- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
This is no ordinary calendar. No oceans. No mountains. No deserts.
Each month features a "pin-up girl."
But these models will never run for Miss America or promote world peace. Only a few have social skills and most are solitary.
Take a look at Miss May. She's a sweat bee. Take a look at Miss August. She's a squash bee. And Miss December? A cuckoo bee.
They're all a part of the second annual "North American Bee Calendar." And...drum roll...the first ordering deadline is rapidly approaching: it's Friday, Oct. 15.
“It's our second annual calendar, a project aimed at protecting pollinators, raising public awareness and generating funds to carry on the work of The Great Sunflower Project and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation,” said native bee enthusiast and calendar project coordinator Celeste Ets-Hokin of the San Francisco Bay Area. “Most of these bees are commonly found and important pollinators.”
The calendar, measuring 9x12, features close-up photos by noted insect photographer Rollin Coville, who received his doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley. He has been photographing insects--and spiders--for more than 25 years.
The calendar spotlights a different bee genus each month, with notes on preferred plants, nesting needs, and guidance on how to identify the genus, said author Ets-Hokin, who holds a degree in zoology from UC Berkeley.
Bees appearing in the calendar and the scientific names are:
January: Honey Bee (Apis)
February: Bumble Bee (Bombus)
March: Digger Bee (Habropoda)
April: Mason Bee (Osmia)
May: Sweat Bee (Lasioglossum)
June: Ultra Green Sweat Bee (Agapostemon)
July: Leafcutter Bee (Megachile)
August: Squash Bee (Peponapis)
September: Long-horned Bee (Melissodes)
October: Carder Bee (Anthidium)
November: Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa)
December: Cuckoo Bee (Epeolus)
Matthew Shepherd, senior conservation associate of the Xerces Society, and Ets-Hokin served as editors, and Miguel Barbosa as the graphic designer. Four scientists shared their research expertise: Neal Williams and Robbin Thorp of UC Davis; Gordon Frankie and Claire Kremen of UC Berkeley; and Rachael Winfree of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. In addition, contributing photos were Shepherd and Ets-Hokin, along with yours truly.
Purchasing a $15 calendar ($18 if you have an overseas address) is a good way to protect our badly needed pollinators and to raise public awareness.
Folks can place their orders by accessing the Xerces website or The Great Sunflower Project website. (Preview calendar)
Order by Oct. 15 and you'll get your calendar by late October, Ets-Hokin says. The last deadline to order is Nov. 30. For more information or discount rates for 25 calendars or more, contact Ets-Hokin at celeste.ets@comcast.net.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You gotta love that red buckwheat (Eriogonum grande rubescens).
Attractive to honey bees, native bees and butterflies, red buckwheat is flourishing in the garden. Okay, it's called red buckwheat, but the clusters are rosy pink. They're about the same size as ping-pong balls.
We watched the bees work the flowers last weekend. They crawled up one side and down the other.
This is a highly recommended plant when you're gardening for bees and butterflies.
With autumn settling in and winter approaching, the honey bees won't be working the flowers much longer this year.
But right now, they're in the pink.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's called a complete metamorphosis--from an egg to a larva to a pupa to an adult.
Metamorphosis--Greek for "transformation" or "change in shape" is spectacular.
And it's particularly spectacular when the subject is the Anise Swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon).
Adult butterflies recently laid their eggs on anise (Pimpinella anisum), also known as fennel, in a friend's backyard in Fairfield. The eggs transformed into larvae (caterpillars) with coloring reminiscent of the adults.
We didn't see the first stage, the eggs, but did see the second stage, caterpillar and remnants of the third stage, an empty chrysalis.
One more butterfly flying around in Fairfield...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Once upon a time, there was a redhumped caterpillar gorging on the leaves of a redbud tree.
For three days, the hungry caterpillar gobbled the leaves, like an insect version of Pac-Man. It snipped, shredded and skeletonized the leaves and then went for more.
On the fourth day, it lay motionless, entangled in a spider web.
On the fifth day, the lifeless redhumped caterpillar (Schizura concinna) came back to "life," in the form of Argentine ants gorging on its carcass.
Life and death in the garden...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It was a major milestone, sequencing the genome of Culex quinquefasciatus, the so-called “southern house mosquito.”
The research, spearheaded by UC Riverside geneticists and published in the Oct. 1, 2010 edition of Science, involved scientists from 37 other institutions. The mosquito is a medically important mosquito that transmits the West Nile virus, St. Louis encephalitis, lymphatic filariasis and other diseases.
UC Riverside research entomologist Peter Arensburger led the bioinformatics component of the multiyear research effort, launched in 2004.
Among the 76 co-authors: UC Davis mosquito researchers Anthony “Anton” Cornel and Gregory Lanzaro. Scientists in the Bruce Hammock and Walter Leal labs also participated in the research.
Cornel collected and established the mosquito colony that was sequenced. Cornel is an associate professor of entomology at UC Davis who directs the mosquito research lab at UC Kearney Agricultural Center, Parlier.
“We have multiple sub colonies of the Johannesburg colony now established in numerous insectaries worldwide,” said Cornel.
Lanzaro, a longtime collaborator with Cornel, is a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine and former director of the UC Mosquito Research Program and the Center for Vectorborne Diseases. Both Cornel and Lanzaro serve as graduate student advisors in the UC Davis Department of Entomology. They mentor future medical entomologists.
The Hammock lab played a role in annotating and examining divergence of esterases and glutathione-S tranferases in this mosquito. Bruce Hammock is a distinguished professor of entomology. The lab of Walter Leal, professor of entomology, added expertise in chemical ecology.
Cornel hailed the research as “another milestone in mosquito genomics—we now have a full genome sequence of a third medically important mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus.”
Said Cornel: "This is the first species within the Culex genus fully sequenced and now offers many opportunities for research on comparative genomics and post genomics between three mosquito species now fully sequenced—namely the major malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae; the major dengue virus vector, Aedes aegypti; and a major vector of West Nile virus, Culex quinquefasciatus.”
The genome of Culex quinquefasciatus, Cornel said, is much larger than the other two species--52 percent more than Anopheles gambiae and 22 percent more than Aedes aegypti. “Research on these three mosquitoes--how they find their hosts and vector diseases and the mechanisms involved--will likely blossom in the near future.”
This is indeed research to watch.