Bug Squad

The Frit and the fly...or the butterfly and the fly... That would be the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) and the syrphid fly (family Syrphidae), aka flower fly or hover fly. They meet on a beautiful autumn day on an equally beautiful Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia).

Where are you most likely to encounter a rheophilic insect? If you know the answer to that, you could have scored at the Linnaean Games competition at the recent meeting of the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA). The answer: "In moving streams.

Picture this! A 5x6-foot ruby-tailed wasp! When you visit the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, that's what will greet you at its entrance.

It's Halloween and scores of trick-or-treaters are donning monarch butterfly costumes. But they can't do justice to the living monarchs, those iconic, majestic butterflies that are always dressed in Halloween colors: black and orange.

A monarch chrysalis at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis proved to be a big hit. Literally.