Bug Squad

You can be an understudy or you can be an underwing. Or underfoot. Have you ever seen an underwing, a moth in the family Erebidae? Today one dropped out of a tree, landing on my feet in a Vacaville park. It just missed being a part of our National Moth Week celebration.

If you're a honey bee geneticist and you're asked to highlight your three-decade scientific career, how do you start? Societies to genes? And how do you get from there to here? Noted honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr.

Honey bees, mosquitoes, cabbage butterflies, fruit flies and more... You'll hear about a variety of insects when the international symposium, Insect Olfaction and Taste in 24 Hours Around the Globe, takes place beginning at 9 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), Wednesday, Aug. 11.

If you have a passionflower vine (Passiflora), you probably have cats. No, not the four-legged ones that meow, chase mice or cavort with catnip. These 'cats or caterpillars are part of the life cycle of the Gulf Fritillary butterflies (Agraulis vanillae) and Passiflora is their host plant.

Robert Michael Pyle, founder of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, was right at home at the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology back in July of 2019, when he and other members of the international Lepidopterists' Society toured the insect museum as part of their 68th annual meeting.