Progress 07/01/22 to 06/30/24
Outputs
Target Audience:In the past reporting period, my research has been communicated at several universities and at several conferences. I communicated lectures to undergraduate and graduate students in Physical Design in Bio. Eng. BEE 4590 (in-person, Cornell University, NY), and Biological Form and Function (virtual, Mass Art). I gave invited seminars on my research at the University of Chicago and at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Both of these seminars focused on the breadth of my research and had audiences comprised of undergraduate, graduate, postdoc, and faculty members. I gave a poster presentation on my research thus far, titled, "Hydraulics in arthropods: wings, defenses, and expansion" at the annual USDA-NIFA Annual Project Director (Fall 2023, National Harbor, MD). In the Fall (2023) I was invited to be a member of a scientific working group with many colleagues on the future of insect flight and pressing issues that we should address as scientists. I was one of four team leads and led the section on Insect Biomechanics. As part of this group, I gave an invited symposium talk at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (Jan 2024, Seattle, WA) titled "An insect wing's living network: structure, evolution, and bioinspiration." Goals of this symposium were to connect insect flight-focused scientists across fields (evolutionary, applied, and neuromuscular) to consider where the field's attention should be aimed for the next decade. At the conference we connected with students and colleagues at all levels to discuss pressing issues and create a network of scientists passionate about the future of the field of insect flight. Changes/Problems:Numerous collaborations were continued from the previous reporting period. I mentored students and they were successful in presenting their research on a national scale and gaining scientific publication from their research mentorship with me. While monarch colonies were not successful, the other projects focused on bumbles and millipedes led to successful publications and new scientific protocols for measuring unique biological behaviors. This postdoc was ended early because I was able to use my leadership and management skills to pivot towards a career in Project Management. While I had hoped to continue my entomological research, the professional development I received during this two year grant allowed me to view new possibilities for a career. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?For the past reporting period, this position allowed for numerous training opportunities, especially in regards towards pursuing an academic position. This Fall I applied for 12 faculty positions, and while I did not receive any offers, the experience was fruitful and I developed my long-term research program. I took next professional which meant preparing my academic resume/LinkedIn for industry standards, taking advantage of the many workshops Cornell has to offer for postdocs at this stage, certificate courses through eCornell in Project Management, and making personal connections at my annual conferences with my colleagues. In this, I was referred to positions at Arizona State University. I applied for a Project Manager position in the School of Biological Health Systems Engineering and was hired on. This mean that I ended this postdoc two months early. Lastly, I am working towards two publications on future of insect flight and the effects of pesticides on insect behavior. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In the past reporting period my work has been communicated towards "targeted audiences" of biology, entomology, and biomechanics students and colleagues. However this field of insect research is relatively knew and unexplored. It focuses on the insect wing as a living tissue, studying the network of insect blood (hemolymph), air delivery, and nervous system within the wing. Many entomologists still consider the wing as a "dead" structure and thus when I give talks, guest lectures, and symposia, the information leads to dynamic conversation and new ideas about insects flight. This was especially evident in the large collaboration with other insect flight colleagues for which the paper below will be published soon: Treidel L.A.*, Deem. K.D.*, Salcedo, MK*, Dickinson. M.H.*, Bruce H.S., Darveau C.A., Dickerson B.H., Ellers O., Glass J.R., Gordon C.M., Harrison J.F., Hedrick T.L., Johnson M.G., Lebenzon J.E., Marden J.E., Niitepõld K., Sane S.P., Sponberg S., Talal S., Williams C.M., Wold E.S. Insect Flight: State of the Field and Future Directions. Integrative and Comparative Biology. June 2024. Accepted. This paper highlights the work of my two students (3rd and 4th authors) and their admirable work on developing biomechanical protocols to understand how pesticides negatively change insect behavior: Caserto J., Wright L., Reese C., Huang M., Salcedo M.K., Fuchs S., Jung S., McArt S. Ingestible Hydrogel Microparticles Improve Eastern Bumblebee Health After Imidacloprid Exposure. Nature Sustainability. June 2024. In Revision. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
An insect's wings and how it flies is directly relates to successful agricultural systems. Investigating insect wings as living organs tells us new information about critical insect physiology, agriculture practices and pesticide applications, and biological bioinspiration. This proposal is set to determine how insects that consume toxins, may store them in their body (via sequestration), how that storage affects circulatory health (i.e. the movement of insect blood throughout the body), and how we can measure how insects in the field are consuming pesticides. We focus on the insect wing because an insect's living systems--circulation, respiration, and a branching nervous system--extend from the body into the wing. An insect's wing, often colorful and attractive (like the monarch wing) is often what draws the public to care about the environment. Without its wings, it cannot migrate, mate, feed, or do any normal behavior. Further, hemolymph (i.e. insect blood) circulation in the wing is critical for hydrating tissues and supplying nutrients to living systems such as sensory organs across the wing. Pollution, industrialization, agricultural practices, all affect how an insect moves through the world, and negative factors on an insect's wings directly relates to our food security. By researching the wing as this living system that carries an insect, like a native bee, from flower to flower, we can communicate necessary policy changes and inspire communities to affect beneficial change to local and global insect communities. In order to build this research program using the insect wing as a key focus to agricultural practices, I have collaborated with colleagues across disciplines, in engineering, biology, and entomology to determine the pertinent issues affecting the field of insect flight and biomechanics. With 20 colleagues across scientific disciplines, I led one of four teams to lay out in a publication (which has been accepted) where the future of this field should aim attention. I took opportunities to investigate multiple pest species and pollinators. While the current insect systems have not been monarchs, they have been extremely necessary in one, establishing a base of knowledge on which to act and implement new strategies, and two, test out methods on a tractable, easy to rear system (i.e. bumblebees). In this past reporting, I focused on objectives (listed as "aims" in my proposal) 2. Objective #2: Insect flight, pesticides, and defense mechanisms Major Activities, 2), Data Collected 3), Summary of Statistics/Results Collected: Several major experiments focusing on insect movement, its wings, and pesticides/insecticides were started. After publishing extensively on hemolymph movement in the wings of insects in the previous reporting period, we focused attention on applied work on insects and arthropods. Our team focused on measuring the negative effects the pesticide imidacloprid has on bumblebee flight, rearing monarchs for hemolymph studies, and creating protocols to analyze the defense secretions of the slug millipede, Petaserpes cryptocephalus. Collaborating with Ph.D. candidate Julia Casserto, and her advisor Dr. Minglin Ma (Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell) we determined the effectiveness of pesticide intervention on bumblebee flight behavior. For example, if a honeybee has consumed a lethal dose of neonicotinoids, these particles attach to the pesticide and the bee continues living. Neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides chemically related to nicotine, have devastating effects on insect health. We ask, if given particles, does a bee continue to do normal behaviors? Or is it too damaged? My students performed flight studies using high-speed cameras to determine if particles "heal" compromised behaviors. We submitted this work to the journal Nature Sustainability and it is under revision. This work is on-going but if effective these particles could be fed to the hives at regular intervals in pollen balls or sugar-water reserves (hives are already monitored regularly for mites and other diseases) without wasting time or energy of beekeepers and farmers. Continuing a collaboration with Dr. Brian Lovett (USDA-ARS, Cornell University) an insect pathologist specifically studying how effective fungicides. We have two projects that are resulted in brand new knowledge about critical ecosystems in New York State. The first project involves a small millipede, Petaserpes cryptocephalus, a fungivore that has only been previously described by Dr. Lovett in the state of New York. We collected and maintained a colony in his lab to study their locomotion and a specific defense behavior where they secret a sticky glue and a chemical repellent. Using the Cornell Center for Materials Research we developed protocols using the FT-IR machine (Fourier Transform Infrared) to describe the material properties of this secreted glue. We hope to develop a natural ant repellent while also understanding a novel biological material. Our second project focuses on an entomopathogenic fungus which infects flies, branches throughout the body, and stretches into the wings. Once in the wings, this fungus moves the wings out of the way so that fruiting bodies can eject spores. We are collecting and rearing this fungus in order to measure and film how it infects the wings. The goal of this project is to take advantage of a successful fungus and potentially turn it into a targeted insecticide. For example, specific toxins could be genetically placed in this fungus and delivered to pest insects for quick and effective deaths without non-target effects (i.e. spraying a large area with pesticides). Keeping our aim on monarch colonies and the proposed research of this grant, we received a batch of 100 caterpillars from a colleague at Cornell, which led to 15 emerged and healthy adults. In this process we learned how to rear monarchs but were not successful in getting them to lay eggs and begin the cycle anew. At this point we focused on the importance of our other projects and training objectives with the undergraduate research. 4) Key Outcomes: For the listed projects, my undergraduate students were trained in data collection, field work and collection, data analysis, and how to prepare scientific reports to the public. Our work on bumblebee flight was submitted to the journal Nature Sustainability and is under revision. We submitted abstracts to national biology conferences by the end of the summer and presented in January 2024 at the annual conference Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. I mentored them through data collection and analysis, and through applications to graduate school. One was accepted into several internships (one with the USDA) and his top choice of graduate programs. Lastly, my work on the field of insect flight was submitted and accepted as a publication with my team of colleagues to the journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Treidel L.A.*, Deem. K.D.*, Salcedo, MK*, Dickinson. M.H.*, Bruce H.S., Darveau C.A., Dickerson B.H., Ellers O., Glass J.R., Gordon C.M., Harrison J.F., Hedrick T.L., Johnson M.G., Lebenzon J.E., Marden J.E., Niitep�ld K.,
Sane S.P., Sponberg S., Talal S., Williams C.M., Wold E.S. Insect Flight: State of the Field and Future Directions. Integrative and Comparative Biology. June 2024. Accepted.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Caserto J., Wright L., Reese C., Huang M., Salcedo M.K., Fuchs S., Jung S., McArt S. Ingestible Hydrogel Microparticles Improve Eastern Bumblebee Health After Imidacloprid Exposure. Nature Sustainability. June 2024. In Revision.
|
Progress 07/01/22 to 06/30/23
Outputs
Target Audience:In this past reporting period, my research has been communicated to several audiences. As a researcher, I enjoy bringing my passion and science to the classroom, to inspire and inform students still deciding majors. I communicated to undergraduate and graduate students in Physical Design in Bio. Eng. BEE 4590 (in-person, Cornell University, NY), Biorobotics BEE 3900/5900 (in-person, Cornell University, NY), Biomechanics 200 (virtual, Saint Mary's College, IN), and General Entomology BIOL-3480-001 (virtual, East Tennessee State University, TN). I gave an invited symposium talk for the Entomology Society of America and presented at a national conference, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (Austin, TX). Both of these conferences were communicating my science to researchers at the undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and faculty levels. Lastly, I was an invited speaker for the Comparative Neuromuscular Biomechanics Conference (virtual), which connected scientists (postdocs and faculty) across the world on topics of insect biomechanics. The goal of the symposium was collaboration and connection. Changes/Problems:The project is moving along as expected. Numerous collaborations have been started and are resulting in publication. I am currently mentoring students and working on my leadership skills My objectives are still the same, focusing on the insect wing as a key indicator for insect health. I worked to establish a knowledge base (through publications) on hemodynamics (i.e. how insects use hemolymph in their bodies and their wings). While that was not purely focused on monarch wings, it allowed me to develop a foundation for this research. Much of my data is currently being collected with the Summer 2023 field season. If there are significant delays to product delivery (i.e. publications), it is only because my position began on July 1st, 2022, where it was difficult to jump into the field season mid-summer. I hope to turn submit publications by mid-Spring 2024 before this position ends. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?For the past reporting period, this position allowed for numerous training opportunities, especially in regards towards pursuing an academic position. This Fall I applied for 23 faculty positions, had one short-list interview with the University of Washington (Biology Department), and one full, invited interview with the University of Chicago (Organismal Biology and Anatomy). While I did not receive any offers, the experience was fruitful and I developed my long-term research program. Ideally, I would like to run my own lab, mentoring students, teaching, and doing research in the field of insect physiology and agriculture. However, since these faculty positions are difficult to achieve, my next professional steps include preparing my academic resume/LinkedIn for industry standards, taking advantage of the many workshops Cornell has to offer for postdocs at this stage, and making personal connections with people doing jobs that I would like to do. I have done several informational interviews with a Branch Director at the USDA, and Lean-Agile Project Managers. I have continued service projects for the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in developing professional development workshops for academics to teach them project management skills. I developed new content and produced a workshop on October 28th for 20+ academics. In the past reporting period, I have felt my leadership and managing abilities increase as I've mentored students at Cornell and continue to mentor 12 students at Arizona State University. With these students, I consider their professional goals (i.e. medical school, industry, graduate school) and do my best to prepare them for writing grant proposals, formulating their application materials, and using my own professional network of scientists to help guide them. I lead them through experiments, data analysis, manuscript preparation, and publishing. My ultimate goal is to produce critical, dynamic thinkers, and project managers, so that my students feel empowered to pursue any scientific endeavor after working with me. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In the past reporting period, my research has been communicated to a diverse range of students and at national conferences. It has mostly been towards "targeted audiences" of biology, entomology, and biomechanics students and colleagues. However this field of insect research is relatively knew and unexplored. It focuses on the insect wing as a living tissue, studying the network of insect blood (hemolymph), air delivery, and nervous system within the wing. Many entomologists still consider the wing as a "dead" structure and thus when I give talks, guest lectures, and symposia, the information leads to dynamic conversation and new ideas about insects flight. This has resulted in several key first-author publications supporting my objective to investigate hemolymph in the wings and insect locomotion: Salcedo, M.K., Jung, S., Combes, S.A. 2023. Autonomous expansion of grasshopper wings reveal external forces contribute to final adult wing shapeIntegrative Comp. Biology.Accepted, In revision. (May 2023) Salcedo, M.K., Ellis, T.E., Sáenz, Á.S., Lu, J., Worrell, T., Madigan, M.L. and Socha, J.J., 2023. Transient use of hemolymph for hydraulic wing expansion in cicadas.Scientific Reports,13(1), p.6298. (April 2023) Read here: doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32533-4 Salcedo, M.K., Jun, B.H., Socha, J.J., Pierce, N.E., Vlachos, P.P. and Combes, S.A., 2023. Complex hemolymph circulation patterns in grasshopper wings.Communications Biology,6(1), p.313. (March 2023) Read here: doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04651-2 Cornell University holds a large community event called "Insectapaloooza" to communicate to the public all of the variety of ways that Cornell insect research contributes to beneficial agriculture, pest management, and insect collections. While I was not able to participate in the previous event, in the upcoming reporting period, I intend on creating an exhibit to discuss how different insecticides (i.e. fungal pathogens) and pesticides disturb insect physiology, its circulation systems, and wing function. The exhibit will include photos, live insects flying, and ways for children to build their own flying insect with different wing modifications. The goal would be to build an insect with functioning wings, and then wings that have tears, or are too heavy (e.g. from pesticide application residue), and then place them in a simple wind tunnel to see how they fly. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the above following projects that I have begun and collaborated with in the last year, many have direct relation to agriculture practices, to the benefit of pollinators, and methods of deterring pests. To push forward my proposal goals, I am currently acting on multiple fronts: -Seeking monarch pupae for the lab -Investigating radioactive tagging of pesticides to track hemolymph movement in the wings -Creating an exhibit for Insectapalooza, a large community event held at Cornell University to describe the importance of insect wings to the public. -Continuing current projects to publish new knowledge to inform policy and agricultural practices
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
An insect's wings and how it flies is directly relates to successful agricultural systems. Investigating insect wings as living organs tells us new information about critical insect physiology, agriculture practices and pesticide applications, and biological bioinspiration. This proposal is set to determine how insects that consume toxins, may store them in their body (via sequestration), how that storage affects circulatory health (i.e. the movement of insect blood throughout the body), and how we can measure how insects in the field are consuming pesticides. We focus on the insect wing because an insect's living systems--circulation, respiration, and a branching nervous system--extend from the body into the wing. An insect's wing, often colorful and attractive (like the monarch wing) is often what draws the public to care about the environment. Without its wings, it cannot migrate, mate, feed, or do any normal behavior. Further, hemolymph (i.e. insect blood) circulation in the wing is critical for hydrating tissues and supplying nutrients to living systems such as sensory organs across the wing. Pollution, industrialization, agricultural practices, all affect how an insect moves through the world, and negative factors on an insect's wings directly relates to our food security. By researching the wing as this living system that carries an insect, like a native bee, from flower to flower, we can communicate necessary policy changes and inspire communities to affect beneficial change to local and global insect communities. In order to build this research program using the insect wing as a key focus to agricultural practices, I have collaborated with colleagues across disciplines, in engineering, biology, and entomology to analyze an insect physiology and their wings. While my postdoc primarily focuses on monarch butterfly physiology, I took opportunities in this reporting period to take advantage of the numerous resources at Cornell University and examine multiple pest species and pollinators. In this past reporting, I focused on objectives (listed as "aims" in my proposal) 2 and 3. While the current insect systems have not been monarchs, they have been extremely necessary in one, establishing a base of knowledge on which to act and implement new strategies, and two, test out methods on a tractable, easy to rear system (i.e. bumblebees). Monarch experiments and determination of sequestration of toxins are currently being pursued. Objective #2: Hemolymph and locomotion of pest and beneficial insects 1) Major Activities, 2), Data Collected 3), Summary of Statistics/Results Collected: Several major experiments focusing on insect movement, its wings, and pesticides/insecticides were started. Despite the critical role of hemolymph circulation in maintaining healthy wing function, wings are often considered "lifeless" cuticle, and flows remain largely unquantified. First, I mentored undergraduate students on the movement patterns of the Colorado Potato Beetle (CPB), a major pest throughout North America, that primarily feed on potatoes but can also feed on other members of the night shade family. Letting beetles freely climb on potato plants and begin feeding, we measured responses to mechanical stimuli to determine if an optimal shaking frequency causes them to fall or stop eating the plant. This information could be used collaboration with the Cornell Engineering Department to create monitoring robots that could briefly shake potato plants, inhibit the beetle behavior, and then administer targeted insecticides. Second, I worked with Dr. Sunny Jung (Biological and Environmental Engineering - BEE, Cornell) on a mathematical model to describe how insects use their own internal pressure and hemolymph to expand their wings. Imagine a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis, it emerges with wings wrinkled. In order for it to fly, it must pump up its own wings with its hemolymph (i.e. insect blood) and expand the wing. Hemolymph moves into the tubular wing veins, pressurizing and stretching the wing (similar to a flat balloon). We submitted this work, published it within the last six months will apply it to other insect wing expansion to further understand how wings may not expand under influences such as temperature or pesticides which inhibit hemolymph pumping. 4) Key Outcomes: As a postdoctoral fellow with training in biology and biomechanics, I use integrated approaches (ie. whole physiology, all appendages) of how an insect wing functions which have resulted in a change in knowledge, of how insect physiology is taught and discussed in primary and higher education. I have published several papers in two high-impact journals are now available in open-formats (i.e. free to the public) on hemolymph movement in insect wings and how insects expand their wings during metamorphosis (listed under "dissemination"). Objective #2: Investigating pesticides and fungicides 1) Major Activities, 2), Data Collected 3), Summary of Statistics/Results Collected: Thirdly, I collaborate with Ph.D. candidate Julia Casserto, and her advisor Dr. Minglin Ma (BEE) to test the effectiveness of a particle which absorbs pesticides within insects. For example, if a honeybee has consumed a lethal dose of neonicotinoids, these particles attach to the pesticide and the bee continues living. Neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides chemically related to nicotine, have devastating effects on insect health.We ask, if given particles, does a bee continue to do normal behaviors? Or is it too damaged? Currently we are performing flight studies using high-speed cameras to determine if particles "heal" compromised behaviors. This work is on-going but if effective these particles could be fed to the hives at regular intervals in pollen balls or sugar-water reserves (hives are already monitored regularly for mites and other diseases) without wasting time or energy of beekeepers and farmers. Lastly, I developed a collaboration with Dr. Brian Lovett (USDA-ARS, Cornell University) an insect pathologist specifically studying how effective fungicides. We have two projects that are resulted in brand new knowledge about critical ecosystems in New York State. The first project involves a small millipede, Petaserpes cryptocephalus, a fungivore that has only been previously described by Dr. Lovett in the state of New York. We collected and maintained a colony in his lab to study their locomotion and a specific defense behavior where they secret a sticky glue and a chemical repellent. We are currently performing rheology experiments to describe the material properties of this secreted glue. We hope to develop a natural ant repellent while also understanding a novel biological material. Our second project focuses on an entomopathogenic fungus which infects flies, branches throughout the body, and stretches into the wings. Once in the wings, this fungus moves the wings out of the way so that fruiting bodies can eject spores. We are collecting and rearing this fungus in order to measure and film how it infects the wings. The goal of this project is to take advantage of a successful fungus and potentially turn it into a targeted insecticide. For example, specific toxins could be genetically placed in this fungus and delivered to pest insects for quick and effective deaths without non-target effects (i.e. spraying a large area with pesticides). 4) Key Outcomes: For the listed projects, we aim to publish within the next reporting period in order to inform future agricultural projects. My students will be submitting abstracts to national biology conferences by the end of the summer and presenting in 2024. I am currently mentoring them through data collection and analysis, and we aim to publish our millipede defense project by October as an invited submission to the journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Salcedo, M.K., Ellis, T.E., S�enz, �.S., Lu, J., Worrell, T., Madigan, M.L. and Socha, J.J., 2023. Transient use of hemolymph for hydraulic wing expansion in cicadas.�Scientific Reports,�13(1), p.6298. (April 2023). Read here: doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32533-4
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Mikel-Stites, M.K., Salcedo, M., Socha, J., Marek, P. and Staples, A., 2023. Reconsidering tympanal-acoustic interactions leads to an improved model of auditory acuity in a parasitoid fly.�Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. (April 2023). Read here:�doi: 10.1088/1748-3190/acbffa
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Salcedo, M.K., Jun, B.H., Socha, J.J., Pierce, N.E., Vlachos, P.P. and Combes, S.A., 2023. Complex hemolymph circulation patterns in grasshopper wings.�Communications Biology,�6(1), p.313. (March 2023). Read here: doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04651-2
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Salcedo, M.K., Jung, S., Combes, S.A. 2023. Autonomous expansion of grasshopper wings reveal external forces contribute to final adult wing shape�Integrative Comp. Biology.�In revision. (May 2023)
|