Bug Squad

When the Bohart Museum of Entomology hosts an open house, a sure crowd-pleaser is the global Lepidoptera collection, which totals some 500,000 specimens--60 percent moths and 40 percent butterflies.

"EVERYTHING that colonies do when they are living on their own (not being managed by beekeepers) is done to favor their survival and their reproduction, and thus their success is contribution to the next generation of colonies. And I mean everything.

It's billed as a "Bee Bash," but it should be "Big Bee Bash." Urban entomologist Gordon Frankie, professor emeritus and research entomologist in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, will be one of the speakers.

Congratulations to UC Davis postdoctoral scholar and vector-borne disease specialist Olivia Winokur of the Chris Barker lab who won the $2600 Hollandsworth Prize for best student research presentation at the American Mosquito Control Association's annual conference, held recently in Reno.

"Spiders have been around for 400 million years and they are an incredibly diverse group with more than 50,000 species described with probably another 200,000 remaining to yet be discovered.