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

This will be the scene in front of Briggs Hall on Saturday, April 23 when the 108th annual UC Davis Picnic Day takes place. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Something Bugging You?

April 19, 2022

Got a question about insects or arthropods that's been bugging you? Head over to the Bug Doctor booth staffed by UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology doctoral students on Saturday, April 23 at Briggs Hall during the 108th annual UC Davis Picnic Day. The Bug Doctor will be in.

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The monarch caterpillar will be among the topics that seminar speaker Jared Ali will discuss at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in-person and virtual seminar at 4:10 p.m., Wednesday, April 20. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Jared Ali: 'Bad Bugs, Pungent Parasites and Toxic Travelers'

April 18, 2022

Fantastic title: "Bad Bugs, Pungent Parasites and Toxic Travelers!" Don't you just love that alliteration?

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Praying mantis nymphs, Stagmomantis limbata, scatter on a metallic quail sculpture near where they hatched the afternoon of April 9 in Vacaville, Calif. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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A Quail of a Time

April 15, 2022

Talk about a quail of a time.... When the ootheca of a praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, hatched April 9 on a clothespin clamped to our clothesline in our yard, all the nymphs scattered. Some crawled up a metallic quail sculpture, the highest structure on the clothesline.

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This is what the ootheca looked like in mid-March. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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The Day a Clothespin Sprang to Life

April 14, 2022

Saturday, April 9 was the day a clothespin sprang to life. Some 200 praying mantis nymphs emerged from an ootheca that Mama Mantis (Stagmomantis limbata) had deposited last summer in our pollinator garden in Vacaville.

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This lady beetle, aka ladybug, appears to ponder its next move. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Flight of the Ladybug, The Origami Master

April 13, 2022

Ladybug, ladybug fly away home Your house is on fire and your children are gone All except one, and her name is Ann And she hid under the baking pan. So says a traditional nursery rhyme traced back to 1744 when it appeared in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook, according to Wikipedia.

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