- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The themes range from dragonflies to parasitoids to moths, in addition to the annual Biodiversity Museum Day and UC Davis Picnic Day. Most of the Bohart Museum open houses take place from 1 to 4 p.m. except for “Moth Night.”
The schedule:
Sunday, Sept. 20, 1 to 4 p.m.: “Thar Be Dragon (flies)”
Saturday, Dec. 5, 1 to 4 p.m.: “Keep Calm and Insect On.”
Sunday, Jan. 10 from 1 to 4 p.m.: Parasitoid Palooza II
Saturday, Feb. 13: Biodiversity Museum Day
Saturday, April 16, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.: UC Davis Picnic Day
Saturday, July 30, 8 to 11 p.m.: “Celebrate Moths.”
The special weekend hours are free and open to the public. Families are encouraged to attend. The museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, corner of LaRue Road and Crocker Lane, University of California, Davis.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, 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, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or email bmuseum@ucdavis.edu. Tabatha Yang tabyang@ucdavis.edu) does public education and outreach and conducts groups tours.
- 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
"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
Butterflies and moths can't fly if you rub the scales off their wings, right?
Earwigs crawl into your ears and then into your brain, right?
Wrong. Those are some of the myths surrounding insects and ones that the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology will dispel at its open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 23, in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge building, Crocker Lane.
The Bohart also will dispel myths about spiders (arachnids), including
- Brown recluse spiders are found in California
- Daddy long-leg spiders are very venomous, but their mouths are too small to bite us.
- We swallow/eat a significant amount of spiders/insects in our sleep.
The open house, free and open to the public, is the second in a series of nine open houses during the 2014-2015 academic year.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, 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. Facepainting will be among the family-oriented activities.
The museum's gift shop (on location and online) 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 insect 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:
- Saturday, Dec. 20: “Insects and Art,” 1 to 4 p.m.
- 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