This spring we are open to the public, but groups must make reservations and everyone must follow the UC Davis visitor guidelines: https://campusready.ucdavis.edu/visitors. The museum's "visiting us" page will have more information.
Museum HappeningsUC Davis Picnic Day 2022 was fantastic!Save the Date: Spring Weekend Hours announcedSaturday, May 28 1:00-4:00 pm
Bugs in Ag: What is eating our crops and what is eating them? Saturday, June 25 1:00-4:00 pm 8-Legged Wonders (Plus Tuesday, June 28 from 7:30-9:00 pm a lecture series on arachnids) Saturday, July 16 1:00-4:00 pm Celebrating 50 years of the Dogface Butterfly: California's State Insect Shop on-line for unique Bohart hoodies, t-shirts and more. Orders ship every Friday and, if you are local, we can arrange for curbside pick-up.
What is that bug?When people send us photos of insects they can't identify, we are happy to help. Here are some resources to help in that process.
Read more about insects!
Need some good reading about arthropods and the people who study them, plus amazing backyard photos of insects? Kathy Keatley Garvey, our department's communications guru, has faithfully maintained this great blog about all things insects. WATCH these 5 minute nature videos
Deep Look a series of on-line videos from KQED, the public broadcasting system in San Francisco. Some favorite titles that stem from UC Davis are: "A Tse-tse fly births one enormous milk-fed baby" (with the UC Davis Attardo Lab) "This dangerous mosquito lays her armored eggs - in your house" (with the UC Davis Attardo Lab) "Watch this bee build her bee-jeweled nest" (with the UC Davis Williams Lab) Click to set custom HTML
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NewsBill Patterson Gives Generous Gift to the Bohart
Bill Patterson, longtime butterfly collector and supporter of the University of California, Davis, is giving $1 million to the university’s R.M. Bohart Museum of Entomology to help maintain its permanent insect collection. This gift will provide the museum with the necessary financial security to support its ever-growing collection.
“I hope my donation will help educate the community about the importance of butterflies and moths,” Patterson said, adding that with this gift, his aim is to benefit researchers and the museum’s extensive collection of almost 8 million insect specimens. Read more here. UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day
Thank you to everyone who supported this successful event!
Biodiversity Museum day website and read the Bug Squad blog .
Tiny beetles in your pantryOver the past few weeks there have been numerous phone calls and emails to the Bohart regarding tiny beetles inside people's homes in west Davis and parts of Woodland. Samples of the beetles were identified by colleagues at the California Department of Food and Agriculture as Tribolium castaneum, or red flour beetles. These 3 millimeter long beetles are harmless other than their affinity for our grains, flours, rice and cereals. There is "no need to panic" and spraying pesticides is not recommended. Watch this short "public service" announcement (2:10 minutes) featuring Professor Lynn Kimsey about these beetles and what to do if find them in your home. For more information, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) has a useful page on pantry pests: http://ipm.ucanr.edu/QT/pantrypestscard.html Delta field work underway
Images courtesy of Brennen Dyer.
The California Delta is the largest freshwater marsh on the western coast of North America. All the water of most of California’s large rivers, the American, Sacramento, Feather, San Joaquin, Mokelumne, and Tuolumne Rivers to name a few, drain through the Delta on its way to the sea. The marsh is a consequence of the flatness of the central part of the Central Valley and the narrowness of the channel through the Carquinez Straight that the water must use to get through to the San Francisco Bay and the ocean.
The central location of the Delta, combined with the flat land and the abundant water, made this region an early target for conversion into agriculture. The heart of the marshes were diked off, the land inside the dikes drained, and the land converted to agriculture. Now, after more than 100 years, some of this land is being converted back to a more natural state. The big question in any such reclamation efforts is are you recreating a natural habitat or just a garden. In other words are native species recolonizing the native plants that you are planting. The Bohart Museum is involved with the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology here at UC Davis to evaluate the rehabilitation efforts in the Delta. Last year we surveyed the insects at 11 different sites using mass trapping techniques such as pitfall traps that collect crawling arthropods, blue vane traps to collect bees, and Malaise traps that capture flying insects. We just began our second season of work and will focus this year on collecting certain kinds of insects that were missed last year. We will be running light traps to collect nocturnal insects and yellow pan traps that will collect aphids and certain kinds of wasps. In addition, we will be collecting aquatic insects and insects that we see in the environment such as butterflies, dragonflies and bees. Welcome Video with Director Lynn Kimsey
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