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

UC Davis alumna Melody Keena, a research entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station in Hamden, Conn., and a 39-year member of the 7000-member Entomological Society of America (ESA), is one of three newly selected Honorary Members, the organization's highest honor.

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Congratulations to Melody Keena, UC Davis Alumna and Entomologist Extraordinaire

September 7, 2022

Congratulations to Melody Keena, UC Davis alumna and entomologist extraordinaire. Keena, a research entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station in Hamden, Conn.

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From left: Martin Müller, director of the Institute for Materials Physics at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, and Christian Schroer, leading scientist of DESY's X-ray source PETRA III, accept a model of the newly identified ant from lead author Brendon Boudinot of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and co-author Jörg Hammel, beamline scientist at the Hereon measurement station at PETRA III, where the research took place. (Photo courtesy of Marta Meyer, DESY)

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Zeroing in on 20-Million-Year-Old Ants, a New Genus

September 6, 2022

What incredible research! It involves fossilized male ants, estimated to be about 20 million years and encased in Ethiopian amber.

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Worker bees are aptly named. They comprise most of the bees in the colony and do most of the work. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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No Labor Day Holiday for Honey Bees

September 5, 2022

On Labor Day, a federal holiday, we celebrate the our country's labor movement, our gratitude, and our achievements. But there is no Labor Day holiday for the worker bee, one of three castes (queen, worker and drone) in a honey bee colony. No Labor Day holiday for the queen, either.

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A WSU-tagged monarch. (Photo by WSU entomologist David James)

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Monarch Migration Underway from Pacific Northwest

September 2, 2022

They're here and more are coming! Be on the lookout for migratory Monarch butterflies from the Pacific Northwest heading south to their overwintering sites along the California coast.

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A monarch butterfly nectaring on a showy milkweed, Asclepias speciosa, in Vacaville, California in June, 2016. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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A Good News Day: Monarchs on the UC Davis Campus

September 1, 2022

Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, has been looking for monarchs all year long on the UC Davis campus--as have scores of others. On Friday, Aug. 26, he met with success. He spotted four within half an hour.

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