- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The latest edition of Fremontia, a publication of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS), is devoted to the state's declining prairies and grasslands.
"Humans are largely responsible" for this decline, writes editor Bob Hass. "We exploit natural resources for basic human needs and for consumable. But too few of us pay attention to the effect our actions have on the environment. Fewer still make the connection between an eroding environment (polluted water, air, soil from toxic chemicals) and cumulative impacts to human health (cancer, birth and immune system defects) or to plants and animals (disease, acid rain, increased toxins accumulating in the food chain)."
So true. And as Hass says "Nature cannot protect itself from what we humans do to the environment, but we can."
We were especially interested in the article, "Native Bees and Flowers in California Prairies and Grasslands" by native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis and a 35-year member of CNPS.
He quoted John Muir in his book, The Mountains of California: "When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its entire length...the Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that in waking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step."
Not so today! No wonder the bees are suffering from malnutrition (not to mention other issues).
Thorp calls attention to some of the flowers found today in the Central Valley grasslands. "Our state flower, the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) produces no nectar, but only pollen as a reward to bees...Generalist bumble bees (Bombus spp.) and sweat bees (Halictus spp.) are the main visitors, along with small pollen feeding beetles."
Thorp illustrated his article with a beautiful photo by Davis plant/insect enthusiast and photographer Gary Zamzow of the yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) foraging for pollen on a California poppy. Thorp also included several other photos.
No doubt you've seen honey bees foraging on California poppies, but as Thorp says, poppies provide no nectar, only pollen.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Heliconius butterflies will take center stage, so to speak, when James Mallet of Harvard University presents a lecture at the University of California, Davis on Wednesday, Nov. 28.
Mallet will discuss “Hybridization, Mimicry and the Origin of Species in Heliconius Butterflies” from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Addition (LSA). The talk, open to all interested persons, is part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology’s fall seminar series.
The adults’ brightly colored wing patterns signal their distastefulness to potential predators.
“It is a seductive idea that species are independent evolutionary units,” says Mallet, whose research focuses on the evolution and genetics of Amazonian butterflies. “Natural hybridization is rare in nature on a per-individual basis, but it may affect many species. Brightly colored Heliconius butterflies engage in Müllerian mimicry of other species. Although most of this mimicry is due to adaptive reconstruction of similar patterns, we've long suspected that color patterns are exchanged among some closely related species that hybridize occasionally in nature.”
Müllerian mimicry, named after German naturalist Fritz Müller, occurs when two or more poisonous species, “that may or may not be closely related and share one or more common predators, have come to mimic each other’s warning signals” (Wikipedia).
“We have recently shown that genomic regions that determine mimicry have been exchanged repeatedly among species to form new, adaptive combinations,” Mallet says. “Through their joint effects on mating behavior and signaling to predators, these novel color patterns are also involved in triggering evolution of new species.”
Heliconius, a widespread genus, is distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the New World, from South America to the southern United States. The larvae eat passion flower vines (Passifloraceae).
Before accepting a position as a distinguished lecturer earlier this year at Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Mallet was a professor of biodiversity at University College London (UCL) from 1992 to 2012. He describes himself as an avid natural historian and a Darwin enthusiast. He has led courses in tropical ecology in southern Europe, Africa and across South America.
Mallet served as a Helen Putnam Fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study from 2009 to 2010. Among his many appointments, Mallet is an honorary research fellow at the Natural History Museum, London, and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama.
Mallet received his bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1976 from Oxford University; his master’s degree in applied entomology from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1978; and his doctorate in zoology at the University of Texas, Austin in 1984. He was a NERC Fellow (Natural Environment Research Council Fellowship) in genetics and biometry from 1985 to 1988 at UCL before joining Mississippi State University's Department of Entomology as an assistant professor.
Mallet will be introduced by medical entomologist/professor Greg Lanzaro of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
Plans call for Mallet's lecture to be videotaped and then posted at a later date on UCTV.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you're looking for something to do on Sunday, Nov. 18--something both fun and educational--you'll want to attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology’s open house.
The theme is "Insect Societies," featuring honey bees, ants and termites.
The event, free and open to the public, takes place from 1 to 4 p.m. in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge building on Crocker Lane, formerly California Drive, on the UC Davis campus. The nearest intersection is LaRue Road.
Senior museum scientist Steve Heydon says the bee displays will include a bee observation hive from the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility; a cartoon of a waggle/round/break dance created by former UC Davis student and cartoonist Beth Urabe; and a photo of an unusual bee sting captured by yours truly--that would be me--that went viral.
Billy Synk, staff research associate at the Laidlaw facility, will provide the bee observation hive, which he also brought to the debut event of the Honey and Pollination Center on Oct. 27 at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.
Urabe’s cartoon depicts a waggle and round dance, behaviors performed by honey bees, and then on a humorous note, she added break dancing. She's a former cartoonist for the California Aggie newspaper.
The photo of the bee sting depicts a bee stinging Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen in the Laidlaw apiary. It's unusual in that you can see a trail of abdominal tissue; usually a sting is a clean break. It won first place in a photo competition sponsored by the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences and then was named “one of the most amazing photos of 2012” by Huffington Post.
Also planned are displays on ants and termites. Visitors can also “get up close and personal” with the live specimens in the year-around “petting zoo.” They include Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas, including a rose-haired tarantula.
Featured in the gift shop will be California dogface butterfly t-shirts at a discounted prices; and caddis fly cases that can be used to string together necklaces.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, houses a global collection of nearly eight million insect specimens and is the seventh largest insect collection in North America. It is also the home of the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum in 1946.
Bohart officials schedule weekend open houses throughout the academic year so that families and others who cannot attend on the weekdays can do so on the weekends. The Bohart’s regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday. The insect museum is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
We probably won't see the Gulf Fritilliary (Agraulis vanillae) laying eggs any more this year on our passion flower vine.
Cool weather has set in, the rains are coming, and the butterfly season is ending.
But just for a little while, the Gulf Frit obliged us with its shadow. It fluttered over our passion flower vine and then soared over a fence, just ahead of its shadow.
Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, says the Gulf Frit was introduced into southern California in the 19th century, and was first recorded in the Bay Area before 1908. Sacramento area residents saw a lot of it in the 1960s, but not in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. It disappeared.
But, since 2009, it's been making a comeback.
And leaving behind its shadow...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's no secret that bees are fond of germanders or Teucrium, a genus in the mint family, Lamiaceae.
And it's no secret that praying mantids are fond of bees.
Although it's a little late in the season for praying mantids, we spotted this one hiding in a bush germander last Friday in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee garden located on Bee Biology Road next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, University of California, Davis.
The mantid's abdomen bulged. She was very much pregnant.
Nearby honey bees from the nearby Laidlaw apiary nectared on the blue flowers. One bee tucked herself inside the blossom, oblivious of the nearby predator.
Current score: Praying mantis: 0. Honey Bee: 0.
But tomorrow is another day.
Note: The garden is open from dawn to dusk for self-guided tours. Groups who'd like a guided tour may contact Christine "Chris" Casey at cacasey@ucdavis.edu for more information.
