Ongoing research

Not again! The light brown apple moth, also known as "the eat-everything moth" because its larvae dine on about 250 host plants, is back in the news again. We received a press release yesterday (Nov.

UC Davis medical entomologist Thomas Scott is mentioned in "The War on Dengue Fever," a news article published Nov. 3, 2008 in the New York Times. Scott is a leading expert on dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease transmitted by Aeges egypti.

What a series! You won't want to miss the Consilience of Art and Science speaker series that gets under way Nov. 12 and continues through April 9 at the University of California, Davis. The lectures are free and open to the public.

Ah, rain! Ah, liquid precipitation! Just when we were feeling drought-stressed, the weather forecast turned to rain. I don't know if "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain," but the rain in Northern California fell squarely on our bee friendly garden last weekend.

What's medical entomolology? Anyone who's an entomologist or who works in entomology is asked that question periodically. Medical, they know. Entomology? Often not.

Good news. Its official.

It's a sad photo. The antenna of a honey bee pokes out of an abandoned hive. Victim of colony collapse disorder (CCD)? Perhaps. Everytime I look at the bent antenna, I think of a plea for help. Help me! Help me! Please help me! This bee should have been nectaring flowers or gathering pollen.

Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, said it best. "Headgear." The "headgear" was actually a Giant New Guinea Walking Stick crawling up the face of Eric San Gregorio, an undergraduate student majoring in entomology at UC Davis.

Hover flies do know how to hover. Like a helicopter with spinning blades, the hover fly lingers seemingly motionless in mid-air over a flower before zeroing down to feed on the nectar. Sometimes theyre called flower flies. Sometimes syprhids.

There they sat, a row of jack o'lanterns ready for a light. Undergraduate students at the University of California, Davis, created them for the "Happy Halloween" open house, held Oct. 23 at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, 1124 Academic Surge, UC Davis.