Bug enthusiasts will have a "jolly good time" or a "fuzzy-wuzzy good time" selecting holiday gifts that the Bohart Museum of Entomology and the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) are offering.
"Fuzzy-wuzzy" wasn't a bear. It was probably a wooly bear caterpillar (Pyrrharctia isabella, the Isabella tiger moth) or a bold jumper spider (Phidippus audax)
Bohart Museum
The Bohart Museum of Entomology gift shop, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus, offers a variety of bug-related gifts, including T-shirts, hoodies, jewelry, books, posters, pens and pins, stuffed toy animals (such as bed bugs and ticks), novelty candy, and collecting equipment.
Some of the Bohart Museum’s popular T-shirts depict monarchs, dragonflies and tardigrades (water bears). One hoodie, lettered with “Bohart Republic,” features an insect-netting entomologist riding a tardigrade. A spider T-shirt asks “Got legs?” A monarch T-shirt, “Got Milk? (in reference to milkweed, the monarch's host plant). Bohart clothing sizes run from toddlers to adults.
“We’re getting some new pins and some new dragonfly T-shirts in blue, olive and brown,” said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator, “but we don’t have them yet.”
The gift shop will be closed Thanksgiving week, Monday-Friday, Nov. 24-28, and during the winter break, Dec. 22-Jan. 2. For more information access the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu/ or email bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946 by UC Davis Professor Richard "Doc" Bohart (1913-2007), houses a global collection of eight million specimens, plus a live petting zoo (Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, tarantulas and more) in addition to the gift shop.
The Bohart collection houses seven phyla, including Arthropoda (insects, arachnids, millipedes and centipedes), Tardigrada (water bears), Onychophora (velvet worms), Annelida (leeches), Platyhelminthes (flatworms), Nematomorpha (horsehair worms) and terrestrial mollusks.
Director of the Bohart Museum is professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schindler Endowed Chair of Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and executive associate dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita Lynn Kimsey served as the director for 34 years and continues to head the Bohart Museum Society and the newsletter, published quarterly.
EGSA
The UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) designs and sells T-shirts, hoodies and stickers online at https://ucdavisentgrad.square.site/ and also at Briggs Hall during the annual campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day (the 2026 event is April 18).
Doctoral candidate and EGSA president Lexie Martin, a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow and a member of the laboratory of community ecologist Rachel Vannette, professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, says the newest T-shirt and hoodie, “Scream,” spotlights a cockroach. It is the work of fellow doctoral candidate Abigail Lehner of the lab of pollination ecologist, Professor Neal Williams. The EGSA newest sticker, also by Lehner, depicts “The Return of the Crab.”
The “Scream” T-shirt ties in well with the EGSA’s annual Roach Races at UC Davis Picnic Day. (Run, roaches, run!)
Popular EGSA T-shirts include "The Beetles" (four beetles crossing Abbey Road, reminiscent of the rock group, The Beatles) and "Bugbie" (take-off of Barbie with an illustration of a rosy maple moth, Dryocampa rubicunda.) "Bugbie" is the work of UC Davis doctoral candidate Marielle Hansel Friedman, who also designed the monarch butterfly, swallowtail butterfly, milkweed bug, and Bugbie stickers.
Among the many EGSA T-shirts: a cowboy bee hollering “Bee-Haw”; a praying mantis, “Here for a Good Time, Not a Long Time”; and a dung beetle “They See Me Rollin’.”
EGSA says on its website: “Our objectives are to connect students from across disciplines, inform students of and provide opportunities for academic success, and to serve as a bridge between the students and administration. We also plan social and academic events for students, faculty, and staff to enhance social and intellectual cohesion and to connect our department with the community at large."
(Editor's note: For more UC Davis holiday gifts, UC Davis Dateline just published a UC Davis Holiday Gift Guide.)
Cover image: UC Davis third-year entomology student Jo Ridgeway, a Bohart Museum of Entomology intern, shows a stuffed toy animal, a tick, from the Bohart gift shop. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)