- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Yes!
That was the scene at the Vacaville Museum Guild's Annual Children's Party, held Thursday morning, Aug. 8 in the museum courtyard on Buck Avenue.
The event, open to children ages 3 and 9, drew a capacity crowd. One of the highlights was The Honey Bee, with a smile as wide as the Sacramento River.
Inside the smiling bee costume was Dr. George Stock (retired physician), who practiced in the Fairfield/Vacaville area for more more than 30 years. A native Californian, he was born and raised in San Diego.
He lives in Vacaville with his life partner, Debbie, for 40-plus years, and "two dogs that changed our lives." He describes himself as a "Sierra hiker, itinerant gardener and wine aficionado."
And now, a honey bee. "Dr. George" handed out honey sticks donated by "Queen Bee" Amelia Harris of the Z Food Specialty/The Hive, Woodland, retired director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center. He stood near a bee observation hive displayed by beekeeper Ettamarie Peterson of Petaluma, known fondly as "The Queen Bee of Sonoma County." A retired teacher, she is a past president of the Sonoma County Beekeepers' Association and is a longtime beekeeping leader with the Liberty 4-H Club.
"That was fun," Dr. George said. "I think the Mickey Mouse/Disney routine worked well. Don't say much, dance and wave your hands, pat ‘em on the head, hold still for photo ops. Thank you for this opportunity." Vacaville residents Pamela King and Diana McLaughlin co-chaired the event, themed "Fun on the Farm."
The California Master Beekeeper Program, directed by associate professor of Cooperative Extension Elina Niño, based in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, loaned the costume to the Vacaville Museum Guild for the day. The Bee has appeared at special events, including the annual California Honey Festival in Woodland.
And now at the Vacaville Museum Guild's Children's Party, where there was a doctor in the house, the courtyard and in the bee costume.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Meanwhile, here's another look at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's 2024 Moth Night, which drew widespread interest.
No one knows exactly how many moth events took place across the nation during National Moth Week, just as no one can predict how many species of moths and other night-flying insects will come to your porch light at night, or to your blacklighting display (UV light illuminating a hanging white sheet).
"Scientists estimate there are at minimum 150,000 moth species, and some believe that there could be over 500,000! Moths have been found that are small as a pinhead and as large as an adult-human's hand," according to NationalToday.com. "But of course, it's the incredibly complicated wing colors and patterns that make them especially dazzling."
A New Jersey non-profit organization, Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission, launched the national event in 2012. The organization is dedicated to the conservation and promotion of the local environment.
The Bohart Museum's global collection of 8 million insects includes some 825,454 specimens of moths and butterflies, including 618,750 moths, ranging in size from the huge Atlas moths (10-inch wingspan) to the extremely tiny (4 mm wingspan) leafminer moths, says Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection. He and Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas showed dozens of moth specimens and answered questions.
What moths were drawn to the blacklighting display? (See list on Bug Squad blog). Retired UC Davis staff associate John "Moth Man" De Benedictus and his colleagues set up the blacklighting display. UC Davis doctoral student Iris Quayle fielded questions about the differences between moths and butterflies (See Bug Squad blog).
In today's blog, we share images of
- Moth-er Volkmar Heinrich, UC Davis associate professor of biomedical engineering
- Moth-ers UC Davis doctoral candidate Peter Coggan and his father, Pete Coggan of Minnesota (See Bug Squad blog)
- UC Davis student Kaitai Liu who showed stick insects and Madagascar hissing cockroaches from the live petting zoo
- UC Davis graduate student Riley Hoffman and fellow Bohart volunteer Barbara Heinsch, who staffed the family arts-and-crafts table.
Light Pollution. The Coggans answered many questions about light pollution. "Most organisms have come to rely on nighttime darkness for knowing when to reproduce, preparing for the winter, and moving around their environment," commented UC Davis doctoral student Peter Coggan. "The Industrial Revolution Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) has become a major conservation issue, disorienting and confusing countless species, often resulting in death. ALAN often kills or displaces organisms like bats, moths, and fireflies, making our nights less bio- diverse and more mosquito filled."
"Not only does it alter animal behavior but ALAN also has been linked to many human health issues like depression, obesity, and cancer," he said. "Although not widely known, ALAN is one of the easiest environmental crises to solve. Raising awareness and getting communities to reduce their light usage can solve the issue overnight and bring back the animals of darkness and the stars back to them."
The Bohart Museum's Moth Night also featured a display of various silk textile and cocoons, donated to the museum by Professor Richard Peigler of the University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio. Bohart associate Mike Pitcairn, retired senior environmental scientist and supervisor, California Department of Food and Agriculture's Biological Control Program, staffed the table. (See more in upcoming Bug Squad blog.)
The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. Director of the insect museum is Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair of UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, Agricultural Sciences, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The open houses are free and family friendly. The next open house is on Saturday, Sept. 28 from 1 to 4 p.m. The theme: "Museum ABC's: Arthropods, Bohart and Collecting." Access the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or email bmuseum@ucdavis.edu for more information.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
He's a male Mantis religiosa, as slim as a string bean, and scanning his environment.
We're accustomed to seeing see the native Stagmomantis limbata in our garden, and not M. religiosa, the European mantis, which is found throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America.
"Males are often found to be more active and agile, whereas females are physically more powerful," according to Wikipedia. "Adult females are generally too large and heavy for their wings to enable a take-off...The great variation in the coloration of M. religiosa from different shades of yellow, brown, green, and sometimes black has been the cause of numerous hypotheses and studies for over 100 years.However, no generally accepted answer about reason, benefit, or mechanism of the coloration or the change of coloration has been found."
The male is apparently quite good at avoiding sexual cannibalism during mating. Wikipedia says: "Instead of just observing them, sexually mature males approach sexually mature females when they see them, but due to the physical superiority of the females, males of M. religiosa face certain challenges in doing so. When a female spots a male, she is very likely to attack and kill him (see also: Sexual cannibalism). Therefore, males can be observed to be very slow and cautious in their approach; after spotting a female, the male usually freezes and turns his head to look directly at her. Since the foveae in his eyes face directly forwards, he has the most accurate and detailed view of her and can watch every one of her moves. He then proceeds to approach her from behind. Males can be observed to stop as soon as the female turns her head or even moves. Mantids are very good at detecting moving structures, but are almost unable to see immobile objects. Using this ‘stop-and-go' tactic, the male stalks closer to the female. This can often take several hours. Depending on the environment, males sometimes show a light ‘rocking'-behavior which is believed to imitate the leaves of surrounding plants to blend in with the background. Males doing this had no higher probability of being detected and attacked, which supports this hypothesis of concealment."
We asked praying mantis scientist Lohit Garikipati about this European species. He holds a bachelor's degree from UC Davis and a master's degree from Towson University, Md., and is now PhD-bound at the Richard Gilder Graduate School in the American Museum of Natural History in the Jessica Ware lab.
"In my time at Davis I observationally did--they hold a special place for me as they were the first species that ever kept and raised in captivity!" said Garikapti, who shared his mantises and expertise at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open houses. "But they also highlighted to me the potential impact of invasive species on both native mantis species but also prey populations--as low foliage and ground dwelling predators, they have a different niche from S. limbata, and may be contributing to the decline of native Litaneutria (even as they have for the California mantis, Stagmomantis wheelerii). Adult females have also been observed feeding on fence lizards, without much apparent effort as they can take lizards even larger than they are. All of these factors combined with their cryptic ooth (ootheca) deposition and large clutch size have made them one of the most if not the most successful mantis species on the planet - they tolerate both cold and hot climates being found in deserts to temperate forests and now have a Holarctic distribution."
Garikipati related that in the Ware lab, he will be "investigating the evolutionary relationships of praying mantises and what drove their diversity."
We look forward to hearing more from Lohit! As for our buddy, the male M. religiosa, he took flight. (See video on YouTube).
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No, as industrious as a Lepidopterist.
Specifically, as industrious and dedicated as Jeff Smith, curator of the moth and butterfly collection at the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology--a collection that an international authority on Lepidoptera praised as “The Gold Standard” of Lep collections.
But more about that later.
Smith, fascinated by insects since his childhood in San Jose, considers entomology “my passion” and the Bohart Museum “my cause.”
You may remember him from back in 2015, when he received a highly competitive Friend of the College Award from the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Lynn Kimsey, then director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis professor of entomology (and now distinguished professor emerita) nominated Smith for the award. “You could not ask for a better friend than Jeff Smith,” she said, noting that he has “brought us international acclaim and saved us $160,000 through donations of specimens and materials, identification skills and his professional woodworking skills. This does not include the thousands of hours he has donated in outreach programs that draw attention to the museum, the college and the university.”
Kimsey, who directed the museum for 34 years, stepping down on Feb. 1, 2024 when Professor Jason Bond accepted the position, remembers when Smith joined the museum. “When Jeff was working for Univar Environmental Services, a 35-year career until his retirement in 2013, he would spend some of his vacation days at the museum. Over the years Jeff took over more and more of the curation of the butterfly and moth collection. He took home literally thousands of field pinned specimens and spread their wings at home, bringing them back to the museum perfectly mounted. To date he has spread the wings on more than 200,000 butterflies and moths. This translates into something like 33,000 hours of work!”
We caught up with Smith the other day for an update.
A Bohart volunteer since 1998, Smith has donated some 100,000 specimens (primarily butterflies, moths but a few other insects, including beetles) to the Bohart Museum. To date, he has spread the wings of some 180,000 moth and butterflies. He has crafted and donated some 2,475 wooden specimen drawers. He is valued for his expertise and public outreach at the Bohart Museum's open houses, usually about nine in number. The open houses include UC Davis Picnic Day, UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day, and Take-Your-Daughters-and-Sons-to-Work Day.
In addition, Smith annually presents an evening spreading class to the UC Davis Entomology Club as well as an annual presentation to Bio Boot Camp. He also speaks at 12 to 15 other venues per year, engaging students at School Science Days and in individual classrooms.
825,454 Specimens in Lep Collection. “We have 825,454 specimens of moths and butterflies,” he said, delighted to be showing the collection at the Bohart Museum's Moth Night from 7 to 11 on Saturday, July 20, in celebration of National Moth Week. “We have around 618,750 moths, ranging in size from the huge Atlas moths (10-inch wingspan) to the extremely tiny (4 mm wingspan) leafminer moths.” The event is free and family friendly.
Some of his favorite moths are in the subfamily Arctiinae. "They're called Tiger Moths because of their colors and amazing ability to resemble stinging wasps. We have a very large worldwide collection of this group.”
Worldwide, scientists have described about 18,000 species of butterflies and 180,000 species of moths, "and hundreds of newly named species are added every year," Smith said. "It's also believed that we may know of no more than 10-15 percent of the species actually out there, with the small 'micro-Lepidoptera' likely with over 90 percent of the species in the world still unknown. This emphasizes the importance of preserving natural environments so things don't go extinct before we can ever recognize their importance to the Earth and their relationships in their habitats. '
How many specimens have you spread?
“I believe I typically spread 6,000 or more moths and butterflies each year for the past 30 plus years, and at this moment, I am spreading several thousand specimens just brought back from another Belize excursion. Everything butterfly or moth that comes to the museum is handed to me to curate, label, identify, and incorporate into the collection, which I believe may now house nearly 3/4 million Lepidoptera.”
How many specimen drawers have you made?
“To date I have made and donated 2,475 drawers, and in my garage shop I am currently making another 23 as the museum suddenly became short on empty drawers. About 1/4 of the drawers have been out of repurposed redwood from old decks and fencing.
Estimated number of hours you've donated to the Bohart?
“This is difficult to say, as most of the work I do is at home (Rocklin) on a daily basis, perhaps 2 to 3 hours each day. I get into the museum once a week to put away what I've done at home, so 9 to 10 hours there as well. Even on vacations away from home I take projects to work on daily on my computer-- spreadsheets, new unit tray labels, new pull tab labels, so that adds many more hours as well, and I've been doing this for 35 years.”
Smith is an active member of the international Lepidopterists' Society (since 1967). He and his colleagues hosted the 2019 meeting of the Lepidopterists' Society in Davis.
Now, back to "The Gold Standard."
"The Gold Standard” praise came from Professor Paul Opler (1938-2023) of Colorado State University, an international authority on Lepidoptera and author of noted books on butterflies and moths, including the Peterson Field Guide to Butterflies of Eastern North America, the Peterson Field Guide to Butterflies of Western North America, Butterflies East of the Great Plains: An Illustrated Natural History, and Moths of Western North America. butterflies. Opler (who by the way, served as the first editor of American Entomologist, published by the Entomological Society of America), received his doctorate in entomology in 1970 from UC Berkeley,
“About 10 years ago, Paul spent a few days in the Bohart going through our Notodontidae collection in preparation for a revision of that family now available,” Smith recalled. Upon returning home, Opler emailed Smith: “I consider the Bohart Lepidoptera collection to be The Gold Standard to which we all should aspire.”
“That huge compliment," Smith said, "spoke to the time I have spent with this magnificent collection."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology's annual Moth Night celebration, affiliated with National Moth Week, you'll meet John De Benedictis, better known as “The Moth Man.”
The indoor-outdoor event, free and open to the public, is set from 7 to 11 p.m., Saturday, July 20 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane.
De Benedictis and his colleagues annually set up a blacklighting display, using UV lighting to attract moths and other night-flying insects. He has blacklighted for 37 years.
His moth collection of some 600 species from the Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve and 300 species from his backyard in Davis is housed in the Bohart Museum.
"Jerry Powell (the late UC Berkeley professor and director of the Essig Museum of Entomology) once estimated that there are about 17,000 North American butterflies and moths," De Benedictus commented. "I would not be surprised if it's closer to 20,000."
'Expertise in Moth Identification Is Invaluable'
"John has been great volunteer and supporter of the Bohart Museum," said UC Davis distinguished emerita professor Lynn Kimsey, former director of the Bohart Museum. "His expertise in moth identification is invaluable and now that Jerry Powell is gone, there's really no one else who can identify moths, particularly little brown moths (LBMs) of California."
De Benedictis, a research associate at the Bohart Museum, is closely linked to UC Berkeley, his alma mater, and UC Davis, where he retired. He holds a bachelor's degree in biology, with an emphasis in entomology (1979), and a master's degree in entomology (1998) from UC Berkeley. "Jerry was my major professor and also recruited me as an undergraduate to work in his lab."
A UC Davis retiree since 2001, De Benedictis worked as a staff research assistant from 1995 to 2001 in the laboratory of medical entomologist Tom Scott, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
"I came to Davis in 1989 for a two-month job to key out aphids for Beth Grafton-Cardwell, who at that time was a postdoc of (Professor) Jeffrey Granett. During that time, the rootstock that was being used to protect wine grapevines from grape phylloxera began to fail in Napa and Sonoma counties, so I was able to prolong my stay at Davis through a series of grants to address that problem. While working for Beth and Jeffrey, I got a mini-grant from the former Institute of Ecology to study moths at the Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve where I collected from 1989 until the last major fire in 2020."
“I began a similar inventory of the species in my backyard after I purchased my home in 1998," De Benedictis said. "It continues to this day, and a synoptic collection of the 300 or so species that I've collected in my yard is housed alongside the Cold Canyon collection in the Bohart Museum.” Grace Horne of the lab of urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, Department of Entomology and Nematology, is analyzing the data from these studies as part of her doctoral research.
When Children Were 'Free-Range'
John traces his interest in entomology to his childhood. Born in Oakland in 1945, the second of six children on Aldo and Eleanor De Benedictis, he grew up in Berkeley.
“I am grateful that I had parents who not merely tolerated but encouraged our activities and to have grown up in an era when chickens were confined and children were free-range rather than the reverse as is the case today.”
“I attended Berkeley public schools and later UC Berkeley, except for my last year of junior high school which was in Mt. Vernon, N. Y., while my dad was temporarily transferred,” De Benedictis said. “My older brother Paul was keenly interested in natural history, which switched from subject to subject whenever a new Golden Nature Guide came out. We spent much of our free time poking around in the East Bay Regional Parks and in Strawberry Canyon behind Berkeley's Central Campus.” (Paul went on to obtain a doctorate in ecology in Michigan.)
While in the fourth grade, John began “collecting butterflies, a few flashy moths, and other insects with my older brother and a couple of classmates. A highlight of my youth was the return trip from New York by car where we chased butterflies that we never saw in New York or in California as often as we could complain long and loud enough to make my dad stop the station wagon.”
When John was attending junior high in the late 1950s, he found a Polyphemus moth under a streetlight on the UC Berkeley campus. “It was a highly prized find. At UC Berkeley, we collected on spring field trips with the systematics professors and students and we---whoever was participating--ran lights on during our spruce budworm field trips. I ran a sheet a few times on San Bruno Mountain on my own and was surprised to find that very few of the moths that I had reared from caterpillars flew to my light. While in grad school and afterwards, I went on a few of Jerry Powell's trips to the California Channel Islands to assist him in his inventory of the islands' Lepidoptera species. There we ran lights and set out light traps when it wasn't too cold and windy.”
Species Named for Him
De Benedictis recalled that he and Dave Wagner, now a professor at the University of Connecticut, started graduate studies with Powell at UC Berkeley at the same time. "Jerry had a long-term project studying larval host plants of caterpillars, and Dave and I were among the succession of students who took care of his larval rearing lots on the Berkeley campus. Dave went on to become the current authority on the caterpillars of large moths. I was more interested in smaller moths and prolonged my graduate years by collecting caterpillars on San Bruno Mountain by the San Francisco Airport.” There De Benedictis discovered a handful of new species, one of which Powell named Gnorimoschema debenedictisi.
“The Mid-Winter Gathering is a legacy of Jerry Powell,” said De Benedictus, who spent more time in the field with Powell than any other UC Berkeley graduate student. "I was privileged to be Jerry's student and lucky to have him become my friend."I
In a tribute to Powell, the Essig Museum wrote: "Jerry's rearing program was the most extensive in the history of the study of New World Microlepidoptera. For over 50 years he and his students processed more than 15,000 collections of larval or live adult Lepidoptera. Resulting data encompass more than 1,000 species of moths, through rearing either field-collected larvae or those emerging from eggs deposited by females in confinement. This total includes more than 60% of an estimated 1,500 species of Microlepidoptera occurring in California."
Powell and Paul Opler, two Lepidoptera legends, co-authored Moths of Western North America.