The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, is displaying specimens of California’s native insects, including the California dogface butterfly, in the Children’s Section of the Fairfield Civic Center Library through Wednesday, Sept. 10.
Library associate Galila Kitzes arranged for the project with Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator, to commemorate California's 175th anniversary of statehood. California became America’s 31st state on Sept. 9, 1850.
Library hours are Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
Kitzes has long been interested in insects. In the midst of pursing two college degrees in the Bay Area, Kitzes worked with fruit flies in a medical lab and "that connection to the importance of insects and science inspired her life-long appreciation and curiosity with insects," Yang commented.
More about the California dogface butterfly, part of the logo of the Bohart Museum:
The California State Legislature designated the California dogface butterfly as the state insect in 1972. The butterfly, Zerene eurydice, is found only in California and is rarely seen in the wild. It thrives in the 40-acre Shutamul Bear River Preserve near Auburn, Placer County. The preserve, part of the Placer Land Trust, is closed to the public except for specially arranged tours. It has also been seen in Gates Canyon, Vacaville.
The butterfly's main host plant is false indigo (Amorpha californica), a riparian shrub that grows among poison oak and willows and along stream banks, often in steep and isolated canyons. The male has markings on its wings resembling a silhouette of a dog's head. The female is usually solid yellow with a black spot on each upper wing.
Entomologist Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake College who doubles as a Bohart Museum scientist and a UC Davis lecturer and a doctoral alumna, authored a children's book, The Story of the Dogface Butterfly, published in 2013. The 35-page book, available in the Bohart Museum gift shop, tells the untold story of the California dogface butterfly and how a classroom successfully mounted a campaign to convince the California State Legislature to name it the state insect.
The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946 by UC Davis entomology professor Richard “Doc” Bohart, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens. It is the seventh largest insect collection in North America. It also maintains a live petting zoo (including Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas); and an insect-themed gift shop stocked with T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, books, posters, jewelry, pens and pins, as well as insect collecting equipment.
Director of the museum is Professor Jason Bond, the Evett and Marion Schindler tndowed chair of insect systematics, and executive associate dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
