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News from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Prolific weeds like buttercup compete with underlying grasses and can reduce their growth in the spring. This reduces the amount of forage yield available for livestock grazing pastures, and fescue lawns or pastures may end up with bare spots as a result of this competition. CAES News
Buttercup Control
Spring has undoubtedly arrived in Georgia. Local pastures and lawns remind me of the lyrics from “America the Beautiful,” “Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.” Except that almost every call this week has been about amber waves of buttercup, something that neither livestock nor humans like to eat.
Adaptable and hungry, Argentine black and white tegus pose a significant threat to native wildlife, from gopher tortoises to ground-nesting birds. The public should report tegus seen in the wild, alive or dead. (Photo by Dustin Smith/Georgia DNR) CAES News
Report Tegus
Warming temperatures will have tegus on the move in southeast Georgia. Reporting sightings of tegus, alive or dead, is needed to keep the big, South American lizards from gaining a foothold in the state, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Jena Johnson, a research professional in the Department of Entomology, has been interested in photography since graduate school, when she first experimented with a 35mm camera. Over the years, she’s honed her skills in both research and photography, now documenting a variety of insects with a macro lens. (Photo by Peter Frey) CAES News
Mosquito Metamorphosis
Jena Johnson, a lab manager in the Department of Entomology in UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, captures what she observes working with mosquitoes and other insects in the lab of entomology professor Michael Strand. She finds scientific and artistic meaning in her photos, which offer a glimpse at both intriguing behavioral phenomena and unexpected natural beauty.
House centipede CAES News
16 house centipedes
If you don't mind alien-looking creatures skittering around your home, house centipedes are handy things to have around. They're not nearly as big as they look. A house centipede's body is only an inch long, but its long antennae and 15 pairs of extended, spindly legs make it look much larger. They give it a frilly, rippling look as it moves.
Adult plum curculio (Photo by Brett Blaauw) CAES News
Plum Curculio
With the onset of warmer, longer days, an array of pink blooms from peach, cherry and plum trees break forth — the first signs of spring. And while most of us enjoy this seasonal shift, fruit tree growers prepare their orchards for the relentless, annual migration of insect pests.
A medical illustration of an azole-resistant fungus, Aspergillus fumigatus. (Photo courtesy of the CDC) CAES News
Fungicides Driving Resistance
New research from the University of Georgia has shown, for the first time, that compounds used to fight fungal diseases in plants are causing resistance to antifungal medications used to treat people. 
UGA Arch from Broad Street CAES News
Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants
Eleven grants totaling $1.5 million were awarded in November 2021 to recipients of the third round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants. Overall the awards went to faculty from 13 UGA departments, centers, programs, schools and colleges.
Melissa Mitchum SCN Coalition 720x400 CAES News
NSF-NIFA Nematode Award
University of Georgia plant pathology researcher Melissa Mitchum will co-direct a $1.2 million award from the joint National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NSF-NIFA) Plant-Biotic Interactions Program to help combat a devastating soybean pathogen with colleagues at the University of Missouri.         
UGA plant pathologist Bhabesh Dutta examines onion seedlings in research facilities on the UGA Tifton campus. CAES News
New Bacteria Species
University of Georgia researchers have identified a new species of bacteria, which they have named Pseudomonas alliivorans — from “allium vorans,” which translates as onion devourer or eater.
“Slugs, by their very nature, must have moisture to survive and are known to eat damp paper on occasion,” said Agriculture and Natural Resources Agent Paul Pugliese. “The moral of the story: We now know why the postal delivery service is called 'snail mail.'” CAES News
Snail Mail
Recently, a church trustee in Bartow County brought samples of “holey” mail to the local University of Georgia Cooperative Extension office for closer examination. Strangely, mail deposited in the church’s mailbox was showing up with holes chewed through the outer layer of the envelopes, but the mail inside was intact — a small miracle in itself.