- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Ironically, some folks proclaim their hatred or disgust for all things spiders throughout the year, but when the Halloween season arrives, they're thinking webs, fangs and eight legs as perfect decor for their door.
And to scare the bejeezus out of trick-or-treaters, the postal employee (who goes postal), cousins (who become distant) and other folks approaching the front porch who wish they hadn't.
So, it's good to see the Bohart Museum of Entomology come up with a "Got Legs?" spider t-shirt in its gift shop this week. It's a trapdoor spider, or what arachnologist Jason Bond of UC Davis studies. Bond is the associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. In June, 2022, he co-hosted the American Arachnological Society's "Eight-Legged Encounters" conference at UC Davis. The focus on spiders also included a Bohart Museum's open house, "Eight-Legged Wonders!"
"We designed it together and Francisco did the art," Keller said.
"I think it's fantastic," said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. "I haven't seen any other t-shirts featuring spiders like this."
The gift shop offers the spider t-shirt in both youth and adult sizes. The youth t-shirt glows in the dark.
The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. Named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart, it is open to the public from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays. The insect-themed gift shop, stocked with t-shirts, hoodies, books, posters, jewelry, insect-collecting equipment and more, is open year-around and is also online.
Now back to spiders. We remember asking Professor Bond five good reasons why folks should like spiders. (See Bug Squad blog)
- Spiders consume 400-800 million tons of prey, mostly insects, each year. Humans consume somewhere around 400 million tons of meat and fish each year.
- Spider silk is one of the strongest naturally occurring materials. Spider silk is stronger than steel, stronger and more stretchy than Kevlar; a pencil thick strand of spider silk could be used to stop a Boeing 747 in flight.
- Some spiders are incredibly fast – able to run up to 70 body lengths per second (10X faster than Usain Bolt).
- Athough nearly all 47,000-plus spider species have venom used to kill their insect prey, very few actually have venom that is harmful to humans.
- Some spiders are really good parents –wolf spider moms carry their young on their backs until they are ready to strike out on their own; female trapdoor spiders keep their broods safe inside their burrows often longer than one year, and some female jumping spiders even nurse their spiderlings with a protein rich substance comparable to milk.
Spiders rock! And yes, they got legs...
Eight. Of. Them.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Known by his colleagues as “the leading honey bee geneticist in the world,” he will be honored at the CA&ES Award of Distinction dinner and celebration awards ceremony on Thursday, Nov. 3 in the UC Davis Activities and Recreation Center Ballroom.
Page, emeritus professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and an emeritus professor and administrator at Arizona State University, “is a pioneering researcher in the field of evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees, and a highly respected and quoted author, teacher and former administrator,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
“One of Dr. Page's most salient contributions to science was to construct the first genomic map of the honey bee, which sparked a variety of pioneering contributions not only to insect biology but to genetics at large,” Nadler pointed out. “It was the first genetic map of any social insect. He was the first to demonstrate that a significant amount of observed behavioral variation among honey bee workers is due to genotypic variation. In the 1990s, he and his students and colleagues isolated, characterized and validated the complementary sex determination gene of the honey bee; considered the most important paper yet published about the genetics of Hymenoptera. The journal Cell featured their work on its cover. In subsequent studies, he and his team published further research into the regulation of honey bee foraging, defensive and alarm behavior.”
Page joined the UC Davis entomology faculty in 1989 and chaired the department from 1999 to 2004 when he transitioned to emeritus and was recruited by Arizona State University (ASU) to be the founding director of its School of Life Sciences. His career at ASU led to a series of top-level administrative roles: from founding director of the School of Life Sciences (2004-2010) to vice provost and dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013) and then to University Provost, 2014-2015.
For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a UC Davis honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.
Since his retirement from UC Davis, Page has published 65 research papers, eight major reviews and two scholarly books, many using his UC Davis affiliation. He authored “The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution” (Harvard University Press, 2013) and the “Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies” (Oxford University Press, 2020).
See more about Rob Page's career on the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology website.
Others honored at the CA&ES Award of Distinction ceremony will be Alumnus of the Year, Marko Zaninovich (Class of 1964); Distinguished Friends of the College, William 'Bill' Patterson and his wife, Doris Brown, for their contributions and support of the Bohart Museum of Entomology; Exceptional Faculty Award: Daniel Sumner, the Frank H. Buck, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics; and Exceptional Staff Award, Shannon Tanguay, budget fiscal officer with CA&ES. (See CA&ES website)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The yellow-faced bumble bee bursts from a neon pink blossom in the video below.
It's Oct. 19, 2022 and the temperature has soared to an unseasonal 81 degrees. This bumble bee is hungry. She may have emerged from hibernation "to get a bite to eat," as the late Robbin Thorp, UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, used to say about late-in-the-season sightings.
B. vosenenskii, native to the west coast of North America, from Baja California to British Columbia, is an important pollinator, especially important for its buzz pollination of tomatoes, peppers and cranberries. In buzz pollination, the bumble bees grab a blossom and shake it, dislodging the pollen to accomplish pollination.
The ice plant, Carpobrotus edulis, is a native of South Africa and known as an invasive weed.
Interesting that on one end of the Doran Regional Park, volunteers with the California Native Plant Society are pulling out the ice plant to make room for native plants, while on the other end, a bumble bee hungrily sips the nectar. "Ice plant chokes out native plants and alters the local soil composition," according to the park website. "Removing ice plant allows native, endangered plants to repopulate the area and wildlife to thrive."
Want to learn more about the bumble bees around us? Read these two books, both co-authored by Thorp in his retirement: Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University, 2014) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday, 2014).
And, if you see a bumble bee and would like to get involved in citizen science, Bumble Bee Watch seeks your sightings.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you like to photograph and share images of bugs, this is for you.
Submissions are open for the 64th Annual International Insect Salon, hosted by the Peoria Camera Club of Illinois. It's affiliated with the Entomological Society of America (ESA), which will spotlight the winning photos and many of the accepted entries at its Nov. 13-16 joint meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia with the Entomological Society of Canada and Entomological Society of British Columbia. The theme: "Insects Through Art, Science, and Culture."
The last day to submit your images online is Saturday Oct. 29. Images may include insects, spiders, and related arthropods, such as barnacles, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, centipedes, and millipedes, says contest coordinator Joe Virbickis of Washington, Ill. Each photographer may submit up to four images.
The 2021 Insect Salon drew a total of 256 images from photographers residing in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, England, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Scotland, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, as well as within the United States. You can see view the 2021 accepted images here.
The "Best of Show" medal went to Marcus Kam of Ipoh, state of Perak, Malaysia for "Bugs Love." Kam also won the medal for the "Best Image by a Non-ESA Member" for his "Sharing."
Other medalists:
- "Medal, Most Unusual," won by Albertus Nugroho of Jakarta, Indonesia, for "Super Ant In Action."
- "Medal, Best Story Telling," Dre Van Mensel of Tielen, Antwerpen, Belgium for "Fall Over."
- "Medal, Best by ESA Member," Tom Myers of Lexington, Ky for "Syrphid Fly Feeding."
- "Medal, Best by Peoria Camera Club Member," Joe Virbickis of Washington, Ill., for "Monarch Laying Eggs."
Among the two California entries accepted was one by yours truly, Kathy Keatley Garvey. It depicts two passion butterflies, Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae), "Keeping Busy." Garvey, a communication specialist with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and a member of ESA, quips that it is "insect wedding photography." The other California entry accepted: an image of two bees, titled "Bee 4066" by Nan Carder of Lancaster, Ca., a retired registered nurse and active in the Photographic Society of America.
ESA, founded in 1889 and headquartered in Annapolis, Md., is the world's largest organization serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and others in related disciplines. Its 7000-members pursue occupations in educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Seen any monarchs lately?
A beautiful male glided into our Vacaville garden late yesterday and made himself at home on our Mexican sunflowers, Tithonia rotundifola.
He claimed the patch--"mine, all mine, all mine!"--until a honey bee buzzed by looking for nectar. When the bee edged too close for his comfort, Mr. Monarch relinquished his blossom and simply fluttered to another one.
Backlit against the setting sun, the monarch's iconic colors gleamed. It was a magical moment.
Mr. Monarch is on his way to an overwintering site, perhaps Pacific Grove. KSBW, a Salinas television station, announced that the first weekend count at the Monarch Sanctuary in Pacific Grove revealed that the monarchs are returning in "large numbers."
Large numbers? The tally on Friday, Oct. 21 totaled 3,823. "In 2021, only one butterfly was seen," the news story related. "In 2021, only one butterfly was seen. In 2020, zero butterflies entered the sanctuary during their entire annual migration. At the beginning of the year, the Xerces Society reported that 247,237 monarch butterflies were observed across the West which amounts to more than a 100-fold increase from 2020 which saw fewer than 2,000 monarchs."
Entomologist David James of Washington State University, who studies migratory monarchs (citizen scientists in the Pacific Northwest tag them) reported Oct. 15 on his Facebook page, "Monarch Butterflies in the Pacific Northwest," that "We now have our fifth long distance tagged Monarch recovery! Remarkably this one came from the same release as the previous one! So, two recoveries from a group of Monarchs reared and released by Gillian Gifford Short on September 28 in Ruch, Oregon. The first recovery (G6797) was found in Trinidad, CA about 100 miles SW from Ruch. The latest recovery (G6800) was found yesterday, October 14 in San Rafael, CA by Kelly...This individual did not fly coastward, instead flying almost due south for 295 miles. Still not done migrating, it likely has another 100 or so miles to go before it reaches a coastal overwintering site."
Safe journeys!