Bug Squad

The Sting. (c) Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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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/bugsquad/index.cfm. The story behind "The Sting" is here: https://my.ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=7735.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Theme of the Bohart Museum open house on May 17 is "Name that Bug! How about Bob?" This is UC Davis forensic entomologist Robert "Bob" Kimsey doing research on Alcatraz. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Name That Bug! What About Bob?

May 13, 2015
Naming a child or a pet takes some major thought and requires some major decisions. Naming our son was easy. We opted for family names handed down 200 years ago. A puppy? When we acquired a half-St.
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Decoding reflectance signals to biotic stress in crops. Christian Nansen is at right. (Photos courtesy of Christian Nansen)
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Managing Pests via Remote Sensing and the Smart Use of Fertilizers

May 12, 2015
Christian Nansen, the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's new agricultural entomologist will talk about his exciting research on "Remote Sensing and Smart Use of Fertilizers to Manage Pests" at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 14 in Room 2045 of Bainer Hall, UC Davis campus.
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What's wrong with this picture? This is not a field cricket but a house cricket. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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What's Wrong With This Picture?

May 8, 2015
Take a look at the insect below. "It's a cricket," you say. Correct. It is a cricket. But it doesn't belong there. Why? It's the wrong cricket. It's not a "field cricket" but a "house cricket." House crickets don't "belong" on flowers.
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A honey bee looking for a hole drilled by a carpenter bee in the corolla of a foxglove. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Robbing the Nectar

May 7, 2015
It's the easy way to do it. A carpenter bee heads for a foxglove blossom and drills a hole in the corolla to sip the nectar. This is "nectar robbing"--bypassing the pollination process and heading straight for the reward, the nectar. Honey bees are quick learners.
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