Ongoing research

So many flowers. So many pollinators. So many floral visitors. On every field trip, we see something new and different, such as the male long-horned bee, Melissodes communis (below) on salvia and the female sunflower bee, Svastra obliqua expurgata, on a Mexican hat flower.

If you're craving to find out more about insects--specifically how to FIND them--then you'll want to attend the Bohart Museum of Entomologys open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, June 9. It's free and open to the public.

The early history of the parent navel orange was presented in the last issue of Topics in Subtropics as The Parent Washington navel orange tree - Its first years.

If you've studied bees, you know that there are approximately 20,000 described species of bees in the world. Most people are familiar with honey bees and bumble bees, but they don't know about "those big black bees" (carpenter bees) or "those green metallic bees" (sweat bees).

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT * * * * * * Weed Day 2013 July 11, 2013 :: UC Davis Visit http://wric.ucdavis.edu and click on Weed Day Be a Weed Day sponsor (click here.) * * * * * * Weed Science School 2013 Sept. 17-19, 2013 :: UC Davis Visit http://wric.ucdavis.

It's a bird, it's a plane... It's not Superman. It's a flame skimmer dragonfly (Libellula saturata). We spotted this dragonfly in our yard recently and crouched down for a low angle, framing it against the sky. This is one insect that everyone notices and admires. Except maybe its prey...

In January, 1995 during my second consultancy visit to Thailand, I was asked to lecture to the staff of KasetsartUniversity located in Bangkok. The lecture was on the problems of the greening disease in their country where trees die between 4 and 8 years and rarely reach 12 years of age.

The next time you're around a lamb's ear--no, not the animal, the plant (Stachys byzantina)--watch for buzzing bees. Especially the European wool carder bees (Anthidium manicatum). The females card the fuzz from the soft, silvery-gray leaves for their nests.

Whiteflies are usually considered a minor pest on strawberries, but greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum has become an important pest with regular and high infestations in the recent years.

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