Nazzy Pakpour has a way with kids.

At a recent Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, she read passages from her newly published children's book, Please Don't Bite Me: Insects that Buzz, Bite and Sting, and then encouraged questions.

Each time a youngster raised a hand, she'd say "Yes, my friend!"

She answered each question thoughtfully, expertly, and kindly.

Pakpour, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area,  is no stranger to UC Davis. She received her bachelor of science degree in entomology from UC Davis in 1999; her doctorate in microbiology, virology and parasitology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008; and served as a postdoctoral scholar at UC Davis for seven years, leaving campus in August 2015. Her work "focused on determining the effects of ingested human blood factors on the mosquito immune response to malaria."

Passionate about teaching science, Pakpour accepted a faculty position in 2015 at California State University, East Bay, teaching for nearly seven years before moving to the biotech sector. She is a senior scientist at Novozymes, Davis (since January 2022).

A resident of Woodland, Pakpour describes herself as "the mother of two witty and wonderful kids," and as someone who "loves bugs of all varieties, whether they are six-legged or microscopic."

Factoid: She once spent a summer feeding tarantulas at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

Her 60-page book, published by Flying Eye Books and illustrated by Owen Davey, is a introduction to what most people call "annoying" bugs: mosquitoes, lice, wasps, cockroaches, fleas, and bedbugs. It's billed as a middle-school book, but it also can be read to younger children. Adults can learn from it, too.

"An insect," Pakpour defines in her book, "is an animal that has six legs, two eyes, two antenna, and three body parts. A special group of scientists called entomologists have been studying insects for hundreds of years an they have learned all kinds of amazing things."

Pakour goes on to say that "our bodies offer a delicious and unique menu of food for a vast variety of insects. These insects drink our blood, live in our homes, and even in our hair! They impact every aspect of our lives, from the clothes we wear, the pets we keep, to the homes we live in, and the way we store our food. Like tiny aliens living among us, each insect has its own unique body, home, and lifestyle."

Some excerpts:

Mosquitoes. "If mosquitoes don't have protein, they can't make eggs, which is why only female mosquitoes feed on blood...Mosquitoes lay their eggs in almost anything that holds water. Once she finds a suitable spot, she will land on the surface and lay around 100 eggs. So they don't sink and drown, the eggs stick together and float like a tiny raft."

Lice. Lice, which are only 0.10 inches long, can move 9 inches in about a minute. "That is about the equivalent of a person who is 5 feet tall moving 450 feet in one minute."

Wasps. Wasps are social insects. "I don't mean social as in they love to throw parties and hang out with their friends. When scientists say an insect is social, it means they live in a group made up of their relatives." She clarifies that only a few specific species are considered pests to humans and "even then it's only when they happen to build their nests near us."

Cockroaches. "Cockroaches give their eggs a little bit of extra protection, wrapping them up like a lovely box of chocolates in a package called an ootheca."

Fleas."Given a choice at the blood buffet, a flea will always choose a cat or a dog over a human."

Bedbugs. "Bedbugs have big appetites and they like to take their time sucking  up your blood...The Romans believed eating crushed up bedbugs could cure poisonous snake bites."

Pakpour points out that these insects are annoying but emphasizes that the majority of the 10 quintillion insects in the world "have important and unique roles to play in nature that have nothing to do with humans....Without insects, our entire ecosystem would collapse."

Please Don't Bite Me could easily be called Please Read Me. It's a fascinating book, especially for young entomologists-to-be or children and teens curious about what's living in their world--or what's pestering them. It's an easy read with interesting scientific information spread throughout the book. The illustrations are BBC: big, bold and colorful.  

Great book, Nazzy Pakpour!  

It's not every day you find a 15-million-year-old skull of a dolphin.

Leave it to an eagle-eyed entomologist accustomed to searching for elusive bees to find it.

Emily Bzdyk, who holds a master's degree in entomology from UC Davis, is making national headlines, but not about insects this time.

Bzdyk is garnering widespread news coverage for discovering a 15-million-year-old dolphin skull along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Calvert County, Maryland.

Bzdyk, a volunteer at the Calvert Marine Museum on Solomons Island, said she was combing the shores along the Calvert Cliffs on Saturday, Aug. 5, when she noticed what appeared to be a two-foot-long fossil bone in the shallow water.

It turned out to be a fossil from the Miocene Epoch, the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period. The Miocene epoch extends from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago.

Stephen Groff, manager of the Calvert Marine Museum's fossil collection, described it as “a really impressive find,” noting that “it's rare to find a skull in such good condition.”

Bzdyk estimated it will probably take a few months for her to clean the silt and clay from the fossil and prepare it for permanent public display at the museum. Visitors to the museum (open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) are watching her clean the fossil.

“I've been fossil hunting for about a year and a half and I have thousands of shark teeth and other things in my collection,” said Bzdyk, who received her master's degree in entomology from UC Davis in 2012, studying with UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. At UC Davis, "I focused on a taxonomic revision of the subgenus Litomegachile leafcutter bees with a description of a new species and a key to current species."  The new species that she discovered: Megachile pankus. (See her work in ZooKeys, published Sept. 13, 2012)

A native of Long Island, N.Y., Emily received her bachelor's degree in biology in 2008 from St. Mary's College of Maryland (SMCM), St. Mary's City, where she minored in environmental studies and studio art. Her senior thesis? A Guide to Native Plants of Historic St. Mary's City, which she also illustrated.

 Bzdyk returned to SMCM in 2016 as a visiting instructor of biology. She served as an adjunct faculty member until May 2019.

Her friends says she has an eagle eye for discoveries. She credits her entomological training with that. "Many years in entomology didn't hurt!"

NBCWashington.com headlined her fossil discovery as "Big Win: Woman Finds 15 Million-Year-Old Dolphin Skull Along Chesapeake Bay."

Mike Murillo of WTOP News, which serves the Washington, D.C., area, said that the "Dolphin fossil found in Calvert County could help 'write the books' on ancient marine mammals...It is not uncommon to find fossils from marine mammals. Dolphin skulls are typically found twice a year in southern Maryland. But this find, according to Groff, stands to be the most intact of the finds. It could also turn out to be a species that was previously not known about."

Murillo noted that "During the Miocene period, when the marine mammal swam the earth, the sea level was much higher, according to Groff. What is the beach now was once the ocean floor. Now, as the ocean is eroding away part of the beach, more fossils are being uncovered." 

In addition to her interests in biology, entomology and paleontology, Bzdyk enjoys incorporating her scientific illustration and photography skills in her work.  She served as a scientific illustration intern at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2008.

Bzdyk shares her interests in her blog, "Sentimental Entomologist" (Thoughts about insects, birds, nature and life) at http://sentimentalentomologist.blogspot.com/.

In her blog profile, she describes herself as: "I have always loved insects and I studied them in graduate school. Bees, to be precise. I focused my thesis on Litomegachile, a subgenus of Megachile leafcutter bees. I discovered a new species of bee, and published one paper on these bees before I hung up my scientist hat to become a stay at home mom. But that won't stop insects from finding their way into my life."

She also maintains an Instagram account on her discoveries at https://instagram.com/hastalishunter. 

Meanwhile, Bzdyk's Facebook page, containing the links to the news coverage, is drawing scores of comments, such as:

• "You are so freaking cool. Awesome find."
• "Emily, I just watched the NBC clip. So excited for you!! What an incredible find—more specifically, what an eye you have for treasures below the sand!!!Have a wonderful adventure as you uncover more about your 15 million YO dolphin skull!!!"
• "They even got in a bug joke! Super cool." ("Entomologist by training, but been bitten by a different bug")
• "You're famous now! Can I have your autograph?" 
• "Way to go, Emily! Super exciting!"

Bzdyk is a 2010 alumna of the globally recognized The Bee Course, an annual 10-day workshop sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and held at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz. One of her instructors was noted bee authority Robbin Thorp 1933-2019), UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology. Thorp and  Professor Neal Williams of the Department of Entomology and Nematology served on her guidance committee, along with research entomologist Tom Zavortink of the Bohart Museum.

Her husband, Troy Townsend, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at SMCM, received his doctorate in inorganic chemistry in 2013 from UC Davis. He studied biology and chemistry at SMCM, obtaining his undergraduate degree in 2007. The couple has two daughters, ages 6 and 9.

The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, has announced the themes of its fall open houses:

Sunday, Aug. 27: Praying Mantises

Saturday, Sept. 23: Household Vampires

Saturday, Nov. 4: Monarchs

The open houses, free and family friendly, take place from 1 to 4 p.m. in the insect museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. Parking is free.

At each event, the focus is on the special theme, and there's also a family arts-and-crafts activity. You can see insect displays and hold the Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects from the live petting zoo.

The museum, founded in 1946, is directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey. It houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens. In addition to the petting zoo, it houses a year-around, insect-themed gift shop.

Meanwhile, how many praying mantises (or praying mantids) have you seen this year? Or in past years?

What were they eating?

This mantis is a Stagmomantis limbata, as identified by Lohit Garikipati, a UC Davis alumnus studying for his master's degree at Towson University, Md.

It nailed a cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae. As a caterpillar, P. rapae is a major pest of cole crops such as cabbage. 

This time the menu did not include "bee."

If you've ever seen the nests of the bindweed turret bees, Diadasia bituberculata, and if you've ever tried to photograph these fast-flying bees, you know how speedy they are and how difficult they are to photograph.

So when we viewed KQED's Deep Look video,  “This Fly Torpedoes a Bindweed Bee's Nest,” on YouTube at https://youtu.be/gJHCoP4WqMc, we were totally amazed. It's nothing short of spectacular.

The crew filmed the bees in a nesting area outside the UC Davis Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve, near Winters. 

UC Davis scientists Shawn Christensen, a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the laboratory of community ecologist Rachel Vannette, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, were among those collaborating with the Deep Look production. 

“Shawn has done a lot of work on this bee and with Deep Look, and he also leads our lab's work on Anthophora bomboides, a bumble bee mimic, and studies microbial associates of pollen and solitary bees,” said community ecologist and associate professor Rachel Vannette, a Chancellor's Fellow and vice chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology.

The bees, also known as digger bees or chimney bees, are specialists on bindweed, commonly known as morning glory.  “The females use pollen only from one plant species and are active through the late spring and early summer,” said Vannette, an international leader in microbial ecology who studies interactions between plants, insects and microbes.

Native to California, the bindweed turret bees dig underground nests, many with structures called turrets at the nest entrance. They provision the nests with pollen for their future offspring, and then lay their eggs inside.    

Gabriela Quirós, coordinating producer of Deep Look and producer of this video,  consulted with the UC Davis scientists, obtaining information on the location of the bee nests, as well as information on the brood cells, pollen, and turrets. The Deep Look production includes UC Davis images taken inside a bee nest. 

Quirós also consulted with seven other scientists: Stephen Buchmann, University of Arizona; Andy Calderwood, Ventura County Deputy Agricultural Commissioner;  Neal Evenhuis, Bishop Museum of Honolulu, Hawaii; Paul Havemann, UC Davis Natural Reserve System; Keng-Lou James Hung,  University of Oklahoma; Doug Yanega, UC Riverside, and James Carey, a naturalist who researches and videos bindweed turret bees in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area. 

 Josh Cassidy, the lead producer and cinematographer, filmed all the footage except for the male bees fighting with each other (00;17;14- 00;25;22 in the video).  James Carey, who filmed that incredible footage, “has been regularly monitoring and filming bindweed turret bees since 2016 in Rancho Sierra Vista/Satwiwa, an open space in the Santa Monica Mountains,” Quirós said. “James also filmed the shot at 04;17-04;21 showing nests in the Santa Monica Mountains covered up at the end of the nesting season."

Christensen, a member of the UC Davis Microbiology Graduate Group and anticipating his doctorate in the spring of 2024, is an evolutionary biologist turned microbiologist. Christensen also researches other native bees,  including Melissodes and Colletes.

Vannette focuses her research on the chemical and microbial ecology of plant-pollinator interactions and how microbes influence plant defense and resistance against insect pests.  On its website, the Vannette lab is described as "a team of entomologists, microbiologists, chemical ecologists, and community ecologists trying to understand how microbial communities affect plants and insects--sometimes other organisms, too. We often study microbial communities in flowers, on insects or in soil. We rely on natural history observations, and use techniques from chemical ecology, microbial ecology and community ecology.  In some cases, we study applied problems  with an immediate application including pathogen control or how to support pollinators.”

We're looking forward to more research from the Vannette lab, including their work on Anthophora bomboides, a bumble bee mimic that forms turrets in sand dunes (including the sand cliffs at Bodega Head).

Most people are unaware that there are more than 20,000 known bee species in the world, and 4,000 of them are native to the United States. Of the 20,000 known bee species, 70 percent are ground-nesting bees. California alone is home to more than 1600 species.

And just one of those species is the bindweed turret bee, Diadasia bituberculata, that forages on morning glories. Glory bee...