Bug Squad

Bumble bee on bull thistle at Bodega Bay

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UC ANR is renovating its website. The Bug Squad blog, by Kathy Keatley Garvey of the University of California, Davis, is a daily (Monday-Friday) blog launched Aug. 6, 2008. It is about the wonderful world of insects and the entomologists who study them. Blog posts are archived at https://my.ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/archive.cfm

A cabbage white butterfly stops for a little catmint nectar (flight fuel) on a warm summer day. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Oh, That Elusive Cabbage White Butterfly

January 26, 2023

No butterfly. No beer. Blame the rain. Blame the cold. As of today, Jan. 26, no one has won Art Shapiro's "Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest," aka Suds-for-a-Bug. Not Art, not anyone.

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A diabolical ironclad beetle, Phloeodes diabolicus, held by Bohart Museum research associate Brittany Kohler. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Diabolical Ironclad Beetle: Crush It With a Car and It Still Survives

January 25, 2023

If you attended the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house last Sunday on beetles, you may have seen what Bohart research associate Brittany Kohler displayed: a live diabolical ironclad beetle, Phloeodes diabolicus.

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This is a net-casting spider that UC Davis postdoctoral scholar Lisa Chamberland studies. (Image courtesy of Lisa Chamberland)

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Lisa Chamberland: About Those Ogre-Faced Spiders....

January 24, 2023

If you're curious about ogre-faced spiders, then you'll want to hear what UC Davis postdoctoral scholar and arachnologist Lisa Chamberland has to say about her research at the next seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

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An enthusiastic little girl (future entomologist?) buries her head in a beetle display at the Bohart Museum open house, much to the delight of UC Berkeley associate professor and carabid beetle specialist Kipling "Kip" Will. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Beetlemania at the Bohart: Something Clicked

January 23, 2023

Something clicked at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on "Beetlemania" last Sunday afternoon at the University of California, Davis. But it was not the click beetles. That "click" was the love of science in general, and the love of beetles, in particular.

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Cal Fire senior environmental specialist Curtis Ewing shows a coast live oak with cankers and flatheaded borer damage.

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Beetle Mania to Descend on the Bohart

January 20, 2023

The beetles are coming! The beetles are coming! From boring beetles to burying beetles...and beetles from Belize and more... And you're invited. The Bohart Museum of Entomology is hosting an open house, themed "Beetles," from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan.

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