- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Oh, the critters we overlook.
If you have flowering artichokes, expect to see honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees and syrphid flies foraging on them. And a few spiders waiting for dinner.
Don't expect to see a mayfly.
The mayfly habitat is in or around water. Fly fishers use artificial lures that look like mayflies and other aquatic insects.
This tiny mayfly (below) was perched on a flowering artichoke, about 15 feet from our fish pond.
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis, says it's from the family, Baetidae.
Worldwide, the Baetid family has about 900 described species. The Baetids are unique in that they're among the smallest of the mayflies. In general, adult mayflies have a short lifespan, often living just a day. They're in the order Ephemeroptera (ephemeros is Greek for short-lived, and pteron means wing).
Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, teaches "Entomology for the Fly-Fisher" every spring quarter. The course focus: "insect life in the aquatic ecosystem; methods and mechanics of fly fishing; what you need to know to match the hatch; and enhancing the fly-fishing experience for the novice and experienced angler."
Parrella, an avid fly fisherman, taught entomology and fly-fishing classes while on a six-month sabbatical last year in Chile.
Chances are he never encountered a mayfly perched on a flowering artichoke!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, surrounds herself with more than seven million insect specimens in the museum, plus a few live ones (Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and a rose-haired tarantula) in her "petting zoo."
Kimsey identifies about 800 bugs a year.
"I probably do four to five identifications a day (for the general public) between email, phone, mail and walk-ins; maybe 400 a year--I lose track," she said. “Probably another 400 or so for colleagues in my research groups--tiphiid and chrysidid wasps.”
The most common ID question? “Spiders--brown recluse or not, mostly," she said. Carpenter bees come in a strong second. The male Valley carpenter bee is often mistaken for a "golden bumble bee." (Both are pollinators.)
So when Holly Millener of Oroville, Butte County, spotted a strange-looking bug on her lilies, she posted an image on Facebook with a "what-is-it?" query.
“They’re everywhere,” noted Millener, who lives on Kelly Ridge near Lake Oroville.
The "mystery bug" drew guesses on and off-line. Elderberry bug, boxelder bug, soapberry bug, squash bug, milkweed bug, stink bug...
“I have one that looks kinda like that out here except where the yellow (orange) is, it’s red," answered a friend. "Those keep eating the leaves on my squash."
“I have a female boxelder tree and they are all around my yard,” wrote another. “They are a nuisance.”
A UC Master Gardener proclaimed it a boxelder bug and kindly posted a link to the UC IPM Management Guidelines.
Other Facebook friends differed.
“I believe they are stink bugs.”
“Valley elderberry longhorn beetle?"
“I don’t know, but we had them EVERYWHERE when we lived in Chico and Durham.”
Wait, is there an entomologist in the house?
Kimsey to the rescue.
“This is a largid in the group of insects called bordered plant bugs,” Kimsey said when we emailed her Millener's photo. Family: Largidae. Genus: Largus.
Mystery solved. It's a bordered plant bug, so named because of the characteristic orange border around its shield, directly behind the head and outlining the abdomen.
This insect sucks plant juices. It attacks a wide variety of plants, appearing especially fond of Asteraceae, the sunflower family. It is known to overwinter in cracks and crevices around the home.
By the way, Kimsey's skills at identifying insects drew international attention in a landmark case in which she identified insects and their locale from the radiator of a rental car driven by a 44-year-old murder suspect. The Bakersfield jury ended up convicting the defendant, a former vice principal, of five counts of first-degree murder in the July 2003 shooting and stabbing deaths of his estranged wife, three children and mother-in-law.
Kimsey knows her bugs.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It boasts striking colors, but you don't want this bug anywhere near your garden.
It sucks.
Literally.
This is a harlequin bug, Murgantia histronica, as identified by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis.
What it does is suck the juices out of your cabbage, cauliflower, collards, mustard, Brussels sprouts, turnip, kohlrabi, radish and other crucifers. You might also find it on your tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, okra, beans, asparagus and beets. And on fruit trees, fruit crops and weeds, plant scientists say.
We saw scores of these harlequin bugs last weekend in a weed patch bordering the Benicia Marina.
They belong to the stink bug family (Pentatomidae) and like the sting bugs, these harlequin bugs could be coming to a garden near you.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It was a reddish-orange beetle, moving a little but not a lot.
We spotted it on a sunflower bordering the Avant Garden in Benicia. The garden, located at the corner of First and East D streets, thrives with assorted tomatoes, peppers, onions, strawberries, cucumbers, eggplant, squash and ornamentals.
This little beetle, as identified by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis, is a meloid blister beetle.
"These are nest parasites of wasps and mostly bees," Kimsey said.
Blister beetles (Coleoptera) belong the family Meloidae. They produce a blistering agent (thus their name) known as cantharidin, that can blister the skin. Horses can die from ingesting blister-beetle contaminated feed, such as alfalfa.
Scientists estimate there are approximately 7500 known species worldwide. They vary in size, shape and color.
The adults feed on multiple plants, including garden vegetables, ornamentals, vegetables, alfalfa, soybeans and potatoes. Larvae dine on grasshopper eggs and the like. Solitary bee nests are a haven for immature stages of some blister beetle species.
UC Davis evolutionary ecologist Leslie Saul-Gershenz, a graduate student in the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology, researches a solitary ground-nesting bee, Habropoda pallida and its nest parasite, a blister beetle, Meloe franciscanus, found in the Mojave National Preserve.
Saul-Gershenz says the larvae of the parasitic blister beetle produce a chemical cue or a pheromone similar to that of a female solitary bee to lure males to the larval aggregation. The larvae attach to the male bee and then transfer to the female during mating. The end result: the larvae wind up in the nest of a female bee, where they eat the nest provisions and likely the host egg.
She and her colleagues most recently published their research in the April edition of the National Park Service's Mojave National Preserve Science News. You can read about her exiting work on the Department of Entomology website and see her amazing photograph of blister-beetle larvae on a digger bee. That's something you won't forget.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
We saw her touch down in our nectarine tree last weekend.
Big green compound eyes glowed at us.
She moved up and down a branch, foraging for food, and then took off.
A wasp. The carnivore cousin of the vegetarian honey bee. They belong to the same order, Hymenoptera.
The green-eyed wasp? Genus Tachytes, as confirmed by noted "wasp woman" Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis. The green eyes are a distinguishing feature of the genus.
Tachytes is a member of the Crabronidae family or "sand-loving wasps." The females burrow into sandy soil, and provision their nest with such paralyzed prey as katydids and grasshoppers. Meanwhile, their cousins, the honey bees, are out collecting nectar and pollen.
If you're looking for something to do this summer, be sure to check out the Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 Academic Surge, corner of La Rue Road and Crocker Lane (formerly California Drive). Regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday. It is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
There's always something to see and do at the museum, what with more than seven million insect specimens collected from around the world. And you can meet the critters in the "live petting zoo," including walking sticks and Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
Be sure to check out the Hymenoptera specimens in the museum's display cases. You'll be amazed.
