Bug Squad

Bumble bee on bull thistle at Bodega Bay

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UC ANR is renovating its website. The Bug Squad blogs are archived at https://my.ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/archive.cfm

Meanwhile, here are the latest blogs. They can also be found on the Bug Squad blog, Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/TheBugSquad

March 28, 2025: Congrats to Douglas Walsh, PBESA's Woodworth Award Recipient

March 27, 2025: In Support of Honey Bees

March 26, 2025: Remembering Professor Harry Lange and Helping the Bohart Museum of Entomology

March 25, 2025: Hammock, Morisseau to Give TEDX Talk at School of Medicine Research Celebration

March 24, 2025: A UC Davis Living Lab: Which Plants Are Best for Your Garden?

March 21, 2025: 'Fantastic' and Much Needed Workshop: Fruit Fly ID

March 19, 2025: Thinking Pink on the First Day of Spring

March 18, 2025: Dad's Bees

March 17, 2025: Don't Pinch Me! I'm Green

March 14, 2025: CC Edwards Elected Chair of Youth Professionals, American Mosquito Control Association

March 13, 2025: Bohart Scientists Explain Venomous vs. Poisonous

March 12 2025: A Beautiful Bombus at Bodega

March 11 2025: Learn How Two UC Davis Entomologists-Artists Fuse Art with Science

March 10, 2025: How to Color a Frog: the Boh-Art Way

March 7, 2025: Bohart Museum Open House: Hopping with Poison Dart Frogs

A crab spider dines on a green bottle fly in a lavender patch in Vacaville, Calif. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

What's for Dinner? How About a Green Bottle Fly?

June 25th, 2019

What's for dinner? A crab spider, camouflaged in our lavender patch, didn't catch a honey bee, a butterfly, an ant or a syrphid fly. No, it nailed a green bottle fly. We couldn't help but notice. The fly's metallic blue-green coloring stood in sharp contrast to the white spider.

The six-acre lavender fields on the Araceli Farms, on the outskirts of Dixon, glow during the Lavender Festival. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Lovin' the Lavender

June 24th, 2019

Lovin' the lavender... If you attended the Lavender Festival last weekend at the six-acre Araceli Farms at 7389 Pitt School Road, Dixon, you were in for a real treat.

Wendy Mather (left) program manager of the California Master Beekeeper Program explains the life cycle of bees to a group of third graders from Amador County. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Third Graders Learn About Pollinators

June 21st, 2019

(June 17-23 is National Pollinator Week.

A female Trichonephila clavipes (formerly Nephila clavipes) is a giant compared to her small male (below). The research covers a complex pattern of sexual size dimorphism in this group of spiders, family Nephilidae. (Image copyright by Chris Hamilton, University of Idaho)

Article

Golden Orbweavers Ignore Biological Rules

June 20th, 2019

Size does matter. Have you ever wondered about sexual size dimorphism in the tropical spiders, the golden orbweavers? The females are sometimes 10 times larger and 100 times heavier than their male counterparts.

European paper wasps protecting the nest they're building on the lip of a recycling bin near the Mann lab, UC Davis campus. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Do You Know Where Your Pollinators Are?

June 19th, 2019

It's National Pollinator Week. Do you know where your pollinators are? If you're thinking bees, butterflies, beetles, birds (hummingbirds) and bats, you're correct.