Vojtech Novotny's seminar on plants and insects will be webcast live.

DAVIS — A professor of entomology from the Czech Republic will speak on "Ecology of Plant-Insect Food Webs in Tropical Rainforests, Particularly in Papua, New Guinea" at the next UC Davis Department of Entomology noonhour seminar, set from 12:10 to 1 p.m., Wednesday, April 28 in 122 Briggs Hall, Kleiber Drive.

The talk by Vojtech Novotny, with the Institute of Entomology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, will be webcast live and then archived on the UC Davis Department of Entomology website. The link to listen live is posted on the department's home page: http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/home.cfm.

Host is Marcel Rejmanek, professor of Evolution and Ecology, UC Davis College of Biological Sciences.

The spring seminars, launched March 31 by the Department of Entomology and held every Wednesday noon through May 26, are webcast in a pioneer program spearheaded by James Carey, professor of entomology at UC Davis. His graduate students, James Harwood and Amy Morice, webcast the seminars. Dating back to February 2009, the webcasts are online at http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/webcastlinks.html.

Carey is also teaching a video class for graduate and undergraduates. They are creating clips, to be used by high school biology students, on "How to Make an Insect Collection." The finished product will be posted on the UC Davis Entomology website.

The remaining speakers at the spring seminars, coordinated by assistant professor Neal Williams, include:

May 5: Michal Segoli, postdoctoral scholar, Center for Population Biology, Jay Rosenheim lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology, speaking on "Joint Parent-Offspring Control of Brood Size in a Polyembryonic Wasp." Host: Professor Jay Rosenheim.

May 12: Andrea Lucky, doctoral candidate in the Phil Ward lab, speaking on (exit seminar) "Systematics, Biogeography and Conservation of Ants in Australasia and the Pacific." Host: Professor Phil Ward.

May 19: Steven J. Seybold, Chemical Ecology of Forest Insects, USDA Forest Service, and Department of Entomology affiliate, speaking on "Walnut Twig Beetle and Thousand Cankers Disease: Characterizing an Emergent Threat to Forest and Agroecosystems in North America." Host: Mary Louise Flint, associate director, Integrated Pest Management Program.

May 26: Florian Altermatt, postdoctoral researcher, UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy, speaking on "Butterflies and Moths in Central Europe: Natural History, Climate Change and Voltinism." Host: Professor Phil Ward.

Further information on the spring seminars is available from coordinator Neal Williams at nmwilliams@ucdavis.edu or by calling him at (530) 752-9358.