- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
There's no fame, fortune or glory in writing a daily (volunteer) Bug Squad blog.
It's about the insects. It's always been about the insects, from honey bees to bumble bees, to butterflies, to dragonflies, to praying mantises and more.
Why? Just call it a fascination for insects, which evolved some 400 million years ago. "Three-quarters of all known animals are insects, a staggering 1 million species in total with an estimated 4 to 5 million yet to be discovered," according to a November 2015 article in New Scientist. "By contrast, there are fewer than 70,000 vertebrate species. Harvard University entomologist Edward O. Wilson has suggested there may be as many as 10 quintillion insects alive at any one time – that's 1018, or more than a billion for each person on the planet. They have colonised every continent, including Antarctica. They can live in air, land and water. They even live on us – lice evolved as soon as there was hair and feathers to set up home in. They are the kings of the arthropods – animals…"
I began writing the Bug Squad blog (at the invitation of Pam Kan-Rice) on the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) website on Aug. 6, 2008, and have written it every night, Monday through Friday, never missing a single night of posting. Today that amounts to 4020. Along the way it's been named the No. 4 "bug blog in the world" (there aren't that many of us!) And, it has won some international awards. My photos have landed on the covers of several scientific journals and popular magazines, and in a few scientific books and children's books (all donations).
My photography has also resulted in thousands of copyright infringements. One man in Austria falsely claimed one of my images and was selling it on four stock photo platforms, including Getty Images. Others deliberately erase the copyrights and steal the images for their commercial purposes.
It's fun until it isn't.
Where do I take the images? Almost all are from our family's pollinator garden. My gear includes a Nikon Z7 mirrorless camera, a Nikon D800, a Nikon D500, a Canon AE1, coupled with half-a-dozen macro lenses. It's exhilarating to capture an image of a honey bee in flight, a monarch butterfly laying an egg, a dragonfly catching prey, or even to go eye-to-eye with a Western yellowjacket.
I don't poke 'em, prod 'em, or pin 'em. I am a guest in their habitat.
So, in 2023, "These are a few of my favorite things" (thanks, Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers):
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Congrats to the University of California recipients of awards from the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE), an international association of communicators, educators and information technologists who focus on communicating research-based information.
ACE officials recently handed out gold, silver and bronze awards at their 107th annual conference, held in Asheville, N.C. ACE's first conference occurred July 10, 1913, when land-grant college agricultural editors gathered at the University of Illinois.
And now, the California winners:
The University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) won the gold award in the Information Technology category, Instructional Design for a Non-Academic Public Online Course, for its “Self-Paced Online Course: Urban Pyrethroid and Fipronil Use-Runoff and Surface Water Protection.”
The team: Petr Kosina, Cheryl Reynolds, Robert Budd, Aniela Burant, Carlos Gutierrez, Karey Windbiel-Rojas and Loren Oki.
The course, for pest management professionals who work primarily in structural pest control or landscape maintenance, “presents information on the Surface Water Protection Regulations that were put into place to reduce the amount of pyrethroids in surface water runoff. It discusses the types of applications allowed under the regulations as well as those that are prohibited and those that are exempt." The course, available for free, must be completed by Dec. 30 of the current year.
Kathy Keatley Garvey (yours truly), communication specialist for the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, won a bronze award (third place) in the pictorial series category. Her submission included a series of monarch images published July 27, 2022 on her Bug Squad blog, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources website.
Headlined “Monarch Butterflies: Closer to Extinction,” the blog included photos of a monarch egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and male and female butterflies, all images she captured in her family's pollinator garden in Vacaville.
The blog dealt with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announcement on July 21, 2022 that the migratory monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is now on its "Red List of Threatened Species as Endangered--threatened by habitat destruction and climate change."
Wrote Garvey:
“The good news? That the iconic monarch landed on the Red List, which means opening safeguards to protect it."
“The bad news? Being on the list means that it's closer to extinction. The other bad news? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has not yet listed it as endangered or threatened, only that it's a candidate for its list of endangered and threatened wildlife."
“The sad news? The IUCN Red List now includes 147,517 species, of which 41,459 are threatened with extinction."
Garvey launched the Bug Squad on Aug. 6, 2008 and writes it every night, Monday through Friday. The insect blog draws worldwide rankings and accolades.
The ACE winners represent universities or higher institutions of learning in 18 states: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia and Wyoming. (See list)
