April 25, 2008
‘Invasion of Ants’ at Bohart Museum
photos and story by Kathy Keatley Garvey
Eli Sarnat
DAVIS—They want ants to invade your homes and businesses.
Not to forage in your kitchen, but to decorate your walls. The Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, has just published a color poster, “Pacific Invasive Ants,” featuring auto-montage images of the heads of 12 common invasive ants.
“Some of the images look like paintings,” said Fran Keller, a graduate student in the Department of Entomology who designed the poster. “And when you look at the actual size of the ants as a comparison, it is just amazing how small and diverse they really are.”
The images are primarily the work of ant specialist Eli Sarnat, a graduate student in Phil Ward’s laboratory...
read the full story and check out the poster>>>
March 10, 2008
Lynn Kimsey Named Interim Chair of the Department of Entomology
by Kathy Keatley Garvey
DAVIS, CALIF. —Entomologist Lynn Kimsey, director of the R. M. Bohart Museum of Entomology and director of the Center for Biosystematics, has been named interim chair of the University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology. Her appointment, announced last week by Neal Van Alfen, dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, was confirmed Monday, March 10 by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef.
She will serve until July 2009. Chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor of entomology, served as chair from July 2006 through February. The chair is a rotational position shared among faculty. Kimsey, professor of entomology and an insect taxonomist specializing in bees and wasps and insect diversity, joined the UC Davis faculty in 1989. She received her doctorate in entomology in 1979. She has served as director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology since 1989.
Kimsey said she plans to follow the tradition of the late Richard Bohart by bringing her microscope to the chair’s office. Bohart, who was Kimsey’s major professor, chaired the department from 1956 to 1965 and retired in 1980 as an emeritus professor. During his career, Bohart identified more than one million mosquitoes and wasps, many now displayed at the Bohart Museum, a teaching, research and public service facility that he founded on campus in 1946. The museum collection totals more than seven million... See the full story>>
December 21, 2007
Plight of the Bumblebee: Vanishing Bumblebees Alarming, Says UC Davis Entomologist Robbin Thorp
photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey
When University of California, Davis entomologist Robbin Thorp begins his annual scientific survey for the critically imperiled Franklin’s bumblebee this spring in its narrow distribution range of southern Oregon and northern California, he fears he may not find it.
He’s seen the distinctive black-faced bumblebee, splashed with yellow markings on its thorax and atop its head, only once in the last five years. The bumblebee that Thorp so readily recognizes by its solid black abdomen and a black inverted U-shaped design on its yellow thorax, may be extinct. Full Story>>>>>
July 12, 2007
Bohart Museum sparking interest in California state insect rarely seen in nature
To spark interest in the rarely seen California state insect and efforts to protect it and its habitat, the R. M. Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis has published a first-of-its-kind poster immortalizing the dogface butterfly (Zerene eurydice).
“The dogface butterfly is found only in California, but it’s losing its natural habitat due to rapid California development,” said Fran Keller, a UC Davis doctoral student of entomology who designed the poster.
“I’ve been all over California collecting beetles,” Keller said, “and..."
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June 15, 2007
Bugs Tell Tale of Murderer's Cross-country Trip
When two FBI agents and a Bakersfield detective hauled a radiator and air filter -- both splattered with insects -- into UC Davis' Bohart Museum of Entomology, they were not there to contribute to the museum's 7-million insect collection.
They wanted museum director Lynn Kimsey, a professor of entomology, to identify the insects and their geographical home for an upcoming mass murder trial.
"I saw it as a puzzle to be solved," Kimsey said of the car parts embedded with several hundred insects. "I've never heard of anyone doing this."
Full Story>>