Bug Squad

What a delight to hear UC Davis doctoral candidate and dragonfly researcher Christofer Brothers share his rhyming prose at a recent Bohart Museum of Entomology open house.
Brothers titled his 15-minute presentation, "Midair Basketweaving: A Doggerel of Dragonflies and Damselflies," a presentation representing preliminary work from his dissertation on dragonfly and damselfly hunting behavior.
Brothers described doggerel as "a term for funny, silly poetry without a universally set structure --though it can also sometimes refer to bad poetry, and some of my rhymes are certainly questionable!"
See more at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/sharing-his-rhyming-prose-about-dragonflies

Forty-eight years ago, UC Davis scientists Becky Westerdahl, Eric Mussen and Norm Gary formed the Western Apicultural Society (WAS).
That was in 1978. A photo of them taken at what is now the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Facility, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, drew interest at a joint retirement luncheon held recently in the UC Davis Student Community Center for Professor/Extension Becky Westerdahl and fellow nematologist, UC Davis Distinguished Professor Steve Nadler.
Westerdahl, now Professor/Extension emerita, just completed a 40-year nematology career, and Nadler, 30 years. A total of 70 years...
"Where did you get that photo?" Westerdahl asked me.
https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/extension-nematologist-becky-westerdahl-40-years-service

Entomologists aren't just skilled at netting insects.

Some of them do well at croquet, striking a ball with a mallet and knocking it through a wicket.

Question is: Can the Ian Grettenberger lab at UC Davis swing a mallet as well--or better--than an insect net?

Agricultural entomologist Grettenberger, associate professor of Cooperative Extension and a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT) faculty, and his doctoral student Briley Mullin teamed to win the first-ever Graduate Student-Faculty Retreat Croquet Game.

The event took place Thursday, June 4 on the north lawn of UC Davis Student Community Center, following a morning of departmental business and lab talks inside the facility.

The Grettenberger team received a GOAT (Greatest of All Time) trophy, complete with a crown and a goat statue on a pedestal.

"Briley and Ian overcame the competition in the final moments for a dramatic finale," commented organizer Amanda Hodson, assistant professor of soil ecology and pest management, whose lab also competed in the croquet game. "They will safeguard the GOAT trophy until next year when they will have to defend it."

https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/through-wickets-win

Congratulations to UC Davis doctoral candidate Pallavi Shakya of the lab of nematologist Shahid Siddique, who won “Best Student/Early Career Talk” at the 36th Symposium of the European Society of Nematologists, held June 1-5 in Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands.
Well done! UC Davis is proud of you!
The global competition drew 41 participants. Another student, Beth Molloy from the Crop Science Centre at the University of Cambridge, also scored a first, the only two awards presented.
Shakya's abstract: “Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.) are among the most destructive agricultural pests that cause significant yield losses across a wide range of crops. Meloidogyne hapla is a valuable model for studying root-knot nematodes due to its parasitic diversity, small diploid genome, and a reproductive strategy that facilitates genetic analysis. Here, we report the most contiguous genome assembly to date for any plant-parasitic nematode built using PacBio HiFi, Oxford Nanopore, Illumina, and Hi-C sequencing. Genetic linkage analysis of F2 populations derived from crosses between M. hapla strains validated the assembly but also revealed anomalies indicating chromosome structure differences between parental isolates such as fissions, fusions, and rearrangements.”
"Strikingly, we identified sharply delimited zones with extraordinarily high recombination on most chromosomes,” she wrote. “Notably, several of these high recombination zones were significantly enriched for genes encoding secreted proteins, many of which contribute to parasitism. These findings suggest that meiotic recombination facilitates effector diversification and offer insight into how these parasites diversify their effector protein repertoire to change or expand their extraordinary host range. We further report the discovery of a novel 16-nucleotide tandem repeat and lack of canonical telomere repeats at chromosome ends. The localization of this 16-nt repeat at chromosome ends highlights a potentially divergent mechanism of chromosome-end maintenance in this nematode group. Overall, our study integrates high-resolution structural genomics, genetic mapping, and functional inference to uncover links between genome architecture, recombination landscapes, and host–parasite interactions.”
https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/congrats-pallavi-shakya-well-done

"If you want to find the native bees, look for native plants and vice versa. If you want to save the native bees, save the native plants."

So said native bee conservationist and native bee photographer Krystle Hickman, author of The ABCs of California's Native Bees when she addressed a recent Bohart Museum of Entomology open house.

"I photograph native bees, the plants that they have relationships with, as well as their locations. And primarily, I photograph in California," she said, adding that she considers herself a "conservation photographer as well as a community scientist."

"Um, community scientist, it's a term that I prefer to use over citizen science because they're basically the same thing. But the last few years politically, the word citizen has kind of changed from whether or not you have a degree in what you're studying to whether or not you're documented. So just to be more inclusive, I started using community scientist as a term...So basically what I do, again, is photograph bees in their environment, document their behavior, also notate their plants are on, and I keep track of things like times, dates, and weather. So I actually have an Excel sheet for every single location I visit, and I update it year after year, and it's a great way to keep track of things."

See more on Bug Squad blog at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/krystle-hickman-and-abcs-californias-native-bees

UC Davis bee researcher Felicity Muth educated the crowd, including adults, children and teens, about native bees at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's recent open house on "Buzz Words: Insects in Literature."

Muth is the author of the highly acclaimed children's book, "Am I Even a Bee?"--about an Osmia bee (family Megachilida) that wonders just that.
https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/felicity-muth-no-one-way-be-bee

Who were the "worker bees" bee-hind the scenes who organized the highly successful Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, "Buzz Words: Insects in Literature," that featured displays, hands-on activities, and three speakers?

The "worker bees" were three UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) members: Grace Horne, Mia Lippey and Marielle Hansen Friedman. Horne and Friedman are doctoral candidates in the lab of urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Lippey, who received her doctorate in entomology in April 2026, studied in the labs of Meineke and UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emeritus Jay Rosenheim.

See more at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/bee-hind-scenes

Interested in pollinator biology, health and policy? We all should "bee."

Professor Michelle Flenniken of Montana State University (MSU), is chairing an International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health, and Policy 2026 that is set June 25-27 in the Strand Student Union Building, Bozeman.

Flenniken, who focuses her research on virology, genetics, host-pathogen interactions, honey bee pathogens, completed her postdoctoral research at the University of California. Back in 2010, when the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology received initial funding from Häagen-Dazs for a pollinator garden (now known as the UC Davis Bee Haven), the ice cream company also announced a postdoctoral scholarship. Flenniken, then an insect virus researcher in Professor Raul Andino's lab, UC San Francisco Department of Microbiology and Immunology, won the competition and became the Häagen-Dazs Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Davis. She continued to work in both labs.

The international conference will feature presentations and discussions on topics critical to insect pollinator health, which includes honey bees and native bees.

See more at

An International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health and Policy | Bug Squad Image

UC Davis doctoral candidate Madison "Madi" Hendrick, scheduled to receive her doctorate in entomology in June, will present her exit seminar on "Integrated Pest Management in California Field Crops: Challenges in Alfalfa and Rice" on Friday, June 5.

Her seminar is set for 10 a.m. in 366 Briggs Hall, UC Davis. It also will be on Zoom.

Hendrick studies insecticide resistance in alfalfa weevil and tadpole shrimp

"California produces a wide variety of crops, with field crops contributing substantially to the statewide agricultural economy," Hendrick writes in her abstract. "Many field crops face arthropod pests, and protecting these crops is a constant challenge for growers and pest control advisers. Certain crops, such as alfalfa and rice, are limited in their control options and rely heavily on insecticides for pest management. Though generally effective, an overreliance on these chemicals can lead to insecticide resistance and environmental issues. In my dissertation, I explored challenges and worked to find solutions for field crop integrated pest management."

See more at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/ipm-challenges-alfalfa-and-rice

Honey bees can't get enough of the Tower of Jewels, Echium wildpretii.

Wildpretii? Sometimes you feel like addingan extra "t" and remove an "i." It's pronounced "wild-PRET-ee-eye."

A towering, flowering biennnial plant in the family Boraginaceaes, it's named for the 19th century Swiss botanist Hermann Josef Wildpret (1834–1908). Origin: the Canary Islands, Spain. It's predominant around Mount Teide in Tenerife.

https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/tower-red-pollen-blue