Bug Squad

If you have some free time during the holidays--free time, what's that?--and you're interested in insects, you'll want to watch a series of UC Davis insect "infomercials.

Suds for a bug? A bug for some suds? The annual Beer for a Butterfly contest, launched in 1972 by butterfly guru Art Shapiro, now a UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus, gets underway Jan. 1.

We're delighted that microbial ecologist Danielle Rutkowski, a UC Davis doctoral alumna and now a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Iowa State University, has just received a Royal Entomological Society Early Career Entomology Award, Highly Commended, for her research piece, Bee-Ass...

"When the Gorman Museum of Native American Art relocated to a new space, campus partners and students worked to make the grounds nearby home to the types of plants traditionally used by Indigenous cultures, such as white sage, a food also used in religious ceremonies, and yarrow, a medicinal herb.

What's not to like about a bug? And there are more of them to like than you think! About a million described species of insects inhabit our planet. That's about 80 percent of the world's species, scientists say.