Bug Squad

The folks at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis,call them "jungle gems." And "gems" they are. They're New World orchid bees (Euglossine bees), which museum director Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, describes as "the most beautiful bees in the world.

Honey bees on blanket flowers (Gaillardia). Honey bees on Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia). The Girls of Autumn....not unlike The Boys of Summer...

We're accustomed to seeing a solitary monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) flitting around a garden. But millions of them? It was interesting to read the National Public Radio piece (Oct. 4) on Flight: A Few Million Little Creatures That Could.

Superorganisms, mimicry and aphids... Those are some of the topics to be covered at the UC Davis Department of Entomology's fall noonhour seminars, to begin Wednesday, Oct. 17 and continue through Wednesday, Nov. 28 in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Building.

The Gulf Fritillary is as fascinating as it is amazing. The showy reddish-orange butterfly (Agraulis vanillae) is making a comeback in the Sacramento-Davis area. In the early 1970s, it was considered extinct in that area.