rain and wind Ohio can offer, so we might have a couple winners. We certainly hope so...time is of the essence!

MYSTERY Insect of the week!

For my Insect Biodiversity/Morphology course I have been dissecting insects:

Can anyone guess what this messy looking dissection is showing?

Field season is almost here!

This is the time of year it hits me, we have A TON of work to get done this summer. Luckily we have been continuing to meet with the research teams for all our projects throughout the winter and spring, but, once it starts to get warm the pressure is on to move from plan to action!

This week we are finalizing supply lists for all our field projects, many trips to Lowes are in our near future....

We have already acquired some of the needed supplies. Above, painted bee bowls used to measure bee abundance and diversity dry on a lab table.

New ALE Website!!

The ALE lab now has a website to go with our blog! We have all been working on the site the last couple weeks and want to thank Dave Lohnes at OARDC for helping us constantly as we figure out how to make changes to the site. On this website you will find information about our current research and outreach projects, as well as information about our current staff and any job opportunites in the lab. It is still a work in progress but we are really excited to have this site up and running!