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Bug Squad

Bug Squad blog image depicts a honey bee sting in action.

Welcome to the Bug Squad blog! The Bug Squad blog was launched Aug. 6, 2008 and is a daily blog (Monday through Friday). It showcases entomologists and the work they do.  The blog focuses on scientists in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, the Bohart Museum of Entomology, Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, the UC Davis Bee Haven, and assorted campuswide events, including UC Davis Picnic Day, UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day, and Bohart Museum open houses. The blog spotlights insects, including bees, butterflies, dragonflies, and praying mantises, as well as arachnids such as jumping spiders and crab spiders. Author and photographer is Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and a longtime journalist and community scientist with two degrees from Washington State University.  She is a member of the Entomological Society of America (ESA) and the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE). Her blog posts and images have won international awards from ACE and ESA and appeared on journal and magazine covers. She shoots primarily with a Nikon Z-8 mirrorless camera, a Nikon D500 and Nikon 800, with assorted macro lenses. 

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A honey bee stuck in milkweed pollinia. This plant is the narrowleaf milkweed,Asclepias fascicularis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Milkweed: A Honey Bee's Floral Trap

August 17, 2020
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
It is not a "pretty sight," as Ernest Hemingway might have said, to see a honey bee stuck like glue--nature's "gorilla glue?"-in the reproductive chamber of a milkweed. It's a trap, a floral trap.
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A female Stagmomantis limbata nymph starts the day by hanging upside down: keeps the blood flowing and the heart pumping. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

How a Praying Mantis Seizes the Day

August 14, 2020
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you're a praying mantis, it's important to start the day out right by meditating, praying, and exercising. Close your eyes and slow your breathing. Be grateful for what you have, not what you want. But it's permissible to dream big, as in a Megachile pluto instead of a Perdita minima.
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This is the giant water bath created from a leftover evaporative cooler from the Michael Parrella lab.

Emily Bick: Salinity, the Water Hyacinth and a Weevil

August 12, 2020
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
If that heavy growth of water hyacinth in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in central California alarms you, then you'll want to read a newly published research paper that provides the most thorough look at how salinity impacts the invasive plant and its biological control agent, the weevil Neocheti...
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