What's that little green bug on the head of the Gaillardia?

It's soft-bodied. It's miniscule. It's sucking plant juices.

An aphid!

We captured an image of this little green bugger shortly after we purchased several plants from an area nursery. It's a good idea to check your plants for aphids and other critters before you buy them or transplant them in your garden.

Gaillardia is a hearty plant, but it's troubled by aster yellows, a viruslike disease transmitted by those nasty aphids and leafhoppers.

A green aphid may look pretty on a reddish flower, but it is not your friend. It sucks plant juices, transmits diseases, and produces as many as 80 offspring within a week. Then there's that sticky, unsightly honeydew it secretes--and which ants tend. 

California alone has more than 450 species of aphids, and they come in some of your favorite colors, including green, yellow, red, brown and black.

Favorite colors, but that's it. Nobody likes 'em...'cept for ladybugs, lacewings and syrphid flies...

It was not a good day to be a honey bee.

But it was a good day to be a spider.

For days we watched honey bees, sweat bees and syrphid flies visit a patch of alyssum and African daisies in our yard. Their floral visits did not go unnoticed. A crafty spider stretched a web between two citrus trees just above the flowers.

The spider waited patiently, sometimes dangling in the middle of the web, sometimes tucked beneath the citrus leaves. The web seemed more like a fishing net than a trap because, under our watch, she caught nothing.

Her prey easily slipped through the net and bounced out of harm's way.

Not so on Saturday. A honey bee encountered the sticky web and could not escape--neither the sticky web nor the spider's bite. By the time we saw the bee, she was already toast...well...spider dinner.

It was not a good day to be a honey bee.

But it was a good day to be a spider.

Huge jaws of male warrior wasp. (Photo by Andrew Richards, Bohart Museum of Entomology)

The new species that Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis, discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi measures a whopping two and a half inches long.

That's the male "warrior wasp." The female is a little smaller. Just a little.

First thing folks say is "Wow!"

Next they ask: "Does it sting?"

Like all wasps, the female does; the male does not.

The male's jaws "are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed," Kimsey says. "When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male’s front legs. I don’t know how it can walk."

Indeed--those jaws look like elephant tusks dragging on the ground.

Kimsey discovered the warrior wasp on the Mekongga Mountains in southeastern Sulawesi on a recent biodiversity expedition funded by a five-year grant from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program.

The insect-eating predator belongs to the genus Dalara and family Crabronidae.

Kimsey says she's going to name it Garuda, after the national symbol of Indonesia. Garuda is a mythical half-man, half-eagle warrior, magnificent in combat.

Kimsey is a collaborator of a five-year $4 million grant awarded to UC Davis scientists in 2008 to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on Sulawesi, all considered threatened by logging operations and mining developments. Much of the mountain was logged two decades ago and now there are plans for an open pit nickel mine, Kimsey said.

“There’s talk of forming a biosphere reserve to preserve this,” she says.  “There are so many rare and endangered species on Sulawesi that the world may never see."

This is one they can see.

Collembola! Watch the springtails spring!

Over the last several days, Art Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology at the University of Caifornia, Davis, has patrolled a UC Davis sidewalk checking out a huge volume of springtails.

"Literally millions of little buff-colored springtails," he related Monday, "have been swarming for the past three days on the sidewalk and adjacent strip under the oak trees on the east side of Howard Way, about halfway between the parking garage and Russell Boulevard, mostly around 7 to 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m. I've never seen such numbers, except for the snow springtails in winter in upstate New York."

I trekked over to Howard Way at 7 a.m. today and it took awhile to find these little buff-colored organisms. That's because they're oh, so tiny! They're less than six millimeters long--that's 0.24 inches in length. And they move fast.

Obviously, Art Shapiro has the eyes of an eagle. I don't.

Springtails (order Collembola) are those primitive, wingless six-legged critters you find in soil, leaf litter, decaying wood and other damp places.  Basically, they're known for working the soil. However, some springtails, such as Sminthurus viridis, are agricultural crop pests.

Why are they called springtails? Retired UC Berkeley entomologist Jerry Powell writes in California Insects (a University of California Press book co-authored by entomologist Charles Hogue): "Most springtails are readily recognizable by a forked, tail-like appendage (furcula) which arises toward the rear of the abdomen and which the insect snaps against the substratum, springing itself into the air."

California has about 130 species that spring themselves into the air.

Frankly, it's a wonder anyone can see them, springing or not springing.