- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's the Fourth of July, and amid our celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago on July 4, 1776 and our glorious nation, we celebrate the red, white and blue--the colors of our flag.
But in the insect world, we can also celebrate the red, white and blue:
The red: The firecracker red flameskimmer dragonfly, Libellula saturata, a common dragonfly of the family Libellulidae, native to western North America. We love to see it perched on a bamboo stake in our pollinator garden.
The white: The delicate, petticoated cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, common throughout much of the world, including North and South America, Europe, Great Britain, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Beauty? Yes. It absolutely glows in the late afternoon sun. Beast? Yes. The caterpillar or larva is a serious pest of our cole crops, including cabbage, kale and mustard.
The blue: The blue spots in the tail of the Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus, a common swallowtail butterfly of North America. Its range stretches from much of North America, from British Columbia to North Dakota in the north to Baja California and New Mexico in the south, according to Wikipedia.
We've never been able to capture an image of a flameskimmer, cabbage white butterfly or Western tiger swallowtail in the same photo, but they don't need to be. Individually, their colors are strong and independent, just like our forefathers who signed the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Members of the North American Forensic Entomology Association (NAFEA) will be special guests and presenters at the open house hosted from 1 to 5 p.m., Sunday, July 9 at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
The event, free and open to the public, takes place in the Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
NAFEA is meeting for a conference at UC Davis July 7-12 and the Bohart open house will be part of its outreach activities. The scientists will field questions throughout the event.
"We'll have scientists from across the country here at this family-friendly event,” said Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator. Family arts and crafts activities are featured at each open house. A popular activity planned for the July 9th open house is maggot art, in which maggots are dipped into non-toxic, water-based paint and placed on a “canvas” (paper) to crawl around and create a painting. The activity, coined by entomologist Rebecca O'Flaherty, a former graduate student at UC Davis, is a traditional part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's Briggs Hall offerings at the campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day.
Forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology served as president of the organization in 2015. (See news feature about Kimsey, "The Fly Man of Alcatraz.") Current president is Jason Byrd of the Department Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine University of Florida College of Medicine. The goal of NAFEA is to promote the development of forensic entomology throughout North America and to encourage co-operation with other similar international bodies. NAFEA defines its mission as “to provide a cooperative arena for forensic entomologists to interact and collaborate in ways that enhance the science, moral and ethical foundation, and reputation of forensic entomology.”
The fly photo below is of a male flesh fly (Sarcophagidae), "very likely genus Sarcophaga" (http://bugguide.net/node/view/458576/bgimage), according to senior insect biosystematist Martin Hauser of of the Plant Pest Diagnostics Branch, California Department of Food and Agriculture.
The July 9th open house is one of three open houses scheduled this summer. The others are:
Saturday, July 22, Moth Night from 8 to 11 p.m.: Moth Night, held in conjunction with National Moth Week, will enable visitors to explore nighttime nature through a blacklighting setup, enabling the collection of moths and other insects. The event takes place in the courtyard in back of the Bohart Museum. The museum will be open throughout Moth Night.
Sunday, Aug. 27: Bark Beetles and Trees, Forest Health in California, from 1 to 4 p.m.: The event is in collaboration with Steve Seybold, USDA Forest Service entomologist and an associate of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. He and his students and staff will be there to show displays and answer questions.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum.
Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. Visitors are invited to hold the insects and photograph them.
The museum's gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or email bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
Traffic: Note that Old Davis Road that goes past the Visitors' Information Center will be closed due to construction of a paving project (https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/paving-project-close-old-davis-road/) Visitors should enter the campus via Highway 113 and take the Hutchison exit. The parking lot closest to the Bohart Museum is Lot 46.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It was the early 1980s. The invasive insect, better known as the medfly (Ceratitis capitata), threatened the state's multi-billion-dollar fruit and vegetable industry, leading to widespread detection, eradication and quarantine attempts. Aerial spraying of Malathion drew widespread protests.
Entomologist James R. Carey of the University of California, Davis, stepped forward to launch an informed, concerted and widespread effort to reveal the science about the invaders. His well-documented research in basic and applied aspects of invasion biology shows that these pests are established and cannot be eradicated.
Fast forward to today.
Carey, a distinguished professor of entomology with UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and an internationally recognized leader and distinguished scholar in invasion biology, will appear in a 32-minute interview on the nationally televised Through the Decades program on Monday, July 3.
Through the Decades, based in Chicago, is known for covering high-profile or important historical events. It is hosted by Bill Kurtis of National Public Radio's "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me."
The interviewer "asked about the medfly program back in 80s, my involvement, and I talked a lot about how medfly really has never gone away," Carey related.
Tune in on Monday to hear the interview. Link to http://decades.com/wheretowatch/ to find the local program. In California, the show will be broadcast on KFAZ Fresno, KCBS Los Angeles, KOVR Sacramento and KPIX San Francisco. Through the Decades airs daily at 7 a.m., 1 p.m., 7 p.m. and 1 a.m., Eastern Time, or 4 a.m., 10 a.m., 4 p.m., and 10 p.m., Pacific Time.
As one of the five members of the state's Medfly Science Advisory Panel, Carey testified in 1989 before the California State Assembly, which later convened as a “committee of the whole” (a high profile public hearing examining the handling of the eradication program) that the pest is established in California and eradication efforts are futile. Carey subsequently wrote two news and review pieces in Science, plus an article on its establishment. The New York Times' Retro Reports profiled him and his involvement in the medfly issue.
The American Entomologist journal, in its "Issues in Entomology," has just published a piece by Carey and colleagues Nikolas Papadopoulos and Richard Plant on "The 30-Year Debate on a Multi-Billion-Dollar Threat: Tephritid Fruit Fly Establishment in California." It begins with: "It is virtually impossible to overstate the seriousness of the tephritid fruit fly threat to the $25 billion California fruit and vegetable industry constituting over half of the overall $47 billion agriculture economy of the state. Consider these facts: a total of 17 different species of fruit flies have been detected in California, several of which are detected every few years and one of which is detected every year (Papadopoulos et al. 2013). More than 350 California cities have experienced fruit fly outbreaks, seven cities (e.g., Fresno, Bakersfield) of which are located in one of the world's most productive agricultural regions—the Central Valley."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Hmmm, run that by again?
We've all written "please-let-me-do-this-over-again" answers on our tests, right? Too much coffee, too little time, too much anxiety, and too little comprehension? And no spell-check or thought-check? Check!
Professor Lynn Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology--she's probably better known for her role as director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology--collects the strange, funny and odd answers that students pen on her tests in her Entomology 100 class.
Here's a sampling of her favorites from spring 2017:
- Locust go under behavioral, morphological, and physiological changes in a rapid amount of time with no warning.
- Because this is the lethal range of bed bugs, this will cause all of them to die without damaging or moving any furniture around the house.
- The danger of neonicotinoids are not in question, but rather there is still discussion on whether they are the primary source of alarm for honeybees when there are many other artificial chemicals they are equally exposed to.
- A large variety of evidence been presenting itself regarding this topic with many such papers contrasting what has previously been deemed certain.
- The spraying of insecticide is a very effective means of eliminating large areas of land where tsetse flies are commonly found.
- In understanding succession of insects, forensic entomologists can piece together the estimated time frame of when specific insects would have taken part in the decomposition of decaying carcasses and can provide a reasonable date of when the carcass would have died.
- This succession of insects is more important for dead carcasses that have been eaten off of for a long time.
- Seeing the oozing and blackened lesions, cysts, and tumors wrapping around its dead or dying victims, Europeans referred to plague as the Black Death, and they saw it as the end of the world.
- A disease such as this is easily dispersed by the vector flies and also infected mammals but especially in humans who, now more than ever, can travel long distances in very short periods of time.
- For example, C. thalictra, was first recorded participating in hematophagous behaviors when a scientist working on the project tested if the moth would feed on its finger.
- The number of those killed by bee sting is increasing yearly because of aggressive Africanized honeybees that are taking control of Texas.
A close-up of an engorged bed bug. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey) - The idea that a minuscule mosquito could help transmit some of the most important pathogens of global diseases, was not an easy idea to grasp.
- On the head, they also have long, filiform antennae and mandibles for digestion and mating.
- In climates such as Sacramento, California native adults will begin to emerge in spring and summer months.
- Ants live a very foraging lifestyle, which allows them to have a mutualistic relationship with both insects and plants, as well as a parasitic relationship with their own kind.
- Today they use their large frame, powerful sting, and pure wit to dominate areas throughout Central and South America.
- Fleas do not "jump" like mammals do; fleas charge their elasticated legs with tensity, like a drawn bowstring, then shoot themselves through air.
- Due to their multi-stage, holometabolous lifecycle, fleas are not only talented at infesting their animal hosts, but also the dwellings of their hosts-such as houses, towns, cities, all of which harbor innumerable flea colonies.
- As Y. pestis grows in the proventriculus, they disturb the valvular function of the proventriculus, caushing a gut bloackage.
- Drones are distinguished from other bees in that they do not have a stinger.
- The fungi allows it to protect itself from harsh environment of the soil where it thrives.
- It is unknown if the hematophagous behavior is capable of transmitting disease between the same or different species, but if it were to, perhaps the safety from the moth would come into question giving this facilitative hematophagg ous group of organisms mirror like acknowledgment from that of obligatory hematophagous groups of organisms.
- Yet, the more feasible harm the moths would have on humans or other organisms' safety is in the agricultural realm.
- Nevertheless, bee stings can cause fatal effects on people in the United States; being among the direct deaths caused by animals since the allergic reaction of the poison kills 53 individuals every year.
- The female worker bees carry out large number tasks that are necessary for the continued existence of the hive thus they exist for six weeks due to constant laboring.
- These species are found exclusively in the Americas, or New World, and thrive throughout much of North and South America.
- Most species are seed harvesters, leaving the nest to collect resources and a variety of other items including dead or dying insects unlucky enough to wonder in their path.
- Though unclear how and when Triatoma infestans became domesticated, some predictions claim that it was first introduced into the human environment via vector transition from rodents inside their burrows to cave-like pre-Columbian peoples
- Killer bees can pursue people for more than a quarter mile when they are animated and antagonistic and die once they sting since the stingers are located at their abdomen.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Yang, who joined the Bohart Museum nine years ago, coordinates museum tours, classroom visits, special weekend hours, summer camp programs, and other outreach activities that connect science and scientists with the public. She collaborates with interns, undergraduates, staff, graduate students and faculty to accomplish the outreach program.
Yang received a cash prize of $1000 as a “gesture of appreciation" for her contributions to the campus community, according to Stacey Brezing, chair of the UC Davis Staff Assembly Citations of Excellence Committee.
Nominations for the service award are based on achievements such as fostering engagement and inclusion in campus community, leadership, and volunteerism.
Yang was nominated, confidentially, by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis; senior museum scientist Steve Heydon of the Bohart Museum, and Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist for the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
They wrote: “Our nominee is a treasure, a one-of-a-kind gem and an all-around ambassador who exemplifies all that is good and great about UC Davis. A friendly and caring person who joined the campus museum workforce in 2009, she makes all of us feel needed, wanted, and appreciated as if we were ‘Person of the Year.' Throughout the year, she engages more than 20,000 children, families, students, faculty and staff who visit the museum or attend her science outreach programs. She enthusiastically and freely gives of her time to plan and participate in weekend open houses. She co-founded the annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day six years ago, which this year drew 12 participating museums and an attendance of 3000. This year she chaired the committee."
“Five years ago, she launched an annual summer camp for children that is so popular it draws youths from around the nation, resulting in multiple camps and waiting lists. She helps coordinate the UC Davis Picnic Day activities in the museum, engaging more than 3500 excited and enthusiastic visitors. At the Solano County Ag Day, she shared scientific information with 3000 youngsters over a four-hour period, always smiling and genuinely interested in each person."
The nominees praised her exemplary service, high morale, encouragement, passion and inclusion and described the qualities as a treasure trove...she is kind, caring, thoughtful and never without a smile or a word of encouragement."
One volunteer at the museum said: "Wherever I go, her name is legendary. People just rave about her and her work." Said another: "She is one of the most patient, outgoing individuals I know who loves to teach and share information."
Said her supervisor: "She has greatly expanded our outreach programs, participating in Solano County Youth Ag Day, and many other STEM programs offered at libraries, schools and county facilities. She gives science outreach programs to about 15,000 adults and children every year. She is particularly good at working with groups of children and maintaining discipline at the same time as engaging them in the topic, so that everyone can see, hear and learn. We always request an evaluation from groups she talks to and they always rave about her presentations."
The Staff Assembly's annual Citations of Excellence Awards Program provides recognition for individual staff and staff teams who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in one of the following areas: teaching, research, service, supervision and innovation. There is also a team award for campus community contributions and service. Teams include project or program staff, office staff, or other similar groups. (Names of the 2017 recipients, along with photos, will be posted soon on the Staff Assembly website.)
The Bohart Museum is a world-renowned insect museum that houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It also maintains a live “petting zoo,” featuring walking sticks, Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tarantulas. A gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information on the Bohart Museum or on group tours (a small fee is charged) is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
