- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
DAVIS--Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, is the recipient of the top award in the service category of the UC Davis Staff Assembly's Citation for Excellence Program. She will be honored by the chancellor at a ceremony on June 26.
Yang, who joined the Bohart Museum nine years ago, coordinates museum tours, classroom visits, special weekend hours, summer camp programs, and other outreach activities that connect science and scientists with the public. She collaborates with interns, undergraduates, staff, graduate students and faculty to accomplish the outreach program.
Stacey Brezing, chair of the UC Davis Staff Assembly Citations of Excellence Committee, wrote to Yang: “It gives me great pleasure to notify you that you have been selected as the top selection for this category, the committee was greatly impressed with your work."
Yang will receive a cash prize of $1000 as a “gesture of appreciation for your contribution to the campus community,” Brezing said.
Nominations for the service award are based on achievements such as fostering engagement and inclusion in campus community, leadership, and volunteerism.
Yang was nominated, confidentially, by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis; senior museum scientist Steve Heydon of the Bohart Museum, and Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist for the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
They wrote: “Our nominee is a treasure, a one-of-a-kind gem and an all-around ambassador who exemplifies all that is good and great about UC Davis. A friendly and caring person who joined the campus museum workforce in 2009, she makes all of us feel needed, wanted, and appreciated as if we were ‘Person of the Year.' Throughout the year, she engages more than 20,000 children, families, students, faculty and staff who visit the museum or attend her science outreach programs. She enthusiastically and freely gives of her time to plan and participate in weekend open houses. She co-founded the annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day six years ago, which this year drew 12 participating museums and an attendance of 3000. This year she chaired the committee.
“Five years ago, she launched an annual summer camp for children that is so popular it draws youths from around the nation, resulting in multiple camps and waiting lists. She helps coordinate the UC Davis Picnic Day activities in the museum, engaging more than 3500 excited and enthusiastic visitors. At the Solano County Ag Day, she shared scientific information with 3000 youngsters over a four-hour period, always smiling and genuinely interested in each person.
“Our nominee is kind, caring, thoughtful and never without a smile or a word of encouragement. She strongly believes in inclusion. For example, she wears a safety pin, a way of showing that she is a safe space for those who are afraid. She shows she is in solidarity with victims of racism, homophobia and religious discrimination and will protect everyone who feels in danger, regardless of gender, sexuality, race, disability or religion. 'You are safe with me!'
“We watched her lead a tour of children of migratory workers, educating them about what could be a lifelong interest or their occupation. ‘You can be anything you want to be. You can do this! We know you can!' She can reach the shyest of the shy.
“One volunteer at the museum says ‘Wherever I go, her name is legendary. People just rave about her and her work.' Said another: ‘She is one of the most patient, outgoing individuals I know who loves to teach and share information.'
“Said her supervisor: ‘She has greatly expanded our outreach programs, participating in Solano County Youth Ag Day, and many other STEM programs offered at libraries, schools and county facilities. She gives science outreach programs to about 15,000 adults and children every year. She is particularly good at working with groups of children and maintaining discipline at the same time as engaging them in the topic, so that everyone can see, hear and learn. We always request an evaluation from groups she talks to and they always rave about her presentations.'
“In summary, our nominee's exemplary service, high morale, encouragement, passion and inclusion are a treasure-trove of qualities that single her out as the gem she is.
The Staff Assembly's annual Citations for Excellence Awards Program provides recognition for individual staff and staff teams who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in one of the following areas: teaching, research, service, supervision and innovation. There is also a team award for campus community contributions and service. Teams include project or program staff, office staff, or other similar groups.
The Bohart Museum 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.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Find out at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, May 17 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane.
The theme is "Name That Bug! How About Bob?"
Officials at the Bohart Museum and the California Department of Food and Agriculture will explain how insects are named. There also will be family arts-and-crafts activities. The event is free and open to the public.
The Bohart Museum sponsors a nonprofit biolegacy program, an opportunity to name an insect after you or a loved one. This is a lasting dedication and will help support future research and discovery at the Bohart, said Lynn Kimsey, museum director and a professor of entomology at UC Davis.
For example, there's a new wasp species named “The Bockler Wasp,” thanks to a concerted drive to memorialize a beloved science teacher, and the taxonomy work of the Bohart Museum and the BioLegacy Program.
When award-winning biology teacher Donald “Doc Boc” Bockler of Arlington (Mass.) High School, died at age 65 of an apparent heart attack on Sept. 2, 2008 at his home, two of his former students from the Class of 1993--Tabatha Bruce Yang of the Bohart Museum and Margaret Dredge Moore of Arlington--launched a fundraising drive to name an insect after him.
They selected a newly discovered species in the genus Lanthanomyia and sought the name, Lanthanomyia bockleri.
Senior museum scientist Heydon recently published his work on Lanthanomyia bockleri Heydon in Zootaxa, a worldwide mega-journal for zoological taxonomists and the name is now official.
“Once an article goes through the scientific review process and is published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, the name of the new species is official and immortalized in the scientific literature,” explained Kimsey.
Kimsey described species-naming as “a unique, lasting form of dedication” and “a great honor both for the person giving the name and for the individual or other honoree whose name is being given to the species.”
Heydon said Lanthanomyia is a genus whose species are restricted to central and southern Chile and adjacent parts of Argentina. The new species is found in the Nothofagus forests of Patagonian Chile, including Chiloe Island. It belongs to a family of parasitic wasps called the Pteromalidae. “Unlike other related species, this one has a unique dorsal attachment of the head to the thorax. If you see a specimen of Lanthanomyia with the neck attaching close to the top of the head, you know it is bockleri,” Heydon said. “Adults are reared from galls on Nothofagus and are thought to be parasites of gall-forming weevils.”
“Donald Bockler was fascinated by evolution and nature and he would have been proud,” said Yang, education and outreach coordinator at the Bohart Museum. Like many other Bockler students, she credits him for influencing her decision to pursue a career in science.
For more information, and to get a list of species available for naming, contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
One of the displays at Sunday's open house will be by entomologist Jeff Smith, associate at the Bohart Museum, who will be displaying monarch butterflies in various stages of pinning. A mishap occurred at an unknown California wedding: 300 monarchs were to be released but all perished in the box. "Now we are using them for a static display (as opposed to hands-on)," Smith said.
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 last open house of the year is "Moth Night," set from 8 to 11 p.m., Saturday, July 18 on the grounds just outside the Bohart Museum. Participants will learn how to collect moths and identify them.
More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or Tabatha Yang, education and public outreach coordinator at tabyang@ucdavis.edu
/span>- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Hosts are Bohart senior museum scientist-entomologist Steve Heydon and entomologists John De Benedictis and Jeff Smith.
Visitors are encouraged to bring specimens, photos, PowerPoint presentations or slides from collecting trips and tales of collecting triumphs to share with others. Butterfly t-shirts and other entomological merchandise are available from the gift shop.
Interested persons are invited to attend. Lepidopterists are researchers or hobbyists who specialize in the study of butterflies and moths in the order, Lepitopdera.
For more information, contact Steve Heydon at (530) 752-0493 or slheydon@ucdavis.edu.
The Bohart Museum is located on Crocker Lane, near the intersection of Crocker Lane and LaRue Road. Visitors can park in Lot 46. Academic Surge is the building north of Lot 46.
The museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens, and is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. It was founded by noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007).
- 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
When award-winning biology teacher Donald “Doc Boc” Bockler of Arlington (Mass.) High School, died at age 65 of an apparent heart attack on Sept. 2, 2008 at his home, two of his former students from the Class of 1993--Tabatha Bruce Yang of the Bohart Museum and Margaret Dredge Moore of Arlington--launched a fundraising drive to name an insect after him.
They selected a newly discovered species in the genus Lanthanomyia--being described by Bohart Museum senior museum scientist Steve Heydon. They sought the name, Lanthanomyia bockleri.
Heydon recently published his work on Lanthanomyia bockleri Heydon in Zootaxa, a worldwide mega-journal for zoological taxonomists and the name is now official.
“Once an article goes through the scientific review process and is published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, the name of the new species is official and immortalized in the scientific literature,” explained Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis.
Kimsey described species-naming as “a unique, lasting form of dedication” and “a great honor both for the person giving the name and for the individual or other honoree whose name is being given to the species.”
Heydon said Lanthanomyia is a genus whose species are restricted to central and southern Chile and adjacent parts of Argentina. The new species is found in the Nothofagus forests of Patagonian Chile, including Chiloe Island. It belongs to a family of parasitic wasps called the Pteromalidae. “Unlike other related species, this one has a unique dorsal attachment of the head to the thorax. If you see a specimen of Lanthanomyia with the neck attaching close to the top of the head, you know it is bockleri,” Heydon said. “Adults are reared from galls on Nothofagus and are thought to be parasites of gall-forming weevils.”
“Donald Bockler was fascinated by evolution and nature and he would have been proud,” said Yang, education and outreach coordinator at the Bohart Museum. Like many other Bockler students, she credits him for influencing her decision to pursue a career in science.
His former students and teaching colleagues said the naming of the insect is a fitting tribute to a teacher who lived for and loved science and instilled the enthusiasm in his students. Wrote one colleague in an email to Yang and Moore: “His students were blessed by his passion and devotion to inquiry learning. As a friend and mentor, he left an indelible mark on my career as a teacher and scholar… Most importantly, he helped us all believe in the value of our work.”
Bockler's obituary in the Boston Globe related that he “found his place among the subjects he loved and the students he taught. During his career he led classes in all levels of biology, environmental science, and earth science.”
“...He was past president of the Massachusetts Association of Biology Teachers (MABT), was a reader for the AP biology and Environmental Science exams, and presented at state and national conferences… He received an award for Excellence in Environmental Education in 2003 and was recognized by Tufts University for excellence in mentoring practice teachers.
“Once retired in 2003, he continued working in science education, writing curricula for the Urban Ecology Institute, home-schooling science students, and becoming a teaching assistant at Harvard University Extension. Recently he had begun working with the Encyclopedia of Life Project.
“His essence is reflected in comments made by students and teachers: "The learning community has lost one of its greats." "A gentleness is passed." "He was loved by all and will be sorely missed as our world has lost one of its finest teachers and human beings."
He and his wife, Marzina, had no children.
MABT established a memorial scholarship in his name and wrote on its website: “Don's energy and enthusiasm for teaching were an inspiration to us all. Don was a dedicated educator who taught for over 30 years at Arlington High School and before that as a Peace Corps volunteer in South America. His students learned their lessons to a high standard because of his outstanding teaching. In addition to his dedicated service to MABT, he chaired the Massachusetts Outstanding Biology Teaching Award Committee for years. Don was an avid reader; his personal library held more than 5000 volumes, the diversity of which reflected his many varied interests and his inquisitive mind.
The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 Academic Surge on Crocker Lane, established its BioLegacy program “to support species discovery and naming, research and teaching activities of the museum through sponsorships,” Kimsey said.
“At a time when support for taxonomic and field research is shrinking, researchers find it increasingly difficult to discover, classify and name undescribed species. Yet there are thousands yet to be discovered. Taxonomy is the basis of all biology and without species discovery and naming much of the world's biodiversity will remain unknown and therefore unprotectable.”
Agriculture and human settlement are expanding, and according to conservative estimates, around 17,500 species become extinct every year. “Most of these have not even been discovered, let alone researched or exploited,” Kimsey said. “This loss has ecological and economic consequences which, though difficult to measure, are undoubtedly of major significance. Extinction is forever!”
The Bohart Museum of Entomology posts information about naming rights and insects needing names on its BioLegacy website. A minimum sponsorship of $2,500 is requested. Participation in the BioLegacy Program is open to the public (of legal age) and scientists in research organizations. Taxonomists are expressly invited to join the BioLegacy Program. The Bohart Museum is a non-profit organization and donations are tax-deductible.
The BioLegacy Program:
- provides donors the opportunity to sponsor and give a scientific name to a newly discovered insect species;
- provides researchers responsible for identifying the new species with names provided by donors;
- ensures that names provide by donors are used in a scientifically sound and scientifically correct manner in accordance with International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature rules;
- provides donors with documentary proof of their name for the new species in question; ensures that donated funds go to the support of taxonomical research in the Bohart Museum of Entomology;
- publishes donor-named species and information about the research on its website
The Bohart Museum, dedicated to teaching, research and public service, houses nearly eight million specimens and is the seventh largest insect collection in North America. It is named for noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007).