- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It was--and is--sheltering at the UC Davis Bee Haven. The half-acre garden, open to the public from dawn to dusk, is located on Bee Biology Road, next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Honey Bee Research Facility, west of the central campus. (Admission and parking are free.)
"That Wasp Guy" Sloan Tomlinson, a Facebook and Instagram friend, identified the native wasp. He identifies himself on Instagram as an "artist, photographer, researcher, educator. sharing the beauty of the most-maligned insects: wasps. Wasp t-shirts, stickers, art prints, and posters." If you like wasps--and you should--you'll want to follow him.
"This time of year it would be a foundress for sure," said Tomlinson, who resides in Hatfield, Mass. "It's a cool species. We sadly don't have them out here in the east."
"I feel like they're less common," he added. "Likely displaced by P. dominula."
P. aurifer is found in the western part of North America, from southern Canada through the United States to northern Mexico, according to Wikipedia. It's been recorded in California, Arizona, Colorado, far west North Dakota, western South Dakota, Idaho, western most Kansas, Montana, western Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, far west Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (a single record in the far northwest).
"Aurifer" is a Latin word meaning gold-bearing. Simple and descriptive, right?
Which brings us to Tomlinson's Happy New Year video of "fun" scientific names. "Today I wanted to focus just on scientific names! There are a lot of fun names out there, but binomials often are scary and seem unapproachable. Like the soldier fly, Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides, definitely a mouthful! But you probably already know loads of scientific names! Many common names for plants are their genus names for example (Amaryllis, Aloe, Aster, Cannabis, Citrus, Echinacea, Eucalyptus, Iris, Hydrangea, Geranium, Sassafras, etc), and if you ask any kid, they can probably rattle off tons of scientific names, as no dinosaur has a common name! Tyrannosaurus rex is a binomial! (Tyrannosaurs is a genus, rex is the species). People are often more familiar with vertebrate animals than they are insects, but there are only around 54,000 species of vertebrates (including all the fish!) so a lot have common names, but there are over 1,000,000 species of insect, with likely many many more we still haven't discovered, so having them all have a binomial AND a common name is insane and impossible. Plus, some are fun! If you can't read the LOTR wasps in that part they all belong to the genus Shireplitis and contain the species S. bilboi, S. frodoi, S. meriadoci, S. peregrini, S. samwisei, and S. tolkieni! Happy New Year everyone."
Does Menke still have that license plate? He does. In an Aug. 27th email, he wrote: "I still have the license plate but it is not on my car."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Next week promises to be memorable week for entomologists at the University of California, Davis.
Oh, how they wish they could clone themselves so they could be in two places at the same time: in San Diego and on the UC Davis campus.
First off is the 103rd annual meeting of the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA) meeting in San Diego, which begins Sunday, March 31 and ends Wednesday, April 3. It will take place in the Hyatt Regency Mission bay Spa and Marina. (See schedule.)
Then there's the Entomology Alumni Reunion, with the participants arriving Sunday, March 31 and conferring all-day Monday and Tuesday, April 1-2 for camaraderie and tours. (See schedule.)
PBESA Meeting
At the PBESA meeting, four UC Davis entomologists will be honored at the awards ceremony on Tuesday from 1 to 1:30 in the Regatta Pavillion:
- Molecular geneticist/physiologist Joanna Chiu, associate professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who will receive the Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology Award
- Pollination ecologist Neal Williams, professor, the Plant-Insect Ecosystems AwardD
- Doctoral candidate Brendon Boudinot of the Phil Ward lab, the John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Award; and
- Postdoctoral researcher Jessica Gillung (she received her doctorate from UC Davis in Decemberr, studying with major professor Lynn Kimsey), the Early Career Award. Gillung joined the Bryan Danforth Lab, Cornell University in January. (See news story.)
Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp of UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology will be honored at a special PBESA symposium, set from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2 in Bayview 1. Neal Williams is organizing the event. (See news story.)
The national championship UC Linnaean Games Team, comprised of UC Berkeley and UC Davis graduate students, is scheduled to compete, with the winner and second-place finisher qualified to compete in the nationals, to be held during the Entomological Society of America meeting in November in St. Louis. The UC team includes captain Ralph Washington Jr., who holds an entomology degree from UC Davis and is now a graduate student at UC Berkeley; and doctoral candidate Brendon Boudinot and graduate student Zachary Griebenow, both of the Phil Ward lab, UC Davis. The Linnaean Games are lively college bowl-style competitions on entomological facts played between university-sponsored student teams. (See news story)
Entomology Alumni Reunion
The third UC Davis Entomology Alumni Reunion is co-chaired by Will Crites and Arnold Menke. Forensic entomologist and adjunct professor Robert Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology will keynote the banquet on Tuesday, April 2 in the Walter A. Buehler Alumni Center. He is known as "The Fly Man of Alcatraz" for his entomological research on the island. (See news story.) Kimsey serves as the advisor of the UC Davis Entomology Club.
The alumni will tour several campus facilities, including the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Facility, the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, and the Shrem Museum of Art. (See updated agenda)
Department One of Best in the World
The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology is one of the best in the world. The most recent rankings by the Times Higher Education's Center for World University Rankings shows UC Davis as No. 7 globally.
Current figures:
Number of entomology faculty: 19
Number of nematology faculty: 3
Number of students enrolled in the doctorate program: 33
Number of students in the master's program: 4
Students enrolled in the entomology major: 38
Number of staff: 73
New to the department, as of March, is nematologist and assistant professor Shahid Siddique, from Iowa State University's Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology. His areas of expertise include molecular plant-nematode interactions, plant parasitic nematodes.
Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, joined the faculty in mid-2018. He is known for his expertise on spiders.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The third UC Davis Entomology Alumni Reunion is set Sunday, March 31 through Tuesday, April 2. Most of the events will take place in the Walter A. Buehler Alumni Center on Alumni Drive, UC Davis campus.
Co-chairing the event are Will Crites and Arnold Menke.
Forensic entomologist and adjunct professor Robert Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology will keynote the banquet on Tuesday, April 2 in the Walter A. Buehler Alumni Center. He is known as "The Fly Man of Alcatraz" for his entomological research on the island. (See news story.) Kimsey serves as the advisor of the UC Davis Entomology Club.
The participants will tour several campus facilities, including the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Facility, the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, and the Shrem Museum of Art.
Sunday, March 31 is the day of arrival.
Reservations must be made by Sunday, March 24 with Carrie Cloud, director of programs and events, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, at crcloud@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-2120.
