- (Focus Area) Environment
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You may have never seen this tiny bug that's causing big trouble.
But agriculturists and scientists have.
The spotted-wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii, is an agricultural pest that is super tiny.
It's approximately 2 to 4 millimeters in length with a wingspan of 5 to 6.5 millimeters. One millimeter is approximately 0.039 inches. There are 25.4 millimeters in 1 inch. So, the adult is about the size of a grain of sand, which can measure 0.5 to 2 mm in diameter.
SWD, native to southeast Asia and first discovered in California in 2008, lays its eggs in such soft-skinned, ripening fruits as strawberries,...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's Friday Fly Day, when folks post images of flies.
Flies seem to the entomological equivalent of Rodney Dangerfield's "I-don't-get-no-respect" quote.
So how about a black syrphid fly, a Mexican cactus fly, Copestylum mexicanum, nectaring on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifolia?
The genus Copestylum includes more than 350 species in the new world, according to Martin Hauser, senior insect biosystematist with the Plant Pest Diagnostics Branch of the California Department of Food...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
In your childhood, somebody probably gave you a jack-in-the-box toy, a music box that you crank up, and then the lid springs opens and out pops a wildly dressed clown, startling you and everyone around you.
A praying mantis sighting is something like that, but without the music box. You're walking in the garden and suddenly you notice that the Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, appears to have an extra petal.
You look closer and you see a triangular head with bulging eyes. And a spiked foreleg that looks as if it's extending a hand in (fake) friendship. It's a praying mantis and it's staring right at you.
Such was the case recently when a female praying mantis, Mantis...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's beginning to look a lot like...Halloween.
If you haven't noticed, stores are gearing up for Halloween with assorted ghosts, goblins and ghouls for you.
We remember Halloween 2023 when a female migratory monarch fluttered into our pollinator garden. She checked out the milkweed (we had several native and one non-native species) and chose to sip nectar on the tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, a non-native.
We managed to capture several images of her around 5:30 p.m. before she left on her journey to overwinter in coastal California.
The
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So, here you are, a newly eclosed Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus, eager to sip some nectar from a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville garden.
It's a warm, windless day, and you're anxious to score, score, score.
You touch down on a Tithonia, but something whizzes by your tails.
Whoa! What was that?
You're startled, alarmed, and irritated. It's a territorial male long-horned bee, probably a Melissodes agilis. He aims to dislodge you from your blossom in his attempt to save the nectar for his would-be girlfriends.
You teeter, then totter, then take off. You touch down on another...