June 11, 2008
See photos from previous Bug Boot Camps
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Phil Ward will lead the Bug Boot Camp. |
DAVIS—They call it the “bug boot camp” and that’s what it is.
Phil Ward, professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, will lead a group of eight students on a June 15-July 20 scientific campout at the UC Sagehen Creek Field Station, near Truckee.
The five-week course, traditionally limited to eight students, has been taught every other year for the past 46 years, except for 1988. Richard Bohart (1913-2007), former professor of entomology and department chair at UC Davis, served as class instructor from 1962 until 1980, when Ward took the helm.
Lynn Kimsey, chair of the Department of Entomology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, remembers serving as a teaching assistant for Richard Bohart. “This course is a fabulous chance for students to learn how to identity insects and their natural histories,” she said.
This year’s bug boot camp will include four graduate students and four undergraduates; instructor Ward; and teaching assistant Andrea Lucky, a UC Davis entomology graduate student who works in the Ward lab. The entomology graduate students will include Bonnie Blaimer of the Ward lab; Ian Pearse of the Rick Karban lab; and Kelly Liebman of the Tom Scott lab.
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Andrea Lucky |
Lucky said the primary goal of the boot camp, also known as “Entomology 109: Insect Taxonomy and Field Ecology,” is to acquaint students with the taxonomic and biological diversity of insects.
The students will collect, identify and curate specimens. At the end of the course, each will have collected and identified 200 insect families, and completed a small field project on some aspect of insect behavior or ecology.
This ties in with the broader goal of becoming familiar with insect natural history and evolution, Lucky said.
Sagehen Creek Field Station, a research and teaching facility, is located about 6, 800 feet on the eastern slopes of the Sierra-Nevada.
The course is designed to be an intensive learning experience. The students live in rustic dormitory cabins and study a wide range of California-Nevada habitats, including forest, montane chaparral, alpine meadows and the Great Basin desert. The bug boot camp runs six days a week, with Sundays off. It includes about three hours of formal lectures per week. Most days are spent in the field and most evenings in the lab.
Established in 1951, the reserve is owned by the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture and affiliated with UC Berkeley, the Berkeley Natural History Museums, the California Biodiversity Center and the UC Natural Reserve System.
More information is on the Phil Ward Web site.
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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
