Department of Nematology

Grape Day shows San Joaquin Valley growers ‘what works in our area, for our crops’

tomwt — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 17:01:39 +0000

Grape Day shows San Joaquin Valley growers ‘what works in our area, for our crops’ tomwt Thu, 08/21/2025 - 10:01 More CNAS in the Media Michael Hsu | UC ANR August 20, 2025

UC ANR - Grape Day at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center – a time-honored learning event dating to the late 1960s – was convened again on Aug. 12 for wine, table and raisin grape growers to hear about the latest field trials and innovations.

“The primary purpose of Grape Day is to showcase research that University of California faculty, specialists and advisors are doing to benefit the California grape industry, and particularly for growers in the San Joaquin Valley,” said Matthew Fidelibus, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology.

...

At the first stop, Andreas Westphal, professor of Cooperative Extension in the Department of Nematology at UC Riverside, provided an overview on the biology of nematodes – microscopic roundworms that can rob grapevines of vigor and yield.

Then Ashraf El-kereamy, UCCE specialist in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC Riverside, shared the results of testing two products aimed at mitigating heat stress on table grapes.

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Finding Nematodes with Adler Dillman

owenw — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 17:49:06 +0000

Finding Nematodes with Adler Dillman owenw Tue, 04/15/2025 - 10:49 More Blog Posts April 15, 2025

To say that Adler R. Dillman is fascinated by a particular ubiquitous organism best viewed through a microscope is a bit of an understatement.

A Professor of Parasitology & Nematologist as well as the Chair of the Department of Nematology at UC Riverside, Dillman is “all about” parasitic nematodes...although, to be sure, he had never heard that classification as a kid growing up in Orem, UT, just south of Salt Lake City.

Adler Dillman

“I had never heard that term before until I was an undergraduate, maybe not until 2003,” he says. But, Professor Dillman did grow up loving science fiction, and that interest stoked his imagination vis-à-vis what later became the world of parasites and especially nematodes.

“As a child of the ‘80s, we had many great books and films,” he says. “I LOVED the whole Alien movie franchise...when I first learned about nematodes, these parasites of insects, to me they seemed like they could be something right out of a James Cameron movie!”

“It was really interesting to me," he continues, "the notion that you could have this worm that crawls into its host through natural openings and gets into the blood of the insect host and defecates out highly pathogenic bacteria into the blood of that insect. Together, the nematode and the bacteria it’s defecated out, kill the insect and liquify all the tissues...and then about a week later, what started out as 10-50 parasitic nematodes at the initiation of infection has grown to tens of thousands of parasitic nematodes that emerge from the cadaver!”

In his upcoming, Science Lecture Series presentation, Parasitic Nematodes: Masters of Disguise, Professor Dillman plans to discuss how parasitic nematodes kill their hosts and are at the same time masters of immune modulation.

“That’s important to human beings,” he says, “because we have a lot of autoimmune disorders that are based on wonky disregulation of immunity. Research suggests that parasitic nematodes can bring back into regulation a previously disregulated immune response. We are looking at using parasitic nematodes as a therapeutic to treat autoimmune disorders like Crohn’s Disease, inflammatory bowel disease, even celiac disease."

Professor Dillman adds, "We still don’t really understand how nematodes suppress the inappropriate immune response, but it’s fascinating.”

In layman’s terms, nematodes are round worms. “I would normally say they’re microscopic round worms, but there are exceptions to that...some are visible to the naked eye,” Professor Dillman says. “If you go to the zoo, most of the things you see are all part of one phylum, the phylum Chordata...animals with a backbone and a bundle of nerves running down their back. Nematodes are a whole other giant taxonomic group...they’re all unsegmented roundworms.”

According to Professor Dillman, while many nematodes are parasitic, most are not. Some can be found existing in marine and fresh water environments. Others, he says, are “soil-dwelling” but not parasitic, and feed on fungi and bacteria. “But then, of course, you have a small proportion, maybe 15 percent of the that are described, that are parasites of plants and another 10 percent that are parasites of animals,” Professor Dillman says of the approximately 30,000 nematodes that have been discovered so far.

The nematode-to-human threat, in Professor Dillman’s view, is enormous and often underestimated. “You have this huge threat in plant-parasitic nematodes, which puts at risk the very food we consume,” he says. “I don’t do research on that particular group, but most of my department does. I’m focused on the second part of this, which is the direct threat of parasites to human health via being parasites of humans and livestock.”

There are more than 1 billion people on Earth who are infected with one species of nematode. Professor Dillman says that when other infectious parasitic nematodes are added to the mix, potentially 3 billion people could be infected, with some infected by more than one nematode.

“You have this species called Ascaris lumbricoides, which is about 8-10 inches in length and as wide as a green bean,” Professor Dillman says. “It sits in the small intestine of humans, and there are 1.2 billion people infected with that one nematode right now!”

Not including James Cameron, two people figured prominently in Professor Dillman’s path to the microscopic universe of nematodes. The first was his uncle Drew, a plastic surgeon and self-taught naturalist. “He was very interested in birds, plants and to a lesser degree, insects,” Professor Dillman says. “As a kid, when we would go out hiking with him...he was one of those people that stopped at every single plant or tree and quizzed me about it. It drove my dad crazy...he wanted to keep hiking, but with Uncle Drew, we were going to look at every single thing along the way.”

From his uncle, Professor Dillman learned the scientific names of plants, how to identify them, and why they were named what they were named. “When we went to the natural history museum, we had to stop and read every plaque,” he remembers. “I loved that one person could know so much. That inspired me.”

After two-years serving a mission in Bucharest, Romania for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and teaching at missionary training center in Utah, Professor Dillman pursued his desire to become a scientist. “At Brigham Young University, my major was microbiology,” he says, “but I hadn’t had any research experience, so after I had been a teacher at the missionary training center for a year, I was trying to figure out what classes I was going to take next.”

As Professor Dillman tells it, he was in the middle of his sophomore year and on his way to meet his science counselor with the burning question of whether to take a particular physics or statistics class to meet a course requirement.

“It was pure happenstance that I met a faculty member in the hallway by the name of Byron Adams,” he says. “He stopped and asked me what I was doing. I had never seen him before and didn’t know him. He asked if I was interested in research. I responded affirmatively and he told me he was a new faculty member and was having his first lab meeting on Monday and asked if I would come. It turned out that Byron was the person who introduced me to Nematodes.”

Everything clicked for Professor Dillman after that meeting. “When I was in the lab, all these abstract ideas about DNA replication and transcription made sense,” he says. “I was doing PCR in his lab, and he allowed me to go to scientific conferences and present research, and actually took me to Antarctica as part of his research program!”

Professor Dillman adds, “I spent five weeks sampling for nematodes in The Dry Valleys out there. That set me on a path – looking at nematodes under a microscope, digging for them in the soil, growing them on lab plates. I was in love and am still intrigued by these delightful organisms.”

Professor Dillman came to teach at UC Riverside full-time in 2015, but his first experience with Nematology at UC Riverside was when he was an undergraduate at BYU in 2005. He responded to an advertisement looking for students to travel to the Republic of Moldova in part to research nematodes, but also as a goodwill excursion. Due to his previous missionary work in Romania, Professor Dillman was a natural fit.

“I went with a faculty member, Ed Platzer, who at the time was Professor of Nematology and Biology at UC Riverside,” he says. “That was my first experience getting to know UCR, and the high quality of research being done at the college deeply impressed me. Imagine my surprise when in 2015 I was offered a faculty position! I’ve always been a fan of UC Riverside’s research prowess...in my line as a nematologist, it is one of the premiere places to conduct research on nematodes because of its stellar faculty.”

Beyond the faculty, Professor Dillman’s admiration extends to UC Riverside's students, who he finds to be hardworking, diligent and rigorous in their pursuit of academic excellence.

“I teach a class of more than 400 students,” he says, “and I find that the students who are really interested and motivated are among the best and brightest students I’ve ever worked with anywhere, and that includes Caltech, where I did my Ph.D. and Stanford, where I was a postdoc.”

The Department of Nematology at UC Riverside was created in 1954 and is currently home to seven faculty members. It also bears the distinction of being the the only unhyphenated Nematology department in the entire U.S. While there have been departments of Nematology at UC Davis, the University of Florida and other universities located in the Midwest and on the East Coast, over time they have all merged with other departments.

“In my experience, I kind of feel we’re at a point where there’s a push to move away from organismally-focused departments...the only exception to that is that you still have a number of universities with entomology departments,” Prof. Dillman says. “I think now the focus is more on neurobiology or ecology and evolution or molecular biology – we’ve gone away from organismally-focused entities.”

Over the course of his career, Professor Dillman has been the recipient of an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement from UC Riverside. The Nematology lab at UC Riverside is currently funded by the NIH, the National Science Foundation, and the United States Department of Agriculture.

The laurels, while nice to get, rank down the list of Professor Dillman’s proudest achievement to date: investigating a “cocktail” of sorts.

“When I started my research lab here, we did some really nice experiments illustrating that the nematodes themselves release a cocktail of toxic proteins into the insects that they infect.” he says. “This cocktail by itself is highly lethal to insects. So, I kind of upended the dogma that the nematodes only served as a vector. A lot of my research today is still focused on identifying the components of that cocktail and how they cause death in the insect and how other components are involved in modulating the immune response of the host.”

Ask a CNAS Prof: Adler Dillman

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Protecting Long Beans From Aphids and Nematodes

tomwt — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 19:14:43 +0000

Protecting Long Beans From Aphids and Nematodes tomwt Wed, 12/04/2024 - 11:14 More CNAS in the Media Stacy Kish | CSA News December 04, 2024

CSA NEWS - Commercial markets are embracing traditionally ethnic vegetable crops, adding diversity to the food system. Long beans (Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis), which originated in Africa and have been refined through domestication in Southeast Asia, have an export value of $80 million. The edible pods are a symbol of luck and longevity, but more importantly, they pack a nutritious punch, offering a new food option, enriched in protein, vitamins, and minerals.

Despite these benefits, long beans have not broken into larger commercial markets because the current varieties require frequent applications of synthetic chemicals to manage aphids and root-knot nematodes, limiting marketability and opening the potential of pest resistance. Concerns with pesticide applications have affected consumer demand, and the acreage of long bean has been in decline.

A recent article in the Journal of Plant Registrations details the development by researchers at the University of California-Riverside of new long bean germplasm lines that resist aphids and nematodes.

"We are confident that once consumers become familiar with the new resistant varieties, the crop will gain momentum," says Bao-Lam Huynh, assistant professor in the Department of Nematology at the University of California-Riverside and first author on the paper.

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19 Species Named After Your Favorite Celebrities (Including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and More!)

tomwt — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 17:44:47 +0000

19 Species Named After Your Favorite Celebrities (Including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and More!) tomwt Tue, 12/03/2024 - 09:44 More CNAS in the Media Kelli Bender and Paris C. - People December 01, 2024

PEOPLE - Celebrities can be found throughout the animal kingdom — if you know where to look.

Occasionally, when a new species is discovered, pop culture-loving scientists decide to name the creature after their favorite star. There are bugs named after Oscar winners, lemurs sharing names with comedians and spiders with the same titles as starlets.

Read on to see what celebrities have received the honor of having a species named after them.

Barack Obama
Caloplaca obamae is a lichen species named after former President Barack Obama. It was discovered in 2007 on Santa Rosa Island, part of California’s Channel Islands.

As ScienceDaily reported, lichenologist Kerry Knudsen of the University of California, Riverside, named the species in 2009. "I named it Caloplaca obamae to show my appreciation for the president's support of science and science education," he said of his discovery in the journal Opuscula Philolichenum.

Jeff Daniels
In January 2022, scientists from California's UC Riverside dubbed a new nematode species, Tarantobelus jeffdanielsi. The name was inspired by actor Jeff Daniels' character, Dr. Ross Jennings, in Arachnophobia (1990).

"His character in the film is a spider killer, which is exactly what these nematodes are," said parasitologist Adler Dillman, who led the team that discovered the new species.

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Your skin color may affect how well a medication works for you — but the research is way behind

tomwt — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 16:46:40 +0000

Your skin color may affect how well a medication works for you — but the research is way behind tomwt Tue, 11/26/2024 - 08:46 More CNAS in the Media Emily Cooke | Live Science November 26, 2024

LIVE SCIENCE - Your skin color may influence how safe and effective a given drug is for you, a new analysis suggests.

In a recent think piece, published Oct. 9 in the journal Human Genomics, scientists examined a plethora of studies, revealing that melanin — the pigment that gives our skin, hair and eyes their color — can absorb certain drugs that are either applied to the skin or taken orally, thus affecting how much of a dose makes it to the tissues that need treatment.

This means that people's responses to a standard dose of a given drug may vary depending on their skin tone. For instance, research has shown that nicotine binds to melanin and that variations in skin pigmentation may influence how much people smoke. This may be because, once nicotine is inhaled, it travels through the bloodstream and is absorbed by melanin-containing cells in the skin, therefore reducing how much of the drug reaches the brain. However, the exact reason is not yet fully understood.

Toxic chemicals, such as those found in fertilizers and pesticides, may also accumulate in higher concentrations in darker skin than in lighter skin, the researchers found. This could reframe what a standard safe-exposure level might be for certain demographics.

In the think piece, Sophie Zaaijer, a consultant and researcher affiliated with the University of California, Riverside, and Simon Groen, an assistant professor of evolutionary systems biology at UC Riverside, noted that melanin's ability to interact with specific drugs was flagged back in the 1960s. However, they argued that its effects have not been properly considered in preclinical research or in clinical trials of new drugs.

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Skin tone may affect how drugs work, including those designed to help people stop smoking

tomwt — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 23:27:29 +0000

Skin tone may affect how drugs work, including those designed to help people stop smoking tomwt Thu, 10/24/2024 - 16:27 More CNAS in the Media Anna Edney | Bloomberg October 17, 2024

BLOOMBERG - Many factors can affect how well a drug works: age, whether you’ve eaten, your weight and even drinking grapefruit juice. Recently, I learned skin color can also play a role.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, highlighted this last week in the journal Human Genomics and called for drugmakers to take steps to better understand the reaction between melanin, the substance that determines skin tone, and medications.

...

Scientists Sophie Zaaijer and Simon Groen from UC Riverside laid out a cost-effective way drugmakers could investigate whether melanin affects these potential treatments. Hopefully they’ll listen.

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CE Advisors & CE Faculty Collaboration Meeting: Exploring Ongoing Agricultural Research at UC Riverside

joanny — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 23:54:27 +0000

CE Advisors & CE Faculty Collaboration Meeting: Exploring Ongoing Agricultural Research at UC Riverside joanny Sat, 08/24/2024 - 16:54 More College News August 24, 2024

The University of California, Riverside (UCR) College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences (CNAS) hosted the Cooperative Extension (CE) Advisors and UCR CE Faculty Collaboration Meeting on May 23.

CE advisors located in (or serving) over 14 counties across California were invited to learn about the ongoing research by UCR CE faculty to enhance collaboration between CE advisors and faculty, and to address existing and emerging agricultural challenges to better serve California and the US.

The following CE faculty provided oral presentations on their current research projects:

Connecting the Dots Between Production Horticulture & the Consumer for Subtropical Fruit Crops
Mary Lu Arpaia
Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Subtropical Horticulture
Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Turfgrass Research & Outreach
Jim Baird
Associate Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Horticulture
Department of Botany & Plant Sciences
turfgrass.ucr.edu

Management of Insect Pests in Subtropical Fruit Crops
Bodil Cass
Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Entomology
Department of Entomology

Urban/Structural Entomology Labs
Dong-Hwan Choe
Professor and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Entomology
Department of Entomology

Insect Invasion Biology & Vector-Borne Plant Disease Management
Matt Daugherty
Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Entomology
Department of Entomology

Optimization of Citrus Horticultural Practices
Ashraf El-kereamy
Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Horticulture
Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Advanced Technologies for Improving Food Safety of Fresh Produce
Ahmed El-Moghazy
Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Food Safety
Department of Microbiology & Plant Pathology

Minimizing Disease Impact in Subtropical Fruit Crops
Fatemah Khodadadi
Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist
Department of Microbiology & Plant Pathology

Subtropical Horticultural Research
Peggy Mauk
Director of Agricultural Operations
Professor of Cooperative Extension
UC Cooperative Extension Specialist
Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Black Earth & Robots
Milt McGiffen
Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Vegetable Crops
Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Nursery Production: Plant Nutrition & Water/Native Plant & Pomegranate Operations
Donald Merhaut
Associate Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Horticulture
Department of Botany and Plant Sciences

Nematode Management in Vegetable Crops
Antoon Ploeg
Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Nematology
Department of Nematology

Disease Management in Vegetables & Small Fruits
Alex Putman
Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist in Plant Pathology
Department of Microbiology & Plant Pathology

Geospatial Soil & Plant Sensing Research
Elia Scudiero
Associate Professional Researcher
Department of Environmental Sciences

Tree & Vine Research Overview
Philippe Rolshausen
Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Subtropical Crops
Department of Botany & Plant Sciences

Precision Urban and Agricultural Water Management in Southern California
Amir Verdi
Associate Professor and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Agricultural and Urban Water Management
Department of Environmental Sciences

California’s Citrus Clonal Protection Program & Its Research in Addressing Citrus Challenges
Georgios Vidalakis
Professor and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Plant Pathology
Director, Citrus Clonal Protection Program
Department of Microbiology & Plant Pathology

Nematode Diseases of Trees & Vines
Andreas Westphal
Professor of Cooperative Extension and Cooperative Extension Specialist of Nematology
Department of Nematology

In addition to CE advisors and faculty, the collaboration meeting was attended by UCR Agricultural Experiment Station faculty and CNAS leadership including CNAS Interim Dean Peter Atkinson and chairs of agricultural departments. The meeting was organized by Isgouhi Kaloshian, Professor of Nematology and former CNAS Agriculture & Natural Resources Divisional Dean, Peggy Mauk, Agriculture Operations Director and CE Faculty, and Donald Merhaut, CE Faculty.

For more information about Cooperative Extension at UC Riverside, please visit cnas.ucr.edu/ce-specialists.

For more information about the University of California Cooperative Advisors, please visit cnas.ucr.edu/about/cooperative-extension.

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A poisonous diet gives these animals their own toxic defense

tomwt — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 16:10:02 +0000

A poisonous diet gives these animals their own toxic defense tomwt Wed, 06/12/2024 - 09:10 More CNAS in the Media Brian Handwerk | Smithsonian Magazine June 12, 2024

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - You are what you eat, the old saying goes, and that holds true for many animals that regularly ingest poison. For certain species that feed on toxic fare like plants and insects, not only do the poisonous meals do these creatures no harm, but the consumers actually co-opt the toxins. They become poisonous themselves for protection from parasites or predators.

Monarch butterflies are beautiful backyard favorites—but they’re also toxic. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed plants, where caterpillars devour leaves containing poisonous cardiac glycosides compounds. The monarchs store these toxins in their own bodies to deter predators—and the insects’ appealing black and orange color signals this toxicity.

The monarchs evolved to digest the toxic plant through just a few key genetic mutations—ones that scientists have recently uncovered. Unfortunately for the butterflies, some of their predators, including black-headed grosbeaks and eastern deer mice, have also evolved mutations enabling them to devour the insects and tolerate the toxins.

“It looks like in this situation there might be an evolutionary arms race up the food chain,” says Simon Cornelis “Niels” Groen, an evolutionary systems biologist at the University of California, Riverside.

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RFK Jr. revealed he had a parasitic brain worm. Here’s what to know.

tomwt — Thu, 09 May 2024 17:40:38 +0000

RFK Jr. revealed he had a parasitic brain worm. Here’s what to know. tomwt Thu, 05/09/2024 - 10:40 More CNAS in the Media Fenit Nirappil | The Washington Post May 08, 2024

THE WASHINGTON POST - Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed that he was diagnosed with mercury poisoning around the same time doctors discovered a parasitic worm in his brain, adding to questions about cognitive fitness that have roiled the 2024 campaign.

“It’s not necessarily a problem right away to have this infection, but it’s really when the parasite is starting to die in the brain,” said Simon Groen, assistant professor of evolutionary systems biology at University of California at Riverside, who has researched parasitic worms. “That’s when a lot of molecules are released from the parasite cells that brain cells can respond to with an innate immune response that causes inflammation. And that in turn can lead to neurological disorders like seizures.”

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Dangerous bacterial disease reported in multiple dogs in Southern California

tomwt — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 22:33:12 +0000

Dangerous bacterial disease reported in multiple dogs in Southern California tomwt Fri, 04/19/2024 - 15:33 More CNAS in the Media Travis Schlepp | KTLA 5 April 17, 2024

KTLA 5 LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control has issued an animal health advisory after four dogs tested positive for a potentially deadly bacterial disease.

The advisory was issued earlier this month after four infected dogs arrived at an emergency veterinary center in Pasadena between June 2023 to this past March.

It’s called salmon poisoning disease and is caused by a bacteria found in a parasite found in wild fish.

According to Adler Dillman, professor of Parasitology & Nematologist at the University of California, Riverside, "Fish in general that are caught in the Pacific Northwest have a fairly high infection rate. But this can infect salmon, trout, and char in other parts of the world as well. If your dog's not eating raw or undercooked fish, or even if your dog is playing in the water, it's not something to be concerned about from that perspective, it needs to be eaten."

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