This bug's for you.

Ever tasted a cricket? A mealworm? An earthworm?

You can if you attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house themed "Gobble, Gobble, Munch, Munch, Crunch: Entomophagy,” to be held from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 21 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane.

Open to the public, it's free and family friendly, said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis.

“The theme is entomophagy and we have some samples from various companies coming our way,” said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator. Companies providing samples include Hotlix, Exo and Chirps Chips.

Said Kimsey: "Many insects are quite edible and if you try them you might find that crickets are the new shrimp. Personally, I like flavored mealworms."

"Just think of insects as terrestrial shrimp or crab," said senior museum scientist Steve Heydon.

The event will include learning about entomophagy, sampling insect-based foods, button-making (“I ate a bug at the Bohart”), viewing the collection, and handling insects from the petting zoo, which includes Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas. Yang and Bohart associate Emma Cluff recently completed an online training for food handling, as required by UC Davis.

In preparation for the event, Bohart Museum volunteer Iris Bright, a second-year biology major at Sacramento City College, sampled crickets, mealworms and earthworms last week.

Bright liked them all. “They're good,” she said, as she tasted red, green and blue earthworms. She described them as having "a sweet and sour taste." The mealworms? “Somewhat cheesy.”

“The crickets are crunchy," she said, adding "I've had them before.”

Bright, who plans to obtain a degree in biology and a field ecology certificate and then her master's degree, joined the Bohart Museum of Entomology/Folsom Lake College team that recently collected insects in Belize. She's studied with Belize bioblitz team leader Fran Keller, an assistant professor at Folsom Lake College who received her doctorate in entomology at UC Davis.

Eighty percent of the world population, including those living in Central and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, consume insects as a high protein source. Some 1700 species of insects are edible.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has registered some 1,900 edible insect species and estimates that there were, in 2005, some two billion insect consumers worldwide. FAO suggests eating insects as a possible solution to environmental degradation caused by livestock production. Insects and arachnids eaten globally include crickets, cicadas, grasshoppers, ants, various beetle grubs (such as mealworms, the larvae of the darkling beetle, various species of caterpillars (such as bamboo worms, Mopani worms, silkworms and waxworms), scorpions and tarantulas, according to Wikipedia.

Spencer Michels in a PBS News Hour report in May 2017, commented: “But the big advantage of eating insects is that they are generally healthier than meat. A six-ounce serving of crickets has 60 percent less saturated fat and twice as much vitamin B-12 than the same amount of ground beef. ..Bugs also don't spread disease to humans the way cows — think mad cow disease– or pigs can.”

“I do realize that insects do have a bad rap,” California Academy of Sciences entomologist Brian Fisher recently said. “Most people see insects are pests or as dangerous. But it's just the opposite. Insects are less dangerous and less of a problem for humans in terms of disease."

“We do have concerns about disease jumping from animals like pigs and cows to humans,” Fisher said. “But there are no worries about a disease jumping from an insect to humans. The more evolutionary distant we are from our food source, the less danger there is. … There is almost zero chance that any disease that affects an insect could actually impact a human after it's cooked.”

Celebrity bug chef David George Gordon, author of the “Eat-a-Bug” cookbook, extolled the virtues of the “bugs as food” movement when he addressed a UC Davis audience in 2014 at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science. Insects are an environmentally friendly source of protein, he said, and bug farming reduces greenhouse gas emissions and is exponentially more water-efficient than farming for beef, chicken, or pigs.

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. It maintains a live "petting zoo," featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks or stick insects, tarantulas, and praying mantids. The museum's gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.

The 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.)

It was the fall of 2009 when a half-acre bee garden on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis campus, sprang to life.

Headlines on colony collapse disorder dominated the news media, as scientists declared "honey bees are in trouble."

Under the direction of interim department chair Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, a crew installed the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven (named for it major donor) on Bee Biology Road, next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility.

Fast forward to the fall of 2019.

A 10th anniversary celebration will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 28 in the bee garden. It will include sales of plants and native bee condos, honey tasting (honey from Sola Bee Honey, Woodland), catch-and-release bee observation and identification, and beekeeping and research displays. Several mini lectures are planned.

Visitors will see analemmatic sundial--the only one of its kind in the Sacramento area--and they can discuss the sundial with dial master and beekeeper Rick Williams, M.D. to learn how the dial was created and the links between human and bee perception of the sun. Visitors also will learn about "our research on bee use of ornamental landscape plants," said manager Chris Casey. In addition, visitors can "donate a book on insects, gardening, or nature for our Little Free Library," she announced.

The schedule:

• 10:30 a.m.: Donor and volunteer recognition
• 11 a.m.: Hive opening by beekeeper from the California Master Beekeepers' Association
• 11:30: Mini lecture, "Getting Started with Beekeeping"
• 12: Mini lecture, "Plants for Bees"
• 12:30: Mini lecture, "Using Solitary Bee Houses
• 1 p.m.: Hive opening by beekeeper from the California Master Beekeepers' Association

History of the Bee Garden

It all began with a news story. A feature on bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, written by Kathy Keatley Garvey, department's communication specialist, drew the attention of Häagen-Dazs, a premium ice cream brand which depends on honey bees to pollinate many of the plants that form the basis of its ice cream flavors.  Häagen-Daz  initially donated $125,000, later increasing it to some $500,000. 

Häagen-Dazs wanted the funds to benefit sustainable pollination research, target colony collapse disorder, and support a postdoctoral researcher.  It was decided to install an educational garden, conduct a design contest, and award a research postdoctoral fellowship to Michelle Flenniken (now with the Montana State University).

A Sausalito team--landscape architects Donald Sibbett and Ann F. Baker, interpretative planner Jessica Brainard and exhibit designer Chika Kurotaki--won the design competition. The garden was installed in the fall of 2009 under the direction of interim department chair Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology.

An eight-member panel selected the winner of the design competition: Professor Kimsey; founding garden manager Missy Borel (now Missy Borel Gable), then of the California Center for Urban Horticulture; David Fujino, executive director, California Center for Urban Horticulture at UC Davis; Aaron Majors, construction department manager, Cagwin & Dorward Landscape Contractors, based in Novato; Diane McIntyre, senior public relations manager, Häagen-Dazs ice cream; Heath Schenker, professor of environmental design, UC Davis; Jacob Voit, sustainability manager and construction project manager, Cagwin and Dorward Landscape Contractors; and Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist, UC Davis Department of Entomology.

Others who had a key role in the founding and "look" of the garden included the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, founded and directed by the duo of entomologist/artist Diane Ullman, professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and self-described "rock artist" Donna Billick. The art in the garden is the work of their students, ranging from those in Entomology 1 class to community residents. Eagle Scout Derek Tully planned, organized and built a state-of-the-art fence around the garden.

"The Honey Bee Haven will be a pollinator paradise," Kimsey related in December 2008. "It will provide a much needed, year-round food source for our bees at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. We anticipate it also will be a gathering place to inform and educate the public about bees. We are grateful to Haagen-Dazs for its continued efforts to ensure bee health."

The garden, Kimsey said, would include a seasonal variety of blooming plants that will provide a year-round food source for honey bees. It would be a living laboratory supporting research into the nutritional needs and natural feeding behaviors of honey bees and other insect pollinators.

Visitors to the garden, she said, would able to glean ideas on how to establish their own bee-friendly gardens and help to improve the nutrition of bees in their own backyards.

The timeline:

Feb. 19, 2008
Häagen-Dazs Donation to UC Davis 

Dec. 8, 2008
Häagen-Dazs Launches Bee Garden Design Contest

Aug. 6, 2008
Insect Virus Researcher Michelle Flenniken Named Häagen-Dazs Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Davis 

Feb. 26, 2009
Sausalito Team Wins Design Competition

Aug. 6, 2009
Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven Site Preparation

Aug. 13, 2009
Bee Biology Website to Be Launched

Aug. 13, 2009
Thinking Outside the Box

Sept. 15, 2009
Campus Buzzway: Wildflowers

Dec. 15, 2009
Bee Biology Website Lauded

2010 
June 6, 2010
Grand Opening Celebration of Honey Bee Garden

July 15, 2010
Art Is Where the Community Is; Blending Science with Art in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven

July 30, 2010
More Than 50 Bee Species Found in Haven: Robbin Thorp (Now there's more than 80 and counting!)

Aug. 25, 2010
Donna Billick: Miss Bee Haven

Aug. 11, 2011
What the Signs Tell Us in the UC Davis Honey Bee Garden

Aug. 24, 2011
Royal Visit to Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility

April 11, 2012
Brian Fishback: Spreading the Word about Honey Bees

Aug. 26, 2013
Eagle Scout Project: Fence Around the Bee Garden

Sept. 11 2012
A Fence to Behold

2013
April 25, 2013
UC Davis Bee Team Wins Major Award

Aug. 1, 2013
Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven Place to Be
With photo of founding volunteers 

Donors 
List of Donors Who Helped Launch the Garden (2009 through July 2014)

Missy Borel, then manager of the California Center for Urban Horticulture (and now Missy Borel Gable, director of the California Master Gardener Program) served as the founding manager, a part-time position. Nineteen volunteers assisted her. 

Today Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, serves as the faculty director of the bee garden. Christine Casey is the academic program manager.

For more information on the garden, access the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven website or contact beegarden@ucdavis.edu.

Landmark research led by UC Davis medical entomologist-geneticist Geoffrey Attardo provides new insight into the genomics of the blood-sucking tsetse fly, an insect that transmits the parasite that causes human and animal trypanosomiasis.

In humans, the disease is commonly known as sleeping sickness: the parasite invades the central nervous system and disrupts the sleep cycle. If not treated, the disease can result in progressive mental deterioration, coma, systemic organ failure and death.

The newly published research in the journal Genome Biology compares and analyzes the genomes of six species of tsetse flies and could lead to better insights into disease prevention and control. “It was a behemoth project, spanning six to seven years,” said Attardo, an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology. “This project represents the combined efforts of a consortium of 56 researchers throughout the United States, Europe, Africa and China.”

Tsetse flies, Glossina sp., are of great medical and economic importance, wrote Attardo and co-authors Adly M. M. Abd-Alla of the Insect Pest Control Laboratory, Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, Vienna, Austria, and Serap Aksoy of the Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Conn. They related that since the implementation of surveillance and record-keeping in the 20th century, “millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa” have died from sleeping sickness.

Tsetse flies, which resemble house flies, are distinguished from other Diptera by unique adaptations, including lactation and the birthing of live young, a vertebrate blood-specific diet by both sexes, and obligate bacterial symbiosis. The scientists targeted six Glossina genomes representing three sub-genera: Morsitans (G. morsitans morsitans, G. pallidipes, G. austeni), Palpalis (G. palpalis, G. fuscipes), and Fusca (G. brevipalpis) which represent different habitats, host preferences, and vectorial capacity.

“The aim of these studies,” the authors wrote, “was to generate and mine the genomic sequences of six species of tsetse flies with different ecological niches, host preferences, and vectorial capacities. The goals of the analyses performed here are to identify the novel genetic features specific to tsetse flies and to characterize the differences between the Glossina species to correlate the genetic changes with phenotypic differences in these divergent species.”
“Expanded genomic discoveries reveal the genetics underlying Glossina biology and provide a rich body of knowledge for basic science and disease control,” the scientists concluded. “They also provide insight into the evolutionary biology underlying novel adaptations and are relevant to applied aspects of vector control such as trap design and discovery of novel pest and disease control strategies.”

Attardo, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 2017 after serving 13 years with the Yale School of Public Health, said the massive research project involved “the complete sequencing and assembly of six Glossina species, including the two primary vectors of human African tryapnosomiasis, three major vectors of animal trypanosomiasis and one ancestral tsetse species which demonstrates some resistance to the species of trypanosomes responsible for human and some animal forms of the disease.”

The research, titled "Comparative Genomic Analysis of Six Glossina Genomes, Vectors of African Trypanosomes,"  offers:

• A clearer definition of the Glossina phylogenetic tree and placement of a controversial species.
• Identification of rapidly evolving regions of the tsetse genome relative to Drosophila.
• Identification of Glossina specific genes and their functions as well as expansions and contractions of gene families in tsetse relative to other flies.

“We discuss the functional implications of these changes and how they relate to tsetses' physiological adaptations and evolutionary history,” Attardo noted.

“We discovered that the rhodopsin gene family which is associated with vision/color detection shows conservation in motion detection and tracking associated genes.” Attardo said. “However, the gene coding for the protein that detects blue wavelengths is divergent relative to houseflies and shows the highest variance between Glossina species of all the rhodopsin genes. This is significant as the color blue is used as an attractant to bring tsetse into the traps used for control. It suggests that different species may be tuned/attracted to different wavelengths of blue.”

They also analyzed the genes associated with tsetse immunity and the relative differences in comparison with houseflies and fruit flies. “We see many immune genes missing in Glossina and increased copy numbers of genes associated with negative regulation of immune function. We think this may be associated with the evolution of obligate symbiosis as a way to protect their symbionts.”

“We also found extreme conservation of milk proteins between all sequenced species,” the UC Davis medical entomologist said. “On the flip side, male reproductive proteins (seminal proteins) appear to be very rapidly evolving relative to the rest of the genome. The copy numbers of these genes also change significantly between species.”

The scientists also found an overall reduction of olfactory associated genes and protein modifications specific to salivary proteins in the two species that vector human trypanosomiasis.

In 1995, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 60 million people were at risk of sleeping sickness, with an estimated 300,000 new cases per year in Africa, and fewer than 30,000 cases diagnosed and treated. Due to increased control, only 3796 cases were reported in 2014, with less than 15,000 estimated cases, according to WHO statistics. 

The parasitic disease “mostly affects poor populations living in remote rural areas of Africa,” according to WHO. “Untreated, it is usually fatal. Travelers also risk becoming infected if they venture through regions where the insect is common. Generally, the disease is not found in urban areas, although cases have been reported in suburban areas of big cities in some disease endemic countries.”

Several National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, awarded to Attardo and Aksoy, funded the research. They also drew funding from the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine; the National Research Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Slovak Research and Development Agency.

Related Links:

• Feature story on Geoffrey Attardo, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
• Tsetse Fly on Sketchfab by Geoffrey Attardo
• Geoffrey Attardo Video of Tsetse Fly Giving Birth, Piece Published in Los Angeles Times

The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, has scheduled nine special weekend open houses for the academic year.

The  open houses, scheduled primarily on the third Saturdays (except for the campuswide Biodiversity Museum Day), will take place in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane. They are free, family friendly and open to the public.

All ages are welcome, said Bohart director Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, and Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.

The schedule:
Saturday, Sept. 21, 1 to 4 p.m.
Theme: "Gobble, Gobble, Munch, Munch, Crunch: Entomophagy" (eating insects)

Saturday, Oct. 19, 1 to 4 p.m.
Theme: "Parasitoid Palooza!"

Saturday, Nov. 16, 1 to 4 p.m.
Theme: "Arthropod Husbandry: Raising Insects for Research and Fun"

Saturday, Jan. 18, 1 to 4 p.m.
Theme: "Time Flies When You are Studying Insects: Cutting Edge Student Research"

Saturday, Feb. 15:
Ninth Annual Biodiversity Museum Day
The Bohart is part of the annual campuswide Biodiversity Museum Day, spotlighting museums and collections. This free, educational event offers visitors the opportunity to meet and talk with UC Davis scientists--from undergraduate students to staff to emeritus professors--and "see amazing objects and organisms from the world around us."

Saturday, March 21, 1 to 4 p.m.
Theme: "Busy Bees and Their Microbial Friends"

Saturday, April 18
106th Annual UC Davis Picnic Day
Picnic Day begins with the parade opening ceremony at 9:30 a.m., and the parade begins at 10 am. Most events hosted by Picnic Day run from 10 am to 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. All events hosted by Picnic Day start after 9 a.m. and end before 5 p.m.

Saturday, May 16, 1 to 4 p.m.
Theme: "Farmers' Foes and Friends"

Saturday, June 2020 (date and time to be announced)
Theme: "The Eight-Legged Wonders, with the American Arachnological Society"

The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, 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. It maintains a live "petting zoo," featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks or stick insects, tarantulas, and praying mantids. The museum's gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.

Director of the museum is Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis. The staff includes Steve Heydon, senior museum scientist; Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator; and Jeff Smith, who curates the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) section.

The 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.