- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When you venture into your pollinator garden, look for the beauty, color, diversity and the intensity that surrounds you. You will be astounded.
- A honey bee nectaring on lavender in a soft-pastel scenario.
- A katydid nymph crawling (backlit) on a blanketflower, Gaillardia.
- A Gulf Fritillary butterfly, Agraulis vanillae, nectaring on Lantana
- A praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, perched on a Cosmo
- A yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, exiting a lavender patch.
You're the gardener, and you'll be using your garden tools...pruning shears, spade, trowel, garden fork, hoe, hand rake...
But another good garden tool--and an indispensable one--is the camera. You just never know when a buddy shows up in the garden...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"For me, at least a lot of my interest developed when my parents gave me a net and a butterfly picture book and then gave me enough independence to explore on my own," recalls UC Davis distinguished professor emerita Lynn Kimsey, who served 34 years as director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology before stepping down on Feb. 1.
"Today parents seem to schedule every minute of their kid's day with scheduled activities," Kimsey said, "and this simply doesn't allow kids to explore, and use their imaginations."
So true. Kids are naturally curious. When they see lady beetles, aka ladybugs, they check out what they're doing, what they're eating (a menu of aphids and other soft-bodied insects), and how they take flight.
You can ask them questions: What do you think that is? What is it doing? Can you describe it? Do you want it to be your friend? Why or why not? Do you want to write a poem about it? Do you want to photograph it?
They quickly learn that everything eats in the garden. They can watch a honey bee foraging for nectar and pollen, and then get nailed by a praying mantis. Ditto the butterfly. One minute a butterfly is sipping nectar, and the next minute, it's snared in a spider web.
And they never forget metamorphosis: how a butterfly egg magically transforms into a caterpillar, the caterpillar into a chrysalis, and then an adult butterfly ecloses from that chrysalis. "Magic" and "miracles" occur right before their eyes!
A great example of the natural curiosity of children occurs every year on the UC Davis campus during the "Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work." Mom and Dad show youngsters where they work, and also visit other workplaces. One of the highlights is the Bohart Museum of Entomology
For the Bohart Museum staff and volunteers, it's a good opportunity to engage in science communication or sci-com. Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator organizes the open houses and leads the team. At the recent event, the science communicators included doctoral student Em Jochim of the Jason Bond lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; Oliver Smith, a UC Davis entomology student; psychology major Naomi Lila of the UC Davis Entomology Club; Syd Benson, a high school intern from Met Sacramento; and animal biology major Jakob Lopez wearing a quite appropriate "Have a Nice Day" shirt.
Everly Puckett, 3, was there with her father, Ryan Puckett with Facilities Management. She wasn't sure she wanted to hold any insects (Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects) from the petting zoo but her dad encouraged her to touch a stick insect, aka walking stick.
Ten-year-old Mark Blankenship eagerly held a thorny stick insect. His dad, Mark Blankenship, works for Supply Chain Management.
Eight-year-old Hunter Baker was super interested in the insects and wanted to know more about them. His mother, Kate Schaul, works in security at the UC Davis Library.
Sebastian Carrasco, 3, whose mother Nadia works in UC Davis Health, attended with his father, Lizandro. When asked if he wanted to hold an insect, Sebastian hid behind his father. Then he shook his head and said "Bye, Bye!" to the insect. Clever and creative!
Daphne Shuman, 7, whose mother Amy Shuman, works for Students Affairs, loved the Bohart Museum. In fact she loved it so much she attended the event twice, in the morning and in the afternoon.
Mark Blankenship, 10, peered closely at a stick insect crawling on a hand. His father, Mark, works for Supply Chain Management.
Atlas Scott, 4, attended with his mother Danielle Hoskey who works for UC Davis Health. He decided he'd rather not become acquainted with the stick insects, but he did hold a tomato hornworm.
Bottom line: they will all remember that day at the Bohart Museum, a day when they were encouraged to look, touch and hold an insect.
And, quite likely, many may enroll in college entomology courses and some may seek entomology as a career.
The Bohart Museum, home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens (plus a gift shop and petting zoo), is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane. Summer walk-in hours are Tuesdays, June 17-Aug, 27, 9 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 4:30 p.m. The museum will be closed to the general public from Sept. 1-Sept. 22.
Director is Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in the Department of Entomology and Nematology. He's also associate dean of agricultural sciences for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
The next open houses are:
Saturday, July 20: Moth Night at the Museum (inside and outside activities) 7 to 11 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 28: Museum ABC's: Arthropods, Bohart and Collecting, 1 to 4 p.m.
All open houses are free and family friendly. Parking is also free. For more information, contact the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu. or call (530) 752-0493.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
(Note: The main UC Davis Department of Entomology news page is at https://entomology.ucdavis.edu.)
What's a picnic without bugs!
The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology is gearing up for the 110th annual UC Davis Picnic Day, set April 20.
This year, all of the entomology exhibits, including those at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, will be at Briggs Hall. (The Bohart Museum headquarters in the Academic Surge Building will be closed on Picnic Day.)
Picnic Day at Briggs Hall is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Some of the activities will closer earlier.
The list of events and activities in and around Briggs Hall will include:
Bug Doctor
Briggs Hall Entryway
Graduate students will answer questions about insects. What's that bug? Attendees are encouraged to bring an insect or photo for identification.
Cockroach Races
Front of Briggs Hall
American cockroaches, Periplaneta americana, from Bob Kimsey's forensic lab, race on a specially made track, while roach fans cheer for their favorites. (Sometimes the athletes are named for faculty, friends or bystanders.)
Medical Entomology
122 Briggs Hall
Carla-Cristina "CC" Melo Edwards of the Geoffrey Attardo lab is coordinating the medical entomology display. Her research focuses on investigating the physiological mechanisms underlying pyrethroid resistance in Aedes aegypti (the yellow fever mosquito).
Diversity of Arachnids
122 Briggs Hall
Doctoral student Emma Jochim of the Jason Bond lab is coordinating an exhibit she created last year to display the diversity of arachnids, such as vinegaroons, whip spiders, tarantulas, and scorpions. "We'll have live animals and fact sheets that will give a general overview of their diversity, behavior, and habitat," Jochim said. "I'll also bring some curated specimens to show what goes into creating a scientific collection and talk about why collections are important for understanding biodiversity. "
Maggot Art
Briggs Courtyard
Artists--children and adults alike--create maggot art by dipping a live maggot into water-based, non-toxic paint. It's suitable for framing (or at least a spot on the refrigerator door). This event will close at 3 p.m. this year (last year it was at 5 p.m.)
Dr. Death
122 Briggs Hall
Forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey will display and discuss his work in his "Dr. Death" booth. Last year Kimsey pin-mounted and identified flies from various cases and research efforts, and displayed studies on the sequence of development of individual maggots, calling attention to the development and sequence of communities of insect maggots. "By these means, approximations about how long a person has been dead can be made," he told the crowd.
Entomology at UC Davis
122 Briggs Hall
Displays of insects, including bees, ants and more. Graduate students, faculty and emeriti will staff the tables.
Bohart Museum of Entomology
Front of Briggs Hall
A pop-up tent, staffed by the Bohart Museum, will include stick insects (walking sticks) and Madagascar hissing cockroaches. "We are excited to be part of the bigger department's offerings," said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator. Give-aways are also planned.
Fly-Tying
Briggs Hall courtyard
Fly Fishers of Davis will show attendees how to tie a fly. The recipients take home the flies.
Insect-Themed T-Shirt Sales
Briggs Hall entryway
Members of the Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA), led by president Mia Lippey, will be selling their popular insect-themed t-shirts, including The Beetles. The T-shirt, EGSA's all-time best seller, is a take-off of the cover of The Beetles' Abbey Road alum. However, instead of the Beatles crossing the road in a single file, four beetles (family names Phengogidae, Curculionidae, Cerambycidae and Scarabaeidae) do so.
Mosquito Control Booth
Entrance to Briggs (below front steps)
Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District will be providing information on mosquitoes, answering questions, and handing out give-a-ways, including mosquito repellent.
UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management (UC IPM)
Briggs Hall Courtyard
“We plan to have many of our usual materials on display and will be giving out the live lady beetles (aka ladybugs) again,” said urban and community IPM educator Lauren Fordyce. “We purchase them from a local garden center. In addition to that, we plan to have a prize wheel that adults and kids can spin, answer a question, and win a prize if they answer correctly. We may also have temporary insect tattoos to give away.”
Ranked Third in the Country. The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology is ranked third among “The Best Entomology Colleges in the United States for 2024" by universities.com. The department includes 24 active and 19 retired faculty; 28 graduate students (five in the master's degree program and 23 in the doctoral degree program); 47 undergraduate entomology majors (based on the Office of Academic Support and Instructional Services (OASIS) Student Reports); and a staff comprised of 27 academics (non-faculty), 24 career, and 56 student assistants. Professor and chair of the department is molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
There's no fame, fortune or glory in writing a daily (volunteer) Bug Squad blog.
It's about the insects. It's always been about the insects, from honey bees to bumble bees, to butterflies, to dragonflies, to praying mantises and more.
Why? Just call it a fascination for insects, which evolved some 400 million years ago. "Three-quarters of all known animals are insects, a staggering 1 million species in total with an estimated 4 to 5 million yet to be discovered," according to a November 2015 article in New Scientist. "By contrast, there are fewer than 70,000 vertebrate species. Harvard University entomologist Edward O. Wilson has suggested there may be as many as 10 quintillion insects alive at any one time – that's 1018, or more than a billion for each person on the planet. They have colonised every continent, including Antarctica. They can live in air, land and water. They even live on us – lice evolved as soon as there was hair and feathers to set up home in. They are the kings of the arthropods – animals…"
I began writing the Bug Squad blog (at the invitation of Pam Kan-Rice) on the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) website on Aug. 6, 2008, and have written it every night, Monday through Friday, never missing a single night of posting. Today that amounts to 4020. Along the way it's been named the No. 4 "bug blog in the world" (there aren't that many of us!) And, it has won some international awards. My photos have landed on the covers of several scientific journals and popular magazines, and in a few scientific books and children's books (all donations).
My photography has also resulted in thousands of copyright infringements. One man in Austria falsely claimed one of my images and was selling it on four stock photo platforms, including Getty Images. Others deliberately erase the copyrights and steal the images for their commercial purposes.
It's fun until it isn't.
Where do I take the images? Almost all are from our family's pollinator garden. My gear includes a Nikon Z7 mirrorless camera, a Nikon D800, a Nikon D500, a Canon AE1, coupled with half-a-dozen macro lenses. It's exhilarating to capture an image of a honey bee in flight, a monarch butterfly laying an egg, a dragonfly catching prey, or even to go eye-to-eye with a Western yellowjacket.
I don't poke 'em, prod 'em, or pin 'em. I am a guest in their habitat.
So, in 2023, "These are a few of my favorite things" (thanks, Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers):
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Members of the Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology design insect and arachnid-themed T-shirts that are all the fashion.
The critters climb, crawl, jump, roll, flutter, buzz, fly or otherwise position themselves on EGSA T-shirts.
If you've ever seen the EGSA booth at Briggs Hall during the campuswide annual UC Davis Picnic Day, you know how popular the T-shirts are.
They are hot-ticket items during the holiday season, too. They can be viewed and ordered online at https://mkt.com/UCDavisEntGrad/.
EGSA president Mia Lippey, a doctoral student in the laboratories of UC Davis distinguished professor Jay Rosenheim and assistant professor Emily Meineke, says that currently, the designs offered are:
- The Beetles (in black or red)
- Entomo Gothic (a play on the American Gothic, in grey)
- Whip Scorpion (in lavender and black)
- Bee-Haw (in black)
- They See Me Rollin' (dung beetles rolling a poop, in heather blue)
- Et in Terra (dark green)
- Entomophagy (in blue and green)
All T-shirts come in sizes from XS to XXL.
"The Beetles" T-shirt is EGSA's all-time best seller. Instead of the English rock band John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star crossing Abbey Road in single file (that's the iconic image on the cover of their album, Abbey Road), think of The Beetles (four insects) crossing Abbey Road in single file. Beneath the images of the beetles are their family names: Phengogidae, Curculionidae, Cerambycidae and Scarabaeidae. Think glowworm, snout, long-horned, and scarab beetles.
One of the newer designs is "Bee Haw," of a honey bee disguised as a cowgirl, complete with hat and rope. The entomophagy ("eating insects") T-shirts are also "in," as are those that whip and roll--whip scorpions and dung beetles.
They are also great conversation pieces! What's that design on your shirt? Where did you get it?