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)
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Monarch in a Vacaville garden on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2025. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The Monarch That Visited Vacaville on Election Day

November 4, 2025
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
 A monarch visited Vacaville, Calif. on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2025.No, it wasn't King Charles or any of the 42 other monarchs in sovereign states. Did you know that these monarchies are spread across Asia (13), Europe (12), the Americas (9), Oceania (6), and Africa (3)? And yes, the monarch's role can…
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Overwintering monarchs at Natural Bridges, Santa Cruz. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Majestic Monarchs Make Their Grand Entrance

November 3, 2025
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
 It's happening."Monarch butterflies are fluttering back to California’s coast, and volunteers across the West have been busy surveying overwintering sites for the 2025 Western Monarch Count (WMC)."That's what conservation biologist Isis Howard of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation…
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A witch at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's Halloween party.

Bohart Museum: Big on 'The Boo' and 'The Hiss'

October 31, 2025
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
 Boo! Hiss! Boo! A melodrama? No! A pre-Halloween party at the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of Caliornia, Davis. Witches boo, and Madagascar hissing cockroaches (from the Bohart Museum's petting zoo) hiss. If you're a member of the Bohart Museum Society, arm of the…
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A new trapdoor species, Aptostichus ramirezae. (Photo by Emma Jochim)

For the Love of Spiders and Research

October 30, 2025
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
 For the love of spiders...and research!It's that time of year to dangle fake spiders from fake webs, but scientists in the Jason Bond lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, take their work seriously.And this week they're busy fielding questions after the journal, Ecology and…
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This is the Montana leaf beetle, Chrysomela aeneicollis, that Professor Nathan Rank of Sonoma State University studies. It is feeding on Salix orestera, a species of willow known by the common name Sierra willow, or gray-leafed Sierra willow. This image was July 2, 2009 at Bull Lake in the Bishop Creek drainage of California. (Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Tracking a Montane Leaf Beetle

October 29, 2025
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
 If you're concerned about the global decline of insects--and you should be--you won't want to miss the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar by Professor Nathan Rank of the Department of Entomology and Nematology.He will speak on "Local Adaptation and Population Persistence in a…
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