Bug Squad

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. It's also a 'cat-eat-'cat world, that is, when a caterpillar eats another caterpillar. Or in this case, when larva eats larva. We recently spotted this lady beetle larva eating a syrphid fly larva on our yellow rose bush, "Sparkle and Shine.

This is an insect that looks as if it were assembled by a dysfunctional committee: long angular legs, long antennae, and beady eyes on a thin green body. All hail the katydid. It's usually camouflaged, disguised as a leaf in the vegetation--Nature's gift. But in our pollinator garden, we see them.

From horrible to bad. That's the consensus of the declining honey bee population in the United States.

There's an old saying applicable to child-rearing: "First you give them roots, and then you give them wings." Roots. Wings. Roots to ground them, to love them unconditionally. And wings for them to lift off and launch new beginnings.

When UC Regents scholar Heather Wilson, a junior specialist in the Frank Zalom lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, entered the 2011 Entomological Society of America's video contest, she drew a lot of fans--and a couple of marriage proposals.