- 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.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If Cinderella were a moth, what species would she be? Maybe this tiny, shimmering one.
When we spotted this visitor during National Moth Week on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in our pollinator garden, we asked our Bohart Museum of Entomology associates for identification.
John "Moth Man" De Benedictis and Greg Kareofelas said it appears to be a Cadra figulilella, the raisin moth, family Pyralidae.
How did the raisin moth get its name? Most likely because it was first identified on Muscat raisins in Fresno County in 1928, according to Wikipedia. It's a pest in its larval stage, feeding on such dried fruits as raisins and dates. "The larvae in particular are herbivorous and prefer to feed on dry fruits on the ground or still on the plant. In particular they feed on fallen figs, ripe carob pods, grapes, cottonseed cake, cacao beans, prunes, peaches, apricots, pears, and more." This species is found throughout much of the world, including California, Florida, the Eastern Mediterranean region, and some parts of Australia, South America, and Africa.
Remember the Cinderella story? After her father died, Cinderella lived with her cruel stepmother, Lady Tremaine, and two evil stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella, who forced her to work as their maid. When Cinderella received Prince Charming's ball invitation, she wanted to wear her deceased mother's party dress but her jealous stepsisters destroyed it. Like magic, her Fairy Godmother appeared and gifted her with a a silver shimmering gown and tiny glass slippers. Bottom line, Cinderella loses a slipper at the ball, when the Fairy Godmother's magic vanishes. Prince Charming learns it belongs to Cinderella, and they marry and live happily ever after.
Not sure if this moth lived happily ever after, but poof, it vanished shortly after I took this image.
Happy National Moth Week...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It was a family night in more ways than one.
Families who attended the Bohart Museum of Entomology's annual Moth Night last Saturday, Aug. 3, not only saw specimens from scores of insect families inside the UC Davis insect museum, but outside as well.
The blacklighting display drew at least 11 different species from five moth families: Tineidae, Tortricidae, Pyralidae, Geometridae, and Noctuidae, according to Bohart associate and "Moth Man" John De Benedictis.
De Benedictis, along with senior museum scientist Steve Heydon and Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas, set up the blacklighting display, comprised of a hanging white sheet illuminated by a generator-powered ultraviolet (UV light).
Moths that visited the blacklighting display from around 9:15 to 11 p.m. included:
Family Tineidae:
Opogona omoscopa (Opogona crown borer)
Family Tortricidae:
Clepsis peritana
Platynota stultana (omnivorous leafroller)
Cydia latiferreana (filbertworm)
Family Pyralidae:
Achyra rantalis (garden webworm)
Ephestiodes gilvescentella (dusky raisin moth)
Cadra figuliella
Family Geometridae:
Digrammia muscariata
Family Noctuidae:
Spodoptera exigua (beet armyworm)
Spodoptera praefica (western yellow-striped armyworm)
Parabagrotis formais
"At this time of year, I get 15 to 20 species most nights," said De Benedictis, an entomologist who started blacklighting in his backyard in 1998 and at Cold Canyon in 1989. "On the best nights, I'll get about 30 species in my yard and more than 100 at Cold Canyon. In recent years (since 2012), I've run my backyard light as many as 260 nights a year and have been getting 140 to 170 species each year."
Since 1998, he has recorded more than 350 species at night from his yard (including an occasional butterfly or skipper), "but there are at least 25 more that I have not identified, so I estimate I've collected 400 plus species in my yard in 21 years when diurnal (day-flying) species are included in the count."
If you attended Moth Night and you cultivate citrus, strawberries, pomegranates or cucumbers, you may have recognized some of the moths on the blacklighting display or seen the larval pests. For example, the omnivorous leafroller is a pest of citrus. The filbertworm is a pest of pomegranate. The Opogona crown borer is commonly found in bird of paradise plants, but also attacks strawberries, according to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM). The Spodoptera exigua (beet armyworm) and Spodoptera praefica (western yellow-striped armyworm) are pests of cucurbits (cucumber family).
Smith estimates the Bohart's global moth collection at 300,000 to 350,000 specimens of moths. "A recent donation from a local collector likely added another 25,000 specimens of moths alone."
"A great many of the colorful moths are diurnal, including hummingbird moths that mimic bumble bees, clearwing moths that mimic wasps, and Arctiid moths that mimic toxic and distasteful butterflies such as Heliconians and Glassywings from South America," Smith said.
In size, visitors saw the biggest (Atlas) to the smallest moth. "Our smallest moth is one from Africa that was overlooked in the alcohol in which it was captured because of its tiny size," Smith pointed out. "Finally, a student separating the insects in the alcohol found it, and it is nearly microscopic." Visitors also marveled at the hummingbird moth which has a proboscis (tongue) that 12 inches long.
Bohart associate Emma Cluff curated the silkworm moths and silks display. She gathered silkworm moths from the Bohart Museum collection, and textiles from a donation by Richard Peigler, a moth expert and biology professor at the University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Texas.
The family craft activity involved coloring and stringing white cocoons (donated by Peigler) to make necklaces or bracelets. Cluff and fellow entomologist enthusiast Keely Davies created a huge luna moth in the hallway. Some 200 visitors participated in the free and family friendly event.
The moth exhibit is currently on display at the Bohart Museum.
Founded in 1946 by Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007), and directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, the Bohart Museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million insect speicments. It is s also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America; the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity; a live "petting zoo" and a gift shop.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours have changed for the summer season. As of July 3, the insect museum is hosting 30-minute tours starting at 2:30 and 3:30 pm. No reservations are required and all ages are welcome. Admission is free, but donations are always welcomed. The Bohart is open to walk-in visitors Monday through Thursday from 1 to 5 p.m. It is closed from 9 a.m. to noon to walk-in visits (the insect museum conducts many tours and outreach programs during those times). More information on the Bohart Museum is available on the website or by contacting (530) 752-0493 or email bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Bohart Museum of Entomology associate John De Benedictis, aka "Moth Man," brought a mantidfly, an insect that's parasitic to spiders, to the museum on Tuesday. He collected it while blacklighting at the UC Davis Stebbens Cold Canyon Reserve, Winters, a site maintained by the University of California as an ecological preserve for teaching and research.
It's a rare find. "It's the first one I've caught in 30 years," he said, recalling that the last one he collected was in the "1970s or 1980s" at Cobb Mountain Lake, Lake County, while he was enrolled at UC Berkeley.
This species, also found in the Bohart Museum collection, is Climaciella brunnea, said Wade Spencer, Bohart associate and UC Davis entomology student.
Climaciella brunnea looks somewhat like a mantis and a wasp, thus, this species is commonly called a "wasp mantidlfy." Its raptorial front legs remind us of how a praying mantis "prays." The mantidfly uses its front legs to catch small insect prey. Its coloring mimics a paper wasp.
Actually, this tiny insect is neither fly nor mantis nor wasp. It belongs to the family Mantispidae, order Neuroptera:
- Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
- Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
- Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods)
- Class Insecta (Insects)
- Order Neuroptera (Antlions, Owlflies, Lacewings, Mantidflies and Allies)
- Suborder Hemerobiiformia (Lacewings, Mantidflies and Allies)
- Family Mantispidae (Mantidflies)
- Subfamily Mantispinae
- Genus Climaciella
- Species brunnea (Wasp Mantidfly)
"As with most mantidflies, this species is parasitic to spiders as larva: the eggs of wolf spiders are their preferred host and larva will get themselves wrapped up with the eggs in the sac by the spider, since they cannot break into the sacs themselves," according to Wikipedia. "If the spider hasn't yet laid eggs, the larva will subsist on the spider's blood until then. Once inside the sac the larva will feast on the eggs until it pupates."
According to BugGuide.net, its range includes "the southern parts of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec (Cannings & Cannings, 2006). Widespread in the United States. South to Costa Rica."
The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History notes that "C. brunnea has a very interesting life cycle. During their 3-4 week adult life stage, inch-long females may lay as many as several thousand short-stalked eggs, grouped on the underside of plant leaves. The eggs hatch and each tiny larva waits for a passing spider. The larva then boards the spider and rides around on it until the spider lays eggs. At this time the tiny mantispid larva crawls off the spider and into the egg sac, where it feeds on the spider eggs in the security of the silken spider egg sac."
"Different species of mantispids specialize on different species of host spiders," according to the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History website. "C. brunnea larvae are known to parasitize the eggs of wolf spiders long females may lay as many as several thousand short-stalked eggs, grouped on the underside of plant leaves. The eggs hatch and each tiny larva waits for a passing spider. The larva then boards the spider and rides around on it until the spider lays eggs. At this time the tiny mantispid larva crawls off the spider and into the egg sac, where it feeds on the spider eggs in the security of the silken spider egg sac."
The adults are often nocturnal but are sometimes attracted by porch lights or blacklights.
That rang true for John De Benedictis: blacklights.
(Editor's Note: The Bohart Museum of Entomology, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It is open to the public Monday through Thursday, and on specially announced weekends. The next open house, free and open to the public, is Saturday, Sept. 22 from 1 to 4 p.m. The theme is "Crafty Insects." Visitors are invited to bring their insect crafts that they have made. They will be displayed next to "crafty"--sneaky--insects.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The UC Davis event took place from 8 to 11 p.m. Saturday, July 21 in celebration of National Moth Week, July 21-29, which celebrated the beauty, life cycles and habitats of moths.
Entomologists use the blacklight to collect or view night-flying insects attracted to ultraviolet light. The Bohart associates set up two displays near the Bohart, but the one set up along a UC Davis Arboretum path drew the most moths--and the most spectators.
Blacklighting is basically comprised of a hanging white sheet, illuminated by ultraviolet (UV) light and powered by a generator.
More than 140 spectators attended Moth Night, held both inside the museum (located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane) and outside on the campus grounds.
The scarab beetles or what some folks often call by the common name "June bugs" (referring to certain species of scarabs) showed up first, followed by assorted moths.
Beetle expert Fran Keller, assistant professor at Folsom Lake College who received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, identified it as a Polyphylla sp. or lined June beetle. "I think it was a female because the antennae were reduced."
Bohart associate and "Moth Man" John De Benedictis listed the species sighted at Moth Night by family. Among them:
NOCTUIDAE: Spodoptera exigua (Beet Armyworm Moth), Proxenus sp. (probably P. mindara)
GEOMETRIDAE: Prochoerodes truxaliata
PYRALIDAE: Ehestiodes gilvescentella
TORTRICIDAE: Cydia latiferreana (Filbertworm Moth), Grapholita prunivora (Lesser Appleworm Moth)
GELECHIIDAE: Leucogniella sp. (probably L. distincta)
TINEDAE: Oinophila v-flava
ACROLOPHIDAE: Amydria sp. (cannot tell genus or species without dissecting. Likely Pseudopsalta confusella.)
De Benedictis said a young girl collected the Prochoerodes truxaliata, a moth that feeds on coyote bush as a caterpillar.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum. It maintains a live "petting zoo," featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, tarantulas, and praying mantids. The museum's gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. It is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free. More information on the Bohart Museum is available on the website or by contacting (530) 752-0493 or emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
(Editor's Note: Stay tuned for photos of the inside activities on Moth Night.)