- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
How much do you know about nematodes?
What would you like to know?
You'll be able to learn more about both, plus fleas, mites, lice, bed bugs, botflies and other critters, when the Bohart Museum of Entomology of UC Davis hosts an open house on “Parasite Palooza: Botflies, Fleas and Mites, Oh, My” from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 22 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane.
It's free and open to the public. You can meet scientists one-on-one and ask questions.
Senior public health biologist Mike Niemala of the California Department of Public Health will participate in the three-hour open house, discussing ticks and other health issues, and handing out fliers and brochures. He received his master of science degree from UC Davis.
What are nematodes? That's a question often asked of nematologists.
"Nematodes are a large group (phylum) of roundworms," Camp said. "Most nematodes are not parasites, but people may be familiar with some of the parasitic species. Some well-known nematode parasites of humans are pinworm, Ascaris, hookworm, and guinea worm. Dogs and cats can also become infected with nematodes including heartworm, hookworm, or Toxocara."
Camp, who grew up in rural northern Indiana, received her bachelor's degree in biology in 2005 from the University of Chicago and her master's degree in biology in 2007 from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C. As a UC Davis graduate student, she focused on the evolutionary relationships and genetic diversity of Baylisascaris procyonis, a nematode parasite of raccoons. Her career plans? Researcher in infectious diseases or genetics/genomics or a science communicator.
"I first became interested in parasites during my undergrad degree at the University of Chicago," Camp said. "My specific interest in nematode parasites developed when I read some of Dr. Nadler's work on the evolutionary relationships of nematodes for an invertebrate biology class. Nematodes are an amazing phylum of organisms- they exist in almost every known environment on the planet, and different species eat everything from bacteria and fungi to plant and animal tissue. I find parasites particularly fascinating, because they are dependent on another organism (or organisms) for part or all of their life cycle."
The Bohart Museum event is free and open to the public. For the family craft activity, attendees will attach stickers of parasites on origami paper hats.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, is a world-renowned insect museum that houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It also maintains a live “petting zoo,” featuring walking sticks, Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tarantulas. A 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, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The colorful butterfly seemed to flutter from a blanket that Solano County 4-H'er Erica Lull was sewing last Saturday, Jan. 14, at a “Cuddle Me Close” community service project.
Erica, 14, a junior leader in the Tremont Countywide 4-H Service Learning Project, has made 700 blankets for new nursing mothers. The soft, flannel blankets or "cover-ups" provide privacy to breast-feeding mothers and their newborns.
Audrey Ritchey, an x-ray technician at the North Bay Medical Center, Fairfield, who triples as president of the Solano County 4-H Leaders' Council, leader of "Cuddle Me Close," and as a co-community leader of the Tremont 4-H Club, Dixon, launched the service project in 2013.
Erica took to it like a needle to thread.
“Erica has made about 60 percent of the blankets,” Ritchey said. “She's amazing.”
Ritchey, a nine-year 4-H adult volunteer (aritchey4h@gmail.com) says the six youngsters in her community-service project not only learn how to sew, but learn how to connect with one another and how to budget while fulfilling a public service need. The project, Ritchey said, “promotes mother-baby bonding through skin-to-skin contact, supports positive and physical and mental development, is healthier for mother and child and is inexpensive in comparison to formula."
Studies show that breast milk contains antibodies that help babies fight off viruses and bacteria and lowers the risk of allergies, ear infections, respiratory illnesses and bouts of diarrhea, said Ritchey, adding that breastfed babies also have a lower risk of childhood obesity.
Last Saturday Erica was sewing blankets during the Solano County 4-H Project Skills Day, held at the Community Presbyterian Church, Vallejo. Earlier she delivered a presentation on “The Digestive System of Chickens”--and judges awarded her a showmanship pin, signifying excellence. Then she headed upstairs to the "Cuddle Me Close" demonstrations, to sew and to teach other 4-H'ers how to sew.
Does she like butterflies? Insects? She does. “When I was a little girl, I used to be obsessed with bugs,” she acknowledged.
Odds are that the butterfly blankets she's making—the patterns also depict colorful flowers and cuddly animals—will be treasured by the new moms. “I was told that one mom started to cry when she got the cover-up,” Ritchey said. “She stated that it was the only thing she had for her baby.”
But back to the butterflies. They glowed red and green. Is this butterfly "real," that is, does it have a counterpart in nature? Could Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, identify it? Shapiro, who has studied the butterflies of central California for more than four decades, maintains a website on butterflies at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/, where he records population trends. A noted Lepitopderist, he authored A Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions, illustrated by Tim Manolis, and published in 2007 by the University of California Press. The book covers more than 130 species.
Shapiro checked out the red and green butterfly. "Nobody I know," he said. "(It's) one God hasn't gotten around to creating yet!"
Or, one Shapiro hasn't discovered yet...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No rapae today!
That's the latest report from Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis.
He's sponsoring his annual Butterfly-for-a-Beer Contest and it's Day 13, Friday the 13th. The first person who collects the first (verified) cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) of the year in the three-county area of Yolo, Solano and Sacramento wins a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.
Shapiro launched the contest in 1972 to draw attention to Pieris rapae and its first flight. The butterfly is emerging earlier and earlier as the regional climate has warmed, said Shapiro, who does long-term studies of butterfly life cycles and climate. "Such studies are especially important to help us understand biological responses to climate change. The cabbage white is now emerging a week or so earlier on average than it did 30 years ago here."
Shapiro traditionally wins his own contest, often finding his quarry near a railroad embankment in West Sacramento,Yolo County. He traveled there today and reported back:
"After a chilly morning, a sunny and seasonably mild (58 F) afternoon in West Sacramento with no wind in the lee of the railroad embankment. Brassica kaber, campestris and tournefortii and Raphanus are blooming, but not heavily yet. A lot of ponding and mud--one has to plod slowly and heavily to avoid slipping!...I stayed through the heat of the day, though I did not expect to find P. rapae out, and I didn't. No Leps (Lepidopterans) at all, and oddly no honey bees; just a variety of Diptera out and about. The outlook to the end of the month looks wet, wet, wet."
UC Davis ecology graduate student Jacob Montgomery won last year, catching a female cabbage white butterfly on Jan. 16 on his lavender plant just outside his front door in west Davis, Yolo County. Since 1972, the first flight has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20.
The professor, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Entomological Society and the California Academy of Sciences, monitors the butterfly population of Central California and maintains a butterfly website, where he records his research. He is the author of A Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions, published in 2007 by the University of California Press.
The cabbage white butterfly inhabits vacant lots, fields and gardens where its host plants, weedy mustards, grow. What does it look like? It's a white butterfly with black dots on the upperside (which may be faint or not visible in the early season). It inhabits vacant lots, fields and gardens where its host plants, weedy mustards, grow.
The contest rules include:
- It must be an adult (no caterpillars or pupae) and be captured outdoors.
- It must be brought in alive to the department office, 2320 Storer Hall, UC Davis, during work hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with the full data (exact time, date and location of the capture) and your name, address, phone number and/or e-mail. The receptionist will certify that it is alive and refrigerate it. (If you collect it on a weekend or holiday, keep it in a refrigerator; do not freeze. A few days in the fridge will not harm it.)
- Shapiro is the sole judge.
Shapiro, who is in the field more than 200 days of the year, usually returns to his Storer Hall office with the first cabbage white of the year. He has been defeated only four times since 1972. Three winners were his own graduate students: Adam Porter defeated him in 1983; and Sherri Graves and Rick VanBuskirk each won in the late 1990s.
So, no rapae, no beer. The search continues for the first cabbage white of 2017. Rapae on!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's way we were excited to see National Public Radio's Nell Greenfieldboyce generate a recent piece on "Bugs Abound: If You Think the Skies Are Crowded, You Have No Idea."
She touched on a newly published study in the journal Science, which found that more than 3 trillion migrating insects fly over south-central England each year.
More than 3 trillion!
Dingle, author of the popular textbook, Animal Migration: the Biology of Life on the Move (Oxford University Press), is one of the world's experts on animal migration. National Geographic featured Dingle in its cover story on Great Migrations in November 2010. LiveScience interviewed him for its November 2010 piece on Why Do Animals Migrate?
Dingle agrees that many migrating insects receive little attention. "Certain insects like locusts and the monarch butterfly, have gotten a great deal of attention," he told Greenfieldboyce. "But perhaps because of all that attention on these big charismatic insects, the huge migrations that occur in lots and lots of other insects, all the way down to tiny aphids, are certainly not as well known by the public, and may not even be as well known by scientists."
And scores of butterfly enthusiasts flock there, too, to admire, photograph and monitor them. It's good to see the increasing human population banding together to help save the declining monarch population.
As for the NPR piece, Greenfieldboyce gave a little press to one of the least publicized insects, the marmalade hoverfly, which she described as a "a small, insignificant-looking creature."
But don't consider the hoverfly "inconsequential." It's not only a long-range migrant that travels at great speeds and for hundreds of kilometers in a single flight, but it's a beneficial bug: it eats aphids and pollinates crops as well as wildflowers. It winters in the Mediterranean but returns to England in the spring.
Check out the paper in Science, "Mass Seasonal Bioflows of High-Flying Insect Migrants," for more information on migrating insects and you'll see why the NPR headlined its piece "Bugs Abound: If You Think the Skies Are Crowded, You Have No Idea."
The researchers' 10-year project of monitoring the migration of large and small insects over the southern United Kingdom yields incredible information. That's why we now know what they know--that 3 trillion of these migrating insects fly the friendly--and not so friendly skies--every year.
It's getting pretty crowded there.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's the sound of success.
It finally happened. The beleaguered rusty-patched bumble bee, Bombus affinis, is now listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an endangered species, the first bee in the continental United States to be listed under the Endangered Species Act.
So many folks helped spearhead this project. Bumble bee expert Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, and co-author of Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University) helped sound the alarm.
Thorp co-authored a 2010 petition seeking an endangered status for Bombus affinis. The Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation, along with Thorp and others, submitted the petition to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013. In 2015, agency officials agreed to consider it. In 2016, they proposed protection. Then on Jan. 10, 2017, the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the rusty-patched bumble bee as an endangered species. (See Xerces press release.)
Other key players in making this all happen included natural history photographer/filmmaker Clay Bolt and his friends at the Day's Edge Productions, which created the award-winning film, A Ghost in the Making: Searching for the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee with support from the Xerces Society and others. The result: nearly 200,000 persons signed a petition seeking endangered status for the bee.
The rusty-patched bumble bee was once found in 28 states in the eastern and upper midwest United States, along with the District of Columbia and two Canadian provinces. Since the late 1990s, however, its population has declined by nearly 90 percent, according to Sarina Jepsen, director of endangered species for the Xerces Society.
"The rusty patched bumble bee is threatened with extinction," Jepsen wrote in the petition. "Possible causes of its decline include pathogens, habitat loss or degradation, pesticide use, and climate change. Reduced genetic diversity, which could be a result of declining, isolated populations caused by any of the aforementioned factors, likely also threatens this species with extinction. Furthermore, existing regulations are wholly inadequate to protect this species."
Jepsen described bumble bees as "iconic pollinators that contribute to our food security and the healthy functioning of our ecosystems."
Enter Clay Bolt who set out to find, photograph and document the critically imperiled bumble bee. He moved from state to state, habitat to habitat, museum to museum, meeting with scientists and conservationists. Finally, he found the living breathing rusty-patched bumble bee in the University of Wisconsin arboretum. You can see his excitement and learn about his incredible journey in the amazing Ghost in the Making.
Bolt related that he first became aware of the plight of the rusty-patched bumble bee while looking at specimens in the collection at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "There was a stuffed passenger pigeon in the same room, frozen in time, but no longer among us in nature," he told us. "It was once the most numerous bird on the planet and then it was no more. This has always haunted me. I decided then that I had to do everything in my power to attempt to bring more attention to this beautiful little bee before it went the same way."
With friends from Day's Edge Productions and the Xerces Society, Bolt made the film about the bee, helped develop the petition, and spoke on Capitol Hill and other high-profile events to spotlight its plight. "Through all of this, I kept thinking back to seeing this amazing little animal in the field," Bolt said. "Watching it fly. Witnessing it do what it had been doing for thousands of years. It had no idea that its fate was in our hands."
"I am just so encouraged and grateful for the public's outcry in support of this species," Bolt said. "This was an effort that would have never been possible without so many people working together to see it through. I am grateful that my images played even a small part in this historic occasion. These are the moments that make all of the hours of work and worry worthwhile."
One observation in Ghost in the Making particularly resonates: "We spend so much time and effort making life better for ourselves, the least we can do is make life possible for this bee." The film advocates that we all do our part: provide flowers, a safe place to nest, and a pesticide-free environment.
How many other bumble bees should be listed as endangered? "That's difficult to answer, mainly due to a lack of good information," said Thorp. "Most of our bumble bee species seem to be doing well according to our most recent assessments. But at least one eastern cuckoo bumble bee may be declining because its host bumble bees have declined. About a quarter of our bumble bees may be at risk, but we need more information. One that used to be common here in the Central Valley, Bombus sonorus, basically disappeared from our area about a dozen years ago, but it is doing well in the southern part of its range in southern California and Arizona."
Meanwhile the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing three other species of bees for possible inclusion as endangered. They include Franklin's bumble bee, the western bumble bee and the yellow-banded bumble bee.
Thorp, who has been monitoring Franklin's bumble bee, Bombus franklini, since 1998 (See Dec. 12 Bug Squad), hasn't seen the bumble bee in 10 years within its five-county range of southern Oregon and northern California. He doesn't want to say the "E" word--extinct. Not yet. He thinks this may be the year he'll find it.
This week, however, is a cause for celebration. The rusty-patched bumble bee is now an endangered species, in danger of extinction, and we can now begin the process to protect it and recover it.