Bug Squad

A daily (M-F) blog launched Aug. 6, 2008 and about the wonderful world of insects and those who study them. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Cousins Aryanna Nicole Torres, 8, of Woodland and Aaden Matthew Brazelton, 8, of Vacaville, get ready to eat insects. Their grandmother, UC Davis employee Elvira Galvan Hack of Dixon, accompanied them to the museum. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Eating Insects at the Bohart Museum of Entomology

October 2, 2019
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
Fact: Eighty percent of the world's population eat insects. Fact: At least 80 percent of those attending the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house on entomophagy ate one or more insects--a cricket, an earthworm or a mealworm. The diners ranged in age from a 9-month-old girl to senior citizens.
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A monarch butterfly sips nectar from a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) in front of a bird, decorative art. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Bug Squad: Article

The Butterfly and the Bird

October 1, 2019
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
A monarch butterfly fluttered into our pollinator garden in Vacaville yesterday and sipped nectar from a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) as a bird looked on. Well, sort of looked on. The bird was decorative art. The monarch was real. Now if that bird had been real, the monarch may have been a meal.
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Adult Caenorhabditis elegans. Wikipedia describes it as "a free-living, transparent nematode, about 1mm in length, that lives in temperature soil environments." (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Plant Nematologist Nathan Schroeder: 'Endless Worms Most Beautiful'

September 30, 2019
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you're interested in nematodes--also called "roundworms"--then you'll want to be around when plant nematologist Nathan Schroeder, associate professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, presents a seminar on Wednesday, Oct.
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Two monarchs arrived today at a pollinator garden in Vacaville to sip nectar from a patch of Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

A Monarch Kind of Day

September 27, 2019
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
Today was a Monarch Kind of Day...in Vacaville. When Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, searched for butterfly species today at one of his field sites--Gates Canyon in Vacaville--he spotted not one, but two monarchs.
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