Bug Squad

Are you ready to celebrate Moth Night at the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis? Mark your calendar for 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, July 21.

It was a long awaited process, but it's a girl! And she's beautiful! It all began with finding two anise swallowtail chrysalids clinging last July to the fennel stems in our pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif.

Professor Rick Karban of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, author of the landmark book, Plant Sensing and Communication (University of Chicago Press), says that plants can eavesdrop, sense danger in the environment, and can distinguish friend from foe.

A Fulbright to France... Congratulations to UC Davis entomology professor Diane Ullman who has just a received Fulbright to France to research plant virus-insect interactions. She will be studying plant viruses and the insects that transmit them.

So there they were, literally dozens of dragonflies flying around two separate Vacaville (Calif.) yards, feasting on swirling clouds of prey (gnatlike insects) and then touching down on blades of grass or fence posts. They proved as elusive as a celebrities attempting to avoid a paparazzi.