You won't want to miss this Bohart Museum of Entomology open house!

Themed "Grasshoppers, Crickets and Katydids," the open house will take place from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, March 3 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It's free and family friendly. Parking is also free.

UC Davis third-year entomology major Solea “Sol” Wantz, who triples as a curator intern at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, a student researcher in the lab of pollination ecologist and professor Neal Williams, and as president of the UC Davis Entomology Club, will discuss “Grasshoppers, Crickets and Katydids."

She'll deliver her presentation at 1 p.m., and questions and answers will follow. The venue: a classroom of the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, located next to the Bohart Museum. 

“I'll be giving a overview of all of the major and most interesting--in my opinion--families of Orthoptera," she said. The order includes some 20,000 species worldwide.

A few factoids she related:

• The katydid genus Supersonus produces the highest frequency sound of any known animal, up to 150 kHz! For reference, humans can only hear between 0 and 20 kHz. 
• The family Myrmecophilidae, the “ant-loving crickets” are tiny, wingless crickets that live only in ant nests. “We even have these here in Davis, but they're hard to find unless you're digging through ant colonies,” Wantz says.
• Jerusalem crickets, also known as "potato bugs," have a unique method of sound production. "Rather than using their wings (they are actually wingless, she says) or another sound-producing organ, these crickets thump their abdomen against the ground to produce a surprisingly loud noise. Their thumping patterns can be used to identify their species."

And did you know that grasshoppers spit or produce what some folks call “tobacco juice?

“It's actually a grasshopper defense mechanism!” Wantz says. “When under stress--usually when they are grabbed, especially around the thorax-- grasshoppers vomit a foul-smelling/tasting liquid to ward off whatever predator is attacking them.”

Orthoptera (in ancient Greece, “ortho” means "straight,” and “optera” means "wings") is an order that includes grasshoppers, crickets, locusts and katydids. Grasshopper belong to the suborder Caelifera, and crickets and katydids to Ensifera.

Wantz, who decided at age 6 that she wanted to become an entomologist, is currently re-curating and reorganizing the Bohart's collection of several thousand specimens of Orthoptera.

"After finishing my undergraduate degree at UC Davis, I aim to enter a graduate program, potentially to explore my newfound interest in systematics. Ultimately, I hope to become a professor of entomology and lead my own research lab. This appeals to me because it presents the opportunity to weave together my knowledge of wild bee ecology and conservation, love of Orthoptera and museum work, and emphasis on professional outreach and public engagement."

The Bohart Museum, directed by Professor Jason Bond, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus a live petting zoo (Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects, tarantulas and more) and an insect-themed gift shop stocked with T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, books, posters, jewelry and insect-collecting equipment.

For more information, access the Bohart website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.

Fact: Eighty percent of the world's population eat insects.

Fact: At least 80 percent of those attending the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house on entomophagy ate one or more insects--a cricket, an earthworm or a mealworm. The diners ranged in age from a 9-month-old girl to senior citizens.

Some came back for more--especially the mealworms and earthworms, said Bohart associate Emma Cluff. The crickets? Not so much.

A two-year-old from Dixon happily munched everything given to him. "He'll eat anything," his mother said.

Various companies, including Hotlix, Exo and Chirps Chips, provided the samples.

Besides eating insects, visitors asked questions about entomophagy and handled insects from the petting zoo, which includes Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks or stick insects, and tarantulas.

They also made buttons proclaiming "I Ate a Bug at the Bohart."

A display, titled "Bug Buffet," drew widespread interest: "Have you ever eaten ant pancakes or scorpion scaloppini? Well, eating bugs (entomophagy) is a lot more common than you might think. All round the world, people eat delicious and nutritious insect delicacies."

The dishes mentioned on the display:

• Locust Biscuits, featuring the brown locust, Locustana pardalina
• Mexican Caviar, starring the giant water bug, Abedus herberti
• Termite a la Carte, featuring termites, order Isoptera 
• Maguey Worm Tacos, with Maguey worms, family Megathymidae
• Raw Cossid Moths, starring the larvae of the cossid moth, Xyleutes leucomochia
  
• Fried Pupae, presenting the pupae of the silkworm moth, Bombix mori

The raw cossid moths? Quite nutritious. The information read: "They are eaten raw by Australian aborigines and supposedly taste like almonds...and they "provide all the calories, protein and fat an adult human needs for one day."

The next Bohart Museum open house, themed Parasitoid Palooza!, is on Saturday, Oct. 19 from 1 to 4 p.m. It is free and family friendly. The museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Drive.

"An insect parasitoid is a species whose immatures live off of an insect host, often eating it from the inside out," said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator of the Bohart Museum. "It is part of their life cycle and the host generally dies."

The late UC Davis entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007), founder of the Bohart Museum, researched Strepsiptera, or twisted-wing parasites, for his doctorate in 1938. Both the Bohart Museum and an entire family of Strepsiptera, the Bohartillidae, are named in his honor.

The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is home to the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. It also maintains a year-around gift shop, which is stocked with T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.

The insect museum is open to the public Mondays through Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m., except on holidays. More information on the Bohart Museum is available on the website at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu or by contacting (530) 752-0493 or bmuseum@ucdavis.edu. (See list of open houses for the 2019-2020 academic year.)

Take the creative and collaborative minds of students studying design and entomology at the University of California, Davis.

Add an innovative project involving insects.

Add three talented instructors: Diane Ullman, professor of entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and lecturers Gale Okumura and Morissa Rubin of the UC Davis Department of Design 

Result: an art exhibition, “The World of Insects: Paper, Tile, Branding and Packaging.” to take place from 6 to 8 p.m., Wednesday, June 6 in the Environmental Horticulture courtyard, located near Walter A. Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center on Alumni Drive. The event is free and open to the public.

Background: Students in Design 116 and Entomology 001 "collaborated in discussing entomological science and design principles,” said Ullman, who is director of the Career Discovery Group Program, part of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. "Entomology students did case study research on the assigned insect, met with their design partners and then created designs to communicate a concept or concepts about their insect. They used the silk screening process to print their designs and create multiples of each on paper, as well as on ceramic tile. With their paper projects they then created a final project. These projects, their fired tiles and their case studies will be on display."

Ullman described it as “a very interesting and profitable collaboration that taught the students to think outside the box, collaborate across disciplines and communicate science visually.”

The students will display their branding and packaging of their product for edible insects, said Okumura. "The design students were to create a pattern from the assigned insect, as well as design a logo for their branding, which was then applied to their packaging and business system," she said. "The packaging had be appealing to the consumer and in some sense, change behavior of the audience to buy edible insects by having appealing graphics."

Rubin said the silkscreen prints "focus on illustrations of the insect and its key features (entomology students) or graphic patterns derived from significant markings or features of the insect. Additionally design students have developed an insect related product and its entire graphic identity."

Bottom line: Prepare to enter an amazing world you may not have seen before--the incredible world of insects, coupled with innovative marketing and designs.

And maybe, just maybe, you'll add crickets to your diet?

If you haven't already?

Take a look at the insect below.

"It's a cricket," you say.

Correct. It is a cricket.

But it doesn't belong there.

Why? It's the wrong cricket. It's not a "field cricket" but a "house cricket." House crickets don't "belong" on flowers.  They're reared in many parts of the world as food for humans and animals.

The situation unfolded like this: When I walked into a local pet food store to buy goldfish food, I noticed a sign offering crickets for 14 cents apiece. What a bargain! Fourteen cents!  One thin dime and four pennies.

In reality, I was probably buying someone else's reptile food.  I figured I'd buy six, photograph some of them, and then release them.

I placed a female cricket on the colorful blanket flower (Gaillardia) and watched while she explored her surroundings. Then a honey bee arrived to forage on the same blossom. Voila! A house cricket and a honey bee sharing a flower. However, the honey bee was not at all pleased and buzzed off to find a cricketless blossom.

Of the six crickets, four escaped in the transfer from the closed bag to the patio table. The sixth cricket (top photo) peered back at me.

Flashback.

Crickets were in the news recently when University of California researchers indicated that they're not all that they're cracked up to be as an alternative, global source of protein in the human diet to supplement or replace livestock consumption.

UC Cooperative Extension agronomist Mark Lundy, lead researcher, and horticultural entomologist Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology worked on the project at UC Davis and then published their research April 15 in the Public Library of Science (PLOS ONE). The title: "Crickets Are Not a Free Lunch: Protein Capture from Scalable Organic Side-Streams via High-Density Populations of Acheta domesticus."

The entomologists acknowledged that crickets are known to pack a protein punch, and are often touted as “the sustainable food of the future,” but the issue is far more complex than that.

 "While there is potential for insect cultivation to augment the global supply of dietary protein, some of the sustainability claims on this topic have been overstated,” said Lundy, who headed the research at UC Davis while seeking his doctorate in agronomy. “Our study demonstrates that the sustainability gains associated with cultivating crickets as an alternative source of protein will depend, in large part, on what the crickets are fed and which systems of livestock production they are compared to.”

“Insect cultivation is more likely to contribute to human nutrition at a scale of economic and ecological significance if it does not rely on a diet that competes with conventional livestock, but more innovation is needed for this to become a reality,” Lundy said. “Moving forward, the imperative will be to design cost-effective processes that enable large populations of insects to capture protein from underutilized organic waste and side streams."

Said Parrella: “Everyone assumes that crickets--and other insects--are the food of the future given their high feed conversion relative to livestock. However, there is very little data to support this and this article shows the story is far more complex.”

For the study, the researchers modified a UC Davis greenhouse into replicated cells. They measured the biomass output and feed conversion ratios of populations of crickets (Acheta domestics) reared on food that ranged from grain-based to highly cellulosic diets.They found that the biomass accumulation was “strongly influenced by the quality of the diet.”

“The measurements were made at a much greater population scale and density than any previously reported in the scientific literature,” they wrote. “The biomass accumulation was strongly influenced by the quality of the diet, with the nitrogen concentration, the ratio of N to acid detergent fiber content, and the crude fat explaining most of the variability between feed treatments. In addition, for populations of crickets that were able to survive to a harvestable size, the feed conversion ratios (FCR) measured were higher (less efficient) than those reported from studies conducted at smaller scales and lower population densities. Compared to the industrial-scale production of broiler chickens, crickets fed a poultry feed diet showed little improvement in protein conversion efficiency (PCE), a key metric in determining the ecological footprint of grain-based livestock protein.”

“Crickets fed solid filtrate from food waste processed at an industrial scale via enzymatic digestion were able to reach a harvestable size and achieve an FCR and PCE similar to that of broiler chickens,” they wrote. “However, cricket populations fed minimally-processed, municipal-scale food waste and diets composed largely of straw experienced more than a 99% mortality before reaching a harvestable size.”

The researchers concluded that the potential for “Acheta domesticus to sustainably supplement the global protein supply, beyond what is currently produced via grain-fed chickens, will depend on capturing regionally scalable organic side-streams of relatively high-quality that are not currently being used for livestock production.”

Worldwide, statistics show that crickets are the most widely cultivated insects for the human diet, and are considered the “gateway bug” to entomophagy. They are touted as highly nutritious, and much better for the planet—environmentally and financially--than livestock due to their comparatively efficient feed conversion.

“I'm all for exploring alternatives, and I am impressed by the amount of innovation that has sprung up around insect cultivation and cuisine in the last few years,” Lundy said. “However, I also think we need to be clear-eyed about what the sustainability gains are and aren't, and focus our innovative efforts and limited resources to where they will have the most lasting impact.”

Check out the recent Los Angeles Daily News news story about a Van Nuys cricket farm billed as California's first urban cricket farm for human consumption. Reporter Susan Abram wrote: "One day soon, the sound of a cricket's chirp could make your mouth water."

We remember attending the "Bugs and Beer" event last fall at UC Davis (hosted by the Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Sciences) and hearing celebrity bug chef David George Gordon, author of the award-winning “Eat-a-Bug” cookbook, tell us "Don't worry—be hoppy."

In his talk on "Adventures in Entomophagy: “Waiter, There's No Fly in My Soup!” Gordon said that 80 percent of the world's culture eat bugs and two-thirds of all animal species are insects. "Bug-eating is good for the planet. Bugs are nutritious, delicious, cheap and plentiful.” 

 “Whether a country eats bugs has a lot to do with dependence on agriculture,” Gordon said. “Insects are in direct competition with humans for food. But as the human population grows, we can't feed them all (what Americans are accustomed to eating). People are eating hamburgers when they should be eating bugs.”

 Raising cows, pigs and sheep is a “tremendous waste of the planet's resources, but bug ranching is pretty benign,” Gordon  said. With cows, “it takes the equivalent of 16 pounds of grain and 2000 gallons of water to get one pound of steak." And the resulting greenhouse gases are not good for the planet, either, he pointed out.

 “In our culture, bugs are often considered a novelty food, such as tequila-flavored lollipops,” the chef told the crowd.  However, cricket energy bars "have gone mainstream," and cookies made with cricket flour are becoming more and more popular."

 “Insects are the food of the future,” Gordon declared.

 He cautioned that all bugs should be cooked, as cooking kills any parasites.  Bug chefs must also take special precautions in preparing stinging arthropods. 

Soaking in all that cricket news over the last six months has proved to be both entertaining and informative.

So, what happened to the two house crickets on the blanket flowers? Crickets from a pet store are not meant for human consumption. We like to think that the crickets experienced a little life, an unusual life, before a predator nailed them.