Meet the scientists! Ask questions!

Plans are underway for the 13th annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day, a free "Super Science Day" for the public to see science in action and learn about 10 UC Davis museums and collections.

The event is set for Saturday, Feb. 10, the weekend before Presidents' Day weekend. 

Participating will be:

• Anthropology Museum, 328 Young Hall and grounds, open from noon to 4 p.m.
• Arboretum and Public Garden, Habitat Gardens in the Environmental GATEway, adjacent to the Arboretum Teaching Nursery on Garrod Drive,  10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Bohart Museum of Entomology, Room 1124 and main hall of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Botanical Conservatory, the greenhouses along Kleiber Hall Drive, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• California Raptor Center, 1340 Equine Lane, off Old Davis Road, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 
• Center for Plant Diversity, Katherine Esau Science Hall off Kleiber Hall Drive, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Nematode Collection, Katherine Esau Science Hall, off Kleiber Hall Drive, 10 am. to 2 p.m..
• Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, Room 1394, Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Paleontology Collection, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 1309 Earth and Physical Sciences Building, 434 LaRue Road, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Phaff Yeast Culture Collection, Robert Mondavi Institute Brewery and Food Processing facility, Old Davis Road, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Each year more than 200 volunteers--students, staff and faculty--from across campus help more 4,000 visitors--including other UC Davis students, staff and faculty--"learn about biodiversity through our amazing biological collections," said UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day chair Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum of Entomology.

“Butterflies are treasures, like great works of art. Should we not value them as much as the beauty of Picasso's art or the music of Mozart or the Beatles?—Lincoln Brower (1931-2018), renowned Lepidopterist educated at Princeton and Yale universities. 

The Brower quote appears in a newly published book authored by two renowned scientists who research butterflies. The book, an introduction to butterflies of the world, is a  “must-have” on your bookshelf. 

The book: The Lives of Butterflies: A Natural History of Our Planet's Butterfly Life

The authors: Entomologist David James, associate professor, Washington State University and biologist David Lohman, professor and department chair, the City College of New York.

The publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication date: (U.S.) Jan. 9, 2024. 

James and Lohman describe butterflies, which belong to the order Lepidoptera, as “the colorful ambassadors of the insect world.” But they point out that they are more than just ambassadors. In many cultures, they “symbolize joy, transformation, rebirth, resilience and hope.” 

This 288-page book includes eight chapters: Introduction, Life Histories, Habitats and Resources, Butterfly Populations, Butterfly Seasonality, Defense and Natural Enemies, and Threats and Conservation. The close-up images, many by James, spring to life and really confirm their description of butterflies as the "colorful ambassadors of the world."

This is an easy-to-read, fascinating book, complete with a glossary, a list of butterfly families and resources, and, of course, an index. 

Some tidbits. Did you know that:

• To date, scientists have described some 19,500 species of butterflies throughout the world?
• Scales give butterflies their color? “The colors of each butterfly have evolved to promote protection to the species from predators and to enable the sexes to find and recognize each other,” they write. 
• Butterflies are classified into seven families based on their evolutionary history? And that each family shares physical, behavioral, and ecological features, including body structure, wing characteristics (venation, patterning, and color), host plants, and flight?
• The survival rate of eggs, caterpillars, pupae (chrysalids) is less than 10 percent? What you see are the survivors who have “escaped predation, parasitism, disease and death from unfavorable environmental conditions, including excessive heat, drought, cold, storms, and food shortages,” they relate.  

"What good are butterflies?" the authors ask, answering that they are an ”essential part of most terrestrial ecosystems and an important link in food chains, consuming plants as caterpillars, pollinating flowers as adults, and being consumed by a community of invertebrates and vertebrates." 

Butterflies, it seems, are also the equivalent of the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” an early warning of danger in the ecosystem. Take the issue of the declining population of monarchs. Quoting statistics from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, James and Lohman point out that monarchs have declined by 80 to 90 percent during the past two decades. The decline, they write, "is caused by a combination of habitat loss, pesticide use, and a warming climate.”

If you live in California, you're not allowed to collect or rear monarchs without a scientific permit. 

According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:  "A Scientific Collecting Permit (SCP) is required to handle wild monarchs in California including for educational purposes. It is unlawful to collect, remove from the wild and/or captively rear monarchs in California without an SCP, per California Code of Regulations (CCR), Title 14, section 650.

But the metamorphosis of a butterfly--from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult--is nothing short of magical. As the authors so succinctly point out: "...our children are the future and it is they who will determine the future of butterflies. If a child finds a caterpillar, let them keep it, feed it, and watch it metamorphose.They will remember the experience for the rest of their life, and it will instill in them a love and appreciation for lives smaller than their own."

They add: “It is important that we do not try to excessively regulate to conserve butterfly populations. We need people to be part of the process and be the power on the ground behind conservation programs.”

The book could have easily been called "The Joy of Butterflies." Butterflies fluttering around the garden on a sunburst day, sipping nectar, and then laying eggs on their host plant, bring us great joy. We marvel at the magic, the miracle of it all. 

This book is a great introduction to the lives of butterflies. You'll learn more about their life histories, their habitats, their seasonality, their defensive mechanisms, and what we can do to conserve "the colorful ambassadors of the insect world."

About the authors. James also co-authored Life Histories of Cascadia Butterflies and served as a consultant editor on The Book of Caterpillars. He completed his doctorate on the winter biology of Monarch butterflies and has published more than 200 scientific papers "on a wide range of entomological subjects," the publisher notes.  Lohman, in addition to being a professor and department chair, the City College of New York, is a visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, and a research associate at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and at the National Museum of Natural History in Manila. His research focuses on butterflies in Southeast Asia and the ecology, evolution, and conservation of biodiversity. 

Their passion for butterflies, coupled with their exemplary research, shows. 

Wings up!

Photographer: "Well, hello there, Jumping Spider! What 'cha doing?"

Jumping Spider: "Sunning myself, that's all."

Photographer: "And you're not looking for prey?

Jumping Spider: "I tried to hide in that red zinnia over there, and ambush a syrphid fly but I missed."

Photographer: "You missed?"

Jumping Spider: "I did."

Photographer: "I hear your vision is pretty good. Wikipedia says you jumping spiders have some of the best vision among arthropods and use it in courtship, hunting, and navigation. Says you have four pairs of eyes; three secondary pairs that are fixed and a principal pair that is movable."

Jumping Spider: "Well, I don't need an ophthalmologist, that's for sure. What else does Wikipedia say?"

Photographer: "That your ancestors have been around since the Eocene epoch, about 54 to 42 million year ago, according to the fossil records. You've had a lot of practice jumping around."

Jumping Spider: "Well, I missed that fly. Missed one yesterday, too. And the day before that."

Photographer: "Are you on the no-fly list?"

Jumping Spider: "I'm outta here." 

"Target-site insensitivity (TSI) is an important mechanism of animal resistance to toxins," says nematologist Adler Dillman of the University of California, Riverside. "TSI evolved in parallel in the monarch butterfly and other insects that specialize on milkweeds and is thought to have facilitated sequestration of cardiac glycosides that may protect these insects from predation and parasitism."

Dillman, professor and chair of the UCR Department of Nematology,  will share his research in a presentation titled "Nematode Parasitism of Insects with Toxic Cardenolides," hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology at 4:10 p.m., Monday, Jan. 8.  

His seminar will be in Room 122 of Briggs Hall and also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672. Associate professor and nematologist Shahid Siddique of the Department of Entomology and Nematology is the host. 

Dillman holds a bachelor's degree in microbiology from Brigham Young University (2006) and a doctorate in genetics (2013) from the California Institute of Technology.

The abstract of his UC Davis seminar:  

Known as an excellent investigator and teacher, Dillman won the 2022 UCR Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement; the 2021 Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Society of Nematologists, and a 2020 Outstanding Investigator Award, Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA).

Check out his lab page that details his research and his guest spot on an episode on the podcast Something Offbeat. He he discussed a scientific article on a case of Ophidascaris robertsi infection in a human brain.

Seminar coordinator is Brian Johnson, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. For Zoom technical issues, he may be reached at brnjohnson@ucdavis.edu. The complete list of winter seminars will be posted soon.