- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The walking sticks, or stick insects, belong to the order Phasmatodea. The Phasmids, a word derived from "phantom" in ancient Greek, refers to their ghost-like ability to camouflage themselves as leaves or twigs.
They're found on all continents except Antarctica.
At the recent Bohart Museum open house, hands reigned supreme in the form of "guiding hands" and "hand-over-hand" as visitors cradled the 'sticks.
Definitely a "hands-on" activity!
The Bohart Museum, home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It houses the seventh largest insect collection in North America. It is also the home of the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum in 1946.
The Bohart Museum also maintains an insect-themed gift shop, stocked with t-shirts, hoodies, jewelry, books, posters and insect-collecting equipment.
In fact, the gift shop includes a t-shirt, "Know Your Sticks." It includes a stick person, a real stick or twig, a Vietnamese walking stick and an Australian spiny stick. Entomologist Fran Keller, then a doctoral student at UC Davis and now a professor at Folsom Lake College, came up with the idea, and Ivana Li, then an entomology student doubling as president of the Entomology Club--and now biology lab manager at UC Davis--drew the illustrations.
New hours! The Bohart Museum is open to walk-in-visitors on Tuesdays through Thursdays, from 9 a.m. to noon, and from 1 to 4:30 p.m.
The museum will be operational on Mondays and Fridays as well, but the focus will solely be on research those days. Director of the museum is Professor Jason Bond the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
For the campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 20, the Bohart Museum is planning a pop-up tent at Briggs Hall; the Academic Surge building will be closed. For more information on the Bohart Museum, access the website or email bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Honey bees weren't the only insects at the 2022 California Honey Festival, held Saturday, May 7 in downtown Woodland.
Walking sticks, aka stick insects, grabbed some of the attention, too.
Officials at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis, brought along display cases of bee specimens that showed the diversity of bees. They also brought along stick insects for visitors to hold and photograph.
UC Davis undergraduate students Lauren Spellman and Pichawi "Salee" Sangrawiakararat delighted in holding the Peruvian stick insects. Both are first-year students. Lauren is majoring in environmental sciences while Salee is undeclared. When someone suggested that Salee might consider majoring in entomology (science of insects), she smiled.
The Bohart Museum of Entomology, directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, houses a worldwide collection o 8 million insect specimens. It also includes a gift shop, stocked with insect-themed gifts such as hoodies, t-shirts, books, posters, and jewelry; and its popular live "petting zoo," comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas.
The Bohart, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, is newly opened to the public this spring after two years of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Groups must make reservations and everyone must follow the UC Davis visitor guidelines.
Upcoming weekend programs, free and open to the public:
- Saturday, May 28, 1 to 4 p.m.
"Bugs in Ag: What Is Eating Our Crops and What is Eating Them?" - Saturday, June 25, 1 to 4 p.m.
"8-legged Wonders" -
Saturday, July 16. 1 to 4 p.m.
"Celebrating 50 Years of the Dogface Butterfly: California's State Insect"
Local Spider Information (Essig Museum of Entomology)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation launched "Giving Tuesday" in 2012 in response to the troubling commercialization and consumerism in the post-Thanksgiving season (think Black Friday and Cyber Monday).
A very worthy benefactor on "Giving Tuesday" is the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on the UC Davis campus.
Directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, the insect museum is named for its founder, noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007), a professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology). He founded the museum in 1946.
When you think of the Bohart Museum, you think of excellence: excellent scientists, staff and volunteers. The insect museum houses
- nearly eight million insect specimens collected worldwide
- the seventh largest insect collection in North America
- the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity
- 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
Another key part of the Bohart Museum outreach efforts: they host open houses at scheduled times on weekends throughout the academic year. On the campuswide Picnic Day, the Bohart draws as many as 4000 visitors. Thousands also attend the UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day. (See video on YouTube).
Scientists throughout the world study the insect collection.
What does the Bohart need?
"Support for our outreach programs," said Kimsey. "I would love to get another photograph like the Biss one we have in the hall."
That would be like the newly acquired 5x6-foot photographic image or "microsculpture" of a cuckoo or emerald wasp, the work of noted British photographer Levon Biss. The “cuckoo” name refers to the fact that the female lays her eggs in the nests of unsuspecting hosts, including the sand wasp. The larvae of the cuckoo wasp then consume the host eggs, larvae and the stored food. The wasp is found throughout Europe but not in the United States.
Biss's intricate work, titled "Ruby-Tailed Wasp" (Parnopes grandior), encompasses more than 8,000 separate images, Kimsey said. “We chose it partly to honor the work that ‘Doc' Bohart did." Bohart spent much of his career studying chrysidid wasps or parasitoid wasps.
Biss, based in London, works across many genres, including news, sports, portraiture and insects. He credits his son, Sebastian, for developing his interest in insects. Sebastian found a ground beetle in their backyard and Dad photographed it. That led to a collaboration with the Oxford Museum of Natural History, where Biss gained access to the museum's historical collection of insects, including some collected by Charles Darwin.
Biss now creates micro-scale images for what he calls his Microsculpture series. Over a two-year period, he photographed 37 insects from the Oxford collection. To create the final insect portraits, he composites thousands of images using multiple lighting setups. Biss says he photographed most of them in about 30 sections, “each section lit differently with strobe lights to accentuate the microsculpture of that particular area of the body.”
In October 2017, Biss drew rave reviews for his TED talk, Mind-Blowing Magnified Portraits of Insects. That led to a world gallery tour of his images; his show is now at the Houston (Texas) Museum of Natural Science, July 13, 2018 through Jan. 13, 2019.
Unlike many insect museums, the Bohart Museum is open to the general public four days a week: Mondays through Thursdays, from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., plus occasional, weekend open houses. Admission is free.
Interested in helping out the Bohart Museum on #GivingTuesday? Checks may be made out to the "Bohart Museum Society" and mailed to:
Bohart Museum of Entomology
Room 1124, Academic Surge Building
University of California, Davis
Crocker Lane
Davis, Calif. 95616.
Further information is available on the Bohart Museum website at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/ or contact (530) 753-0493 or bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Who wouldn't, when you get an opportunity to pet a rose-haired tarantula named Snuggles, guide walking sticks "strolling" on your arm, or cradle a Madagascar hissing cockroach? Or marvel at the display of Platypsyllus castoris, an ectoparasite of beavers?
That's what awaited the 2000 visitors at the Bohart Museum of Entomology during the 104th annual UC Davis Picnic Day last Saturday, April 18.
Although the theme of the campuswide Picnic Day spanned "Where the Sun Shines," Bohart Museum officials focused on "Where the Sun Doesn't Shine." They highlighted nocturnal insects, cave-dwelling insects, and parasites, including a beetle, Platypsyllus castoris, found on the south end of a beaver.
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart and professor of entomology at UC Davis, kept busy answering questions about the beaver display--a pelt, and a graphic of the beetle.
As Bohart Museum associate and undergraduate entomology student Wade Spencer said: "These beetles look like they are to fleas what halibut are to other fishes. Instead of the lateral compression fleas exhibit, Platyspyllus castoris are dorso-ventrally flattened, which only adds to their alien appearance. Their unique feeding and lodging preferences have given us so many good laughs, we wanted to make them the star of this year's picnic day event at the Bohart."
Entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the butterfly and moth collection at the Bohart, kept busy encouraging visitors to get acquainted with Snuggles. They held him, petted him and photographed him. Little Teddy Owens, 2 of Davis, held by his mother, Dina, high-fived Snuggles.
Another display featured scorpions: graduate student Charlotte Herbert shone a black light on them to illustrate how they glow in the dark. All scorpions fluoresce in ultraviolet light.
Visitors also learned about bees in a display featuring sweat bees, leaf-cutting bees, mason bees, bumble bees, honey bees, sunflower bees, and carpenter bees, as well as Andrena and Melissodes anthophora.
The Bohart Museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, praying mantids and tarantulas. The museum's gift shop, open year around, offers T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum is open to the public 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 by contacting (530) 752-0493 or emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or Tabatha Yang at tabyang@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you had asked that question at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house at the seventh annual Biodiversity Museum Day last Saturday at the University of California, Davis, the Yellow Shirts would have been proud.
The Yellow Shirts were the volunteers--the insect enthusiasts who share their time, dedication and expertise.
Check out the photos and you can see and feel--and almost hear--the excitement.
- UC Davis student Danny Nguyen coaxing a walking stick to climb his arm.
- UC Davis student Diego Rivera showing Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
- UC Davis doctoral candidate Jessica Gillung encouraging questions from an inquisitive group of youngsters and adults.
- UC Davis entomology graduate Joel Hernandez displaying a walking stick or stick insect.
- UC Davis entomology student Lohit Garikipati showing his orchid praying mantis and others from his collection.
- Bohart Museum associate Noah Crockette, Sacramento City College student, discussing his collection trip to Belize, led by faculty members Fran Keller of Folsom Lake College and Dave Wyatt of Sacramento City College.
- Entomologist Jeff Smith showing the butterfly/moth collection that he curates at the Bohart.
- Professor Dave Wyatt of Sacramento City College discussing the insects he collected in Belize.
The day was still new when someone penned "holding insects" to answer the bulletin-board question, "What do you like best about the exhibits?" Many more comments followed.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology, is home to some 8 million insect specimens, plus a live "petting zoo" and a gift shop. It's located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane.
If you missed Biodiversity Museum Day, the next major event is the campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 21 when the Bohart Museum and other entities will greet thousands of visitors. And it's free.
Meanwhile, the insect museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. Admission is free. For more information, contact the bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or access the website or Facebook page.