Hello! My name is Ryan Smith, and I am from Portland Oregon in the United States. There I first developed a love for nature from flipping over rocks in my backyard to look for bugs to volunteering as a teen naturalist at the Oregon Zoo. I first came to Canada in 2021 to pursue a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna. That is where I fell down the path of Entomology through my coursework eventually landing a co-op position at the BC Ministry of Agriculture as a Plant Health technician. Working under Dr. Susanna Acheampong, I contributed to projects monitoring the populations and tracking the expansion for various agricultural pests including; Western Yellowstriped Armyworm, Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, Western Corn Rootworm, Alfalfa Plant Bugs, Lygus bugs, and Weevils.

 

After completing my bachelor of science degree at UBC Okanagan in December 2025 I was accepted into Dr Maya Evenden’s lab at the University of Alberta beginning in May 2026. Here my MSc research focuses on developing a pheromone-based monitoring for Lygus bugs across multiple crops in the Canadian Prairies. In summer 2026 I tested out pheromone blends developed at the University of Greenwich in the UK for the species Lygus lineolaris and Lygus elisus in fields of canola in eastern Alberta and I plan to expand that work to more crops and other parts of the province in Summer 2027. I am also working on testing the effectiveness of sticky card color on attracting Lygus species and on the effectiveness of already existing pheromone lures on Lygus keltoni and Lygus borealis species for which pheromone lures have not yet been developed.