- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
American humorist-entertainer Will Rogers said "I never met a man I didn't like."
I wonder if he would have said the same thing about insects.
Oh, sure, he probably liked--and appreciated--the butterflies, the honey bees and the ladybugs.
But cockroaches? I bet not.
Cockroaches just don't give you that fuzzy-wuzzy-lovey-dovey feeling--unless you're another cockroach.
Enter Catherine Chalmers, a New York-based multi-media artist who centers much of her work on cockroaches, their place on the planet, and people's reaction to them.
Chalmers, who explores the lives of cockroaches and other creatures that the general public disdains, will speak on “Sex, Food Chains and Cockroaches” from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 7 at the Wyatt Pavilion, University of California, Davis.
Her presentation is the second in a series of four lectures on “The Consilience of Art and Science,” a centennial colloquium sponsored by the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion experimental learning program. The lectures are free and open to the public.
“Catherine Chalmers investigates the natural world, from food chains to insect sex, revealing new points of view about our place in the ecosystem,” said Art/Science Fusion co-director Diane Ullman, associate dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and professor of entomology.
Chalmers specializes in photography, sculpture, drawing and video, preferring to let the subject matter dictate the particular media. She displays her art-science work throughout the country. The Boise (Idaho) Art Museum showcased her most recent show, “The American Cockroach.” She’s been featured in the New York Times, Kansas City Star, The Idaho Statesman and others.
Chalmers possesses this incredible talent of combining humor with biology to make people think. She paints cockroaches to resemble other insects, camouflages them in garden settings, and even “executes” them, strapping one to an “electric chair” or “burning” another at the stake. You can see her videos on her Web site.
Chalmers is quick to point out, however, that no animals are harmed in the making of her art. (Whew! For a minute there i thought the twitching cockroach was actually burning at the stake.)
Chalmers lives with her artist-husband in Rensselaerville, N.Y., where she buys, rears and poses insects for her art work. A native of San Mateo, she received a bachelor of science degree in engineering from Stanford University, and a master’s degree in painting from the Royal College of Art, London.
She said "American Cockroach" grew out of an earlier piece, "Food Chain," which shows animals mating, eating one another, or in the case of the praying mantis, both. (An insect's gotta do what an insect's gotta do.)
I told Catherine Chalmers she should expect a standing-room only crowd.
"Sex, Food Chains and Cockroaches."
The title alone should draw folks in.
Maybe a few cockroaches, too.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What has five eyes, six legs, two pairs of wings and can fly about 20 miles per hour?
Got to be an insect, right?
Right. But which one?
More hints: It’s been around for 30 million years. Its primary form of communication is a chemical called a pheromone.
Well, that could be…
Okay, now it gets easier.
The queen lays about 2000 eggs per day during the peak season. The males are called drones. The workers carry pollen on their hand legs in a pollen basket or corbicula.
Well, that could BEE…
Right. The mystery insect is the honey bee.
UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen says bees must collect nectar from 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey. The average forager makes about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
Bees are important not just for their honey but for pollination. They pollinate about 100 agricultural crops in the
No wonder “honey” is a term of endearment.
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- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
We’re outnumbered.
Plain as day. And they’re not going away.
The estimated ratio of insects to humans is 200 million to one, say Iowa State University entomologists Larry Pedigo and Marlin Rice in their newly published (sixth edition) textbook, Entomology and Pest Management.
There's an average of 400 million insects per acre of land, they say.
400 million!
Per acre.
“The fact is, today’s human population is adrift in a sea of insects,” they write in their introduction.
Well, what about biomass? Surely we outweigh these critters?
No, we don't. The
There you go. The insects are the land owners; we are the tenants. “They are the chief consumers of plants; they are the major predators of plant eaters; they play a major role in decay of organic matter; and they serve as food for other kinds of animals,” Pedigo and Rice write.
The good: they give us honey and pollinate our crops. They spin our silk. They serve as natural enemies of pests. They provide food for wildlife (not to mention food for some of us humans). They are scavengers. They provide us with ideas for our art work. They are fodder for our horror movies.
And what scientist hasn't benefitted from the inheritance studies of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogasta? What ecologist hasn't studied water pollution by examining the mayfly population? Mayflies are the counterpart of canaries in the coal mine.
The bad: they eat our food crops, forests and ornamental plants. They devour or spoil our stored grain. They chew holes in our clothing. They pester us. They annoy our animals, too.
The ugly: They can—and do—kill us. Think mosquitoes. Think malaria,
Ironically, despite the huge numbers of insects, many people don't know the meaning of the word, entomology, the science of insects. They should. Insects outnumber us and always will. They've lived on the earth longer than us (400 million years) and adapt to changes better than we do. Most are tiny. Most can fly. And most reproduce like there's no tomorrow.
"Based solely on numbers and biomass, insects are the most successful animals on earth," the authors claim.
You can't argue with that.
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- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
We're in a recession, but the mosquitoes aren't.
The mortgage meltdown and the resulting green swimming pools are perfect breeding sites for mosquitoes, which can transmit the deadly West Nile virus (WNV). So far this year WNV has sickened 411 Californians, killing 13.
Research just published by UC Davis research entomologist William Reisen and colleagues from Kern County should be required reading. Titled "Delinquent Mortgages, Neglected Swimming Pools and West Nile Virus, California" and published on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site, it relates that in 2007, the mortgage crisis caused a 300 percent increase in notices of delinquency in Kern County.
"This led to large numbers of neglected swimming pools, which were associated with a 276 percent increase in the number of human West Nile virus cases during the summer of 2007," the authors wrote.
They concluded "These new larval habitats may have contributed to the unexpected early season increase in WNV cases in Bakersfield during 2007 and subsequently have enabled invasion of urban areas by the highly competent rural vector Culex. tarsalis."
If you check out the California WNV Web site, you'll notice that Kern County tallied 140 of the statewide 380 human cases in 2007. (The second highest WNV-afflicted county was Los Angeles with 36.) Total WNV-related fatatlies in 2007 in California: 21.
Bottom line: unmaintained swimming pools are turning into algae-clogged ponds. It's a public health issue that taxes the mosquito and vector control districts and threatens the health and welfare of the community.
What this means is: We are our brother's keeper. We are our sister's keeper. We are our neighbor's keeper. NIMBYS (Not in My Backyard) need to be replaced by YIMBY (Yes, in My Backyard) and YLGI (Yes, Let's Get Involved).
The tiny female insect that needs a blood meal to develop her eggs is going green and we're seeing red.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's a high-flying butterfly--rarely seen and rarely recognized.
Ironically, it's now down-to-earth, frequently seen, and frequently recognized, thanks to the Internet.
Last year the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis published a poster of the
Visitors to the Bohart Museum, located at 1124 Academic Surge on the UC Davis campus, love it. So does Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who received a framed copy in April.
Today images of the butterfly are posted prominently on the “California State Insect” page hosted by netstate.com, an educational site providing information on state symbols, emblems, mottos, population, geography, government and the news media.
The one-of-a-kind poster is the work of Fran Keller, doctoral student in entomology at UC Davis, and
“We hope the posting on the Web site will continues to spark interest in our state insect and conservation efforts,” Keller said. “The dogface butterfly is found only in
Keller described the poster as “a great gift for any
The butterfly, so named because of a poodle-like silhouette on the wings of the male, was adopted as the official
The butterfly is also known as the
In addition to posting the Bohart images of the
In 1972, the fourth-grade classrooms of
The fast, high-flying butterfly is elusive except when it nectars on flowers, said internationally renowned butterfly expert Art Shapiro, a UC Davis professor of evolution and ecology who co-authored Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions with T. R. Manolis (UC
“I’d say only one of every 10,000 Californians has ever seen the butterfly in the wild,” Shapiro said.
In April of this year, when the
“Every time I see something like this, I’m even prouder of
The 18x24 poster is available for $18 laminated or $15 non-laminated at the
The
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