Research – Page 5 – Entomological Society of Canada

My name is Chris Buddle – I’m an Associate Professor at McGill University, in Quebec, Canada, and the Editor-in-Chief for The Canadian Entomologist. I have worked at McGill University, in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, for about 10 years. As a Professor, my work involves all three aspects of academia – teaching, research, and service.

For teaching, I instruct undergraduate courses in our “Environmental Biology” program – this involves teaching courses in both my own area of expertise (entomology) as well as in more general areas (e.g., ecology).

My research program is quite varied; although originally hired as a “Forest Insect Ecologist” my research expertise is broader than that, and I currently oversee graduate students working on insect pest management, the ecology of herbivorous insects in forest canopies, and the biodiversity of Arctic arthropods. The latter initiative is part of a larger-scale project titled the Northern Biodiversity Program.

For “service” I devote a lot of time and energy into my position as the Editor-in-Chief for the Entomological Society of Canada’s flagship journal The Canadian Entomologist (TCE) – a journal that joined a publishing partnership with Cambridge University Press in January of this year.

TCE is an excellent scientific journal, and I am honoured to be associated with it. Its excellence is in part because of TCE’s long history as an internationally renowned entomology journal – it has been published continuously since 1868. TCE is a journal with particularly high editorial and technical standards. We pride ourselves on serving authors well, and on producing a product that has been carefully edited, and that is technically clean. TCE is one of the relatively rare entomology journals that publishes on all facets of the discipline, including taxonomy and systematics, biodiversity and evolution, insect pest management, behaviour and ecology, and more.

We are, therefore, an entomology journal for all entomologists – anyone interested in arthropods can generally find an article of relevance within its pages. I’m also excited about TCE’s new partnership with Cambridge. This publishing house has an equally impressive history, and an equally high standard of publication quality. With this partnership, authors no longer pay page charges for TCE, and receive a complementary PDF of their articles.

As Editor-in-Chief, I have an opportunity to help guide the journal into the future. My editorial objectives include a balance of doing what we have done well in the past (i.e., high quality standards), but also seeking some new opportunities. For example we are initiating a plan to produce a topical “special issue” of TCE every year, for the first issue of each volume. For Volume 145 (the year 2013), we will be devoting an entire issue to the topic of “Perspectives on Arctic Arthropods“. This is an extremely important area of study given the current global concerns about changing climates, especially since some of the effects will be most acute in polar regions. The call for papers for this special issue went out at the end of January, and authors have until 15 June 2012 to submit their manuscripts.

Another objective I have is to continually improve our service to authors. Our move to an on-line manuscript submission system is helping this tremendously and I am continuing to work with my editorial team to tweak the system for the benefit of our authors. I am also interested in bringing entomology, and TCE, to a broader audience. Entomology is a vast and wonderful discipline, but the pages of entomology journals often target a specialized audience. I think a lot of what we publish in the journal is of broad interest, and for that reason, I tweet for the Entomological Society of Canada’s twitter account (follow us: @CanEntomologist). This is an effective way to use social media to highlight articles we publish, activities of the Entomological Society of Canada, and other interesting entomology events and stories. We also have plans to work with our society to develop a blog devoted to entomology in Canada, and TCE will be featured prominently on this blog.

I would like to conclude with a few words of advice for up-and-coming entomologists looking to publish their work. The publication ‘game’ can be a complex one, and it is a changing landscape that can be difficult to navigate. In addition to thinking about the traditional metrics when considering different journals, I do recommend that all potential authors look carefully at the “aims and scope” section for potential venues for publication – it is important that your work will be a good fit with the journal. It’s also easy to be swayed by numerous journals that are sprouting up and seem to be offering everything for nothing. Some journals may seem attractive at first glance, but be aware that quality of service, and the quality of the editorial process, may be less than what could be offered by journals backed by a publisher with strong credentials. More ‘traditional’ journals often have an incredible amount of behind-the-scenes support, and this matters. I will also stress that all authors must strive for a clean, concise, and well-written manuscript. I cannot state strongly enough that careful writing and proofreading is of paramount importance.

In sum, it’s truly a delight to be associated with The Canadian Entomologist and its publication partner, Cambridge University Press. The future is bright for the journal, and I am exciting to work hard to increase the profile and readership of TCE, all the while maintaining its history of excellence. I have assembled a strong editorial team of 20 subject editors, and have additional support from my Editorial Assistant, Dr. Andrew Smith. We are all here to help you publish your best entomological research, and get it into the hands of an international audience.

Read the first issue of the year for free here

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This article was originally published at http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/ and can be found at: http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2012/04/meet-the-editor-in-chief-of-the-canadian-entomologist/

By Michel Cusson, ESC President
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For my first blog post, you’d probably expect me to talk about some hot issue pertaining to the ESC. However, I chose otherwise (at least this time) and I’ll save Society-related topics for my “Up Front” column, which you can read in the online version of the Bulletin. Instead, I’d like to introduce you to what I consider the coolest product of insect evolution: the use of symbiotic viruses by parasitic wasps to manipulate the physiology of their caterpillar hosts.

Aleiodes indiscretus wasp parasitizing a gypsy moth caterpillar. Photo by Scott Bauer.

In an unusual twist of evolutionary history, some ichneumonid and braconid parasitoids have “captured” a conventional virus and “domesticated” it so that it can be used to their own advantage in the course of parasitism. The viruses in question, known as polydnaviruses (from poly-DNA-virus, but typically pronounced “polyd-na-virus”), replicate in wasp ovaries where they accumulate in the fluid bathing the eggs, before being injected into the caterpillar during parasitization (egg laying). While the carrier wasp is completely asymptomatic, the infected caterpillar displays AIDS-like symptoms, whereby its ability to mount an immune response against the wasp egg or larva is depressed by the virus. In addition, the virus will often block host metamorphosis, particularly when parasitization takes place late in caterpillar development; this will allow the wasp larva to complete its own development before the host undergoes the traumatic events associated with the larva-to-adult transformation.

But what makes these viruses pathogenic in the caterpillar while being apparently harmless in the wasp, and how could such unusual creatures have evolved? To begin understanding the answers to these questions one first needs to know that polydnavirus genomes are permanently integrated into the chromosomal DNA of the carrier wasps. This means that all individuals within a species known to carry one of these viruses contain the viral DNA within their own genome. Production of the viral particles, however, is confined to females and occurs only in ovaries. There, copies of the integrated form of the viral genome are synthesized and packaged into a proteinacious coat known as the “capsid”. These viral particles are released into the lumen of the oviduct, where they accumulate until injection into the caterpillar host.

What’s going on « behind the scenes ». Image by Michel Cusson and Marlene Laforge.

Once injected, the virus gains access to various host tissues where some of its genes are expressed, leading to the synthesis of viral proteins that do the dirty work, i.e., depress the host immune response and perturb host development. Few, if any, of these virulence genes are expressed in the wasp, which probably explains why the wasp is asymptomatic. While the virus does not replicate in the caterpillar, it is the expression of viral genes that makes it possible for the wasp egg and larva to survive within the host. And successful development of the immature wasp is what ensures transmission of the integrated form of the virus to the next wasp generation.

Whether polydnaviruses are « real » viruses has been a matter of debate for many years. For example, some have argued that, although they look like viruses, they are nothing more than a smart device that the wasps have evolved to transfer host-regulating factors to caterpillars during oviposition. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that polydnaviruses arose from ‘conventional’ viruses.

Recently, a group from France has shown that the proteins that make up the coat of braconid polydnavirus particles are highly similar to those of ‘nudiviruses’¹, a group of conventional insect viruses that are capable of integrating their genomes into those of their hosts. So, it appears that the genome of a nudivirus became permanently integrated into the chromosomal DNA of an ancestral braconid, some 100 MYA. Since then, evolution has led to the replacement of the original nudiviral virulence genes by other genes that are usefull to the wasp during parasitism. The wasps may therefore be viewed as having ‘domesticated’ the nudivirus, turning it into a mutualistic virus – a phenomenon fairly unique in the world of viruses. Cool stuff, isn’t it?

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¹Bezier, A., Annaheim, M., Herbiniere, J., Wetterwald, C., Gyapay, G., Bernard-Samain, S., Wincker, P., Roditi, I., Heller, M., Belghazi, M. & (2009). Polydnaviruses of Braconid Wasps Derive from an Ancestral Nudivirus, Science, 323 (5916) 930. DOI: 10.1126/science.1166788

Meet the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Entomologist

Cool Insect Viruses