- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Perhaps!
We get a kick out of the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association's praying mantis T-shirt, "Here for a Good Time, Not a Long Time." A female mantis has just lopped off the head of her suitor and is finishing her feast.
Gotta love those mantises! We remember spotting a Stagmomantis limbata male and female "getting busy" in our Vacaville garden. No heads rolled that time...but another time one did.
EGSA members design and sell insect- and arachnid-themed T-shirts and hoodies, as well as stickers. They can be ordered online at https://mkt.com/UCDavisEntGrad/.
Doctoral candidate Lexie Martin of the lab of community ecologist Rachel Vannette, associate professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, serves as EGSA president.
Treasurer Iris Quayle of the arachnology lab of Professor Jason Bond coordinates the EGSA store.
Other popular T-shirts include "The Beetles" (featuring four beetles mimicking The Beatles walking across Abbey Road) and "Bugbie" (a take-off of the Barbie movie craze but spotlighting a pink insect, a rosy maple moth, Dryocampa rubicunda.)
Among the many EGSA t-shirts:
- “Would You Love Me If I Was a Worm?"
- "Hang in There: (a pseudoscorpion hanging onto a fly leg)
- "Bee Haw" (honey bee as a cowboy)
- "They See Me Rollin'": (dung beetle)
- "Cicada Amp"
- "Whip Scorpion"
“We now have hoodies in the Bee-Haw, Whip Scorpion, and Worm designs and tank tops in the Cicada Amp and Dung Beetle designs,” Quayle says.
It's a great cause: (1) supporting the graduate students (2) contributing to the appreciation of insects and arachnids, and (3) helping Santa with his "nice" list.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
They eat a variety of prey, including small mammals, birds, snakes, lizards, fish, crayfish, insects and worms, according to the California Raptor Center (CRC), a research center that's part of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
The CRC studies raptors and their biology, physiology, and ecology. The center also provides educational programs and foster care for raptors.
But back to red-shouldered hawks.
We saw a red-shouldered hawk, Buteo lineatus (as identified by William Ferrier, retired CRC director) swoop down in the courtyard of the Vacaville Museum Sunday afternoon and grab an insect.
The hawk then perched on a nearby telephone line and ate its prey. The insect appeared to be a praying mantis or a katydid.
Was the insect just a mere appetizer for the full Sunday spread to come?
Possibly!
That said, be sure to see the “A Bird's Eye View" ceramic-mosaic mural that graces an outer wall of the CRC. It tells the story of the interdependence of raptors and insects, ranging from a golden eagle, great-horned owl and a red-tailed hawk to a clear-winged grasshopper, fiery skipper butterfly and figeater beetle.
The mural, installed in December 2023, is primarily the work of 80 UC Davis students in Entomology 001, “Art, Science and the World of Insects,” taught by UC Davis distinguished professor-artist (now emerita) Diane Ullman of the Department of Entomology and Nematology. Ullman and colleague Gale Okumura, a Department of Design emerita lecturer, led the project. Other faculty, CRC volunteers and staff, and members of the community, also contributed to the 3000-hour project.
The mural measures 22-feet wide and 8-feet in height and is comprised of more than 1300 handmade ceramic relief artworks, tiles and trim pieces. “The mural celebrates 11 key raptor species found in California and 84 insect species that are either parasites of these raptors or eaten by them,” said Ullman, an entomologist-artist who co-founded the UC Davis Art-Science Fusion Program. “The interdependence of birds and insects is striking in food chains around the globe. As insects decline, bird populations are also damaged. When birds decline, some insect populations surge and can rise to damaging levels.” (See feature story on the mural)
Meanwhile, the score at the Vacaville Museum Courtyard Sunday:
Hawk, 1; Insect, 0.
Only the red-shouldered hawk got "A Bird's Eye View."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Praying, preying, or peering?
This female praying mantis, a Stagmomantis limbata, selects a patch of red Lantana to watch for pollinators.
Her spiked forelegs resting, her eyes always watching but her body as still as a stone, she makes an incredible predator portrait. That triangular head, those bulging eyes, that pencil-thin "neck."
Her common names included "bordered mantis, bosque mantis, Arizona mantis, and New Mexico praying mantis." This species is native to North America and considered most prevalent in the southwestern United States.
What's for breakfast? A bee, a butterfly, a syrphid fly?
What's for lunch? What's for dinner? What's for snacks?
She need not worry. She's a great ambush predator.
A limbata in the Lantana.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
In your childhood, somebody probably gave you a jack-in-the-box toy, a music box that you crank up, and then the lid springs opens and out pops a wildly dressed clown, startling you and everyone around you.
A praying mantis sighting is something like that, but without the music box. You're walking in the garden and suddenly you notice that the Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, appears to have an extra petal.
You look closer and you see a triangular head with bulging eyes. And a spiked foreleg that looks as if it's extending a hand in (fake) friendship. It's a praying mantis and it's staring right at you.
Such was the case recently when a female praying mantis, Mantis religiosa, popped up between the petals.
Jackie-in-the-box!
"Nice to meet ya, m'dear," she seemed to be saying. "Too bad you're not a bee."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So here's this praying mantis, a female Mantis religiosa, tucked beneath a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville garden.
She's as still as a stone, and you know how still stones are.
Along comes a honey bee, Apis mellifera. She's packing a load of orange pollen. She lands on the blossom and begins foraging.
She does not see the mantis, commonly known as "the European mantis."
The mantis sees her.
What happened?
Well, Ms. Bee continued to forage, oblivious to the predator and the pending danger, and then buzzed away.
Ms. Mantis remained as still as a stone.
And then, she, too, took flight...in the opposite direction.
No prayers answered today--for the mantis.
