- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Bees, butterflies and beetles will be well represented at the 145th annual Dixon May Fair, which opens Thursday, May 5 for a four-day run (May 5-8) after a two-year hiatus.
They're among the insects depicted in photographs and other art by Solano County 4-H'ers and other youth in the Youth Building, Denverton Hall. The work includes that of Matthew Agbayani of the Vaca Valley 4-H Club, Vacaville, who entered a color photograph of a honey bee and a syrphid fly (aka flower fly or hover fly) foraging on a sunflower.
The judging is done, the ribbons are hung and the doors will open at 4 p.m. May 5.
Chief executive officer of the fair since 2012 is Patricia Conklin, a member of the Western Fairs Association Hall of Fame and a 4-H and FFA alumnus who grew up in Dixon and exhibited at the Dixon May Fair in her youth. Her daughter, Leta Myers, a marine biologist, assisted with the clerking during the recent judging. Like her mother, she, too, is a 4-H and FFA alumnus, but in Gridley, Calif., where Mom served as CEO of the Butte County Fair for 10 years.
The Dixon May Fair, the 36th District Agriculture Association, is the oldest district fair and fairgrounds in the state. It traditionally ends on Mother's Day. This year's theme is "Super Fun.”
The fairgrounds are located at 655 S. First St., Dixon. Fair hours are noon to 9 p.m. on May 5; noon to 10 p.m. on May 6; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on May 7; and noon to 10 p.m. on May 8. General admission is $15 for those 13 and older; $10 for children ages 5 to 12; and free for children 4 and under. Seniors over age 65 and military members with active duty cards will be admitted for $10. Special days include Thrifty Thursday, when general admission for those 5 and older is $5, and Kids' Day Friday, with free admission all day for children 12 and under. See Dixon May Fair website and fast facts for more information on entertainment, exhibits, livestock shows and parking.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No doubt you've seen a praying mantis egg case, or ootheca, on a tree, shrub, fence or post.
But have you ever seen one attached to a clothespin on an outdoor clothes line?
So here we were Thursday afternoon, hanging freshly laundered dog blankets on the clothes line.
We grabbed one clothespin after another, carefully fastening Fido's favorite blankets to the line to dry in the 80-degree temperature.
One more reach....Whoa! What's that?
Can't use that one. There's a ooth on it.
A praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, had apparently pinned her hopes to a clothespin. Or maybe that was her PIN number?
"Too funny," commented Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. "What a weird place to put your ooth."
Our little gravid gal must have climbed the eight-foot-high clothes pole last fall; walked the line (ala Johnny Cash?); and discovered the "perfect place" to deposit her ooth--right above a patch of Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifola) buzzing with bees and fluttering with butterflies.
"I've seen egg cases on outdoor furniture, predator guards on duck boxes, on buildings between bricks, trees, and even garden implements like pots, watering cans, and tools," said praying mantis expert Andrew Pfeifer, who now studies horticulture/landscape design at North Carolina University. "It's a Stagmomantis limbata ooth for sure; the hatch rate will be 150 or less."
Oothecas don't usually hatch until around June, but with the temperatures soaring here in Vacaville, it could happen "even within the month," Pfeifer says.
In September 2018, we watched a praying mantis deposit her ooth a few feet from that clothesline. That gal chose a redwood stake. (See photos on Bug Squad blog).
Now we wait for the nymphs to emerge...and scramble to eat one another...and prey on bees and butterflies...and the life cycle begins.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's the day we're encouraged to "to look for a blur of color as butterflies begin migrating across the country. Each year the celebration brings with it an awareness of the varieties of butterflies and their importance to our survival. Spring and summer are just right around the corner, so it is an excellent time to take a few minutes and learn something new about butterflies and appreciate their beauty."--National Learn About Butterflies Day.
Enter butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, who has monitored butterfly populations of central California since 1972 and maintains a one-of-a-kind research website, Art's Butterfly World.
He's often interviewed on "Learn About Butterflies Day." Yesterday he granted an interview to a Sacramento television station. And back in 2020, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife interviewed him. The Los Angeles Times spotlighted him in November 2019.
The North American Butterfly Monitoring Network (NABA) website praises his work: "Art Shapiro began monitoring 10 transects in 1972 and has been conducting bi-weekly monitoring of those sites ever since. He also monitors an additional site as part of NABA's Seasonal Count Program! Art's program is the longest continually running butterfly monitoring project in the world, predating even the British Butterfly Monitoring Scheme."
Shapiro's fixed routes at ten sites range from the Sacramento River delta, through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains, and to the high desert of the western Great Basin. "The sites," he says, "represent the great biological, geological, and climatological diversity of central California."
Latest statistics on his website indicate that by the end of 2006, he had logged 5476 site-visits and tallied approximately 83,000 individual records of 159 butterfly species and subspecies. Note that Shapiro does not drive a vehicle. His main mode of transportation is walking. For instance, he buses from Davis to Vacaville, and walks from the bus station up Gates Canyon Road to his monitoring site and back.
How many total miles has he walked since 1972?
Shapiro replied: "Since 1988, when all ten sites were firmly established, if an average site visit is 4 miles and I do an average of 225 site visits a year, that's 225 x 4 x 33 years=29,700 miles. Of course, if you add in the years 1972-1987, it would be substantially higher. No wonder my feet are made of leather!"
The UC Davis professor estimates he wears out three to four pairs of shoes a year. "Cheapie sneakers, though," he says.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, has spotted only one moth and one butterfly since Wednesday, Jan. 5.
Shapiro is the professor who sponsors the annual "Beer for a Butterfly Contest" for scientific research. It works like this: Find the first cabbage white butterfly of the year in Sacramento, Yolo or Solano counties, deliver it live to his department, and if you win, you receive a pitcher of beer or its equivalent. He canceled the contest this year due to rising COVID pandemic concerns.
But he's out looking.
In a group email on Tuesday, Jan. 4, Shapiro wrote that "about 4:50 p.m. a noctuid moth landed on my living-room window. I could see by the thoracic hair tuft that it was a Plusiine of some kind. I went outside to examine it, but it had not really settled in and it flew off. The light was too dim to have any confidence as to the species, except I know it wasn't biloba. First Lep of 2022! It was about 55F and overcast."
On Wednesday, Jan. 5, "it was much less cloudy than expected," Shapiro noted. "I decided to stay around campus and check out the Vanessa territorial sites. I figured there would be cumulus in the afternoon, and there were--they even congealed into broken stratocumulus for a while. It was warmest between noon and 2 p.m., about 60-61F, with a light southerly wind. I didn't find any Vanessas and gave up by 3. But I did see a butterfly! A fresh-looking Agraulis vanillae at the EC (Experimental Community) Gardens."
"At 85% precipitation for the year, with the increased temperatures relative to a baseline mean of 1980-2010, I'd estimate an additional 15% plant water stress over the year (equal to ~60% annual precip from normal). We showed that climatic water deficit goes up, even under future climate forecasts that are wetter, because evaporative demand increases with temperature (Thorne et al. 2015). If it's drier, then that effect is amplified."
"One of the reasons butterflies are such a great study system is how responsive they are to immediate, seasonal and possibly multi-year weather," Thorne wrote. "It would be interesting to look at future climate monthly predictions and measure how those relate to the observed faunal response to the measured changes in weather-climate, to build predictive models. We should have enough track record to make some predictions about faunal phenology under future climate. In the forest restoration world, the break between weather effects (such as a late rain or heat wave) on seedling survival and climate effects on longer-term site environmental conditions and seedling progression to early poly-size is about 5 years. That's an arbitrary line drawn looking at seedling survival/establishment."
Thorne attached a research article he co-authored: The Magnitude and Spatial Patterns of Historical and Future Hydrologic Change in California's Watersheds, published Feb. 12, 2015 in Ecological Society of America's journal, Ecosphere.
Monitoring Since 1972. Shapiro has monitored butterfly population trends on a transect across central California since 1972 and records the information on his research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/. His 10 sites stretch from the Sacramento River Delta through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains to the high desert of the Western Great Basin. The largest and oldest database in North America, it was recently cited by British conservation biologist Chris Thomas in a worldwide study of insect biomass.
Shapiro, a member of the UC Davis faculty since 1971 and author of the book, Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento Valley Regions, has studied more than 160 species of butterflies in his transect.
Side note: How is Art Shapiro celebrating his birthday? With a "~6% positivity rate and 617 new Covid cases on campus already this year," he said that he is "lying low."
"I will probably celebrate by ordering a pizza," Shapiro said. "Nothing more elaborate, I assure you, and no gathering of any kind. Stay well, stay safe!"
Happy birthday, Art!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Everything in your garden has a place, and your place should be a healthy, thriving garden--free of pesticides, says Frédérique Lavoipierre.
Lavoipierre, author of the newly published book, Garden Allies: The Insects, Birds and Other Animals That Keep Your Garden Beautiful and Thriving, writes in the introduction: "Of course, we know the pollinators are our allies, but what about all those other insects? I have a few tips, but first, I generally don't think of bugs as good or bad. Indeed, I have learned to think of them in their ecological roles, as prey and predators, pollinators, decomposers and so on."
Everything in nature is connected, she recently told Pacific Coast Entomological Society (PCES) in a Zoom meeting. She quoted John Muir: "When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world."
Basically, if you rid your garden of insects, what will the birds eat? If you rid your garden of aphids, no lady beetles or soldier beetles for you! If you rid your garden of caterpillars, no more butterflies fluttering around for you to admire and photograph. Everything in nature is connected.
Lavoipierre's engaging and educational book, published by Timber Press and illustrated with intricate pen-and-ink drawings by Craig Latker, should be required reading for those interested in planting a pollinator garden or those who want to learn more about the critters--"above, under, around and within"--that visit or live there.
"So I grew up with a dad who loved all things entomological," Frédérique said. Her father's last graduate student was Bob Kimsey, now a longtime forensic entomologist on the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty.
Frédérique went on to study at Sonoma State University; obtain her master's degree in biology, with an emphasis on ecological principles of sustainable landscapes; become the founding director of the Sonoma State University Sustainable Landscape Professional Certificate Program; and serve as the director of education at the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden.
Today she is a consultant and serves on the editorial advisory group for the American Public Gardens Association.
And today, as the author of Garden Allies and a staunch supporter of healthy, thriving gardens--"gardens matter"--she's eager to spread the word about her love of gardens; why you should love them, too; and why you should appreciate the organisms that live "above, under, around and within." She recently set up a Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/Garden.Allies to interact with her readers and garden enthusiasts.
"I wrote Garden Allies as a series for Pacific Horticulture Magazine for ten years," Lavoipierre' recalled. "It's been a terrific COVID project!"
Her husband titled the book. In her introduction, she writes: "Long ago when I first began writing about natural enemies of herbivorous insects, my husband said to me, 'Why don't you call them garden allies instead?'"
"My book is written for readers throughout North America, north of Mexico and is based on conservation biological control," she told PCES.
"I'm a big fan of native plants," Lavoipierre acknowledged. "They support the habitat more. I'm not a purist; I'm a gardener...If you like to grow hydrangeas in in your garden that remind you of your grandmother, you should."
In her talk, she showed images of bees, beetles, butterflies, bats, syrphid flies, dragonflies, lacewings, spiders, praying mantids, birds, earthworms, centipedes, millipedes, and more. "Everything is food for something else."
"And it all starts with the soil. It all begins there, with the soil...You'll have a rich environment if you have healthy soil." In discussing earthworms aerating the soil and what a rototiller can do to disrupt life, she added: "I'm an advocate of no tilling."
Lavoipierre said she visits public gardens at every opportunity. "I look at the flowers, what's visiting them, what's eating what..."
Her tips include: remove your lawn and plant a pollinator garden; plant natives as much as possible; don't use pesticides; install a bat box; join INaturalist; become a citizen scientist and participate in groups such as Bumble Bee Watch; and turn off the lights at night ("it's bad for a lot of insects--check out darksky.org").
And just enjoy your garden, she told PCES. "You don't have to know what everything is to live with it."
Her takeaway message, given to Bug Squad: "Gardens, large and small, make a difference. Reducing (or even eliminating!) pesticides protects us all--the bees and other pollinators, but also other essential organisms such as predators, parasitoids, and pathogens that attack herbivorous insects and keep them in check; and decomposers and soil organisms that keep our gardens thriving. And yes, herbivorous insects are essential--important food for birds and many other animals. Healthy garden food webs keep our watersheds and larger environment safe from pollution."
