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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lagoon fly is a syrphid fly, Eristalinus aeneus. This one is foraging on Virginia stock (Malcolmia maritima), in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey).
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Lagoon Fly: Seeing Spots

March 27, 2024
Ever seen a lagoon fly? It's a syrphid fly, Eristalinus aeneus, distinguished by small black spots patterning its eyes. Syrphids, also known hoverflies or flower flies, hover over a flower before foraging. They're pollinators.
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An egg case or ootheca of a praying mantis. Mama, a Stagmomantis limbata, deposited it on a redbud tree.(Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Ootheca! Ootheca! Ootheca!

March 26, 2024
If you've been pruning bushes or trees, check to see if a praying mantis egg case (ootheca) is attached to a limb. If you do, you're in luck! A mantis deposits her egg case in late summer or fall, and usually on twigs, stems, a wooden stake or fence slat, but sometimes even on a clothespin.
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A fruit fly, Neotephritis finalis, peers up at a gray hairstreak butterfly, Strymon melinus, in a bed of Coreopsis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Presenting: A Butterfly and a Fly

March 25, 2024
A gray butterfly and a fruit fly... Each has "fly" in its name but one is a member of the order Lepidoptera and the other, order Diptera. Etymology does not agree with entomology.
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A National Geographic Facebook image shows a hover fly masquerading as a bee.
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Today's Honorary Bee Image Award Goes to...a Fly

March 22, 2024
Today's Honorary Bee Image Award goes to...drum roll...an image of a humble hoverfly appearing on the National Geographic Facebook page. The caption reads "A bee sits on a marigold flower in Coronado National Forest, Arizona, USA.
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