- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Urban entomologist Gordon Frankie, professor emeritus and research entomologist in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, will be one of the speakers. He specializes in behavioral ecology of solitary bees in wildland and urban environments and co-authored the celebrated book, California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists: (Heyday Books, 2014) by UC scientists, including the late Robbin Thorp, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. The book is available online from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR).
The Event: Bee Bash
Date: Saturday, April 1
Time: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Place: Annie's Annuals and Perennials, 740 Market Ave, Richmond, Calif.
Cost: Free
This is Annie's Annuals' first-ever Bee Bash. Earlier the plant nursery hosted spectacular butterfly summits. Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, distinguished professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, keynoted the 2018 summit. (Read his remarks on Bug Squad)
The schedule of events:
10 a.m.: Jennifer Jewell: “Invitations From and To the Garden: Cultivating Places & People”
11 a.m.: John Whittlesey: “Bumble Bees--Their Natural History & Designing Gardens to Support Them”
12:30: Tora Rocha and Angela Laws: “Maintaining Native Bee Habitats”
1:30 p.m.: Gordon Frankie: “Characteristics of Pollinator Habitat Gardens”
About the speakers:
Jewell hosts the national award-winning weekly public radio program and podcast, "Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden." She's authored several book, including The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants (Timber Press in 2020); Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast (Timber Press, May 2021); and What We Sow, to be published later this year by Timber Press.
Whittlesey is a nurseryman, garden designer, and author of The Plant Lovers Guide to Salvias, published by Timber Press in 2014.
Rocha is the founder and leader of the Pollinator Posse, a volunteer group based in Oakland that creates “pollinator corridors” in and around the Bay Area. (Check out the Pollinator Posse Facebook page.)
Laws, a community ecologist, holds the title of Endangered Species Conservation Biologist, Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation.
California Bees and Blooms is the work of Frankie, Thorp, Barbara Ertter of UC Berkeley, and Rollin Coville, a UC Berkeley doctoral alumnus and photographer. Thorp, 1933-2019 (see tribute) also co-authored Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University, 2014).
Want a card set of California's common bees to help you identify them and learn more about them? The newly published (second edition) card set, "Common Bees in California," is available on the UC ANR catalog. From the website: "Nearly 1600 species of native bees can be found in California's rich ecosystems; this colorful pocket field guide will help you identify bees commonly found in urban gardens and landscapes." Frankie is one of the co-authors.
Resource:
Native Bees Are a Rich Natural Resource in Urban California Gardens (California Agriculture, Volume 63, Number 3)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Winokur delivered her presentation on “Thermal Preferences of Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes.”
Ae. aegypti, commonly known as the yellow-fever mosquito, can spread Zika, dengue, chikungunya, Mayaro, yellow fever and other viruses. Originating in Africa, it is now widespread in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions throughout the world.
Winokur's abstract: “Mosquito-borne pathogen transmission models used to inform control decisions are only applicable if we incorporate the temperatures mosquitoes experience. However, mosquito thermal preferences are not well resolved. We studied Aedes aegypti thermal preferences and found that female Ae. aegypti generally avoided temperatures >30°C on a gradient in the lab, and chose relatively cooler microhabitats in the field as ambient temperature increased. Incorporating these preferences could improve the accuracy of transmission models for Ae. aegypti-borne viruses.”
The Hollandsworth Prize memorializes Gerald Hollandsworth, a past president of the West Central Mosquito and Vector Control Association who lost his battle to cancer.
A UC Davis alumna, Winokur received her doctorate in entomology, with a designated emphasis in the biology of vector-borne diseases, in November 2022, studying with Professor Barker of the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine.
She delivered her exit seminar, as part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology weekly seminars, in October on "Temperature Drives Transmission of Mosquito-borne Pathogens: Improving Entomological Estimates for Aedes aegypti-borne Virus Transmission Risk."
As a postdoc in the Barker lab, Winokur is working with VectorSurv (https://vectorsurv.org/), and has a fellowship from Pacific Southwest Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases (https://pacvec.us/), focused on "Enriching Practical Learning Resources for Entomological, Medical, and One-Health Curricula."
Olivia received her bachelor's degree in May of 2015 from Cornell University where she was an interdisciplinary studies major (environmental effects on human health). She enrolled in the UC Davis graduate program in 2016.
At UC Davis, Winokur served as the 2019-2020 president of the Entomology Graduate Student Association and as a 2020-2022 committee member of the UC Davis Entomology Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging. She co-founded the Girls' Outdoor Adventure in Leadership and Science (GOALS) in 2017 and continues to serve in leadership roles. GOALS is a free two-week summer science program for high school girls and gender expansive youth from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM fields. They learn science, outdoors skills, and leadership hands-on while backpacking in Sequoia National Park.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The UC Davis professor and scores of other taxonomists would have been amazed at all "the undescribed species" that emerged from the arts-and-crafts activity at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on "Many-Legged Wonders" on March 18. Families created new species of arachnids, myriapods, isopods, tardigrades and other critters with colorful modeling clay and equally colorful pipe cleaners.
Doctoral candidate Emma Jochim of the Bond lab originated the clay project. UC Davis students staffed the arts-and-crafts table.
The creativity, color and camaraderie proved captivating. Lots of legs, no legs, red, blue, green...is that what I think it is?
The hierarchical classification probably went like this:
Kingdom? Check!
Phylum? Check!
Class? Check!
Order? Wait, I'm not sure!
Family? Well, it's part of some family.
Genus? I am not a genius--please tell me!
Species? Ummm....you decide!
At the open house, the 350-plus visitors learned about a wide array of critters, including spiders, scorpions, vinegaroons, centipedes, millipedes, myriapods, isopods and more. The "more" included tenants of the Bohart Museum's live petting zoo of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, tarantulas and stick insects.
Meanwhile, the family arts-and-crafts activity, a traditional part of the Bohart Museum's open houses, drew both experienced and budding artists throughout the afternoon.
The Bohart Museum, dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus the live petting zoo, and an insect-themed gift shop. Founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor Richard Bohart, it is open to the public Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m. More information is available on the Bohart website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
The Bohart Museum is now preparing for the annual campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 15. This year is the 109th annual.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Scientists also encouraged the visitors to touch or handle a few of the live specimens, including millipedes, Madagascar hissing cockroaches and walking sticks.
Doctoral candidates Emma Jochim and Xavier Zahnle of the Jason Bond arachnology lab opened the event with a 30-minute mythbusting session moderated by doctoral student Iris Quayle of the Bond lab. (See the UC Davis Entomology and Nematology website for which myths they busted, and watch their YouTube-posted video on brown recluse spiders.)
The trio studies with major professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Following the mythbusting, Jochim, Zahnle and Quayle and researcher and project scientist Jim Starrett of the Bond lab (he holds a doctorate in genetics, genomics and bioinformatics from UC Riverside), teamed with Davis students to showcase critters. Elijah Shih, a third-year UC Davis transfer student who plans to pursue a career in veterinary medicine, displayed his isopods. Bohart Museum research associate Brittany Kohler, the "zookeeper" of the Bohart's live petting zoo, provided tarantulas, black widows, a brown widow, a centipede, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and ironclad beetles, among others.
The tarantulas sport such names as "Princess Herbert," "Peaches" and "Coco McFluffin." Starrett wowed the crowd at two "feeding times" for Princess Herbert. The menu? Crickets, which she instantly devoured. Princess Herbert, the Bohart Museum's oldest tenant in its petting zoo, is a Brazilian salmon-pink bird-eating tarantula (Lasiodora parahybana).
Kim Crawford of Cameron Park and her daughter, Emma, 10, loved the millipedes. Valentina Leijja, 8, of Mexico City, attending with her parents, Martha Leija and Mario Preciado, asked scores of questions of doctoral student Emma Jochim and then visited the Lepitoptera section to see the butterflies and moths, being shown by Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas and Kohler.
Meanwhile, the arts-and-crafts table came to life with newly sculptured arachnids, carefully modeled of clay. (More on pending Bug Squad posts.)
Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator, estimated that more than 350 attended. "The open house featured arachnids, myriapods, isopods and even some tardigrades (also known as water bears)," she said.
A tardigrade scupture, the work of Solomon Bassoff, fronts the entrance to the Academic Surge Building. The Bohart Museum houses one of the world's largest collections of tardigrades. The current collection includes some 25,000 slide-mounted specimens. In a recent newsletter, Bohart Museum director Lynn Kimsey described the water bear as “one of the most peculiar and indestructible groups of animals known. The microscopic and nearly indestructible tardigrade can survive being heated to 304 degrees Fahrenheit or being chilled for days at -328 F. And, even if it's frozen for 30 years, it can still reproduce." See video on EurekAlert.
The Bohart Museum, part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus the live petting zoo, and a gift shop stocked with insect-themed books, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, hoodies and more. Founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor Richard Bohart, it is dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity." It is open to the public Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m. More information is available on the Bohart website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
The Bohart Museum is now preparing for the annual campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 15. This year is the 109th annual.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's a myth. There are no established populations of Loxoceles reclusa in California, doctoral candidates Emma Jochim and Xavier Zahnle of the Jason Bond arachnology lab related during their 30-minute mythbusting at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, "Many Legged-Wonders," on Saturday, March 18. First-year doctoral student Iris Quayle of the Bond lab moderated the session.
They study with their major professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Jochim related that a person claiming to have been bitten by a brow recluse spider in California may have recently returned from a state where they are established or that they handled one that was shipped from that area.
That brings to mind the research of Rick Vetter of UC Riverside and his piece on "Myth of the Brown Recluse: Fact, Fear and Loathing."
"This website presents evidence for the lack of brown recluse spiders as part of the Californian spider fauna. Unfortunately, this contradicts what most Californians believe; beliefs that are born out of media-driven hyperbole and erroneous, anxiety-filled public hearsay which is further compounded by medical misdiagnoses. Although people are free to disagree, this opinion has come about after more than two decades of constant research resulting in many publications in the scientific and medical literature."
Vitter goes on to say: "Spiders are one group of arthropods that are very well known by the common person yet are terribly misunderstood; because of the rare occasion of a deleterious venom incident, almost all spiders are lumped into the category of 'squish first and ask questions later.' There are remarkably few spiders in California that are capable of causing injuries via biting. Overall, spiders are beneficial to humans in that they eat many pestiferous insects that either infest our foods (many phytophagous insects), are vectors of disease (flies, mosquitoes) or are aesthetically-challenged (cockroaches, earwigs). Unfortunately, humans have a low tolerance for spiders in their homes, either because spiders are symbols of danger, unkemptness or arachnophobia. One of the first steps one should take in dealing with these critters should be to identify them properly before blasting them with pesticide and/or getting hysterical."
Meanwhile, listen to UC Davis arachnologists:
Said one attendee: "Dr. Rick Vetter at U. C. Riverside fought the battle for the truth for decades and finally pretty much threw up his hands in defeat. He just couldn't get the media or California medical profession to stop claiming the Brown Recluse is HERE and diagnosing every little spot or open sore as a spider bite. My opinion is that people LIKE to think they were bitten by a brown recluse and wear it as a badge of honor. So much more thrilling than saying bacteria infection.”
