- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Smith curates the 400,000-specimen Lepidoptera collection at the Bohart Museum, a world-renowned insect museum that houses a global collection of nearly 8 million specimens. Smith organizes and identifies the butterflies and moths, creates the drawers that display them, and the labels that identify them. In between, he shares his passion for insects and spiders at outreach programs.
The entomologist has spread the wings of 200,000 butterflies and moths, or about 7000 a year, since 1988. “I do most of the work at my home (Rocklin), where I spread and identify specimens and add them to the museum collection,” he said.
“My life is dedicated to this passion of entomology,” said Smith, an associate of the Bohart Museum and a member of the Bohart Museum Society and the Lepidopterists' Society. “Entomology is my passion and the Bohart Museum is my cause.” He retired in 2013 from a 35-year career with Univar Environmental Science but that just means he can spend more time at the insect museum.
“The Lepidoptera collection is an excellent worldwide resource,” said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis. “Jeff has completely reorganized the butterfly and moth collection. It's no small feat to rearrange this many specimens, housed in roughly 3000 drawers. They have to be identified, and the taxonomy requires extensive updating and reorganization. He has re-curated all of the major moth families.”
If anyone were to put a monetary value on Jeff Smith's museum donations, it would exceed $160,000, said Kimsey, calculating that the 200,000 curated butterflies and moths alone translates into 33,000 hours of work.
A philanthropist extraordinaire, Smith has donated more than 35,000 specimens from his own collection; gifted more than 6000 foam-bottomed unit boxes, 5000 pins and seven reams of label paper; and crafted more than 2000 glass-topped specimen drawers to the Bohart Museum. He loves doing outreach programs, including classroom visits, Bohart open houses, state and county fairs, festivals, school science events, UC Davis Picnic Day and other educational opportunities. He engages crowds with specimens, but also with the permanent residents of the Bohart's live “Petting Zoo.” It was Smith who donated the crowd favorite, Rosie the Tarantula, who lived to 24 years.
In 2000, a scientific team led by Heydon returned from Papua New Guinea with a vast amount of specimens, and over the next two years Smith spread around 18,000 moths and butterflies, all now incorporated into the Bohart collection.
Smith can spread the wings of a butterfly or moth in several minutes, from the smallest to the largest. His smallest moth was a 1 mm long moth (about the size of a period at the end of this sentence) with a wingspan of 2 to 2.5 mm. Heydon collected it in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, central Africa,
The largest moth he's spread? The Atlas moth, which has a 12-inch wingspan.
Smith worked at the Bohart on vacations, evenings and weekends while working full-time at Univar, a major product supplier to the professional pest management industries. “As a salesman of 23 years and then resource development with our website until I retired, I had the chance to teach our customers how to do pest control properly,” Smith related. “I taught probably thousands of classes on safe and effective use of pesticides, personal safety, pest identification and biology, etc., and like to think I made an impact on increasing the professionalism of this industry.” A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Smith was often the “go to” person for insect identification and technical questions.
Smith credits his parents with sparking his interest in insects. As a child growing up in Campbell, Calif., he collected butterflies, moths and other insects. “My parents loved the outdoors and taught us to be curious,” he said. His father, Al, now deceased, was a general contractor, and his mother, Alice, now 98, worked in the business.
From his father he learned woodworking. Of the some 2000 drawers he has made for the Bohart Museum “about half are from scratch,” he said. They include 150 drawers from recycled redwood decking and fencing. He makes and donates spreading boards for open houses and for UC Davis Entomology Club clinics.
“I love retirement and all the additional time I now have for the Bohart and oh, for my wife," Smith said. "Our daughter and one granddaughter live in Prescott, Ariz., and I make things for them such as beds, bookshelves, and other wood objects.”
One of Smith's philosophies is “to leave the world better than I found it, and that pertains not only to my work in the Bohart but also to my 35-year career at Univar.”
Another involves the Golden Rule, or as he says “If you wouldn't want someone doing it to you, don't do it to them.” And a third philosophy "that I stole" from an inspirational man who teaches music to inner city youth in Los Angeles: “Love what you do, do what you love, and take the time to teach others about your passion.”
Jeff Smith is doing all three.
"We really don't know what we would do without Jeff Smith," Kimsey said.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“It will be about bees, bees, bees!” said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis. "Also, we are borrowing specimens of pollinating birds, bats and lemurs from the UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology to cover non-insect pollinators, which should be fun."
Staff research associate Billy Synk of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, will provide a bee observation hive.
The event is free and open to the public. Specialists will be on hand to answer questions. Extension apiculturist emeritus Eric Mussen, who retired in June of 2014 after a 38-year career, is scheduled to participate. Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will be able to participate in part of the event. Entomologist Jeff Smith, a Bohart associate who curates the 400,000-specimen collection of moths and butterflies, will be there to show the specimens and answer questions.
Family activities are also planned.
Bees play a profound role in shaping the world we live in, but many species remain strangers to us, according to native pollinator specialist and Bohart Museum associate Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis and a co-author of California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday Books).
Of the 20,000 bee species identified worldwide, some 4000 are found in the United States, and 1600 in California.
The honey bee, which provides pollination services valued at $217 billion globally and $20 million in the United States alone, is the most recognizable of the bees, but many are unaware of its non-native status, Thorp said. European colonists brought the honey bee to America in 1622.
The bumble bee is also easily recognizable. But there are also carpenter, mining, leafcutting, sweat, digger, masked, longhorned, mason and polyester bees, among others.
Bees are “critical to the health of our natural, ornamental and agricultural landscapes and that populations of some, perhaps many are in rapid decline,” wrote the authors of California Bees and Bloom, published by the nonprofit Heyday Books in collaboration with the California Native Plant Society. It is the work of urban entomologist Gordon Frankie. a professor and research entomologist at UC Berkeley; native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis; insect photographer and entomologist Rollin Coville, who holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley; and botanist/curator Barbara Ertter of UC Berkeley.
California's bees differ in size, shape and color, as do the flowers they visit. “The tiniest bees are ant-sized; the largest rival small birds,” they wrote. “Some are iridescent green or blue, some are decked out with bright stripes, some are covered with fuzzy-looking hairs.”
“Nature has programmed bees to build nests and supply their young with nutritious pollen and nectar, and their unique methods for collecting these resources are fascinating to observe. Their lives are dictated by season, weather and access to preferred flower types and nesting habitat.”
Thorp is also the co-author of Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton Press). Both books are available in the Bohart Museum gift shop.
The Bohart Museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum.
The museum is open to the public four days a week, Monday through Thursday, but special weekend open houses are held throughout the academic year.
The remaining schedule:
- Saturday, March 14: “Pollination Nation,” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, April 18: UC Davis Picnic Day, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Sunday, May 17: “Name That Bug! How About Bob?” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, July 18: “Moth Night,” 8 to 11 p.m.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The insect museum is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. Visitors are invited to hold the insects and photograph them.
The museum's gift shop includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
More information is available by accessing the website at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/; or telephoning (530) 752-9493; or emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"Parasitoid Palooza! will set the theme for the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on Sunday, Jan. 11.
The family-friendly event, free and open to the public, takes place from 1 to 4 p.m. in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
"Most everyone knows that mantids eat other insects or that ladybird beetles (lady bugs) consume lots of aphids, but there is another way insects eat other insects," commented Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.
"An insect parasitoid is a species whose immatures live off of one insect host, usually eating it from the inside out," she said. "It is part of their life cycle and the host dies. This sounds like a weird way to make a living, but there are more species of parasitoids than there are insects with any other single kind of life history. The movie Alien with Sigourney Weaver co-opts this phenomenon, but in reality there are no parasitoids on humans or other vertebrates."
The Bohart open house will spotlight this unusual life cycle. Wasps, flies and beetles are parasitoids to many different insect groups.
Senior museum scientist Steve Heydon, the Bohart collections manager, is a world authority on Pteromalids, or jewel wasps, a group of tiny parasitoids. He will be on hand to talk about them.
Another group of parasitoids that will be highlighted will be the Strepsiptera, or Twisted-Wing Parasites, an order of insects that the late UC Davis entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007), for whom the museum is named, researched for his doctorate in 1938. An entire family of Strepsiptera, the Bohartillidae, is named in honor of Professor Bohart.
Live parasitoids from the lab of Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomolology and Nematology will be showcased. They include Encarsa, Eretmocerus, Diglyphus and Aphidius.
"Parasitoid Palooza" promises to be a fun and wacky celebration of the diversity of life, Yang said. A family-friendly craft activity is planned as well.
Along with parasitoids, native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology, will show some live male and female "teddy bear" bees or Valley carpenter bees. Allan Jones of Davis, a noted insect photographer, delivered some to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility from a friend's cut-down apple tree in Davis.
Directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, the Bohart Museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum.
Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. Visitors are invited to hold the insects and photograph them.
The museum's 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 and on major holidays. Admission is free. Open houses, focusing on specific themes, are held on weekends throughout the academic year.
The remaining schedule of open houses:
- Sunday, Feb. 8: “Biodiversity Museum Day,” noon to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, March 14: “Pollination Nation,” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, April 18: UC Davis Picnic Day, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Sunday, May 17: “Name That Bug! How About Bob?” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, July 18: “Moth Night,” 8 to 11 p.m.
More information is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or Tabatha Yang, education and public outreach coordinator at tabyang@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
With that in mind, the Bohart Museum of Entomology's next open house, themed “Insects and Art,” will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 20 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane. The event is free and open to the public and family-oriented.
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum, and Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator, announced that more than a dozen artists will be displaying their work. Many will be there to answer questions.
The event spans a variety of art from the detailed illustrations of the late Mary Foley Benson, formerly of the Smithsonian Institution, to some of the whimsical representational work from the UC Davis Art 11 printmaking class.
A family activity will be crafting small insect sculptures out of wire and beads.
The work of Diane Ullman, professor of entomology and co-founder and co-director of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, will be displayed. Some will be ceramic mosaics and others will be images of larger campus installations. The UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program installed much of the art around campus, including work at the UC Davis Arboretum and the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road. Ullman and colleague Donna Billick, co-founder of the program, taught Entomology 001 students how to fuse art with science.
Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist for the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and an international award-winning writer and photographer, will show some of the images she's captured in her bee garden. One of her macro images of a flameskimmer dragonfly is published in the Entomological Society of America's 2015 world insect calendar. She also writes the Bug Squad blog that appears on the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources website.
Student art from Art 11, a beginning printmaking class taught by lecturer Bryce Vinkorov of the UC Davis Department of Art and Art History will be displayed. The class borrows educational drawers from the museum and then creates works of art inspired by the assortment of insects. The display will include a work by Beatrice Lee, who drew inspiration from the "violin beetles" in South America.
"My classes have used bugs from the Bohart as inspiration for their linocut prints for the past thee years," Vinkorov said. "This is one of the my classes favorite assignments. They are fascinated by the variety of color and body shapes of these bugs." The prints displayed, he said, are a sample of this quarter's work. "The larger color prints are linocut reductions. I am very thankful that the Bohart lets this kind of cross=pollination happen."
The insect-themed drawings and paintings of Nicole Tam, an entomology undergraduate student and artist, will be displayed.
The work of Mary Foley Benson, the former Smithsonian Institution scientific illustrator who lived the last years of her life in Davis, and worked for faculty in the Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology), will be showcased. Some of it is displayed year-around at the Bohart Museum and in 366 Briggs, a departmental conference room.
Housing a global collection of nearly eight million specimens, the Bohart Museum is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum.
Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. Visitors are invited to hold the insects and photograph them.
The museum's 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 and on major holidays. Admission is free. Open houses, focusing on specific themes, are held on weekends throughout the academic year.
The remaining schedule of open houses:
- Sunday, Jan. 11: “Parasitoid Palooza,” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Sunday, Feb. 8: “Biodiversity Museum Day,” noon to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, March 14: “Pollination Nation,” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, April 18: UC Davis Picnic Day, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Sunday, May 17: “Name That Bug! How About Bob?” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, July 18: “Moth Night,” 8 to 11 p.m.
More information is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or Tabatha Yang, education and public outreach coordinator at tabyang@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, not only oversees a collection of nearly eight million insect specimens, but she collects something else—something that could appear in a national stand-up comedian act.
Entomological funnies. Bug stuff.
“College students—especially under the crunch of a deadline—can write the darndest things,” says Kimsey, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and an international authority on the taxonomy of bees and wasps and insect diversity.
Kimsey, known for her keen sense of humor, collects “the best of the best” sentences from the term papers she grades from her introductory entomology class. She began collecting the gems in 1998.
“Some of these sentences are priceless,” Kimsey said. “You couldn't intentionally write something this good or bad depending on how you look at it.”
Some students misplace their modifiers, add an adverb, or drop a crucial letter from a word, turning a “threat” into a “treat,” Kimsey said.
And some of the students' thinking—perhaps from sleep or coffee deprivation--can be as fuzzy as a caterpillar.
How do honey bees find their way home? “By navigating around the sun,” one student wrote.
Why are mosquitoes excellent vectors? “Because they can ingest and then infect viruses with ease through blood feeding,” penned another student.
What are pathogens? “Pathogens cause disease(s) like viruses and bacteria.”
What is biological control? “Nature has been executing biological control on all walks of life since it began on earth.”
And the definition of classical biological control? “Basically, classical biological control seeks to relieve pestering insects by establishing a predator in a new environment.”
Locusts drew two choice comments:
“Other countries will also face losses (due to locusts) although at a rate of loss much less due to exhaustion from travel.”
“Normally, locusts are introverted creatures; they do not socialize unless it is for reproduction.”
Those traveling dragonflies: “These dragonflies are able to use the best of Mother Nature to assist travel.”
Secrete themselves? “After arriving at the popular, the sexuparae aphids move towards the trunk of the tree where they secrete themselves in order to reproduce.”
Major pests on what? “There have been instances in the Southeastern United States where several species of mole crickets have been accidentally introduced and have become major pests on turd (sic) and pasture grasses.”
Fast forward to adults: “In late winter the overwintering adults come out of diapause and migrate back to their main host population where they lay the first generation of summer adults.”
Wild vertebrae? “People living in high endemic areas also tend to live in close proximity not only to the vector of the disease but to reservoir hosts like dog, cats, and other wild vertebrae.”
Outreach activities? “Since either traps or insecticides can get access to perfect, out-reach activities and novel ideas related to D. suzukii management always come out.”
Recommended fumigation? “Fumigation has proven to be highly effective however, time consuming and the recommended process is aerosol spraying avian vehicles.”
Honey bees, too, yield interesting comments, said Kimsey, who served as president of the International Society of Hymenopterists from 2002 to 2004 and kept bees in her backyard for 10 years.
On mating and semen storage: “This is the only time (honey bee) queens mate in their lifetime since the sperm can be stored longer than her lifetime.”
On the “beeping” industry: “This, similar bans, and a decrease in demand of packages and queens from the United States has hurt the commercial beeping industry.”
On the role of drones: “Because the males in the Hymenoptera social structure do no work, they are considered a waste of the colony's energy, and as such, they are only laid when the colony can stand the strain.”
For the record, UC Extension apiculturist (emeritus) Eric Mussen, who just completed a 38-year career in June, explained that a honey bee queen usually takes a single mating flight during her lifetime and will mate with a dozen to twenty drones. “She stores the semen in her spermatheca and that's enough to last her entire lifetime, usually about two years. During the busy season, she will lay up to 2000 eggs a day.”
“If the drones don't mate, they will die of old age in about 35 days or they will get kicked out of the hive by their sisters in the fall,” Mussen said. “They are not needed when there are no virgin queens with which to mate and the drones are just extra mouths to feed.”
Other sentences in Kimsey's “best of the best” collection include:
- "For every problem, there is a pest.”
- "Damage ranges from minor weakened plants to serious plant death.”
- "The arousal of nest mates by booty-laden foragers has been attributed to a conspicuous mechanical action caused by antennae and forelegs and supported by the scent of the trail substance…”
- "Although caterpillars are vulnerable and young, their ability to protect against predators has helped them become successful predators.”
- "Humans have been using and digesting insects for centuries, despite the wide array of chemicals they produce.”
- "Another way of penetrating the navel orange worm is with biological control.”
- "The actions of these (reproductive) workers can be reprimanded if they are a treat to the others in the colony.”
- "(Fire ant) mounds that are near plants are usually uprooted and overturned by the ants as the mound grows.”
- "The most important upgrade that some insects have acquired is the co-evolution with angiosperms.”
- "The illness has come out of a twenty-five year remission and has begun to infect many tropical islands.”
Kimsey, who received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1979 and joined the faculty in 1989, says there's “a possibility” she may write a book and include the classic answers.
“Maybe,” she said, “but I'm not sure where to go with these from here.”
