Pest Management & Plant Health

Nazzy Pakpour has a way with kids. At a recent Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, she read passages from her newly published children's book, Please Don't Bite Me: Insects that Buzz, Bite and Sting, and then encouraged questions.

The Secret Life of Vineyards depicts what you may never see: the life that inhabits a vineyard. A UC Davis team created the insect-themed ceramic-mosaic mural that was recently installed at the Matthiasson Winery, 3175 Dry Creek Road, Napa.

Professor emerita Sharon Lawler of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology is quoted in a Pest Gnome study titled "2023's Most Vulnerable Counties for Mosquito-Borne Diseases," published Aug. 9. The article, noting that World Mosquito Day is Aug.

The Secret Life of Vineyards, an insect-themed ceramic-mosaic mural created by a UC Davis team and recently installed at the Matthiasson Winery on Dry Creek Road, Napa, won't be a secret much longer.

They may seem too tiny to do much damage to a mature, healthy tree, but invasive shothole borers (ISHB) are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of trees in Southern California. These beetles bore into trees and infect them with Fusarium dieback, a fungal disease that kills the trees.

Some plants thrive even in dry years, while others need wet years to really blossom. It's no surprise, then, that this year the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) Fresno office has received several inquiries about potentially toxic plants and how to deal with them.

It's Friday Fly Day! Time to post an image of a fly. Or two flies. On a cockroach. The scenario: a large cockroach drowned in a small water trough located near downtown Vacaville, Calif., and when the water drained, the roach slid out. It proved to be a feast for green bottle flies.

The August edition of the IPM Hour features Kristen Bowers from New Mexico State University discussing her research into using climate-adapted insect biocontrol agents to control puncturevine in the West.

The authoritative source for current knowledge of ISHB/FD is the UC IPM Pest Note on Invasive shothole borers (ISHB), authored by Beatriz Nobua-Behrmann, UC Cooperative Extension, Orange County; Akif Eskalen, UC Davis Plant Pathology; Stacy Hishinuma, USDA Forest Service; Shannon Lynch, State Univ.

Frank Zalom never set out to study insect science. The UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus, an icon in the entomological world, especially in integrated pest management (IPM), grew up thinking that he might be working for the telephone company.