- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A winter pollinator garden does not buzz with bees; it crawls with earwigs, ants, roly-polys, and other insects.
Turn over a rock, a pot, or a garden sculpture and there they are.
Well, there one was.
An earwig looked up as we lifted a garden sculpture. (Initially identified later as a European earwig, Forficula auricularia, order Dermaptera but it may be another species.)
"Yecch!" you say? Not so fast. Their role in the ecosystem includes eating aphids. They join such aphid eaters as lady beetles (aka ladybugs), soldier beetles, collups beetles, long-legged flies, big-eyed bugs, lacewings, damsel flies, minute pirate bugs and syrphid flies.
European earwigs are invasive. Look at the damage they do to citrus. You've also probably found them in an ear of corn, a nectarine or a pomegranate.
"Although this is the most abundant earwig in California, it was not known to the state until 1923," according to the book, California Insects, co-authored by Jerry Powell and Charles Hogue. "The immatures and adults feed on a wide variety of substances, from flowers and green foliage near the ground to living and dead insects, including aphids."
Earwigs are readily recognizable by their cerci or pincers. They look like nature's forceps or pliers.
Or as the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program says: "The adult earwig is readily identified by a pair of prominent appendages that resemble forceps at the tail end of its body. Used for defense, the forceps are somewhat curved in the male but straighter in the female. Although earwigs can devastate seedling vegetables or annual flowers and often seriously damage maturing soft fruit or corn silks, they also have a beneficial role in the landscape and have been shown to be important predators of aphids."
UC IPM goes on to say: "European earwigs feed on a variety of dead and living organisms, including insects, mites, and growing shoots of plants. They are voracious feeders on soft-bodied insects such as aphids and insect eggs and can exert significant biological control under some circumstances. In yards that are planted to turf and contain mature ornamental plants, damage by earwigs is unlikely to be of concern."
"European earwigs can cause substantial damage to seedling plants and soft fruit as well as to sweet corn. Damaged seedlings may be missing all or parts of their leaves and stem. Leaves on older plants, including fruit trees, have numerous irregular holes or are chewed around the edges. This damage may resemble that caused by caterpillars. Look for webbing, frass (excrement), or pupae that would indicate the presence of caterpillars."
"Earwigs may attack soft fruit such as apricots, strawberries, raspberries, or blackberries but don't harm hard fruit such as apples. On stone fruit, look for shallow gouges or holes that extend deeply into the fruit. On strawberries, distinguish earwig damage from that of snails and slugs by checking for the slime trails snails and slugs leave behind. On corn, earwigs feed on silks and prevent pollination, causing poor kernel development. Earwigs may also seriously damage flowers including zinnias, marigolds, and dahlias. To confirm that earwigs are causing the damage, go out at night with a flashlight to observe the pests in action."
In her newly published book, Garden Allies: The Insects, Birds and Other Animals That Keep Your Garden Beautiful and Thriving, author Frédérique Lavoipierre acknowledges their presence as "ominivores, detritivores and predators." In large numbers, however, they can be pests. "A neighbor uses empty cat-food cans baited with a dab of soy sauce and some cooking oil; they come for the soy sauce and get mired in the oil."
UC IPM points out that bacon grease or fish oil will attract them and vegetable oil will trap them.
- Trap earwigs with rolled newspaper, bamboo tubes, or short pieces of hose. Place these traps on the soil near plants just before dark, and shake accumulated earwigs into a pail of soapy water in the morning.
- Fill a low-sided can with vegetable oil and a drop of bacon grease or fish oil to attract and trap earwigs.
- Daily trapping will reduce earwig populations to tolerable levels.
But back to my sole earwig. What, no image of a bee? No butterfly? No dragonfly? Sorry, it's winter. I must be desperate for insect activity in the winter to stop, look, and photograph an earwig! Plus, nobody I know "takes portraits" of them.
Maybe it's the "yecch" factor as to why we rarely see photographers capturing images of these insects. The old wives' tail of associating earwigs with finding shelter in human ears still lurks. Also, there's that "movement factor": slow-moving photographers vs. fast-moving earwigs. Earwigs don't move at a snail's pace because they are not snails!
Remember George's grandmother in Roald Dahl's children's book, George's Marvellous Medicine? Grandma urges Boy George to eat unwashed celery, complete with earwigs:
"A big fat earwig is very tasty,' Grandma said, licking her lips. 'But you've got to be very quick, my dear, when you put one of those in your mouth. It has a pair of sharp nippers on its back end and if it grabs your tongue with those, it never lets go. So you've got to bite the earwig first, chop chop, before it bites you."
It "bites" you? Pinches!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Erdosh, 21, an undergraduate entomology major and president of the UC Davis Entomology Club, is passionate about bugs. Well, make that passionate about arthropods. Well, make that passionate about "all arthropods on the planet."
Part One of the two-segment interview is at https://cbsloc.al/3G81QaT.
Billed as "bringing bugs to the masses," the program explored critters such as a Madagascar hissing cockroach, an Atlas moth caterpillar, an Australian stick insect, and a rain forest mantis.
More than 22,000 fans follow her Instagram account, @gwentomologist, where she uploads educational and entertaining posts, illustrated with her incredible macro images.
"The main point of my page is to raise awareness for conservation of insects," Erdosh told Williams. Second point: to help folks overcome their fear of bugs by seeing their beauty and peculiarities.
Erdosh showed insects from the Bohart Museum of Entomology, as well as insects being reared by her friends.
Holding an Atlas caterpillar, Erdosh told the Good Day Sacramento reporter: "This is going to become the largest moth in the world."
Erdosh then showed Williams the massive frass (feces), the size of a raisin.
In a classic quote of the day,Williams deadpanned: "It has no problem with bowel movements."
That prompted one of the Good Day Sacramento anchors to quip: "When I woke up this morning I would have bet big money I was not going to see caterpillar poop here today but here we are."
Erdosh is an invited member of the UC Davis Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology (RSPIB), and a researcher in the laboratory of community ecologist Louie Yang, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. She recently received a UC Davis Provost's Undergraduate Research Fellowship to study whether ambient smoke from California's wildfires hinders an insect's ability to locate food.
Gwen knew at age 12 that she wanted to become an entomologist. Her career plan: to receive a doctorate in entomology and join academia as a professor and researcher. She's off to a great start! At age 16, she interned in the lab of Jason Dombroskie at Cornell University.
And quite appropriately, Gwen Erdosh sports a collection of insect-themed T-shirts. The one she wore on the Good Day Sacramento program: a T-shirt lettered with "Wait, I See a Bug!"
(See "The Amazing World of 'Gwentomologist' Gwen Erdosh" on the Dec. 23, 2021 Bug Squad blog.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She's hoping she can trick Culex pipiens, the Northern house mosquito, into not biting us.
As a recent OSU article on Can We Trick Mosquitoes So They Stop Biting Us? explained:
"In her lab, Meuti employed a technique called RNA interference. She injected several thousand Culex pipiens mosquitoes with double-stranded RNA. (RNA stands for ribonucleic acid, which can serve as a messenger, carrying genetic information from the DNA inside an organism's cells and allowing it to be made into the proteins that do all the work.)
"The double-stranded RNA that she injected into the mosquitoes prevented a specific protein that governs the mosquitoes' circadian rhythms from being made.
"Then Meuti waited. She hoped to see if reducing the amount of a circadian clock proteins had any effect on the mosquitoes' ability to measure seasonal time. Specifically, she wanted to see if she could convince a mosquito that it was winter when it was really summer — and vice versa."
Did it work? Yes.
Her presentation begins at 4:10 p.m., Pacific Time. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/99515291076
"Northern house mosquitoes, Culex pipiens, transmit West Nile virus to birds and people in the United States," Meuti says in her abstract. "However, transmission is limited to a few months of the year when female mosquitoes are actively biting and reproducing. During autumn, females of Cx. pipiens enter a physiologically dynamic but arrested state of development known as diapause where they divert resources from reproduction to survival."
Meuti and members of her lab study (1) how mosquitoes are able to measure daylength and whether the circadian clock is involved and (2) how human-mediated changes to the environment, like light pollution and higher temperatures in urban heat islands, affect mosquito seasonality, and how this might affect disease transmission in cities.
Meuti holds three degrees from OSU: dual bachelor degrees in microbiology and entomology, 2008; and her doctorate in entomology, 2014. Studying with major professor David Denlinger, she completed her dissertation on "Circadian Clocks and Photoperiodic Diapause in the Northern House Mosquito, Culex pipiens: Search for the Missing Link.”
Prior to joining the OSU faculty, Meuti served as a visiting professor in the Department of Biology, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, in 2015-16.
"Many of us intuitively recognize that our mosquito problems are seasonal; there are times of the year when mosquitoes are abundant and we cannot go outside without getting bitten (e.g. late spring and summer), while there are other times when we enjoy a reprieve from mosquito bites (e.g. late fall and winter)," Meuti writes on her website. "I am interested in how precisely mosquitoes are able to tell what time of year it is and appropriately respond to their environment. Members of my lab group study how circadian clock genes might allow mosquitoes to measure day length to determine the time of year; how male mosquitoes change their accessory gland proteins to influence female behavior and physiology; and whether mosquitoes in urban environments are active for longer periods during the year and/or bite humans more frequently. We use a variety of molecular, genetic and physiological techniques to investigate these questions. Our ultimate goal is to uncover specific ways to manipulate seasonal responses in insects so that we can more effectively control them." (Watch Megan Meuti's Discovery Talk)
Meuti recently co-authored research, "Artificial Light at Night Alters the Seasonal Responses of Biting Mosquitoes," published in the Journal of Insect Physiology.
The abstract:
"Urban light pollution caused by artificial light at night (ALAN) profoundly affects the ecology, behavior, and physiology of plants and animals. Further, this widespread environmental pollutant has the potential to negatively impact human and animal health by changing the seasonal dynamics of disease-transmitting insects. In response to short days, females of the Northern house mosquito enter an overwintering dormancy, or diapause. While in diapause, female mosquitoes divert energy away from reproduction, cease blood-feeding, and no longer transmit disease. We demonstrate that exposure to dim ALAN (~4 lx) causes female mosquitoes to avert diapause and become reproductively active, as these females acquired less fat content, developed larger egg follicles, imbibed vertebrate blood, and produced viable eggs and larvae. Our findings suggest that mosquitoes in highly light-polluted areas such as cities may be actively reproducing and biting later in the season, thereby extending the period of disease risk for urban residents. Our results suggest that ALAN should be considered when modeling mosquito abundance, disease risk, and when deciding how long mosquito surveillance and control should persist in temperate regions."
Active in the Entomological Society of America, Meuti received the 2018 Early Career Professional Teaching Award of $1,000. She earlier won a 2008-2014 OSU fellowship, the Susan D. Huntington Dean's Distinguished University Graduate Fellowship of $67,200; and a 2010-2013 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship of $90,000.
Coordinator of the UC Davis seminars is nematologist Shahid Siddique, assistant professor. For technical issues involving the seminar, contact him at ssiddique@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"Around 250 million years ago, at the start of the Triassic period, a species of insect evolved to have a narrow waist, called a petiole. This adaptation allowed greater flexibility and maneuverability of the ovipositor, the tubular structure on the female's rear used to deposit eggs."--Hazel Russman London, UK, New Scientist
With all the emphasis on New Year's resolutions and the "growing" desire of many folks to lose weight, consider the waist of the mud dauber wasp, Sceliphron caementarium.
The petiole is about twice as long as the rest of the abdomen, according to BugGuide.net.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, some "fashionable" women wore corsets and girdles to try to achieve the "wasp waist," sometimes as small as 15 to 18 inches in circumference. Can you imagine that?
The French singer and actress, Émilie Marie Bouchaud (1874-1939), better known as Polaire, drew fame for her 16-inch corseted wasp waist.
Polaire, meaning "Pole Star," worked first as a music-hall singer and dancer, according to Wikipedia. One of her earliest hits: performing the French version of the vaudeville song, Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay.
A wasp waist can result in severe medical issues. As Wikipedia points out: "Among the multitude of medical problems women suffered to achieve these drastic measurements were deformed ribs, weakened abdominal muscles, deformed and dislocated internal organs, and respiratory ailments. Displacement and disfigurement of the reproductive organs greatly increased the risk of miscarriage and maternal death."
Polaire, though, apparently didn't die from the adverse effects of the tightlacing.
"Polaire's finances suffered from a series of actions by the French tax authorities and she struggled to find stage or screen roles as she aged," Wikipedia tells us. "She may have suffered from depression. She died in 14 October 1939, aged 65, in Champigny-sur-Marne, Val-de-Marne, France."
Wasp waists? Hourglass figures? Entomologists probably just shake their heads in disbelief.
Leave the wasp waists to the wasps.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Bohart Museum director Lynn Kimsey, a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, said the calendar--featuring students' unusual comments on their Entomology 100 term papers and illustrated by Bohart associate Kris Merritt--is now on sale for $12 in-house or $15 through the online gift shop. (Due to COVID-19 precautions, the Bohart Museum is currently closed to the public.) Funds will benefit the Bohart.
Kimsey teaches ENT100 and annually collects what she calls the "prized sentences."
The sentences selected for the calendar include:
- "Normally, locusts are introverted creatures; they do not socialize unless it is for reproduction."
- "Drones are male bees that contribute only in the perm production for the queen."
- "In addition to a food product, pollinators are also used to pollinated crops."
- "The swarmers are attracted to lights and tend to expose themselves in the evenings."
- "Bees being shipped across country stored in trucks or vans are shown to cause more stress."
- "The thrip is a pest is not always a serious pest."
- "The other mentality that must be overcome is a chemically dependent one."
- "Theosmeteria are typically waved around in an erotic fashion and then retracted back into the body."
- "If not for their communication skills, honey bees would have long been extinct, leading to numerous crop losses.
- "The infected fleas can harbor rats, ground squirrels, rabbits and occasionally, even house cats."
“One aspect of teaching this course is the writing requirement," explained Kimsey, a UC Davis faculty since 1989. "Students at UC Davis are required to take a number of units in general education, science and writing. My course fulfills two of those requirements, which means that I have to require—and grade—student term papers as part of their assignments. I can say definitely that student writing abilities have not improved over the years. So, to alleviate the pain of grading these works of art, I started collecting particularly silly or otherwise awesome sentences from their papers.”
Merritt, who holds a bachelor's degree in entomology from UC Davis, does freelance illustrations and enclosure designs. A resident of Sacramento, she is an entomologist, artist and beekeeper. (See her work on her Instagram account at @bombus_polaris)
"My earliest memory of putting pen to surface is of some amorphous blob meant to be a pirate ship drawn on the side of those old giant inflated balls with handles you'd bounce around on," Merritt said. "Ever since, there has been no surface or media safe from my touch. I pretty much got into anime and manga (Japanese animation and comics) beginning in the fifth grade, and then on through high school.
"That gave me a decent understanding of anatomy and portraying motion," she said, adding "I later expanded my subjects to the extremes of realism and cartoons/caricatures, eventually developing my own unique style."
"I started working at the Bohart Museum in 2016 while an entomology undergraduate and was soon recruited as the in-house artist. I was tasked to illustrate Lynn Kimsey's collection of sentences, as well as various outreach projects. My favorite mediums to work with include alcohol markers, ink, and colored pencils, though I also appreciate the various advantages of digital art programs."
The Bohart Museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge building on Crocker Lane. Home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens, it is the seventh largest university insect museum in North America. It also houses a live "petting zoo," comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects tarantulas. The online gift shop includes such insect-themed gifts as hoodies, t-shirts, books, posters and jewelry, as well as insect-collecting equipment. For more information, contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
