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)

CALIFORNIA AG DAY at the state capitol last year. The annual event heralds in spring. This year's event takes place March 23. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

All Hail California Ag Day

March 22, 2011

If you head over to the California State Capitol tomorrow (Tuesday, March 23) don't be too surprised if there's a John Deere tractor on the west steps. March 23 is Ag Day when the state's urban and rural folks come out in force to celebrate the state's $34.8 billion ag industry.

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GERMAN-BORN physicist Albert Einstein (left), shown here accepting American citizenship in 1940, never said “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have not more than four years to live," his biographers say. At right is Judge Phillip Forman. (Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)

Einstein Didn't Say It

March 21, 2011

If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have not more than four years to live." That comment, widely attributed to physicist Albert Einstein, is all over the web.

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CAMPERS in the Bio Boot Camp may see this dragonfly, a flame skimmer, on the UC Davis campus or at the Sagehen Creek Field Station. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

This Is a 'Bio Boot Camp'

March 18, 2011

You may have heard about the "Bug Boot Camp" that ant specialist Phil Ward, professor of entomology at the UC Davis Department of Entomology, conducts for graduate and undergraduate students every other summer.

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GRADUATE STUDENT Kelly Hamby, who is studying for her doctorate in entomology at UC Davis, works in the Frank Zalom lab on the spotted wing drosophila. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Tackling Spotted Wing Drosophila

March 17, 2011

Deep in the bowels of Briggs Hall on the UC Davis campus, entomology graduate student Kelly Hamby works on a pest that is giving growers fits: spotted wing drosophila (Drosophila suzukii).

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CHEMICAL ECOLOGISTS Walter Leal (foreground) and Zain Syed at work in the Leal lab in the UC Davis Department of Entomology. Leal is a professor and former chair of the department, and Syed is a postdoctoral researcher and the primary author of a paper published March 16 in PLoS One. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

On the Trail of a Better Insect Repellent

March 16, 2011

Researchers in the Walter Leal lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology, are engaging in some exciting research. They just discovered a "generic insect repellent detector" in the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster)--research published today (March 16) in PloS One (Public Library of Science).

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