Rangelands

Ah, the fiery skipper, Hylephila phyleus! They are, as UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro says, "California's most urban butterfly." Shapiro, who has monitored the butterfly populations of Calfornia since 1972 and maintains a research website at https://butterfly.ucdavis.

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.

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.

Have you ever seen the defensive antics of a female longhorned bee, sometimes called a sunflower bee, as she's trying to forage on flowers while a suitor is trying to get her attention?

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.

Get off my turf! The native bees known as Melissodes, the longhorned bees, start stirring in the early morning. First, they settle on a leaf or flower to warm up their flight muscles. Once ready to fly, they don't let up until late afternoon.

International dragonfly authority and researcher Rosser Garrison, who retired as a senior insect biosystematist with the California Department of Food and Agriculture in 2017 and has authored such well-cited books as Dragonfly Genera of the New World: an llustrated and Annotated Key to the Anisopter...

Have you seen any dead butterflies lately?

When the Bohart Museum of Entomology hosted an open house, "An Evening at the Museum," on Saturday, July 22, showcasing moths and flies, the moth experts were there to celebrate National Moth Week, July 22-30 and the fly experts had just attended the 10th International Dipterology Congress, held Jul...

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.