Rangelands

Move over, teddy bears. There's a new bear in town to covet, cuddle and cherish--a water bear or tardigrade. The plush stuffed animals are hot items in the gift shop of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.

Back in July of 2016, a team of researchers affiliated with the University of California, Davis, wrote in the journal Phytopathology that the three-cornered alfalfa leaf hopper, Spissistilus festinus, transmits the virus that causes grapevine red blotch virus.

Congratulations to community ecologist Rachel Vannette of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, recipient of two National Science Foundation (NSF) grants involving flower microbes.

Drones... If you're thinking of apiculture, you might be thinking of drones (male bees). But if you're thinking of agriculture--more specifically sustainable agriculture practices in the 21st century--you ought to be thinking of the importance of unmanned aerial robots.

When we first started using livestock guardian dogs nearly 15 years ago, I often joked that we our sheep operation was "predator-friendly" because our dogs were not.

Sustainable agricultural practices in the 21st century should increasingly depend on drones and other innovative technologies, says an international team of scientists, including UC Davis entomologist Elvira de Lange, in a newly published article in the Journal of Economic Entomology.

Community ecologist Rachel Vannette of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seeks to unlock the mysteries of flower microbes: how do plants protect against them, and can bees benefit from them?

Some people are born good-looking. Some have the gift of gab. And some are lucky enough to be born smarter than the rest of us. Whether we like it or not, Mother Nature does not dole these characteristics out evenly.--Simon Sinek How true. That applies to butterflies, too.

UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Soares Leal, a leading global scientist and inventor in the field of insect olfaction and communication, is a newly selected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NIA), which honors and encourages academic inventions that benefit society.

We hope by now most people have heard about and are aware of the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), a small brown insect that carries a deadly citrus disease called huanglongbing (HLB), threatening all backyard citrus trees as well as the statewide citrus industry.