The Vannette lab is a team of entomologists, microbiologists, chemical ecologists, and community ecologists trying to understand how microbial communities affect plants and insects. We often study microbial communities in flowers, on insects or in soil. We rely on natural history observations, and use techniques from chemical ecology, microbial ecology and community ecology. In some cases, we study applied problems with an immediate application including pathogen control in plants or bees or how to support pollinators. Other questions may not have an immediate application but are grounded in theory and contribute to fundamental knowledge and conservation potential.
Lab news
October 2026: The lab attends the Orchard Bee Association meeting in Davis, CA! Lexie presents her research and is elected Vice-President of the Association.
September 2026: Former TERC intern Ray Kennedy joins the lab as a Junior Specialist. Welcome Ray!
July 2026: Ryan Parisi attends the Beneficial Microbes Meeting to present on “Geographic variation in microbiome composition of Anthophora bomboides”.
May 2026: Dino gives his exit seminar! He’s off to start a postdoc in Colorado this June. Thanks for everything, we’ll miss you in the lab Dino.
May 2026: Rachel visits Cornell University to deliver a keynote address at the Microbiology Student Symposium. Thanks so much to the student organizers for the invitation and hosting me during this wonderful conference!
Spring 2026: Rachel co-teaches Field Ecology at Bodega Marine Lab with Rick Karban and the lab hosts a display at Picnic Day!
April 2026: Congratulations to Lexie on her first thesis chapter now a paper published in FEMS Microbiology Ecology! This paper describes how the blue orchard bee Osmia lignaria acquires microbes via flowers and those microbes differentially establish in provisions, with minimal effects on larval bee development.
Summer 2025: It’s a wrap on summer internships. Mikayla Freeman completed a TERC Internship in the lab, focusing on bee foraging behavior and developing pollinator friendly planting guides for the Tahoe Basin. Miles Johnson completed a summer REU, focusing on effects of temperature on bee microbiomes. Congrats to both of you!
Summer 2025: Conference season was busy this year! Shawn and Rachel attended the Animal-Microbe Symbiosis Gordon Conference in Portland Maine; Rachel attended the Hitchcock Chemical Ecology meeting in Tahoe, and Dino organized a session at ASM Microbe on Phage in the Wild in Los Angeles.
May 2025: Rachel participates in the Arnold Arboretum Plant Biology Symposium at Harvard University. The symposium focused on plant rewards. Thanks to Elena Kramer and Yan Gong for the invitation!
March 2025: Rachel teaches ENT/ECL 225 Field Ecology at Bodega Marine Lab with Rick Karban.
March 2025: Leta’s paper describing peroxide as a variable antimicrobial defense in nectar is accepted to New Phytologist, in a special issue focusing on floral nectar. Check out the FREELY ACCESSIBLE preprint here; early view is forthcoming!
March 2025: Ryan Parisi joins the lab through the Microbiology Graduate Group, to study host-associated microbiomes. Welcome Ryan!
Winter 2025: The lab participates in outreach: Lexie contributes to Biodiversity Day and Rachel contributes to “Ski with a Scientist“, sharing what bees do in the winter
Fall 2025: Students in Rachel’s ENT 10 class produce educational videos on entomology
August 2024: Dino’s paper comparing methods to describe the phage associated with bee microbiomes is published at Microbiome, congrats Dino!
July 2024: It’s a busy summer! We just returned from our lab retreat at Point Reyes, are hosting undergraduate summer interns, and much of the lab is heading to Beneficial Microbes. Recently submitted manuscripts include “Seasonal assembly of nectar microbial communities across angiosperm plant species: assessing contributions of climate and plant traits” led by Jake Cecala and Rachel and “Targeted Viromes and Total Metagenomes Capture Distinct Components of Bee Gut Phage Communities” led by Dino Sbardellati.
Looking for old news? You’ll have to check the archives
Department of Entomology and Nematology
43 Briggs Hall (Basement)
Davis, CA 95616
rlvannette at ucdavis dot edu
Office phone: 530-752-3379
Lab phone: 530-752-4317