"Target-site insensitivity (TSI) is an important mechanism of animal resistance to toxins," says nematologist Adler Dillman of the University of California, Riverside. "TSI evolved in parallel in the monarch butterfly and other insects that specialize on milkweeds and is thought to have facilitated sequestration of cardiac glycosides that may protect these insects from predation and parasitism."

Dillman, professor and chair of the UCR Department of Nematology,  will share his research in a presentation titled "Nematode Parasitism of Insects with Toxic Cardenolides," hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology at 4:10 p.m., Monday, Jan. 8.  

His seminar will be in Room 122 of Briggs Hall and also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672. Associate professor and nematologist Shahid Siddique of the Department of Entomology and Nematology is the host. 

Dillman holds a bachelor's degree in microbiology from Brigham Young University (2006) and a doctorate in genetics (2013) from the California Institute of Technology.

The abstract of his UC Davis seminar:  

Known as an excellent investigator and teacher, Dillman won the 2022 UCR Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement; the 2021 Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Society of Nematologists, and a 2020 Outstanding Investigator Award, Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA).

Check out his lab page that details his research and his guest spot on an episode on the podcast Something Offbeat. He he discussed a scientific article on a case of Ophidascaris robertsi infection in a human brain.

Seminar coordinator is Brian Johnson, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. For Zoom technical issues, he may be reached at brnjohnson@ucdavis.edu. The complete list of winter seminars will be posted soon. 

So, you're sitting in your backyard, enjoying some sunshine (sun break!) on the first day of the year, and you hear a bumble bee buzzing in your Madrone tree.

You take a video, email it to the sponsor, the Bohart Museum of Entomology, and you win the 4th annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble-Bee-of-the-Year Contest 

Congratulations, Nancy Hansen! The Fairfield resident emailed her video of a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, at 10:57 a.m., Monday, Jan. 1 to the Bohart Museum. (See her video on YouTube)

Contest coordinator Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology and director of the Bohart Museum, applauded the winner as the earliest ever recipient, and the first from Solano County.

Contest rules state that the first person to photograph a bumble bee in either Yolo or Solano and email it to the sponsor, the Bohart Museum, will receive a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, the bee that the legendary Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor and a 30-year member of the Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, monitored for decades.

"I've lived in Fairfield since 1970 and I retired from Kaiser Medical Center Vallejo after 33 years," Hansen said. "I'm a longtime gardener and flower-aholic!  I'm very interested in soil health,  pollinators and in soil microbes. I didn't plant the Madrone tree but I'm happy it provides food for pollinators most of the year. The first year we lived here, 2017,   the tree was full of bees. Their buzz sounded like an airplane engine, but since then I've seen fewer and fewer bees."

"On Monday I was out back enjoying the bit of sunshine that had peaked through the clouds when  I heard buzzing in my Madrone tree.  I went over, looked and I saw a lot of honey bees, but then I looked up and saw the bumble bee. I ran to get my camera hoping I could catch his picture before he flew away."

Hansen retired as a cardiology technician at Vallejo's Kaiser facility, where she performed the cardiology testing for the doctors. "It was one of the most interesting and varied jobs in the facility," she said. "I learned so much during my working years. I was in charge of training new employees so I was able to pass that knowledge on."

Previous record-holders: 

2023: Ria deGrassi of Davis, who photographed a B. melanopygus at 12:32, Jan. 8 on a ceanothus in her yard.

2022: Tie between Maureen Page, then a doctoral candidate in the lab of pollination ecologist Neal Williams, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; and Ellen Zagory of Davis, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. Each photographed a bumble bee on manzanita in the  Arboretum at 2:30 p.m., Jan. 1.  Page photographed a B. melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii. 

2021: UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson, then of the Williams lab and the Elina Lastro Niño lab, photographed a B. melanopygus at 3:10 p.m., Jan. 14 in a manzanita patch in the Arboretum.

The contest memorializes Professor Thorp, a global authority on bees and a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, who died June 7, 2019 at age 85. He retired in 1994 but continued working until several weeks before his death. Every year he looked forward to seeing the first bumble bee in the area. 

Thorp, a tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, co-authored two books in 2014, during his retirement:  Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University,) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday). Every year he looked forward to finding or seeing the first bumble bee in the area.

Thorp co-taught The Bee Course from 2002 to 2019. An intensive nine-day workshop affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History and held annually at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz., it draws participants from around the world, including conservation biologists, pollination ecologists, and other biologists who want to gain greater knowledge of the systematics and biology of bees.

For years, Thorp monitored Franklin's bumble bee, found only in a small range in Southern Oregon and Northern California, and now feared extinct. He last spotted it in 2006.

Soon Nancy Hansen will receive a coffee cup with an image of that bee.

One down, one to go!

We have a winner in the 4th annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble-Bee-of-the-Year Contest, sponsored by the Bohart Museum of Entomology. Details are being gathered, with the winner to be announced soon. Hint:it's a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, and it was videoed on Jan. 1, the first day of the contest.

There's no winner yet, however, in the annual Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest, sponsored by UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro. This year it's in collaboration with the Bohart Museum, the drop-off point.

In the Beer-for-a-Butterfly contest, if you collect the first cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) of the year anywhere in the three-county area of Yolo, Sacramento and Solano, you can trade the live specimen for a beer or its equivalent, compliments of the good professor.

Just call it "Suds for a Bug."

Shapiro launched the contest in 1972 as part of his scientific research to determine the first flight of the year in the three-county area. His research involves long-term studies of butterfly life cycles and climate change. 

What he's found: P. rapae is emerging earlier and earlier as the regional climate has warmed, Shapiro says.  "Since 1972, the first flight of the cabbage white butterfly has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20."

Shapiro, who has monitored butterfly populations in Central California since 1972, and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/, says the point of the contest "is to get the earliest possible flight date for statistical purposes. The rules require that the animal be captured and brought in alive to be verified. That way no one can falsely claim to have seen one or misidentify something else as a cabbage white."

The contest rules include:

• It must be an adult (no caterpillars or pupae) and be captured outdoors.
• It must be brought in alive to the Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124, Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus,  during work hours, from 8 a.m. to noon, and from 1 to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. It must include full data (exact time, date and location of the capture) and the contact information of the collector (address, phone number and/or e-mail.) Brennen Dyer will certify that it is alive and refrigerate it. (If it's collected on a weekend or holiday, it can be kept in the refrigerator for a few days--do not freeze it, Shapiro says.)
• Shapiro is the sole judge.

Shapiro, who participates in his own contest, has been defeated only four times and those were by UC Davis graduate students. Adam Porter won in 1983; Sherri Graves and Rick VanBuskirk each won in the late 1990s; and Jacob Montgomery in 2016. The first three were his own graduate students.

Who won in 2023? Shapiro spotted the first butterfly of 2023 at 11:22 a.m., in West Sacramento, Yolo County. He did not collect the butterfly but recorded it as the first of the year. No one came forth with any other.

Shapiro is still looking for No. 1 in 2024.

"I tried this afternoon (Jan. 1 in West Sacramento)," Shapiro wrote in an email. No P. rapae.

But the good news, he recorded four species of another butterfly, the Nymphalids, in West Sacramento.  

1. Vanessa cardui, the Painted Lady
2. Vanessa atalana, the Red Admiral
3. Vanessa annabella, the West Coast Lady
4. Nymphalis antiopa, the Mourning Cloak

Shapiro spotted one of each species, and in this order: antiopa, atalanta, annabella, cardui. "I don't think I've ever had a 4-species day so early!" he related. "As for New Year's Day records: antiopa i.1.18; atalanta i.1.96,  i.1.12, i.1.13' annabella i.1.80. 92 and 96. Earliest cardui earliest is i.18.87. So it's the only free-and-clear record earliest. But a most extraordinary day!  No rapae, but it sure felt like a rapae day!"

Tomorrow may be a rapae day....

It's New Year's Day and it's common for folks to turn over a new leaf.

What about the old leaves?

Sometimes if you turn over an old leaf this time of year in Solano and Yolo counties, you might find a monarch caterpillar. As of today, we have two monarchs munching away in our pollinator garden in Vacaville. They've survived through freezing temperatures, heavy winds and steady rain.

Back in the late summer and early fall, monarchs fluttered into our gardem to lay their eggs. We provide four species of milkweed. Every fall we cut back the milkweed, but not until all the 'cats are gone. This year the 'cats  "weren't gone."

Monarchs surprise us. Some of our December/January sightings:

• A monarch in flight on Dec. 16, 2023 in west Vacaville
• A monarch in flight on Jan. 3, 2023 near Vacaville High School
• A monarch caterpillar munching Jan. 23, 2021 in our garden.

We remember UC Davis distinguished professor Art Shapiro (now emeritus) of the Department of Evolution and Ecology telling us that he recorded a monarch in flight on Jan. 19, 2020 in Sacramento, but even earlier than that--UC Davis professor Louie Yang of the Department of Entomology and Nematology spotted one flying Jan. 8, 2012 in east Davis.

Shapiro, who has monitored the butterfly populations of Central California since 1972, maintains esearch website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/.  His 10 sites stretch from the Sacramento River Delta through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains to the high desert of the Western Great Basin. It's the largest and oldest database in North America, and was recently cited by British conservation biologist Chris Thomas in a worldwide study of insect biomass.

The monarch Shapiro saw on Jan. 29, 2020, however, wasn't in his research project. As he told it in an email to his posse:  "We had a visitor today--a British journalist--who wanted to go on a site walk. Rancho Cordova was next up. We went in his rental car. We were on US 50, just passing the Tower Theater in Sacramento heading eastbound, when, at 10.30 a.m. (temperature in mid-upper 50s, light North wind, mostly sunny), a Monarch, sex unknown, flew across the freeway in front of us, 20-22' up, from SW to NE. There is no possibility of error, unless I am having visual hallucinations."

And the monarch caterpillar we saw in our garden on Jan. 23, 2021? "Evidence of inland winter breeding," Shapiro told us. "Nothing surprises me any more..."