Bug Squad

 Tributes are pouring in for renowned chemical ecologist Jeffrey Richard Aldrich (1949-2025), a longtime researcher at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center,  USDA Agricultural Research Service, who retired in 2011 and then worked with UC Davis researchers for a decade.Aldrich was considered…

 Beware of yellowjacket nests in our state parks--and elsewhere, as well!Self-described "Wasp Woman" UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita Lynn Kimsey who directed the Bohart Museum of Entomology for 34 years until her retirement last year, continues to field many a question about insects, including…

 "From the first minute I joined her lab, I noticed how she always provides a healthy environment to foster the discussion of scientific ideas, respecting and valuing everyone’s point of view. I was amazed to see that this does not stop with her lab, but it extends far beyond. Joanna has devoted her…

 What a tiny moth!Jeff Smith, volunteer curator of the Lepidoptera collection at the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, for three decades, has just spread the wings of a micro-moth with a wingspan (both wings open) measured at about 1 centimeter.And it is not only tiny,…

 How can you capture a close-up image of a male longhorned bee, such as Melissodes agilis or Svastra  obliqua expurgata?Before the sun rises, slip out into the patch of flowers where you've seen them before. They will be sleeping or slighty stirring. (The females return to their nests at night,…