Ongoing research

Recently, an outbreak of shoot and twig dieback disease of citrus has been occurring in the main citrus growing regions of the Central Valley of California (Fig 1).

"I do! I do! I do!" Some of us engage in wedding photography. Not with humans. With insects. All you need is a bride, a groom and ahmmbedroom. That could be a leafy green bedroom in the rose garden where the lady beetles, aka ladybugs, are. Most of the time they're in the kitchen, eating aphids.

The weather pattern this year in the Intermountain Region of Northern California has been radically different from what we have seen the previous 4 years. In most years, high pressure usually moves in periodically sending Pacific cold fronts farther north and giving us periods of warm dry weather.

So here's this lady beetle patrolling a rosebud. It's early spring--April 15--in Vacaville, Calif.--and our little subject is looking for some tasty aphids. Or perhaps a mate. Oh, a visitor is on my rosebud, heading right toward me.

The annual UC Davis Small Grains and Alfalfa Field Day will take place on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at the Agronomy Field Headquarters (2400 Hutchison Drive, Davis, CA 95616). Registration opens at 7:45am, and lunch is provided between the small grains morning program and alfalfa afternoon program.

Psyllids as a pest group have very few specific predators that can be used in biocontrol. Instead there can be some control by generalist predators, like minute pirate bugs, spiders, lady bug beetles and predatory thrips.

Can the larvae of lady beetles (aka ladybugs) eat aphids? Yes, they can. And yes, they do. We spotted some lady beetle larvae on our yellow roses today and guess what they were doing? Right, eating aphids. Eating lots of aphids.

Is it an insect? How can you tell? When the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology participates in the 103rd annual UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 22, visitors to Briggs Hall and the Bohart Museum of Entomology will learn all about insects.

To say it has been a strange year would be par for the course. When don't we have a strange year anymore?! To say it has been a wet year, however, would be an understatement.

Adapted from "The Remarkable Avocado Flower" By Dr. B. O. Bergh Introduction The avocado (Persea americana Mill.) flower behavior is noteworthy in that there is nothing quite like it known in any other plant. The flower has both female and male organs, but they don't function at the same time.