- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
UC Davis third-year entomology student Sol Wantz, an intern at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, president of the UC Davis Entomology Club, and an undergraduate researcher in the Neal Williams' lab, shed light on "Grasshoppers, Crickets and Katydids" when she delivered a presentation at a recent Bohart Museum open house.
Jerusalem crickets, aka "potato bugs," drew the most interest.
The wingless insects, members of the family, Stenopelmatidae, are omniverous, feeding on both plants and animals, Wantz told the crowd. They are ground-dwelling insects found "mostly in North America, some in Asia and Africa," she said, and they include 7 genera and 67 species.
"They have a unique method of sound production," Wantz said. "They thump their abdomen against the ground to produce a surprisingly loud noise. Their thumping patterns can be used to identify their species."
Sol, who grew up in the Bay Area community of Belmont, is the first entomologist in her family. "My parents and brother all love insects, but I am the only one hoping to make a career out of entomology."
Jerusalem Cricket T-Shirt. The Bohart Museum sells a Jerusalem cricket t-shirt in its gift shop, the result of so many queries beginning with "What is that thing?" Kimsey's humorous answer, "basically Vienna sausages with bitey jaws," appears on the shirt. The art is the work of UC Davis student and Bohart volunteer Allen Chew, and the design by UC Davis doctoral alumnus Professor Fran Keller of Folsom Lake College, a Bohart Museum scientist.
Wantz also discussed grasshoppers and katydids. "The katydid genus Supersonus produces the highest frequency sound of any known animal, up to 150 kHz!" she said. "For reference, humans can only hear between 0 and 20 kHz."
Wantz grew up in the Bay Area community of Belmont. "My parents and brother all love insects, but I am the only one hoping to make a career out of entomology." Her parents, Adam Wantz and Patti Leggett-Wantz, were among those attending the seminar.
The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Bulding, 455 Crocker Lane, is directed by Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; and associate dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Two-Week Public Closure. Due to staff shortage, spring break, and winter quarter finals, the Bohart Museum will be closed to the public (walk-ins) for the next two weeks, Monday, March 18 through Friday, March 29. Previously scheduled group tours will continue to take place those two weeks. For more information, access the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
I did not save a spider today. I did not save one yesterday, either. Or the day before.
That's because I did not see any that needed saving. I frequently see them in our pollinator garden, however, and I always stop to take their image.
Nationaltoday.com tells us: "Save a Spider Day is celebrated on March 14 annually in the U.S. in part to reduce arachnophobia, a fear of spiders, and to conserve spiders. People are usually afraid of spiders, mostly due to their bites which are considered deadly. Although most of the fear is largely unfounded and exaggerated, spiders are incredibly useful to humans as they work as effective pest control among other things. On this day, we look at the many reasons why we should rather trap a spider in a jar and take it outside than kill it. Let us spin webs about spiders and why they should be saved." (See more.)
Did you know that arachnologist Jason Bond of UC Davis is the president-elect of the American Arachnological Society? Professor Bond is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; associate dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; and the newly announced director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, succeeding UC Davis distinguished professor emerita Lynn Kimsey.
I remember asking Professor Bond to provide five good reasons why we should love spiders. (He didn't need to convince me!)
He listed these reasons:
- Spiders consume 400-800 million tons of prey, mostly insects, each year. Humans consume somewhere around 400 million tons of meat and fish each year.
- Spider silk is one of the strongest naturally occurring materials. Spider silk is stronger than steel, stronger and more stretchy than Kevlar; a pencil thick strand of spider silk could be used to stop a Boeing 747 in flight.
- Some spiders are incredibly fast – able to run up to 70 body lengths per second (10X faster than Usain Bolt).
- Although nearly all 47,000-plus spider species have venom used to kill their insect prey, very few actually have venom that is harmful to humans.
- Some spiders are really good parents--wolf spider moms carry their young on their backs until they are ready to strike out on their own; female trapdoor spiders keep their broods safe inside their burrows often longer than one year, and some female jumping spiders even nurse their spiderlings with a protein rich substance comparable to milk.
Another good reason is that spiders are...well...beautiful. Check out this gorgeous redfemured spotted orbweaver, Neoscona domiciliorum, or this eye-popping jumping spider from our pollinator garden. It's their garden, too, and I am just a visitor in their habitat.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology organized and hosted an emeriti celebration honoring professors who recently transitioned to emeriti, he didn't stop when the presentations ended.
Leal invited his biochemistry students that he's teaching this quarter to summarize, in a short video, one of the emerti lectures. "I let them decide which one," he said. "They submitted 45 videos and covered all the speakers." The event, held in the International Center, celebrated 73 faculty who retired in the 2022-2023 cohort. Chancellor Gary May welcomed the crowd, and paid tribute to the new retirees and their accomplishments.
Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus, who has monitored butterfly populations in Central California since 1972, spoke on "Using Butterflies to Understand Biotic Responses to Climate Change." He recently retired from the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology faculty, but continues his research with his former doctoral student, Professor Matt Forister of the University of Nevada. Shapiro maintains a research website at https://butterfly.ucdavis.edu. (Read his emeriti presentation on the March 11th Bug Squad blog)
So which student chose to comment on Shapiro's presentation? A butterfly enthusiast: Elly Fry-Ross, a third-year biochemistry and molecular biology major with a minor in psychology.
And butterflies? "I've always loved butterflies ever since I was little," Elly said, adding that the colors fascinate her. "My parents used to take me to the rainforest exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences to see the butterflies and hopefully have one land on me!"
And every year on campus, Elly attends the butterfly and moth exhibit at the Bohart Museum of Entomology during the annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day and during the campuswide Picnic Day, which this year is Saturday, April 20. (This year the Bohart Museum will be closed on Picnic Day, but will move its activities to a pop-up tent at Briggs Hall.)
Elly's career plans? To enroll in a medical school and become a physician.
See the student videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1LZbErkx28
Emeriti Celebration Links
00:00 Getting ready to start 00:15 Opening remarks, Walter Leal 03:26 Land Acknowledgment 06:35 Chancellor Gary May 8:50 Cal Qualset 11:40 Paul Gepts presentation 42:37 Robert Szabo's impromptu remarks 45:40 Bruce Hammock 47:45 Isaac Pessah 1:15:40 Congratulations on your retirement, Jay Lund! 1:18:12 William (Bill) Lacy 1:22:05 Ines Hernandez-Avila 1:52:59 Ken Burtis 1:57:10 Art Shapiro 2:20:50 Q&A 2:28:50 Art Shapiro's additional remarks 2:29:44 Emeriti Napkin 2:29:57 UCDEA Video Recording Interview
Afternoon Session
https://youtu.be/AMs2Q1bimxA
00:00 Highlights of the luncheon 01:20 Suad Joseph, UCDEA 13:16 Mont Hubbard 16:40 Simon Cherry 51:44 Jeffery Gibeling 56:52 Subhash Risbud 1:23:25 Snapshot with undergraduate students 1:23:48 Clark Lagarias 1:26:19 Anne Britt 2:00:30 Sascha Nicklisch 2:03:53 Ron Tjeerdema 2:36:30 Edward Callahan 2:40:45 Andres Sciolla 3:09:41 Mary Croughan 3:18:10 Walter Leal 3:18:55 After the event
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Registration is underway at https://tinyurl.com/bdhrhurh. You also can access the QR code on the flyer below.
The goal is "to advance the land management aims of local tribal communities and provide a platform to educate about the importance of maintaining wetland biology for climate change, ecological and human health, and vector control,” announced medical entomologist-geneticist Geoffrey Attardo, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
The symposium is sponsored by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the Pacific Southwest Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases, which aims to “strengthen the capacity to prevent and respond to emerging vector-borne diseases in the southwestern United States and Pacific Islands.”
His collaborator is Diana Almendariz, a traditional ecological knowledge specialist and a cultural practitioner of Maidu/Wintun,Hupa/Yurok traditions, heritage, and experiences. She will discuss the precolonial relationships between native peoples and wetlands in Northern California, the impacts of colonization on those relationships, and the application of traditional ecological knowledge practices to restore damaged wetland ecosystems. (See video of her talking about her goals at https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Agenda (The symposium will start promptly at 1 p.m. so attendees are asked to arrive early).
Snacks and drinks will be provided.
1 to 2:30 p.m.: Presentation by Diana Almendariz: "Cultural History and Traditional Ecological Management of Wetlands." She'll be exploring the deep connection between indigenous history and wetland ecosystems.
2:30 to 2:35 p.m.: Break
2:35 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.: Presentation by Geoff Attardo: "Wetland Biology and its Importance for Ecological and Human Health." He'll be discussing wetland biology's significance in climate change, ecology, and vector-borne disease.
3:15 p.m. – 3:20 p.m.: Break
3:20 p.m.– 3:50 p.m.: Tule Weaving Demonstration: Participants will learn traditional Tule weaving techniques, connecting with the material culture of wetland management.
3:50 p.m. – 4 p.m. Break
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.: Question and Answer Session: Attendees can engage with the speakers and delve deeper into the topics discussed.
(For more information, contact Geoffrey Attardo at gmattardo@ucdavis.edu)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The emeriti celebrations are the brainchild of UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology (and former professor and chair of the Department of Entomology). He organizes and hosts the events in the International Center.
The recent emeriti celebration honored 73 faculty who retired in the 2022-2023 cohort. Some discussed their research.
Shapiro titled his talk "Using Butterflies to Understand Biotic Responses to Climate Change."
Shapiro, who holds a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Pennsylvania (1966) and doctorate in entomology from Cornell University (1970), began his UC Davis career in 1972 with the Department of Entomology. He recently retired from the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology faculty, but continues his research with his former doctoral student, Professor Matt Forister of the University of Nevada.
Shapiro maintains a research website at https://butterfly.ucdavis.edu. Some excerpts from his slide show presentation:
How It All Began
In 1972, as a new assistant professor, I inaugurated what was supposed to be a 5-year study of butterfly phenology (seasonality) in an attempt to identify which weather variables had the greatest impact on the life-history “strategies” of species.
Why Five Years?
- That would give me enough variability for statistical analysis, using multivariate methods, and
- Given the time frame for my tenure decision, it would allow me to finish the project in case I had to leave.
- I got tenure. And I kept on gathering data!
Why Keep Going?
If you were here in the early 1970s, you'll recall that the climate was extraordinarily variable. That was great for me; the more year-to-year variation, the more could be teased out statistically about climate-life history correlations.
The variability continued, and the data were so good I didn't dare stop collecting them. What started as a 5-year project became a 45-year project!
At that time there was only one other longterm butterfly monitoring project in the world—in the U.K., started at the same time.
I started out trying to understand the climatic basis for “voltinism”—the number of generations (broods) per year--and the way each species spent what is for it the “adverse season.” But once I had several years of data a new question arose: what determines the “first flight date” (FFD) of a species in a given year?
This Graphic Illustrates Why I Kept Going
Look carefully at it! What pattern strikes your eye?
If you have studied statistics, you may have learned about "time series analysis," which is used to extract information from long series of repeated data or measurements.
An important idea here is the distinction between "signal" and "noise." Noise is short-term variability. Signal is longer-term trend.
There's lots of noise on this annual-rainfall plot, but is there any signal? To answer that, we need to look at more than one time frame. By inspection--the stats bear it out--the first third of this data set was extremely noisy and the last third nearly as much so.
The middle third was much less so. If we calculate means and variances--variance is a measure of dispersion around the mean--the middle third of years was both drier and more predictable than the others. I arrived just in time to exploit the return of the Gold Rush era climatic unpredictability, and I was in Seventh Heaven.
And here is the seasonal snowfall data from Donner Summit, where the pattern is less clear
Those factors are going to vary with altitude and climate
A species occurring here in the High North Coast Range of Colusa County has to deal with snowmelt timing, a factor that will not impinge directly on the same species in the foothills below. When we have multiple years of data for the same locations, we can work out detailed analyses of the factors controlling seasonability.
At low elevations, we find ample evidence of advancing first-flight dates (FFDs)
We have a set of 20 indicator species that have been tracked at all our low-elevation sites throughout the study (we had 23, but 3 have gone regionally extinct, like the Large Marble (Euchloe ausonides).
These two species have been the most responsive to climatic warning in our study: the Red Admiral (Vanessa stalanta) and the Field Skipper (Atalopedes campestris)
Both have fascinating back stories. The Red Admiral, which hibernates as an adult, also occurs in the U.K., where it has ALSO been the most phenologically responsive species to climatic warning. And the Field Skipper, which in the 1920s was confined to Southern California, expanded northward, reaching near the Oregon border by 1980 and subsequently expanding its breeding and overwintering range to Washington State and western Nevada, where it had previously been a rare stray. Its spread is statistically closely matched with climatic trends.
Cabbage White Butterfly
The Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae) has a special place in our study--because we enlist the general public in trying to document its FFD.
We offer a pitcher of beer for the first Pieris rapae collected in Yolo, Solano of Sacramento counties each year. The idea is to get as many people as possible out looking for it. If I begin losing frequently, this says I'm not looking hard enough. Public participation keeps me honest. I've lost 5 times in 45 years. Actually 7, but two finds were ruled inadmissible because the butterflies were caught indoors--both in kitchens. Sometimes a mature caterpillar will be brought in on a head of cabbage, escape undetected, and pupate somewhere. Then, given the higher indoor temperature, it hatches into an adult before any are flying outside. The rules originally didn't specify that the beast had to be caught outdoors. They do now. As sole judge, I simply declared those two indoor bugs ineligible!
So, what have we found?
Near sea level, of the 20 surviving indicator species, 9 are emerging significantly earlier in the 2010s than in the 1970s and 2 are significantly later--but those 2 are in the process of going regionally extinct and their apparent lateness appears to result from the low probability of encountering such rare species. The remainder are not statistically significant, but most are earlier. The average significantly earlier species is emerging 2/3 of a day earlier/year, on average, or a week earlier/decade!
One of the disappearing ones is the Field Crescent (Phyciodes campestris).
One consequence of climate change may be to disrupt butterfly-plant synchrony
Especially for specialist species, if the phenology of the insect responds to climate change differently from that of plants that are essential to its life cycle--be they larval host plants or adult nectar sources--that species is going to be in big trouble!
Many multiple-brooded lowland species change host plant with each generation, making this potentially a complex "many-body problem."
Butterfly seasonality is critically dependent on the amount of snow pack and the timing of snow melt. As a previous graphic showed, there as NOT been a clear trend in total seasonal snowfall at Donner Summit since records have been kept. This is a picture at 7000 feet on June 24 last year. During the preceding drought, there was no snow at all on the ground here by June 24 and many things were happening--flowers blooming, butterflies flying. Analysis of data from our mountain sites thus requires use of variables beyond those taken into account at lower elevations, and is very effort-intensive.
This is the ridgetop between Castle and Basin Peaks at 9000 feet, west slope at left. Note how the snow persists much later on the east slope. This is partly due to the SW wind redistributing snow from the west side to the east, generating massive "cornices" which are slow to melt and would form the nuclei of growing glaciers if favorable conditions persisted several years. Butterfly species that occur on both slopes may emerge weeks later on the east side than on the west slope at the same elevation, producing a prolonged flight season.
These two Coopers occur at 7000 feet, but have no host plant at 9000 feet. We see adults at 9000 feet with increasing frequency, but they cannot breed.
In unflooded places, wet ground and a saturated "boundary layer" of air above the ground are favorable for bacterial and fungal pathogens to proliferate, and overwinter mortality is heavy.
But lack of snow portends a poor butterfly season
But here we see as whatever moisture produced by melting snow is long gone. Butterfly seasons after a poor snow pack tend to end early as the vegetation dries up!
In the high country, heavy snow INCREASES butterfly numbers (and diversity to some extent), and lack of snow INCREASES them.
Because the recent drought went on for over 4 years, the cumulative damage to montane butterfly faunas was far too great to be alleviated by good overwinter survival under one year's heavy snow pack. There were too few animals under the snow at the outset.
Our butterfly faunas have experienced a great deal of climatic variation on multiple time scales. We know from fossil pollen and other indicators that California climates have been exceedingly variable since the end of the Pleistocene ice ages, some 15,000 years ago. Remember our discussion of noise vs. signal? In the short term, a 5-year drought is a critical event. IN the longer term, we know there have been 400-year droughts. We know that the vegetation that exists today--apart from human impacts!--can be seen as a freeze-frame taken from a very long movie. The butterflies we have today are the species that have been able to persist, either by adapting to climate change or by moving around to track favorable conditions--or both. Our studies document their coping mechanisms on a short (45-year) time scale--but no one has ever done that before. They give us data that will help us predict biotic responses to FUTURE climate change--which is essential for their well-being AND OURS.
Morning Session
https://youtu.be/J9bmDZv-WtM
00:00 Getting ready to start 00:15 Opening remarks, Walter Leal 03:26 Land Acknowledgment 06:35 Chancellor Gary May 8:50 Cal Qualset 11:40 Paul Gepts presentation 42:37 Robert Szabo's impromptu remarks 45:40 Bruce Hammock 47:45 Isaac Pessah 1:15:40 Congratulations on your retirement, Jay Lund! 1:18:12 William (Bill) Lacy 1:22:05 Ines Hernandez-Avila 1:52:59 Ken Burtis 1:57:10 Art Shapiro 2:20:50 Q&A 2:28:50 Art Shapiro's additional remarks 2:29:44 Emeriti Napkin 2:29:57 UCDEA Video Recording Interview
Afternoon Session
https://youtu.be/AMs2Q1bimxA
00:00 Highlights of the luncheon 01:20 Suad Joseph, UCDEA 13:16 Mont Hubbard 16:40 Simon Cherry 51:44 Jeffery Gibeling 56:52 Subhash Risbud 1:23:25 Snapshot with undergraduate students 1:23:48 Clark Lagarias 1:26:19 Anne Britt 2:00:30 Sascha Nicklisch 2:03:53 Ron Tjeerdema 2:36:30 Edward Callahan 2:40:45 Andres Sciolla 3:09:41 Mary Croughan 3:18:10 Walter Leal 3:18:55 After the event
