Entomology, or the scientific study of insects, is not just rural--it's urban, too.

Think bed bugs, cockroaches, carpet beetles and pantry pests, among others.

Those are some of the critters you'll learn about if you attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house on urban entomology, set from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 18 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It's free and family friendly.

Karey Windbiel-Rojas of the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM)--she's the associate director for Urban and Community IPM who serves as the area urban IPM advisor for Yolo, Sacramento and Solano counties--will be there to greet visitors and answer questions, as will Bohart Museum scientists and staff.

The pests the UC IPM scientist has been dealing with lately include carpet beetles, bed bugs and pantry pests. She'll hand out two newly published Quick Tips on carpet beetles and pantry pests, as well as information on other pests.  What are some of the other pests?  UC IPM's Quick Tips library ("some are household insects, some are pests in the garden/landscape, and some are obviously not arthropods") is here: http://ipm.ucanr.edu/QT/index.html.

The open house will focus on both household and garden insects, said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis. "The focus is urban entomology," she said. "We'll have out examples of all the wonderful household pests/friends and garden pests, along with the kinds of things they inspect restaurants for."

Like cockroaches, which thrive in human habitats and date back 350 millions years ago.

As an aside, Windbiel-Rojas promises to wear--or display--her cockroach costume that she wore on Halloween.

For the family arts and crafts activity, visitors will create mosaics rice in various colors. The youngsters will layer the colors in glass jars with lids. "This can serve as pretty artwork but also remind their parents to store grains in tightly sealed containers to keep pantry pests from infesting," Windbiel-Rojas said.

At a previous open house, youngsters glued dried rice and beans on insect images created by UC Davis entomology student/artist Karissa Merritt. It proved to be a popular activity.

Entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the butterfly and moth collection at the Bohart, will be among the scientists at the open house.  He worked in the pesticide industry for years, training people about entomology, noted Tabatha Yang, the Bohart's education and outreach coordinator.

The open house is free and open to the public. A donation jar will be set up to help Bohart Museum specialist Brennen Dyer; he and his wife lost their home in the wildfire fueled by strong winds that destroyed most of Paradise, Butte County. Profits from the sale of items in the gift shop on Sunday are also earmarked for the Dyers. (See Bug Squad blog.)

The Bohart Museum, home of nearly eight million insect specimens, is the seventh largest insect collection in North America and houses the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of insect biodiversity. In addition, the Bohart features a live "petting zoo," comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, tarantulas and praying mantids; and a year-around gift shop, which is stocked with T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.

Other public weekend hours for the academic year 2018-2019 are:

• Saturday, Jan. 12, from 1 to 4 p.m.: "Time's Fun When You're Studying Flies"
• Saturday, Feb. 16, times vary: (campuswide) Biodiversity Museum Day
• Saturday, March 9, 1 to 4 p.m., "Eight-Legged Wonders"
• Saturday, April 14, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., (campuswide) UC Davis Picnic Day

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 at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by contacting (530) 752-0493 or emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.

"Killer bees can pursue people for more than a quarter mile when they are animated and antagonistic and die once they sting since the stingers are located at their abdomen."

Hmmm, run that by again?

We've all written "please-let-me-do-this-over-again" answers on our tests, right? Too much coffee, too little time, too much anxiety, and too little comprehension? And no spell-check or thought-check? Check!

Professor Lynn Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology--she's probably better known for her role as director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology--collects the strange, funny and odd answers that students pen on her tests in her Entomology 100 class.

Here's a sampling of her favorites from spring 2017:

• Locust go under behavioral, morphological, and physiological changes in a rapid amount of time with no warning.
• Because this is the lethal range of bed bugs, this will cause all of them to die without damaging or moving any furniture around the house.
• The danger of neonicotinoids are not in question, but rather there is still discussion on whether they are the primary source of alarm for honeybees when there are many other artificial chemicals they are equally exposed to.
• A large variety of evidence been presenting itself regarding this topic with many such papers contrasting what has previously been deemed certain.
• The spraying of insecticide is a very effective means of eliminating large areas of land where tsetse flies are commonly found.
• In understanding succession of insects, forensic entomologists can piece together the estimated time frame of when specific insects would have taken part in the decomposition of decaying carcasses and can provide a reasonable date of when the carcass would have died.
• This succession of insects is more important for dead carcasses that have been eaten off of for a long time.
• Seeing the oozing and blackened lesions, cysts, and tumors wrapping around its dead or dying victims, Europeans referred to plague as the Black Death, and they saw it as the end of the world.
• A disease such as this is easily dispersed by the vector flies and also infected mammals but especially in humans who, now more than ever, can travel long distances in very short periods of time.
• For example, C. thalictra, was first recorded participating in hematophagous behaviors when a scientist working on the project tested if the moth would feed on its finger.
• 

  A close-up of an engorged bed bug. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
  The number of those killed by bee sting is increasing yearly because of aggressive Africanized honeybees that are taking control of Texas.
• The idea that a minuscule mosquito could help transmit some of the most important pathogens of global diseases, was not an easy idea to grasp.
• On the head, they also have long, filiform antennae and mandibles for digestion and mating.
• In climates such as Sacramento, California native adults will begin to emerge in spring and summer months.
• Ants live a very foraging lifestyle, which allows them to have a mutualistic relationship with both insects and plants, as well as a parasitic relationship with their own kind.
• Today they use their large frame, powerful sting, and pure wit to dominate areas throughout Central and South America.
• Fleas do not "jump" like mammals do; fleas charge their elasticated legs with tensity, like a drawn bowstring, then shoot themselves through air.
• Due to their multi-stage, holometabolous lifecycle, fleas are not only talented at infesting their animal hosts, but also the dwellings of their hosts-such as houses, towns, cities, all of which harbor innumerable flea colonies.
• As Y. pestis grows in the proventriculus, they disturb the valvular function of the proventriculus, caushing a gut bloackage.
• Drones are distinguished from other bees in that they do not have a stinger.
• The fungi allows it to protect itself from harsh environment of the soil where it thrives.
• It is unknown if the hematophagous behavior is capable of transmitting disease between the same or different species, but if it were to, perhaps the safety from the moth would come into question giving this facilitative hematophagg ous group of organisms mirror like acknowledgment from that of obligatory hematophagous groups of organisms.
• Yet, the more feasible harm the moths would have on humans or other organisms' safety is in the agricultural realm.
• Nevertheless, bee stings can cause fatal effects on people in the United States; being among the direct deaths caused by animals since the allergic reaction of the poison kills 53 individuals every year.
• The female worker bees carry out large number tasks that are necessary for the continued existence of the hive thus they exist for six weeks due to constant laboring.
• These species are found exclusively in the Americas, or New World, and thrive throughout much of North and South America.
• Most species are seed harvesters, leaving the nest to collect resources and a variety of other items including dead or dying insects unlucky enough to wonder in their path.
• Though unclear how and when Triatoma infestans became domesticated, some predictions claim that it was first introduced into the human environment via vector transition from rodents inside their burrows to cave-like pre-Columbian peoples
• Killer bees can pursue people for more than a quarter mile when they are animated and antagonistic and die once they sting since the stingers are located at their abdomen.

Brother, sister...can you spare a meal?

If you're rearing a bed bug colony, they need blood. Yours, if you don't mind.

Someone else's, if there's no one else around.

A big draw at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's recent open house, "Parasite Palooza," was a bed-bug feeding demonstration, featuring bed bugs from a UC Davis-reared colony.

When it was feeding time for the parasitic insects, Cimex lectularius,  two scientists stepped forth and offered their arms in the name of science.

Charlotte Herbert, who is studying for her doctorate in entomology, volunteered to be the first "blood donor." Next to step up was nematologist/parasitologist Lauren Camp, who received her doctorate last December at UC Davis.

The particulars: Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart, handed each scientist a bed bug enclosed in fine netting. The netting proved fine enough to prevent escape, but large enough to allow feeding.

"We don't want any escapees," Yang said.

The Bohart Museum visitors, ranging from pre-schoolers to senior citizens, crowded around, asking questions and taking photos. The reddish-brown bed bugs went from flat to fat within minutes.

The insects originated from the parent colony of UC Davis entomology graduate Danielle Wishon, now a forensic investigator for the Sacramento Police Department. She began rearing them several years ago, intending to do research. Later she gave some of her bed bugs to UC Davis researcher Jenella Loye of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who in turn loaned some to the Bohart Museum for its "Parasitic Palooza: Botflies, Fleas and Mites, Oh, My."

Wishon says it's fairly easy to rear bed bugs.  "If you want a fast growing colony, you can feed them once a week.  When I was very actively feeding them, I chose to feed them once or twice a month so the colony didn't get too big too fast. I've gone as much as six months without feeding them, and they repopulated just fine. I started this colony several years back, but I would occasionally add individuals I find on mattresses discarded by UC Davis students during the great fall quarter move."

Wishon acknowledged that in the past, she 'sub-let' feeding responsibilities to forensic entomologist Bob Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty and to entomology student/Bohart associate Wade Spencer. "Hey, they offered!" she said.

Has Wishon ever encountered bed bugs in a hotel room?

"No, but I always look for their 'salt and pepper'--eggs and feces--first thing," Wishon said. "I had a friend come up and ask about bites after she stayed at a motel in California -- they were definitely bed bug bites. She's taken enough entomology to get a kick out of it so she wasn't upset."

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): "Everyone is at risk for getting bed bugs when visiting an infected area. However, anyone who travels frequently and shares living and sleeping quarters where other people have previously slept has a higher risk of being bitten and or spreading a bed bug infestation."

"Bed bug infestations usually occur around or near the areas where people sleep," the CDC points out on its website. "These areas include apartments, shelters, rooming houses, hotels, cruise ships, buses, trains, and dorm rooms. They hide during the day in places such as seams of mattresses, box springs, bed frames, headboards, dresser tables, inside cracks or crevices, behind wallpaper, or any other clutter or objects around a bed. Bed bugs have been shown to be able to travel over 100 feet in a night but tend to live within 8 feet of where people sleep."

Bed bugs are not known to spread disease, according to the CDC. However, excessive scratching can "sometimes increase the chance of a secondary skin infection."

Wishon noted that some people  experience a "pretty negative reaction to the saliva--flu-like symptoms if I remember correctly. That's really the reason I want to keep feeding a colony even though I am not going to be doing research on them anytime soon--most of the older researchers I know who once fed a colony but stopped, or who traveled to countries where they were common and were exposed regularly but then moved back, and were exposed to them many years later, seem to develop hyper sensitivity to bed bug saliva. This could be completely anecdotal and coincidental, but I've heard this familiar story enough times to want to error on the side of caution and continue feeding without years of breaking. I don't want to develop a negative reaction to exposure."

Both Camp and Herbert said they basically didn't feel much of anything when the bed bugs began feeding. Here's why: "When bed bugs bite, they inject an anesthetic and an anticoagulant that prevents a person from realizing they are being bitten," according to the CDC. "Most people do not realize they have been bitten until bite marks appear anywhere from one to several days after the initial bite. The bite marks are similar to that of a mosquito or a flea -- a slightly swollen and red area that may itch and be irritating. The bite marks may be random or appear in a straight line. Other symptoms of bed bug bites include insomnia, anxiety, and skin problems that arise from profuse scratching of the bites."

Any reactions?  "It took a while, but I did react to the bed bug bites," Camp said. "On the third day (Jan. 25), I saw raised red marks on my right arm, that were a bit itchy. Guess it took me three days to react."

Said Herbert: "I had a very small red mark where it bit, but no lasting marks or feelings. I felt it bite, but just barely. However, I have had bed bugs before while visiting my grandparents in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the bites were pretty terrible! I was itchy and thrashed all night, I didn't realize what was happening until the morning when I was covered in little bite marks and we found the bed bugs on the edges of the mattress. They looked very well fed! 

No wonder folks say:  "Good night! Sleep tight! And don't let the bed bugs bite."

How much do you know about ticks?

How much do you know about nematodes?

What would you like to know?

You'll be able to learn more about both, plus fleas, mites, lice, bed bugs, botflies and other critters, when the Bohart Museum of Entomology of UC Davis hosts an open house on “Parasite Palooza: Botflies, Fleas and Mites, Oh, My” from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 22 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane.

It's free and open to the public.  You can meet scientists one-on-one and ask questions.

Senior public health biologist Mike Niemala of the California Department of Public Health will participate in the three-hour open house, discussing ticks and other health issues, and handing out fliers and brochures. He received his master of science degree from UC Davis.

Nematologist Lauren Camp, awarded her doctorate in December from UC Davis, will discuss nematodes. She studied with major professor Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

What are nematodes? That's a question often asked of nematologists.

"Nematodes are a large group (phylum) of roundworms," Camp said. "Most nematodes are not parasites, but people may be familiar with some of the parasitic species. Some well-known nematode parasites of humans are pinworm, Ascaris, hookworm, and guinea worm. Dogs and cats can also become infected with nematodes including heartworm, hookworm, or Toxocara."

Camp, who grew up in rural northern Indiana, received her bachelor's degree in biology in 2005 from the University of Chicago and her master's degree in biology in 2007 from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C.  As a UC Davis graduate student, she focused on the   evolutionary relationships and genetic diversity of Baylisascaris procyonis, a nematode parasite of raccoons. Her career plans? Researcher in infectious diseases or genetics/genomics or  a science communicator.

"I first became interested in parasites during my undergrad degree at the University of Chicago," Camp said. "My specific interest in nematode parasites developed when I read some of Dr. Nadler's work on the evolutionary relationships of nematodes for an invertebrate biology class. Nematodes are an amazing phylum of organisms- they exist in almost every known environment on the planet, and different species eat everything from bacteria and fungi to plant and animal tissue. I find parasites particularly fascinating, because they are dependent on another organism (or organisms) for part or all of their life cycle."

The Bohart Museum event is free and open to the public. For the family craft activity, attendees will attach stickers of parasites on origami paper hats.

The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, is a world-renowned insect museum that houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It also maintains a live “petting zoo,” featuring walking sticks, Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tarantulas. A 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. The museum 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 by contacting (530) 752-0493 or bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.