VERNON – Jeffrey E. Slosser, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station entomologist, was one of seven faculty receiving the Texas A&M University System Regents Fellow Service Award recently in College Station.
The award is the highest honor the university bestows on research faculty. It recognizes a lifetime commitment to public service. Recipients are chosen from Texas A&M System’s nine universities, eight agricultural and engineering agencies and health science center. Each recipient receives a $9,000 award, a medallion and a commemorative certificate.
Slosser is an internationally recognized cotton entomologist whose expertise covers ecology, population dynamics and management of the boll weevil and cotton aphid. He has studied a diversity of pest and beneficial insects that affect crops, livestock and rangeland. He is headquartered at Texas A&M’s Agricultural Research and Extension Center here.
During his tenure as a research entomologist, Slosser has made significant scientific contributions to knowledge of biology, ecology and control of insects. For more than 30 years, he has strived to reduce chemical use by emphasizing biological and cultural methods of insect control.
In addition to his cotton work in the mid-South, desert Southwest, and on the Texas Rolling Plains, Slosser has extensively studied the biology and control of greenbugs and Russian wheat aphids — two serious wheat pests in the United States. He also developed management guidelines for vegetable pests that can infest cabbage, potatoes and tomatoes; and for oilseed crops such as guar and canola.
He has identified the grasshopper species complex in juniper- and mesquite-dominated rangelands on the Rolling Plains; including an evaluation of those that should be considered beneficial species, and pest species which compete with livestock for forage resources. He is also developing sampling procedures and cultural control recommendations for the cedar fly — a biting fly that attacks livestock and wildlife.
Slosser served as past editor of The Southwestern Entomologist. He received the Texas A&M System Award in Excellence for Off-Campus Research in 1990, and the Entomological Society of America Agricultural Recognition Award in 1994. He has written or co-written more than 150 scientific publications; served as a consulting cotton entomologist on the World Bank cotton project in Uzbekistan in 1996; and currently serves on the Texas Boll Weevil Eradication FoundationÆs technical committee. He has managed more than $1.3 million in research funds during his career.
Slosser and his wife, Chris, have lived in Vernon since 1975. They have twin daughters, Tamara of Lubbock, and Tracy of Dallas.
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