News flash: Santa shops at the Bohart Museum of Entomology gift shop at UC Davis.

Yes, he does.

The jolly ol' gent wants to assure that no one has a "silent night," not with all the insect-themed gifts there: jewelry such as bee and monarch pins and beetle wing earrings; books for children and adults; note cards; T-shirts and hoodies; stuffed toy animals; posters showcasing dragonflies and California state insect, the dogface butterfly, coffee cups with the dogface butterfly motif; stickers;  insect snacks; and hand-turned lathed pens by entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the Lepidoptera collection at the Bohart.

One of the children's books is "The Story of the Dogface Butterfly," authored in 2013 by entomologist Fran Keller,  a professor at Folsom Lake College, a Bohart Museum research scientist, and a UC Davis doctoral alumna.

The 35-page book features images by Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas and Keller, and illustrations by then UC Davis student Laine Bauer.

Found only in California, the rarely seen butterfly is also known as  (1) "the flying pansy," referring to the male's spectacular black and yellow coloring, and (2) as a "dog head" butterfly (the markings on the male resemble a silhouette of a dog's head). The female is mostly solid yellow. The butterfly's major breeding ground is in Auburn in the Shutamul Bear River Preserve maintained by the Placer Land Trust (PLT). 

A fourth-grade class in Fresno led the effort to have the butterfly named the state insect. Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law on July 28, 1972.

Net proceeds from the Bohart Museum gift shop benefit its education, outreach and research programs. Purchases can be made during the regular hours. 

The insect museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus, is open to the public from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday (except on holidays). It will be closed for the winter break from Dec. 23 to Jan. 1. 

The Bohart Museum houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens. It is also the home of a live petting zoo, which includes Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects (aka walking sticks) and tarantulas. 

UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, a UC Davis doctoral alumna, has directed the Bohart Museum since 1990. Her major professor, Richard Bohart (1913-2007) founded the insect museum in 1946. 

For more information contact, the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or access its website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu.

Mark your calendars!

Mark your calendars for the eagerly awaited open houses and special events at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.

The Bohart has announced its 2024 special events, which include three open houses and participation in the 13th annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day, and 110th annual UC Davis Picnic Day. All are free and family friendly. 

The schedule:

Saturday, Jan. 20:
"Social Wasps," 1 to 4 p.m., featuring UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum. She recently received the  2023 Exceptional Faculty Award from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Kimsey, a recognized authority on insect biodiversity, systematics and biogeography of parasitic wasps, urban entomology, civil forensic entomology, and arthropod-related industrial hygiene, is a 34-year member of the UC Davis entomology faculty. She has directed the Bohart Museum since 1990. She plans to retire in 2024.  (See news story)

Saturday, Feb. 10:
13th Annual Biodiversity Museum Day, all day. Last year 13 UC Davis museums or collections participated: Arboretum and Public Garden, Bohart Museum of Entomology, Botanical Conservatory. California Raptor Center. Center for Plant Diversity, Department of Anthropology Museum, Marine Invertebrate Collection, Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, Nematode Collection, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Paleontology Collection, and Phaff Yeast Culture Collection.

Sunday, March 3:
"Grasshoppers, Crickets and Katydids." Talk and a question-and-answer forum from 1 to 2 p.m. Open museum, 2 to 4 p.m. Heading the event is UC Davis undergraduate student Sol Wantz, a senior majoring in entomology and a member o the lab of community ecologist and professor Neal Williams. She serve as president of the UC Davis Entomology Club. 

Saturday, April 20:
110th UC Davis Picnic Day, all day. This is billed as the largest student-run event in the country. It is UC Davis' annual open house with hundreds of free and family friendly events. Entomology displays, exhibits and activities planned by the Department of Entomology and Nematology will be at the Bohart Museum and at Briggs Hall.

Sunday, May 19:
"Bees: Both Wild and Managed," 1 to 4 p.m. Presenters will include community ecologist Rachel Vannette, associate professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. 

The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus a live petting zoo (including Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects, and tarantulas) and a insect-themed gift shop, stocked with t-shirts, hoodies, jewelry, books, posters, pens, and more. 

The Bohart Museum is open to the public Monday through Thursday. Casual walk-in hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m. Pre-arranged tours (schools, scouts, UC classes) may also occur during these times. The museum will be closed for the winter holiday break, Dec. 23-Jan. 1.  More information is on the website or by contacting bmuseum@ucdavis.edu. Tabatha Yang serves as the education and outreach coordinator, and Brennen Dyer as the collections manager. 

Remember the celebrated image of George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon crossing Abbey Road in single file outside their studios in London?  

It's the cover of their final album, "Abbey Road," released Sept. 26, 1969.  

All the Beatles, except Harrison, are wearing designer suits. And all, except McCartney, are wearing shoes. He is barefoot. Reportedly his newly purchased shoes hurt his feet, so he kicked them off. 

Enter the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) and its longtime best-selling T-shirt, "The Beetles," of four beetles crossing Abbey Road. Beneath each image is the family name:  Phengogidae, Curculionidae, Cerambycidae and Scarabaeidae. Think glowworm beetles, snout beetles, long-horned beetles and scarab beetles.

Beetles belong to the order Coleoptera, the largest of all the insect orders, constituting some 400,000 described species, or about 40 percent of all described species of insects.

If you look closely, these UC Davis beetles are all wearing clothes--maybe designer clothes designed just for them? Three are barefoot, and one, the long-horned beetle, is wearing shoes. EGSA records don't indicate who designed "The Beetles," but it's a keeper. It never fails to draw smiles.

"The Beetles" is one of the many shirts that EGSA sells as part of its fundraising projects. The T-shirts can be viewed and ordered online at https://mkt.com/UCDavisEntGrad/. 

EGSA president Mia Lippey, a doctoral student in the laboratories of UC Davis distinguished professor Jay Rosenheim and assistant professor Emily Meineke, says that currently, the designs offered are:

1. The Beetles (in black or red)
2. Entomo Gothic (a play on the American Gothic, in grey)
3. Whip Scorpion (in lavender and black)
4. Bee-Haw (in black)
5. They See Me Rollin' (dung beetles rolling a poop, in heather blue)
6. Et in Terra (dark green)
7. Entomophagy (in blue and green)

All T-shirts come in sizes from XS to XXL. 

One of the newer designs is "Bee Haw," of a honey bee disguised as a cowgirl, complete with hat and rope.  The entomophagy ("eating insects") T-shirts are also "in," as are those that whip and roll--whip scorpions and dung beetles. 

If you love The Beatles, The Beetles, and Abbey Road--or just all insects--and want to help out the entomology graduate students, insect-themed T-shirts are the way to go. Insects rule the world. A recent National Geographic article related that insects evolved 400 million years ago and today "there are about 10 quintillion on Earth...at least 850,000 known insects exist worldwide."

And most of them are beetles...

Picture yourself as a waggle-dancing honey bee. 

You're dancing in the dark, on a small, crowded dance floor with lots of obstacles, and you're trying to communicate to other foragers where that great resource is. You're relating the direction, distance, and quality of the resource (pollen, nectar, propolis, or water) so that they too, can find it, collect it and return it to the hive. 

Can you do that? And also perform other communications, like letting the colony know where a good nesting site is?

No?

Want to learn more about honey bee communication?

Enter bee biologist James Nieh, a professor and an associate dean at UC San Diego. He'll present a seminar, hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, at 4:10 p.m., Monday, Dec. 4 in Room 122 of Briggs Hall. His seminar, "Danger, Dopamine, and Dance: New Insights from the Magic Well of Honey Bee Communication," also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672 

Nieh, who is a faculty member of the Section of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution, Division of Biological Sciences,  and associate dean of Biological Sciences, has studied honey bee communication for decades.

 "Karl von Frisch referred to the waggle dance as the 'magic well' for the insights that it provides not only on honey bees, but on the general cognitive complexity that social insects are capable of," he writes in his abstract. "New research demonstrates that the neurotransmitter, dopamine, the 'pleasure molecule' plays a similar hedonic role in honey bees as it does in many vertebrates, regulating the perception of danger and the anticipation of food rewards as revealed in the excitatory waggle dance and the associated, inhibitory stop signal. I will also discuss new data showing that the honey bee waggle dance is partially learned and has elements that may be culturally transmitted. Together, these findings, demonstrate that the waggle dance can teach us a great deal about shared cognitive mechanisms and the importance of social learning across taxa."

In an article, "Social Signal Learning of the Waggle Dance in Honey Bees," published in Science in March, 2023, Nieh and his research team showed that "correct waggle dancing requires social learning. Bees without the opportunity to follow any dances before they first danced produced significantly more disordered dances with larger waggle angle divergence errors and encoded distance incorrectly. The former deficit improved with experience, but distance encoding was set for life. The first dances of bees that could follow other dancers showed neither impairment. Social learning, therefore, shapes honey bee signaling, as it does communication in human infants, birds, and multiple other vertebrate species. that correct waggle dancing requires social learning. Bees without the opportunity to follow any dances before they first danced produced significantly more disordered dances with larger waggle angle divergence errors and encoded distance incorrectly. The former deficit improved with experience, but distance encoding was set for life. The first dances of bees that could follow other dancers showed neither impairment. Social learning, therefore, shapes honey bee signaling, as it does communication in human infants, birds, and multiple other vertebrate species."

Nieh received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1991 and his doctorate from Cornell University in 1997. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship funded by NSF-NAT0 (National Science Foundation, North Atlantic Treaty Organization) at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He served as a Harvard Junior Fellow from 1998-2000.

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 list of seminars is posted here.