- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Whiteman, UC Berkeley professor of genetics, genomics, evolution and development, and director of the Essig Museum of Entomology, writes with a passion bestowed on him by his late father, a naturalist. “....he was a used car salesman, and later, a furniture salesman, but in his heart, he was a naturalist.”
The 336-page book is captivating, transparent, and fascinating--an “I-didn't-know-that-tell-me-more!” read.
Take monarchs.
Whiteman recalls a scene from his childhood. He and his father are in a patch of milkweed. His father tears a leaf in half. As "white latex" drips from the leaf, his father tells him: "That's why they call it milkweed. Don't ever eat it. Heart poisons are in that sap.”
The toxins are terpenoids called cardiac glycosides. “One of the principal toxins in the common milkweeds that my dad and I encountered is aspecioside,” Whiteman wrote. "The monarchs obtained these heart poisons during their caterpillar stage. But the caterpillars did something even more extraordinary—they concentrated the toxin to levels even high than those found in the milkweed itself.”
“The butterflies were poisonous, my dad explained, because as caterpillars, they had eaten toxins from the milkweed leaves. The insects then stored the toxins in their bodies all the way through metamorphosis, from a zebra-striped caterpillar to a chrysalis encircled at the top by a golden diadem, to the familiar brightly colored butterfly.”
Whiteman points out that monarch butterflies "evolved to become brightly colored to warn predatory birds and other predators of the bitter and emetic cardiac glycosides within." When a bird eats a monarch, it vomits, associating "the butterfly with danger, just as Pavlov's dogs learned to associate the ring of a bell with food.”
That led Whiteman to the question “How do animals that sequester these toxins, as the monarch does, resist them?”
Whiteman researched cardiac glycosides with evolutionary ecologist Anurag Agrawal of Cornell University, who received his doctorate in population biology in 1999 from UC Davis, studying with major professor Richard "Rick" Karban, Department of Entomology and Nematology.
You'll have to read Chapter 4, "Dogbane and Digitalis," to learn what Whiteman, Agrawal and their colleagues discovered.
All 13 chapters of “Most Delicious Poison” are deliciously intriguing and inviting, from “Deadly Daisies,” “Hijacked Hormones,” “Caffeine and Nicotine” to “Devil's Breath and Silent Death” to “Opicoid Overloads” to “The Spice of Life.” And more.
His father's death in 2017 from a substance use disorder (alcohol) pushed him to write the book. "His long struggle with nature's toxins came to a head just as my collaborators and I uncovered how the monarch butterfly caterpillar resists the deadly toxins made by the milkweed host plant.”
Toxins are why the monarch can migrate thousands of miles to overwintering spots without getting eaten by predatory birds.
Nature's chemicals are not a side show, as Whiteside emphasizes. They're "the main event."
(Editor's Note: The Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis, displayed Whiteman's book at its Nov. 4th open house on monarchs. Whiteman plans to deliver a presentation on the UC Davis campus sometime next spring.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you're feeling overwhelmed during the holiday season and just can't seem to concentrate, check out the focus and intensity of this male territorial bee, a Melissodes agilis.
It was back in July of 2015 when I spotted a meloid beetle on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville pollinator garden.
The Melissodes did, too.
Now the meloid beetle is a blister beetle (family Meloidae). Don't touch these beetles because they emit a poisonous chemical, cantharidin, that can blister your skin. It makes for great defense. Touch me, and I'll blister your skin. No wonder the chemical is used to remove warts.
Blister beetles are also known to infest alfalfa hay, and are toxic--even deadly--to livestock. See "Blister Beetles" published by the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station.
"Cantharidin, a vesicant produced by beetles in the order Coleoptera, has a long history in both folk and traditional medicine...Historically, cantharidin has been used as an aphrodisiac, an abortifacient, and a veterinary medicine diuretic." --Cantharidin Revisited, JAMA Dermatology.
So here's this bee targeting the beetle. Oh, the intensity of those eyes...much like a last-minute shopper eyeing a 50 percent-off gift, the last in stock, and ignoring the attempts of last-minute shoppers to grab it.
Did the beetle move?
Not a bit. It rose and ate some of the pollen that the bee was trying to save for its own species.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's a week before Christmas and it's not just the geese that are getting fat.
If you're thinking that the bathroom scale and you are not good friends, not to worry.
We remember the late Extension apiculturist emeritus Eric Mussen (1944-2022) of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, emphasizing the massive weight gain that occurs during the larval stage of the honey bee. He used to speak at scores of beekeeping functions throughout the year, and every time he talked about larval weight gain, he always drew a "Wow!" or "Incredible!" or "Amazing!"
"A honey bee egg weighs about 0.1 mg," Mussen told us. "The first stage larva weighs the same. Over the next six days of larval life the larva goes from 0.1 mg to around 120 mg. It defecates once, just before pupating, and the resulting adult bee weighs around 110 mg. Thus, the new bee weighs about 1,000 times the weight of the one-day-old larva."
Now get this:
"If a human baby, weighing eight pounds at birth, were to grow at the same rate, the baby would weigh 8,000 pounds, or 4 tons, at the end of six days."
Four tons in six days? Fortunately, what goes on with Apis mellifera does not apply to Homo sapiens.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.--Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), 'The Night Before Christmas'
What will be in your Christmas stocking?
Stocking stuffers are usually tiny, fun, or meaningful gifts or something that makes you feel special. For a child, the "stuffings" are often a toy, book, stickers, crayons, pencils, coins, fruit and candy. Adults may receive that coveted piece of jewelry, lottery tickets, a book or cash. Or gag gifts guaranteeing a smile or a laugh.
How about a bed bug, fruit fly, tick or louse in your Christmas stocking?
Santa's helpers who visit the Bohart Museum of Entomology gift shop will have a field day selecting plush toy animals for bug enthusiasts.
UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum, especially likes the yellow bookworm, (Anobium punctatum).
Ticks (Ixodes scapularis), bed bugs (Cimex lectularius), louse (Pediculus capitis), black ants (Lasius niger), fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are popular. The crab louse (Pthirus pubis)? Maybe not so much.
These critters are crafted by Giant Microbes, headquartered in Stamford, Conn.
Proceeds benefit the Bohart mission "of documenting and supporting research in biodiversity, educating and inspiring others about insects, and providing state-of-the-art information to the community," Kimsey says.
Home of a global collection of nearly eight million insect specimens, the Bohart Museum houses the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity of the state's deserts, mountains, coast, and the Great Central Valley. It maintains one of the world's largest collections of tardigrades. It also houses a live "petting zoo" that includes Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas.
The Bohart is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It is open to the public Monday through Thursday, from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m. (holiday hours remain the same this week).
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Date: Sept. 9, 2023
Location: A flower bed in Vacaville, Calif.
Mantis: “Hi, it's me, your favorite praying mantis! I just popped in to say hello!”
Photographer: “Well, hello there, Ms. Stagmomantis limbata, but I think you have ulterior motives! You're not here to greet me and tell me to have a nice day, are you?”
Mantis: “What makes ya think that?”
Photographer: “Because you're hungry and you're an ambush predator and you're waiting to nail an unsuspecting bee or butterfly. But that's OK. Every living thing in this garden eats.”
Mantis: “Ya think?”
Photographer: “Sometimes.”
Mantis: “Well, tell me how I look.”
Photographer: “You look like your crept out of the shadows and your head is spinning in space and it somehow got detached from your body. I could ask you what motivational and existential predicaments are playing directive roles on your current behavior patterns, like I ask all my friends, but I won't. Be well.”
Mantis: “Bee? Where? Where?”
