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

Emma "Em" Jochim, UC Davis doctoral candidate, on a field trip

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Meet Butters at the Bohart on Biodiversity Museum Day

January 30, 2025

Hi, Butters! When you visit the Bohart Museum of Entomology during the 14th annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day on Saturday, Feb. 8, you'll probably meet a scorpion named Butters. It's a new arrival, donated by a retired educator. She did not name it Butters.

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Nematologist Chris Pagan answers questions at a UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day. The 2025 event takes place Feb. 8. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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UC Davis Nematologist Chris Pagan, now PhD, to Present Exit Seminar on Metabarcoding

January 29, 2025

Nematologist Christopher Pagan, who received his doctorate in the fall of 2024 from UC Davis, will deliver his exit seminar on "Soil Nematode Community Analysis: Insights from 28S Metabarcoding" at a seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology at 4:10 p.m., Monday, Feb.

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The yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenzkii, on an oak leaf at the Glen Cove Waterfront Park, as photographed on Jan. 11 by Michael Kwong.

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Winning Bumble at the Glen Cove Waterfront Park

January 28, 2025

What are the odds? You're participating in a monarch-counting expedition, you photograph an image of a bumble bee with your cell phone, and you win a regional bumble bee contest, a contest you didn't know about at the time.

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UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro relates how he collected the 2025 winning cabbage white butterfly. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Big Blue: A Sweet Ride for a Cabbage White Butterfly

January 27, 2025

When UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro collected the first cabbage white butterfly of the year on Thursday, Jan. 23 to win his annual Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest, the butterfly rode in sweet style to his campus office/lab--in a Big Blue soda bottle.

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Jiue-in Yang, assistant professor of nematology at UC Riverside

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Artificial Intelligence and Nematodes

January 24, 2025

Can artificial intelligence be used in nematode management strategies? You won't want to miss a UC Davis seminar by Jiue-in Yang, assistant professor of nematology at UC Riverside.

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