Bug Squad

If you're attending college and don't have a good advisor, then you haven't met Elvira Galvan Hack and Robert Kimsey.

When you visit the Bohart Museum of Entomology on the UC Davis campus, you're likely to see spots. That would be the Indian domino cockroach, Therea petiveriana, also variously called the desert cockroach or seven-spotted cockroach.

Move over, teddy bears. There's a new bear in town to covet, cuddle and cherish--a water bear or tardigrade. The plush stuffed animals are hot items in the gift shop of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.

Back in July of 2016, a team of researchers affiliated with the University of California, Davis, wrote in the journal Phytopathology that the three-cornered alfalfa leaf hopper, Spissistilus festinus, transmits the virus that causes grapevine red blotch virus.

Congratulations to community ecologist Rachel Vannette of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, recipient of two National Science Foundation (NSF) grants involving flower microbes.