- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And it was all about the beetles: "Beetlemania."
Some 500 visitors browsed the displays at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, chatted with scientists, photographed the specimens, engaged in arts and crafts, and then headed over to the petting zoo to introduce themselves to the Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects.
The event took place from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Bohart Museum's headquarters in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane. Bohart personnel greeted the guests: Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum; Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator; Brennen Dyer, collections manager; Brittany Kohler, research associate; Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection; and Greg Kareofelas, Lepidoptera host assistant.
- Beetles from Belize: Professor Fran Keller of Folsom Lake College, a Bohart Museum scientist, and her assistant, Iris Bright, a graduate student in the Jason Bond lab.
- Carabid beetles: Kipling "Kip" Will, associate professor with the UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
- Burying beetles: Tracie Hayes, a doctoral candidate and burying beetle researcher in the laboratory of Professor Louie Yang, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. (She presented a video she created, "A Clearance of Death on Behalf of Life" at https://youtu.be/cGLOE7SrbiU.)
- Bark beetles: Curtis Ewing, a senior environmental scientist with Cal Fire's Forest Entomology and Pathology
- Children's tree-related activities: Jonelle Mason, a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) employee and coordinator of Project Learning Tree (PLT) California, an initiative of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative,
- Tree cores and boring tools: UC Davis graduate student Jennifer Cribbs of the Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management
- Diabolical ironclad beetles: Brittany Kohler, Bohart research associate
- Family arts and crafts: Allen Chew, Sol Wantz and Kat Taylor, all UC Davis undergraduate students
- Petting zoo: Kaitai Liu, undergraduate student in the Jason Bond lab; Veronica Casey, graduate student in Shahid Siddique lab; and Grace Horne, graduate student in Emily Meineke lab
The Bohart Museum, dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," was founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart. It houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus a live "petting zoo," featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas; and a year-around gift shop, stocked with insect-themed books, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, hoodies and more. The museum is open to the public from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays.