Bug Squad

Remember when UC Davis Professor Jason Bond discovered a new genus of trapdoor spider on a sandy beach at Moss Landing State Park, Monterey County, and launched a naming contest for the species?

Some lost everything: Their homes, their barns, their farm animals, their bees, their livelihoods. The recent wildfire that roared through rural Vacaville, reaching the outer edges of the city, seared the souls of the victims but what's happening now is warming their hearts.

So you're growing milkweed for the first time--or found some milkweed--and you're trying to figure out how to identify a monarch egg. Monarchs lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves--generally--but we've seen them on stems and on the leaf edges.

Butterfly expert Robert "Bob" Michael Pyle, founder of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, is not only a national award-winning author, a teacher, a public speaker and a conservationist--but now he's on screen. Well, sort of "on screen.

Two adults, apparently not science aficionados, recently asked me: "What is entomology?" Quick answer: insect science. "What is a monarch?" Quick answer: An orange and black butterfly that's the icon of the butterfly world. Science.