Pest Management & Plant Health

April showers bring June flowers, but spring also brings seminars about insects.

Many plant species are leafing out and flowering earlier in response to rising temperatures, and those that are not are declining at alarming rates in some circumstances, says urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in newly published resear...

Are bats good for the environment or are they pests? How about both? Almost all of the 25 species of bats in California eat lots of flying insects during their night flights, making them an important part of the ecosystem. But when they roost in buildings such as your home, they can become pests.

The schedule for the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's online spring seminars has been announced by coordinator Ian Grettenberger, Cooperative Extension specialist and assistant professor. All seminars will be held on Wednesdays at 4:10 p.m. (Pacific).

30th Annual UCR Urban Pest Management Conference was held online between March 22 - 24, 2021. The event had more than 110 attendees from many different areas of California and other parts of the US.

Insect physiologist Swapna Priya Rajarapu, a postdoctoral research scholar in the Dorith Rotenberg laboratory at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, will present the next seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

If you see western subterranean termites swarming in the spring, from now through June, save the specimens for University of California Urban Integrated Pest Management (IPM) advisor and urban entomologist Andrew Sutherland.

Gophers are well-known and certainly unwelcome pests in landscapes, gardens, lawns, and athletic turf. More correctly called pocket gophers, these rodents mostly remain hidden underground in tunnels and feed on plants from below, sometimes pulling whole plants into their tunnels.

Register now for the Urban & Community IPM webinars! All webinar information and registration links are available on our webinar website. Webinars are the third Thursday of every month from 1:00-2:00pm Pacific time. Webinars are free and open to the public but you must register in advance.

While you are outside gardening or inside doing your spring cleaning, you may have recently found small, round, speckled beetles you've never seen before.