So, you're looking for that perfect, one-of-a-kind holiday gift. One that will not only be memorable but a conversation piece. 

How about a biolegacy gift? Name that bug!

You can obtain naming rights for this cute little black and white weevil with red polka dots (below) for a donation of $2500 to the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis.

Bohart Museum Society member Henry Hespenheide, professor emeritus from UCLA, collected the weevil a couple of years ago in Costa Rica, said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis. 

This species, from genus Macrocopturus,  is waiting to be described. And waiting for a name.

Besides the honor of naming it,  “Your donation directly supports species discovery and student education in Entomology through scholarships," Kimsey said. "By naming this species you are promoting science education, species discovery and conservation.”

"The names have to pass judgment in a peer-reviewed journal," Kimsey said. "Our collaborating systematists are under obligation to publish these names according to the Zoological Code of Nomenclature."

Other species at the Bohart Museum are also ready to be named, she said. Want more information? Contact Kimsey at lskimsey@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-5373. 

But one thing's for sure: this little weevil is definitely unique.

See no weevil, hear no weevil, and speak no weevil.

But you can definitely name it.

It's a strange little insect.

A reader likens it to "a cricket on steroids."

A Van Nuys resident says she always wondered what they were. "I've lived in this house for 17 years, and a few times a year I see this strange insect in my backyard.  It is always either dead or dying.  It has a really large head and seems to be a bit top-heavy and has problems walking.   I have never seen these insects anywhere but in my backyard and no one seems to know what they are.  I feel badly for the little critters, since they don't seem to be thriving."

A Vacaville resident encountered this "unknown species of insect" in her backyard. Her dog discovered the first one. Dead. She discovered the second. Alive.

Guess what they found? A Jerusalem cricket, also known as a "potato bug" because it occasionally feeds on potato tubers.

They're among the largest insects found in California and elsewhere in western North America, says Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis.

The adult is characterized by its "large shiny brown abdomen with dark stripes, large ovoid head and spiny hind legs."

These ground dwellers crawl (slowly) but they don't fly. They belong to the family Stenopelmatidae. The common species found in California is Stenopelmatus fuscus, Kimsey says.

Kimsey also says they are harmless, although if you handle them, they may bite.

So when you're digging around in your backyard, you may find them under rocks, logs or boards. They feed on plant roots and tubers. "They generate sound by rubbing the hind leg against the side of the abdomen (stridulation)," Kimsey says.

In her Fact Sheet on Jerusalem Crickets posted on the Bohart Museum website: Kimsey points out that "Unlike most other crickets, female Jerusalem crickets frequenty kill the males after mating."

Ah, a touch of the praying mantis behavior!

We've seen Jerusalem crickets beneath the grounds of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis.  We've also seen their predators: birds of prey, including owls and hawks, but never the prey and predator together.

Seems like a tasty treat for a burrowing owl.

It's exciting to see a son follow in the footsteps of his father: soon there will be more than one Hammock with a Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis.

UC Davis doctoral candidate Bruce Graham Hammock, whose father, Bruce Dupree Hammock, is a distinguished professor of entomology at UC Davis, will present his exit seminar on Friday, Nov. 30 on “The Timing, Causes and Implications of Climate Change for Mayfly Drift.”

The seminar, open to all interested persons, will be presented from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in 366 Briggs.

“Many stream invertebrates, including mayflies, drift downstream via the water column. Curiously, mayfly drift is often ~100X higher at night than during the day, and exhibits peaks at dusk and dawn,” the doctoral candidate said. Previous work indicates that trout presence causes the nocturnal timing of drift (there is no known cause of crepuscular drift).”

His abstract: 
 We asked whether invertebrate predators, by foraging nocturnally and at dawn and dusk, might also affect the the timing of drift. We found that invertebrate predator presence increased nocturnal drift rates more than diurnal drift rates, both in the presence and absence of trout, but were not the proximate cause of the crepuscular peaks in drift. We also quantified the relative importance of the causes of drift (i.e., food, benthic predation, and passive processes) across a canopy gradient. 

“We found that drift is overwhelmingly an active process to improve fitness (i.e., caused by food limitation and predation), and that drift causes did not vary substantially with canopy cover. An outcome of the drift timing and cause work is that diurnal drift is largely a foraging behavior of mayflies. As such, mayfly drift behavior can be used to ask how the foraging of an ectothermic herbivore (mayfly) is likely to be affected by climate change, both in the presence and absence of an ectothermic invasive predator (trout). Because trout will become more dangerous to mayflies as trout metabolism increases (high elevation trout live largely below their thermal optimas), it is unclear how mayflies will respond to climate change in trout-bearing streams: will mayflies increase foraging to compensate for increased metabolism, or decrease foraging because of the increased threat of trout predation (or will these effects negate one-another).

“We found that diurnal foraging (i.e., drift) increased with increasing temperature in the absence of trout, but decreased with increasing temperature in the presence of trout. Thus, climate change is likely to increase divergence in mayfly behavior between invaded (trout-bearing) and un-invaded (fishless) streams in the Sierra Nevada. This divergence in behavior may have consequences for ecosystem structure.

Bruce Graham Hammock, a doctoral candidate in ecology, has a bachelor's degree in forestry from UC Berkeley. Currently he's a teaching assistant for a statistics class. Over the years, he has TA'd various classes, including limnology and restoration ecology. 

His future plans? "I'd love to keep teaching and doing research. He plans to begin a postdoc position in Swee Teh's lab, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, this winter.

Bruce Dupree Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, directs the campuswide Superfund Research Program, the National Institutes of Health Biotechnology Training Program and the NIEHS Combined Analytical Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of the UC Davis Faculty Research Lecture Award in 2001 and the Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching in 2008.

If you’re having pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pancakes and pumpkin pie today (Thanksgiving), you can thank a squash bee.

The photos posted below are genus Peponapis, common name "squash bee." They emerge in mid- to late summer, nest in the ground, and are approximately half an inch in length. They're so tiny that you'll need a macro lens to capture their image.

A little bit about the squash bees:

• Squash bees are specialists; not generalists. Squash bees pollinate only the cucurbits or squash family, Cucurbitaceae,  which includes pumpkins, squash, gourds and zucchini. 
• Both the males and females are golden brown with a fuzzy yellow thorax.  The males have a yellow spot on their face.
• Often you'll see a male or clusters of males sleeping in the flower in the afternoon and night.
• Squash bees are early risers (they rise before the sun does). They begin pollinating the blossoms as soon as they open in the morning. Other bee species, such as honey bees, don't visit the flowers so early. The squash blossoms close after several hours so there's a limited amount of pollination time.

So, as you're enjoying your pumpkin pie today, say "thank you" to the squash bee. They made it happen.