- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Doctoral student Grace Horne of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology is coordinating a City Nature Challenge Bioblitz on Saturday, April 27 from 8 to 10 p.m. in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. The family-friendly event, funded by the UC Davis Center for Citizen and Community Science, is open to all interested persons. "All ages are welcome," Horne said.
The nature challengers will meet at the Wyatt Deck, located at the west end of the Redwood Grove, across Arboretum Drive from the Wyatt Pavilion Theater. Registration is underway on this Eventbrite link:
https://iluvbugs2024.eventbrite.com.
"It's perfect for nature enthusiasts of all ages and experience levels,” Horne said, adding that it promises to be “an exciting opportunity to connect with nature and appreciate the beauty of bugs.”
Dubbed the #iluvbugs City Nature Challenge Arboretum BioBlitz and billed as "illuminating biodiversity search," the event will be an extension of Horne's first-ever "glowing bugs" exhibit (showcasing plant-insect interactions under ultraviolet light) at Briggs Hall during the 110th annual campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 20.
Bioblitz participants "will take photos of plants and animals--especially bugs!--and upload these observations to the community science platform, iNaturalist,” she said. “All you need to bring is a smartphone or a photo-taking device. We will have a table with small lenses, bug boxes, field guides, insect specimens, and more to help you make observations of wildlife. Local experts will also be available to assist in identifying the wildlife.”
The bioblitz is affiliated with the City Nature Challenge Sacramento. CNC is an annual worldwide competition among some 500 cities with the goal of documenting the most biodiversity within a four-day period. "Participants use the iNaturalist app and platform to photograph, catalog, identify, and organize observations of wildlife in their area," according to the CNC website. "From April 26-29, any iNaturalist photo uploaded within the Sacramento Region will count towards our goal of 10,000 observations."
"We are looking to make as many quality observations as we can during the UC Davis Bioblitz," said Horne, who is marking her second consecutive year hosting a bioblitz in the Arboretum.
Participants are asked to bring a flashlight, comfortable walking shoes, insect repellent, a camera/cell phone, binoculars (if desired), a water bottle, and weather-appropriate clothing.
Meineke Lab. Horne, who joined the UC Davis entomology graduate program in 2021 and studies with urban landscape entomologist and assistant professor Emily Meineke, is a 2021 graduate of Colby College, Waterville, ME, where she received her bachelor's degree in biology and environmental science, magna cum laude. Her thesis: "Reduced Performance of Ash-Specialist Caterpillars on Non-Native, Cultivated Oleaceous Plants.”
At UC Davis, Horne studies "plant-insect interactions using long-term data—primarily expert-collected observations and natural history collections. "Currently, I am investigating how moth populations in Davis and Stebbins Cold Canyon have changed over the past 30 or so years using data collected by John de Benedictis of the Bohart Museum of Entomology."
She is an alumna of The Caterpillar Lab in Marlborough, NH. "At The Caterpillar Lab, we brought together caterpillars and their host plants to teach about species interactions, conservation, and ecology," Horne said. "Our work brought us to museums, libraries, 4th grade classrooms, farmers' markets, etc."
Horne co-chairs the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's Picnic Day Committee with forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey. This year all of the department's exhibits and activities, including those hosted by the Bohart Museum of Entomology, will be at Briggs Hall.
Her Picnic Day exhibit, “I IUV Bugs," is her brainchild. The project is primarily designed by the Meineke lab, "especially (doctoral student) Marielle Hansel Friedman," Horne said. "We will have plants from the UC Davis Arboretum Teaching Nursery and local/pet-trade arthropods which glow under ultraviolet light. With this exhibit, we seek to highlight the interplay between light, color, and species interactions."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
One of the first butterflies we see in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden in midwinter is the Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta.
Yes, this butterfly overwinters as an adult. It's picture-perfect with black wings, red bands and white spots. And on a picture-perfect day in midwinter, you may see it.
Or as butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus, says on his Art's Butterfly World website: "One of the most frequently seen butterflies in midwinter at low elevation, and often very common in the urban Bay Area, the Red Admiral occurs all around the Northern Hemisphere. It is multiple-brooded, overwinters as an adult, and may undergo altitudinal migration in the Sierra (where it is generally uncommon)."
"The larval hosts are all members of the Nettle family, Urticaceae, including not only the familiar Stinging Nettles (Urtica holosericea and U. urens) but the tiny-leaved ground cover Baby's Tears (Helxine or Soleirolia) in moist, shaded gardens and the climbing urban weed Pellitory (Parietaria) in the Bay Area. The larva is solitary, in a rolled-leaf shelter."
Shapiro has been monitoring butterfly populations in Central California since 1972. And the Red Admiral is just one of them.
If you visit the UC Davis Arboretum a picture-perfect day, you must may get the opportunity to admire the Red Admiral...This one was on a Roldana aschenborniana (Golden Light Senecio).
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you've lately visited the Ruth Risdon Storer Garden, part of the 100-acre UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, you've seen them.
Honey bees nectaring on the Kniphofia "Christmas Cheer" poker plant.
Its stems, stretching 5 to 6 feet tall, are topped with brilliant spikes of reddish-orange tubular flowers. They are Santa Claus-red, honey yellow, and pumpkin orange, all wrapped in one.
The genus, Kniphofia, honors Johann Hieronymus Kniphof (1704 -1763), a German physician and botanist. Botanist Conrad Moench (1745–1805) bestowed the name.
Everywhere the plant goes, it spreads cheer.
Honey bees, buzzing out of their their hives when the temperature outside hits 55 degrees, spread their own kind of cheer, bringing back life-nourishing nectar to their sisters and queen bee in the dead of winter.
Cheers.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A BioBlitz is set from 9 to 11 a.m., Saturday, April 29 in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. It's being hosted by UC Davis doctoral student Grace Horne of the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Participants will meet in at the Wyatt Deck (previously the BioBlitz was scheduled for the Carolee Shields White Flower Garden and Gazebo.)
"I am excited about the location change because we will be located next to two biodiversity hubs: The T. Elliot Weier Redwood Grove and the Mary Wattis Brown Garden of California Native Plants," said Horne, a member of the laboratory of urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Reservations (free) are underway here.
“We need your help to track and identify the wildlife in Davis!" said Horne, a member of the laboratory of urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. "Participants will take photos of plants, animals, and fungi, and upload these observations to the community science platform, iNaturalist. All you need to bring is a smartphone or a photo-taking device. We will have a table with small lenses, bug boxes, field guides, insect specimens, and more to help you make observations of wildlife. Local experts will also be available to assist in identifying the wildlife."
This event will be hosted in coordination with the City Nature Challenge Sacramento. The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is an annual international competition among cities with the goal of documenting the most biodiversity within a four-day period.
This year the challenge will occur from April 28 to May 1, "so any observations of wildlife that are uploaded to iNaturalist will contribute to the 2023 CNC," Horne said. "At the end of the CNC, the region with the most observations wins. We are looking to make as many quality observations as we can during the Davis Bioblitz, so stop by the Shields Gazebo to help contribute observations to the Greater Sacramento Region!”
Horne's undergraduate thesis about the effects of the decline of ash trees on native caterpillars, scored the cover of the February edition of the journal Environmental Entomology. The paper, “Specialist Herbivore Performance on Introduced Plants During Native Host Decline,” is co-authored by Ria Manderino of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, VA and Samuel Jaffe of The Caterpillar Lab, Marlborough, N.H. “Our publication highlights the importance of multispecies assessments of host plant acceptance,” said Horne, who studies plant-insect interactions, urban ecology, global change biology, natural history and community science in the Meineke lab.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Well, weather permitting, you can begin searching for the first bumble bee of the year in the two-county area of Yolo and Solano. If you photograph it and you are judged the winner, a prize awaits you--in addition to bragging rights.
The third annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble Bee-of-the-Year Contest will begin at 12:01, Jan. 1. The first person to photograph a bumble bee in the two-county area and email it to the sponsor, the Bohart Museum of Entomology, will receive a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, the bee that Thorp monitored on the California-Oregon border for decades.
Contest coordinator Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, said the image must be taken in the wild and emailed to bmuseum@ucdavis.edu, with the time, date and place.
The contest memorializes Professor Thorp (1933-2019), a global authority on bees and a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, who died June 7, 2019 at age 85. A 30-year member of the UC Davis faculty, 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.
The black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, is usually the first bumble bee to emerge in this area, Thorp used to say. It forages on manzanitas, wild lilacs, wild buckwheats, lupines, penstemons, clovers, and sages, among others.
Two scientists shared the 2022 prize: UC Davis doctoral candidate Maureen Page of the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and horticulturist Ellen Zagory, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. They each photographed a bumble bee foraging on manzanita (Arctostaphylos) in the 100-acre Arboretum at 2:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 1.
Page photographed a black-tailed bumble bee, B. melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, B. vosnesenskii.
Fittingly, they both knew and worked with Thorp, a tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation and the co-author of Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University, 2014) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday, 2014).
This marked the second consecutive win for a member of the Williams lab. Postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson of the Williams lab and the Elina Lastro Niño lab, won the 2021 contest by photographing a Bombus melanopygus at 3:10 p.m., Jan. 14 in a manzanita patch in the Arboretum.
Both Page and Nicholson are alumni of The Bee Course, which Thorp co-taught from 2002-2018. Page completed the course in 2018, and Nicholson in 2015. The nine-day intensive workshop, geared for conservation biologists and pollination ecologists and considered the world's premiere native bee biology and taxonomic course, takes place annually in Portal, Ariz., at the Southwestern Research Station, part of the American Museum of Natural History, N.Y.
In July 2016, Page participated in a "Bumble Bee Blitz" organized by Thorp and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Mt. Ashland, where, she said, "we searched for Bombus franklini and Bombus occidentalis--two very rare west coast bee species. We unfortunately did not find B. franklini, which is now recognized as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.”
The prized coffee cup features an image of the bee specimen, photographed by Bohart scientist Brennen Dyer, now collections manager, and designed by UC Davis doctoral alumnus Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake College. Previous winners are ineligible to win the prize.
Origins of the Contest. The contest actually originated in 2012 as a little rivalry between the late Professor Thorp and his "posse"--three of his bumble bee aficionados: Allan Jones and Gary Zamzow of Yolo County and yours truly of Solano County.
The Davis folks (Yolo County posse) looked for them in the manzanita bushes in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. Me? As the sole member of the Solano County posse, I headed over to Benicia to the marina and to the Benicia Capitol State Historic Park grounds. I always see them in December and/or January foraging near the marina on rosemary, and on oxalis, rosemary and jade on or near the state capitol grounds. And once on a rose in downtown Benicia.
In 2017, Jones found both a female and male in the Arboretum. At 2:02 on Jan. 27 to be exact. "After finding and photographing two males just east of the Arboretum's redwood grove, he spotted and photographed a female just west of it," we wrote on our Bug Squad blog.
"Surprising to see males this early in the season," Thorp told us. "Unusual to see males before any workers are on site. Could be from a gyne that overwintered but was not mated before she went into hibernation; or maybe the sperm she received were not viable; or maybe she was unable to release sperm from her spermatheca to some eggs as they passed through her reproductive tract."
"At any rate," the professor told Jones, "you got two firsts for the season at one time."
"I'd pat myself on the back if I were more flexible," Jones replied.
Pats are good. So is the prized coffee cup that awaits the 2023 winner.