Bug Squad

National Moth Week ended last Sunday, July 25, but questions linger. A reader asked: "A friend was just telling me that butterflies and moths land differently. She couldn't remember if it was a moth that landed with its wings up or down. It looks like they land with their wings down.

Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes you can't see the trees for the forest. And sometimes you can't see the spider at all in a purple forest. Such was the case this week when a tiny white crab spider cunningly figured out the best place to prey was in a flowering artichoke.

If Cinderella were a moth, what species would she be? Maybe this tiny, shimmering one. When we spotted this visitor during National Moth Week on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in our pollinator garden, we asked our Bohart Museum of Entomology associates for identification.

Picture this: A Polyphemus silk moth, Antheraea polyphemus, flutters into the Davis backyard of Bohart Museum of Entomology associate Greg Karoefelas on April 12, 2021 and visits his blacklighting set-up.

They say good news comes in threes. Sometimes it comes in fives! Congrats to the five UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty members for their outstanding academic achievements.