Bug Squad

Who celebrated the most? Homo sapiens or Apis mellifera? It was difficult to tell.

Tabatha Yang saw it first. She's the education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis. What she saw--in a grassy field at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, west of the central campus--was a golden ladybug, aka lady beetle.

A streak of gray, but don't wash it away. The gray hairstreak is a butterfly. We spotted this delicate-looking butterfly (Strymon melinus) on a red pincushion flower (Scabiosa) this week in Winters, Yolo County. Gray on red. Fauna on flora. A Strymon on a Scabiosa.

It's been dubbed "The Manhattan Project of Entomology." And it may have "the potential to revolutionize the way we think about insects," says Richard Levine, communications program manager of the Entomological Society of America (ESA). Call it "The Manhattan Project of Entomology.

The feather-legged fly looks as if it were formed by a committee. It's about the size of a house fly, but there the similarity ends. Black head and thorax, hind legs fringed with a "comb" of short black hairs, and an abdomen that's the color of honey--bright orange honey.