- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So, you want to become an entomologist...
Entomologists, future entomologists and others interested in science are looking forward to the fall seminars sponsored Oct. 1 through Dec. 3 by the Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis.
All seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. Individual faculty members will host the seminars.
You'll learn about fungus-farming ambrosia beetles, the invasive brown marmorated sting bug, argentine ants, thrips, and Culex mosquitoes, to name a few.
The UC Davis entomology faculty do a fantastic job lining up speakers. The key word here is "passion." (The best advice I ever received in a fortune cookie involved passion: "Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.")
Bring on the bugs!
The schedule:
Oct. 1: Jiri Hulcr of Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, “Evolution and Ecology of Fungus-Farming Ambrosia Beetles. Host: entomology professor Phil Ward
Oct. 8: Anne Nielsen, Department of Nematology, UC Davis, “Population Ecology and Damage Estimates of the Invasive Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, Halyomorpha halys.” Host: nematology and entomology professor Ed Lewis
Oct. 15: Urs Wyss, Institute of Phytopathology, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany, “Biological Control of Greenhouse Pests with Natural Arthropod Enemies.” Host: entomology and nematology professor Harry Kaya
Oct. 22: Greg Crutsinger, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, “Linking Plant Genetic Variation to Foliage- and Litter-Based Arthropod Communities.” Host: entomology professor Rick Karban
Oct. 29: Kris Godfrey, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento "Pest Management of Invasive Insect Pests in California.” Host: nematology and entomology professor Ed Lewis
Nov. 5: Neil Tsutsui, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley, “Exploring the Genetic and Chemical Basis of Argentine Ant Behavior.” Host: entomology professor Phil Ward
Nov. 12: Le Kang, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Chemical Communications Between Plants, Leafminers and Parasites.” Host: Michael Parrella, associate dean of the Division of Agricultural Sciences, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and entomology professor
Nov. 26: Chris Barker, Department of Entomology, UC Davis, “Environmental Drivers of Large-Scale Spatial and Temporal Patterns in Mosquito Abundance and Virus Transmission in California.” Host: Bruce Eldridge, emeritus professor of entomology
Dec. 3: Lisa Chanbusarakum, Department of Entomology, UC Davis, “Exploring the Microbial World of Frankliniella occidentalis, the Western Flower Thrips.” Host: Diane Ullman, associate dean for undergraduate academic programs at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and entomology professor
- 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?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She has no formal training in the science of insects, but she can catch insects with the best of 'em. Plus, her credentials include a butterfly mark on her leg.
Xena the Warrior Princess is a rescue cat. We first spotted her outside a Costco store in the winter of 2000, the same year our son headed off to college to study computer science and mathematics.
A sign proclaimed "Free kitten!"
Not wanting a kitten, free or not (we already owned an adventuresome calico named Indiana Joan), we started to walk away.
But she was calling my name, this scrawny kitten dressed unabashedly in the same tuxedo colors our son wore while playing double bass for the Sacramento Youth Symphony's Premier Orchestra.
Coincidence? Probably. Fate? Perhaps. Serendipity? Certainly.
I thought about naming her "Free," but husband Jim didn't think that would be such a great idea. You just can't step out on the front porch and yell "Free! Free! Free!"
So Xena the Warrior Princess she became: half-warrior, half-princess, and all kitten. At first, Xena repeatedly performed sofa-to-chair leaps in the family room--antics that prompted friend Marilyn to observe: "I think her mother had an affair with a flying squirrel."
Then came the insects. The butterflies, the beetles (not the kind that play music) the honey bees, the sunflower bees, the carpenter bees and the moths.
(We will not talk about the roof rat and the flicker. They are not insects.)
Every night, or so it seems, our feline entomologist snares a hornworm moth and eagerly shares it with us. UC Davis entomologist (and apiculturist) Eric Mussen says the mangled specimen (below) is either a tomato hornworm or tobacco hornworm.
At least it's not a flying squirrel.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
I've always loved the wit and wisdom of insect-inspired poets.
God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
- - Ogden Nash "The Fly"
We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics.
- - Richard Vaughan
If you look at the world through a viewfinder--as I have a habit of doing--it's a wonderful, exquisite place, especially if you capture critters in their natural habitat. They don't complain when you make them look fat, skinny, nice or ferocious.
Blow flies, honey bees, carpenter bees, spotted cucumber bees, the ten-lined June beetle, and mosquitoes all appear in my viewfinder. Okay, I know. We're not supposed to like some of these pests (such as the carpenter bees, spotted cucumber bees and the ten-lined June beetles), but hey, all of them are pretty enough to sing the national anthem at the Olympics.
Photography, or writing with light, is just that. Writing with light. Back before the digital technology age, we used to process film, make prints and then hang them out to dry. We "pho-togs" marinated ourselves in Dektol, DK-60 and Hypo.
Our "pheromone" wasn't always appreciated. But the images were.
Bees are black, with gilt surcingles,
Buccaneers of buzz.
- - Emily Dickinson
The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
- - Andy Warhol
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
I'm standing in line at the photo center, waiting to pay for the dozen 8x10 photos of noted entomologist Richard Bohart that I'd ordered for his UC Davis memorial.
“Doc,” as he was called, died Feb. 1, 2007 in Berkeley at age 93 after a career spanning 70 years--33 at UC Davis.
He was a giant of a man. He towered over his fellow linebackers on the UC Berkeley football team in the mid-1930s, and he towered over his entomology colleagues.
During his career, Doc identified more than a million mosquitoes and wasps, named more than 300 new species of insects, authored 230 separate publications and wrote six books on mosquitoes and wasps, including three editions of Mosquitoes of California. An entire family of insects bears his name: Bohartillidae (twisted wing parasites), genus Bohartilla.
Doc founded the Bohart Museum of Entomology in 1946, the same year he joined the UC Davis faculty. Today the museum, a tribute to much of his lifelong work, houses more than 7 million specimens.
So, here I am, standing in line, thinking of his accomplishments and the passion that drove him and the insects that possessed him.
The photo center line shortens and it's my turn. I pay for the photos. “Thanks!" I say. "Nice job! These are of the life of Dr. Bohart, a world-renowned entomologist.”
The clerk, probably in her 30s, looks at me, puzzled. “What,” she asks, “is en-to-mol-ogy?”
She quickly apologizes, saying she ought to know that.
“Study of insects,” I say.
Her question is not unusual. Many folks have no idea what entomology is, which is probably why it should be called “insect science.”
Nancy Dullum, administrative assistant in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, says she's often asked what entomology means and how it's spelled. A UC Davis employee since 1977 (25 years in entomology, including 13 years with the UC Mosquito Research Program, and five years in the dean's office in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences), she's even opened mail addressed to “Department of Antomology.”
Antomology! Now that's creative!
I think “Doc” would have liked that.