Bug Squad Blog
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
The long-awaited UC Davis Picnic Day activities at Briggs Hall will begin at 9 a.m., Saturday, April 12 and continue until 5 p.m.
It promises to be a fun-filled and educational event where roaches races, maggots crawl and the crowd cheers. And everyone learns more about entomology, also known as insect science.
If a person really wants to be a bee or a cockroach, there's a cardboard cutout for that.
"We are super busy with preparations for Picnic Day!" said the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT) Committee co-chair Veronica Casey, a doctoral candidate in the lab of nematologist Shahid Siddique. "There will be cutouts in front of Briggs for photos. The T-shirts are restocked and ready to go, with some new designs and styles. We'll have a bunch of exhibits in Briggs Hall, Room 122, such as the entomology table, pollinator exhibit, glowing bugs, and the nematology table. In front of Briggs, there will be cockroach races, the T-shirt table, vector control, and the Bug Doctor. In the courtyard, there will be maggot art, Davis Fishers fly fishing demonstrations, and UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. There are lots to explore and visitors can check out some fun information posters in the hallway."
Doctoral candidate Emma "Em" Jochim, a member of the lab of Professor Jason Bond, and faculty member Marshall McMunn, an assistant professor and a UC Davis doctoral alumnus, are co-chairing the ENT Picnic Day Committee. Traditionally, a graduate student and a faculty member serve as the chairs.
The Bohart Museum of Entomology, part of ENT, will showcase "Oh, My!" insect specimens and a live petting zoo, and host an insect-netting skills activity, with participants netting a plastic butterfly tossed at them and winning Bohart Museum posters.
Link to the updated activities on the ENT website.
The insect activities are just one part of the campuswide 111th annual UC Davis Picnic Day, touted as an "public open house" for prospective and current students, families, staff, faculty and alumni, as well as the general public. Admission and parking are free.
All in all, though, insects rule! There are an estimated 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive on Earth at any given time, scientists say. This amounts to more than a billion insects for every human on the planet.