Bug Squad

If you attended the 2018 campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day and headed over to see the insects at Briggs Hall, home of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, you may have seen an enthusiastic drummer performing in The Entomology Band.

Thar's gold in them thar hills, and then there's that ol' golden dung fly, Scathophaga stercoraria. It's a red-eyed blond that definitely demands your attention.

It was a good day for a praying mantis. It was not a good day for a honey bee. Here's what happened in the "Daily Insect News": a gravid praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, ambushed and ate a honey bee on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville pollinator garden.

We usually see male Valley carpenter bees, Xylocopa sonorina, in the spring and summer, but in the fall? On Oct. 17? But there he was, the familiar golden bee with green eyes, robbing nectar from a Mexican petunia, Ruellia simplex, in a Vacaville, Calif., garden.

"In 2020, malaria deaths increased by 12 percent compared with 2019. The increases in malaria cases are deaths were associated with disruption to services during the COVID-19 pandemic.