- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
But have you heard of the "Eight-Legged Wonders?"
You won't want to miss the "Eight-Legged Wonders" open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, March 9 at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis.
If you miss it, you'll miss your opportunity to learn about spiders from an international expert, and miss the opportunity to "Assemble an Arachnid," "Create a Chelicerate" and "Eat Like a Spider."
Eat like a spider? Tabatha Yang, Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator, related you'll get to “slurp up soggy cookies.”
The event, free and family friendly, takes place primarily in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane.
Arachnid expert Jason Bond, who is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will present a 10-minute slide show at 1 p.m. in the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology classroom, located on the first floor of the Academic Surge Building, next to the Bohart Museum.
You'll see live specimens and specimens in alcohol. You'll learn the differences between woolly silk and sticky silk. You'll also see the Bohart arachnids--tarantulas--and hold some of the non-arachnids, including walking sticks and Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
“Spiders are an incredibly diverse group with more than 50,000 species described with probably another 200,000 remaining to yet be discovered,” says Bond, who joined the department last July from Auburn University, Alabama. “They are quite ancient, with fossils dating back well over 300 million year and are known to be exclusively predatory. In fact, based on a study published last year, spiders are estimated to consume somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 million tons of insect biomass.”
“To capture insects, and other prey item--sometimes even vertebrates--most spiders employ silk and venom to snare and subdue their victims,” the arachnologist says. “Spider silk is an amazingly strong, proteinaceous material that is produced in many different forms; venoms are likewise complex, diverse proteins. All of this to say – what's not to like – spiders are a tremendously ecological important predatory group, that has persisted on the planet for 100s of millions of years and employ a remarkable suite of silks and venoms to make a living.”
Highly respected for his expertise on spiders, Bond served as the plenary keynote speaker at the 2016 International Arachnological Congress, and also keynoted the 2012 European Arachnological Congress.
Born in Johnson City, Tenn., Bond is a U.S. Army veteran who served for a number of years as a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crew chief. He received his bachelor's degree in biological sciences, cum laude, in 1993 from Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, and his master's degree in biology in 1995 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg. He earned his doctorate in evolutionary systematics and genetics in 1999 from Virginia Tech.
All three degrees focused on arachnids. His undergraduate thesis involved silk spigots; his master's degree, systematics of the spider genera Mallos and Mexitlia; and his doctoral dissertation covered “Systematics and Evolution of the Californian Trapdoor Spider Genus Aptostichus Simon (Araneae: Mygalomorphae: Cyrtaucheniidae).”
What drew him to arachnology? As an undergraduate researcher at Western Carolina University, Bond worked with noted arachnologists Jackie Palmer and Fred Coyle. “My first research project was related to functional morphology (evolution of the spinning apparatus in more primitive spiders) but quickly shifted to systematics and taxonomy.”
Bond joined the UC Davis faculty after a seven-year academic career at Auburn University, Ala. He served as professor of biology and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences from January 2016 to July 2018, and as curator of arachnids and myriapods (centipedes, millipedes, and related animals) at the Auburn University Museum of Natural History, from August 2011 to July 2018.
It was at Auburn University where Bond and his colleagues discovered a new species of trapdoor spider that drew international attention and a news story in the Huffington Post. They named it Myrmekiaphilia tigris, or the Auburn Tiger Trapdoor Spider, in honor of the university's costumed tiger mascot, Aubie. The discovery was exciting but not “surprising,” Bond told the Huffington Post, pointing out that it took taxonomists about 250 years to describe about 1.8 million plants and animals, and that this scratches the surface of what scientists estimate to be between five and 30 million overall species on earth.
The amazing eight-legged wonders!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Got hives?
No, not yet?
You can enroll in classes at the University of California, Davis, to learn how to keep bees and how to work your colonies.
Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño, based in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will be teaching beekeeping classes with her colleagues. beginning Saturday, March 23.
Participants will have the opportunity to learn about--and practice--many aspects of what's necessary to get the colony started and keep it healthy and thriving, Niño said. At the end of the course, participants will be knowledgeable about installing honey bee packages, monitoring their own colonies. and possibly challenges with maintaining a healthy colony.
Lecture modules will cover honey bee biology, beekeeping equipment, how to start your colony, and maladies of the hive.
Practical modules will cover how to build a hive, how to install a package, inspecting your hive and monitoring for varroa mites.
The course is limited to 25 participants. Participants should bring their bee suit/veil if they have one. The $95 registration fee covers the cost of course materials (including a hive tool), lunch and refreshments. The last day to register is Friday, March 22.
Working Your Colonies
A separate course on "Working Your Colonies" will take place on Sunday, March 24. This is an all-day course from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. The last day to register is Friday, March 22.
Participants will have the opportunity to learn about--and practice--many aspects of what is necessary to maintain a healthy colony and exploit products of the hive.
Lecture modules will cover advanced honey bee biology, honey bee integrated pest management (IPM) and products of the hive. Practical models will cover queen wrangling, honey extraction and splitting/combining colonies, and monitoring for varroa mite
The $150 registration fee covers the cost of course materials, lunch and refreshments. Participants should bring their bee suit/veil if they have one.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When you're 5 years old, the world is full of wonders.
Especially when your mother takes you to the Bohart Museum of Entomology to see the butterfly specimens.
Such was the case when Cash Belden, 5, and his mother, Michelle Belden (she's the coordinator of the campus Aggie Surplus, formerly the Bargain Barn) attended the Bohart Museum open house during the eighth annual campuswide UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day.
Little Cash especially liked the monarchs and the blue morphos.
Entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the butterfly/moth section at the Bohart, showed them around. He estimates the Bohart has half a million Lepidoptera in the collection, about 60 percent moths and 40 percent butterflies.
He mentioned the "defensive strategies these insects use for survival, such as camouflage, warning coloration, mimicry of other species."
"We love to teach about the importance of Lepidoptera in the environment, either to their habitat directly or possibly as an indicator of the health of their habitat."
And, of course, there's the beauty of the insects.
Next time it's spiders!
The next open house, themed "Eight-Legged Wonders" and featuring spiders, is set from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, March 9. in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane. It's free and family friendly. Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will host a slide show at 1 p.m. Visitors will see specimens and can engage in interactive activities and family arts and crafts.
The Bohart Museum, home of a global collection nearly eight million specimens, is directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum.
Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. Visitors are invited to hold the insects and photograph them. The museum's gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free. Open houses, focusing on specific themes, are held on weekends throughout the academic year. More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or Tabatha Yang, education and public outreach coordinator at tabyang@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The world's largest bee, known as Wallace's Giant Bee (Megachile pluto), considered extinct since 1981, lives.
It's not extinct, after all.
You probably read the news. An international team, accompanied by guides, rediscovered the black resin bee in January in the North Moluccas, an island group in Indonesia. The find, announced Feb. 21, continues to draw "oohs" "aahs" and accolades.
The four-member team, supported by Global Wildlife Conservation, an Austin, Texas-based organization that runs a Search for Lost Species program, included Honorary Professor Simon Robson of the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney; Honorary Professor Glen Chilton, of Saint Mary's University, Canada; Clay Bolt, a natural history conservation photographer from Montana who specializes in North American native bees; and entomologist and bee expert Eli Wyman of Princeton University.
“It was absolutely breathtaking to see this 'flying bulldog' of an insect that we weren't sure existed anymore,” said Bolt, who is known for his conservation efforts, including his work with the rusty-patched bumble bee. His work (see his website at http://www.claybolt.com) has been featured in National Geographic, Scientific American and many others.
“To see how beautiful and big the species is in real life, to hear the sound of its giant wings thrumming as it flew past my head, was just incredible," Bolt said. "My dream is to now use this rediscovery to elevate this bee to a symbol of conservation in this part of Indonesia."
It was the last day of their five-day trip when they found it: a single female Wallace's Giant Bee living in an active termite mound in a tree about 2.5 meters off the ground. The bee, which nests in active arboreal termite mounds, lines her nest with tree resin to protect it from termites.
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, and a past president of the International Hymenopterists (she was not involved in the project) surmises that are more in the area. "Finding a female is a good thing," she told us.
"Yes, I've had a lot of folks email me and call me about the giant bee," said Kimsey, whose museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens, but no Megachile pluto. "I've actually seen specimens of this beast either at some meetings or the American Museum of Natural History. No surprise that it hasn't been collected since the '80s. Its probably been that long since someone collected in the Moluccas."
In his blog, Bolt relates how it all came about. In 2015 he visited Wyman at the American Museum of Natural History “as part of an ambitious project documenting North America's under-appreciated native bee species. Eli was kind enough to show me around. As we looked through drawers of pinned bee specimens from around the world, I drooled over the beautiful array of species. Just before I left, Eli said with a sly grin, ‘want to see a specimens of Megachile pluto?” I couldn't believe my ears and seconds later, I was literally inches away from one of the rarest and most-sought-after insects in the world."
“It was more magnificent than I could have imagined, even in death,” Bolt blogged. “Eli shared with me that it had been his dream to try to find the bee in the wild for years and before long the two of us began a lengthy dialogue discussing possibilities, following clues, nearly giving up; ultimately a path to follow in the footsteps of Wallace himself and search for the bee in the Indonesian islands known as the North Moluccas. When we heard that GWC was calling for nominations for their Search for Lost Species program, we convinced them to include Wallace's Giant Bee on their top 25 'most wanted list.' We were one step closer to fulfilling our dream."
Fast forward to January 2019. Bolt remembers staring at "termite mounds for 20 minutes at a time" then moving on to the next mound. "It was invigorating but tiring work...As each day went by, we were less and less sure it would happen."
"By the last day of searching, we were all dealing with various maladies, including Glen, who had made the difficult decision to return home to Australia after coming down with heat-induced illness," Bolt blogged. "That day we walked down an old orchard road flanked on both sides by mixed lowland forest and fruit trees. Iswan (a guide), ever the eagle eye, spotted a low termite mound, around eight feet from the ground. He later recounted that he almost didn't mention it to us because, like the rest of the team, he was feeling tired and hungry. However, I'll forever be grateful that he did because as we scampered up an embankment to the nest, we immediately noticed that it had a hole in it, like many other nests we'd seen, but this one was a little more perfect. It was very round, and just the size that a giant bee might use.
"Bracing the rotting tree, I asked Iswan if he would mind climbing up to take a look inside. As he peered inside the nest he exclaimed, 'I saw something move!' Jumping down, for fear that the creature was a snake—his worst fear—after catching his breath, he said that it looked wet and sticky inside. Eli and I looked at each other with reserved excitement. Eli climbed up and immediately felt for certain that it was a bee nest. The structure was just too perfect and similar to what we expected to find. I climbed up next and my headlamp glinted on the most remarkable thing I'd ever laid my eyes on. I simply couldn't believe it:
"We had rediscovered Wallace's Giant Bee."
They documented it, photographed it, and let it bee.
British entomologist Alfred Russel Wallace discovered the giant bee in 1858 when he was exploring the Indonesian island of Bacan. He described the female bee, about the length of a human thumb, as "a large black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle." Years went by. It was considered extinct until American entomologist Adam Messer rediscovered it in 1981.
And now this international team has rediscovered it...in 2019.
Sadly, this is a bee threatened by habitat loss. Between 2001 and 2017, Indonesia lost 15 percent of its forestation, according to Global Forest Watch. "The islands have become home to oil palm plantations that now occupy much of the former native habitat," says Wikipedia. "This has caused the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to label this species as Vulnerable."
And sadly, there are greedy entrepreneurs out there anxious to make a buck. Or a lot of bucks. Two specimens sold on eBay in 2018. One sold for $9,100 on March 25, 2018. It was advertised as "very rare--only one!"
We need strict conservation efforts--and bans on international trade--to save this iconic bee.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
But did you know that scorpions are the oldest living terrestrial arthropods on the planet--that they're approximately 400 million years old? And that these "living fossils" were here before the dinosaurs?
And, did you also know that scorpions are the only arachnids that give birth to live young?
All fascinating facts.
Scorpion scientist Lauren Esposito of the California Academy of Sciences, will reveal those facts--and much more--when she discusses her research at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar on Wednesday, Feb. 27.
Esposito, assistant curator and Schlinger chair of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, will speak on "Evolution of New World Scorpions and Their Venom" from 4:10 to 5 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. Host is Jason Bond, Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Scorpions are just about everywhere; they're found on every continent except Antarctica. In fact, they're found in every ecosystem on the planet, from cave systems below sea level to the peaks of the Alps and the Andes, Esposito says. Although scientists have described 2,200 species of scorpions, Esposito estimates that this number encompasses only 60 percent of the group's total diversity. In her research, she's trying to fill in that taxonomic gap.
Scorpions first drew Esposito's interest in her childhood. Both her parents are biologists. She remembers visiting her grandparents on a remote island in the Bahamas. “The most dangerous things on the island were ants and scorpions, so it was a pretty ideal place for a child to explore,” she quips on the Cal Academy website.
Esposito served a summer undergraduate internship in arachnology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and did volunteer work at a field station in the Chihuahuan Desert. She returned to AMNH to complete her doctorate in arachnology, and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship studying the biogreography of scorpions in the Caribbean. In 2015, she accepted an arachnologist position at the Cal Academy.
"For the past several years, Esposito has studied the evolution and geographical distribution of scorpions in the Caribbean," according to the Cal Academy website. "She suspects the string of islands played a significant but underappreciated role in producing the biodiversity currently found in North and South America. Because scorpions are essentially 'living fossils,' they're ideal organisms to study to decipher this larger relationship. Understanding the biodiversity of this region in a time of rapid agricultural development is a key step toward sustaining it for sustaining it for future generations."
Esposito marvels that a single scorpion "can carry the genes for more than 200 unique venoms in its DNA." She describes those venom varieties as "like protein cocktails, mixed to affect specific mammals, insects, and crustaceans."
“Researchers think that scorpions eject venoms with different compositions depending on the scenario," she says. "If they encounter a predator, they'll eject one combination, and if they encounter prey, a different one.” The venom's effects? Pain, temporary paralysis, or death.
Esposito focuses her research on the evolution of scorpion venom alongside the evolution of scorpions. This makes her unique among venom experts, who are often toxicologists or biochemists studying its chemistry, according to the Cal Academy website.
“Looking at how this venom diversity evolved helps us understand how one creature can evolve the ability to strike hundreds of specific targets,” explains Esposito. “There's a kind of evolutionary arms race happening between scorpions and mammals, particularly with predatory, nocturnal scorpion mice.”
Cal Academy's YouTube video on The Anamolies: Venom Race points out that although "the stings of most scorpions are harmless to humans, a select few can be fatal. Striped bark scorpions, a group of species found in the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, inflict on average 100,000 stings and, until recently, caused more than a thousand deaths each year in Mexico alone. While finding a treatment to this public health concern has been a driving force behind studies of bark scorpion venom, there was one very basic question that had scientists scratching their heads: Why and how would such a tiny creature pack such a lethal punch? Now, researchers, including Lauren Esposito, curator of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences, think they've found the answers in the interplay between a diminutive but dauntless predator—a mouse that has a particular taste for these venomous invertebrates—and the scorpions' own genetic makeup."
Check out these other incredible videos on the Cal Academy website:
Medical entomologist Geoffrey Attardo, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, coordinates the weekly seminars.
