- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's not often that entomology and football mesh.
But that was the case when San Francisco 49'ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk credited his spectacular 51-yard catch in Sunday's NFC championship game with the Detroit Lions to a ladybug landing on his shoe before the game.
Aiyuk dove for the ball as it bounced off the helmet of Lions' cornerback Kindle Vildora and cradled it. A few minutes later, Aiyuk scored a touchdown on a six-yard pass, erasing the 14-point deficit. The 49'ers went on to win the game 34-31.
"Before the game, a ladybug landed on my shoe, and y'all know what that means," Aiyuk told Fox Sports' Erin Andrews after the win. "So that's all I can say because other than that I don't know. Just great luck."
Talk about a beneficial insect. It not only eats aphids but helps win football games!
The ladybug is actually a beetle (Coleoptera), not a bug (Hemiptera), but sports reporters--as do nearly everyone else 'cept entomologists--call it by its common name.
The lady beetle is associated with good luck because it eats the aphids that try to destroy our crops. It can eat as many as 5000 aphids in its lifetime, scientists estimate.
"These beetles have become a cultural icon of sorts because of their appearance and their beneficial habits," writes UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, in her insect fact sheet on lady beetles. "Both adults and larvae feed on aphids and other small, soft-bodied insects...They are ferocious predators on small insects." (See what the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program says about lady beetles.)
Questions remain about that insect landing on Aiyuk's shoe. How many spots did it have? Did it fly away? Was its house burning? Were its children home? What was the gender?
Ladybug! Ladybug!
Fly away home.
Your house is on fire.
And your children all gone.
--Nursery Rhyme
Just wait for someone to bring congregations of lady beetles to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas for the 49'ers-Kansas City Chiefs matchup. Or maybe an artist will paint their shoes or helmets with the icon, or a seamstress will embroider the insect on their jerseys.
Luck be a lady?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's the cover of their final album, "Abbey Road," released Sept. 26, 1969.
All the Beatles, except Harrison, are wearing designer suits. And all, except McCartney, are wearing shoes. He is barefoot. Reportedly his newly purchased shoes hurt his feet, so he kicked them off.
Enter the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) and its longtime best-selling T-shirt, "The Beetles," of four beetles crossing Abbey Road. Beneath each image is the family name: Phengogidae, Curculionidae, Cerambycidae and Scarabaeidae. Think glowworm beetles, snout beetles, long-horned beetles and scarab beetles.
Beetles belong to the order Coleoptera, the largest of all the insect orders, constituting some 400,000 described species, or about 40 percent of all described species of insects.
If you look closely, these UC Davis beetles are all wearing clothes--maybe designer clothes designed just for them? Three are barefoot, and one, the long-horned beetle, is wearing shoes. EGSA records don't indicate who designed "The Beetles," but it's a keeper. It never fails to draw smiles.
"The Beetles" is one of the many shirts that EGSA sells as part of its fundraising projects. The T-shirts 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.
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.
If you love The Beatles, The Beetles, and Abbey Road--or just all insects--and want to help out the entomology graduate students, insect-themed T-shirts are the way to go. Insects rule the world. A recent National Geographic article related that insects evolved 400 million years ago and today "there are about 10 quintillion on Earth...at least 850,000 known insects exist worldwide."
And most of them are beetles...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And it was all about the beetles: "Beetlemania."
Some 500 visitors browsed the displays at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, chatted with scientists, photographed the specimens, engaged in arts and crafts, and then headed over to the petting zoo to introduce themselves to the Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects.
The event took place from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Bohart Museum's headquarters in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane. Bohart personnel greeted the guests: Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum; Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator; Brennen Dyer, collections manager; Brittany Kohler, research associate; Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection; and Greg Kareofelas, Lepidoptera host assistant.
- Beetles from Belize: Professor Fran Keller of Folsom Lake College, a Bohart Museum scientist, and her assistant, Iris Bright, a graduate student in the Jason Bond lab.
- Carabid beetles: Kipling "Kip" Will, associate professor with the UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
- Burying beetles: Tracie Hayes, a doctoral candidate and burying beetle researcher in the laboratory of Professor Louie Yang, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. (She presented a video she created, "A Clearance of Death on Behalf of Life" at https://youtu.be/cGLOE7SrbiU.)
- Bark beetles: Curtis Ewing, a senior environmental scientist with Cal Fire's Forest Entomology and Pathology
- Children's tree-related activities: Jonelle Mason, a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) employee and coordinator of Project Learning Tree (PLT) California, an initiative of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative,
- Tree cores and boring tools: UC Davis graduate student Jennifer Cribbs of the Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management
- Diabolical ironclad beetles: Brittany Kohler, Bohart research associate
- Family arts and crafts: Allen Chew, Sol Wantz and Kat Taylor, all UC Davis undergraduate students
- Petting zoo: Kaitai Liu, undergraduate student in the Jason Bond lab; Veronica Casey, graduate student in Shahid Siddique lab; and Grace Horne, graduate student in Emily Meineke lab
The Bohart Museum, dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," was founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart. It houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus a live "petting zoo," featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas; and a year-around gift shop, stocked with insect-themed books, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, hoodies and more. The museum is open to the public from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And with an exclamation point!
That's the theme of the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, set from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 22 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
It's free, family friendly and open to the public. Scientists will display scores of beetle species, ranging from burying beetles and darkling beetles to dung beetles and lady beetles (aka ladybugs).
Among the presenters will be Tracie Hayes, a doctoral student in the laboratory of Professor Louie Yang, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. She researches burying beetles, genus Nicrophorus, at the Bodega Marine Reserve. She will show a video she created, display specimens, and answer questions. Burying beetles, as the name implies, are known for burying the carcasses of small vertebrates, such as mice, squirrels and birds, and using them as a food source for their larvae. The American burying beetle, Nicrophorus americanus, endemic to North America, is a critically endangered species.
Folsom Lake College professor Fran Keller, a Bohart Museum scientist and a UC Davis doctoral alumna of entomology, will discuss the beetles she and other scientists collected in Belize.
"In November I started working in the Natural History Museum London Coleoptera collection, working on Belize Cerambycidae to facilitate identification and then catalog specimens for the Belize National Insect Collection," Keller said. "I worked with Larry Bezark, via the internet/email/Google Drive, who is retired from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. There were 28 new country records for Belize and two new species to science that Larry will describe."
Scientists from the California Department of Food and Agriculture also will be a key part of the open house.
Beetles, belonging to the order Coleoptera, the largest insect order, total some 400,000 species. They make up "about 40 percent of all insect species so far described, and about 25 percent of all animals," according to Wikipedia.
Beneficial beetles include the lady beetle, aka ladybug, which devours aphids and other small soft-bodied insects. Another beneficial beetle: the dung beetle, which feed on feces. Serious pests include the boll weevil, the Colorado potato beetle, the coconut hispine beetle, and the mountain pine beetle.
The family arts-and-crafts activity at the open house will be coloring a burying beetle, art that's the work of Tracie Hayes.
The Bohart Museum, dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," is directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. Founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart, it houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens; a live "petting zoo," featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas; and a year-around gift shop, stocked with insect-themed books, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, hoodies and more.
The museum is open to the public from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you were attending class at 7:30 a.m., could you get excited about flies? No? How about the gender differences? Still no?
You would if Mary Frances “Fran” Keller were there teaching you.
You won't find anyone more enthusiastic about entomology than Fran Keller.
A doctoral candidate in entomology, she recently received an outstanding teaching award at UC Davis.
She's amazing. Take it from pre-med student Shawn Purnell, one of Keller's students.
“My perception and expectations of teacher assistants were forever raised when I met Fran,” he said.
“Truthfully, the very first time I had lab, I thought Fran was a little crazy. I had never before seen anyone become so enthralled in explaining the differences between male and female flies, especially at 7:30 in the morning. I thought to myself, why would I ever be interested in this and how is this knowledge ever going to benefit me? To my surprise, by the very next lab I found myself blissfully explaining the conditions of Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium to my lab partner. Fran's passion toward her students and enthusiasm for not only zoology, but also all aspects of academia, created an irresistible learning environment.”
That's Fran.
If itcreeps or crawls or flies or jumps, Fran wants to know about it. She's especially partial to tenebrionids or darkling beetles (see her Web site). She's also an accomplished artist, illustrator and nature photographer. And a wife and mother of two.
Her four years as the teaching assistant (TA) in an insect physiology class taught by Charles Judson, emeritus professor of entomology and professors Bruce Hammock and Walter Leal, led to the teaching honor. The trio nominated her for the award, which Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef presented to her at a May ceremony on the UC Davis campus.
How does she do it? Excel at teaching? Fran gets to know her students individually and then focuses on their interests. “She showed me countless examples of how the subject (biological sciences) applied to medicine," Shawn Purnell said. "I especially remember her telling a story about how a graduate student willingly ate a tapeworm to further her research, and what the doctors had to do in order to remove it.”
"It's reassuring to know that out of a maze of 30,000 students and faculty at Davis," he said, "that there are people like Fran who really care."
Said Fran: “Not all students learn in the same way. There are global, linear and kinesthetic learners. I believe that illuminating a student's learning style opens the door for thinking critically.”
"My very best teachers would not accept less than what they knew I was capable of doing. They understood my potential and treated me as an individual in a sea of many.”
Fran, scheduled to receive her doctorate next June, studies with major advisor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and chair of the Department of Entomology.
The doctoral candidate is based at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, where she also designs museum posters, such as the Butterflies of Central California, Dragonflies of California, California State Insect (California Dogface Butterfly) and Pacific Invasive Ants. Currently she's coordinating a sale of gift items listed on the Bohart Web site. Proceeds benefit the museum's outreach program.
What's she been up to lately? I hope you're sitting down!
This fall she will be TA'ing Entomology 100 with her major professor Lynn Kimsey, who describes her as "one of my most gifted students ever."
She's an invited speaker for the first California Desert Research Symposium (CDRS), set Nov. 8 at the University of the Redlands. It's billed as "the first biennial CDRS, contributing to the understanding and conservation of desert wilderness.
Fran is also organizing the Coleoptera symposium at the Entomological Society of America annual meeting set Nov. 16-19 in Reno. She'll deliver a presentation on Stenomorpha.
And for all you dragonfly enthusiasts out there, she's designing a new dragonfly t-shirt for the museum gift shop.
And about those flies she so eagerly discusses at 7:30 in the morning? How much time do you have?