Rangelands

The invasive pest spotlight focuses on emerging or potential invasive pests in California. In this issue we are covering the Mediterranean fruit fly. Mediterranean Fruit Fly Facts The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata, commonly called Medfly, attacks more than 260 different plant species.

Predators employ a diversity of behavioral and morphological adaptations to successfully capture their insect prey, UC Davis doctoral candidates Christofer Brothers and Emma Em Jochim told the crowd at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house.

If you've ever closely examined a spider web, you know how incredible they are. But if you attended the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house last Saturday, you could make a spider web--using chopsticks and colorful yarn.

If you're curious about honey bees, queens and juvenile hormones, you'll want to attend or hear the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT) seminar to be presented by apiculturist Eliza Litsey, a former graduate student in the honey bee lab of Elina Lastro Nio.

Vice President Glenda Humiston and the Strategic Visioning Committee are pleased to announce the release of the UC ANR Strategic Vision 2040, which will guide our work, structure and resource allocation to optimize and align our research, programs and partnerships over the next 15 years.

Got legs? Got eight legs? No, not eight unless you're a spider (arachnid). If you're human, you can seek out the Bohart Museum of Entomology's "Got Legs?" T-shirt of a trapdoor spider.

You won't want to miss the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on Saturday, Nov. 2.

Late in 2023, a potentially devastating beetle was detected in the San Francisco Bay Area for the first time. But land managers, arborists and agency staff have one big advantage as they devise plans to control the invasive shothole borers (ISHB).

It's been several months since I've seen a Western yellowjacket, Vespula pensylvanica. But there it was, dead. It had drowned in an outdoor water bowl. Easy pickings, you say? Easy photography! It's a beautiful insect with its black and yellow coloration.

If you stand perfectly still and don't make any jerky movements, you can usually get a close-up image of a black syrphid fly, a Mexican cactus fly, Copestylum mexicanum. It's Friday Fly Day and this one was nectaring on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifolia.