Hearing a queen bee piping is music to her ears.  So is the shimmering sound of the harp.  

Meet Samantha Murray, the newly selected garden coordinator of the UC Davis Bee Haven, a pollinator and demonstration garden installed in the fall of 2009 by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT). Although undergoing restoration since last summer, The Haven continues to be open to the public from dawn to dusk. 

UC Integrated Pest Management (UC IPM) entomology advisor Dylan Beal, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Program, will be the lead-off speaker of the 2025 UC Davis Entomology and Nematology's winter seminar series.

Suds for a bug?

The annual “Beer for a Butterfly” contest, launched in 1972 by butterfly guru Art Shapiro, now a UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus, gets underway Jan. 1.

The person who finds the first live  cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, of the year in the three-county area of Sacramento, Yolo and Solano, will receive a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.

What are you doing on New Year's Day?

Weather permitting, you can begin searching for the first bumble bee of the year in the two-county area of Yolo and Solano. If you photograph or video it, and you are judged the winner, a prize awaits you--in addition to bragging rights.

Jolene Saldivar, a UC Davis Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Professor Louie Yang, will speak on "Disturbance in Coastal Sage Scrub and the Implications for Migratory Butterflies" at the next UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar.

Ecologist Andrew Corbett, a research associate with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT), will speak on "In Silico Experiments with the Effect of Natural Habitats on Biological Control in Agricultural Landscapes" at the next department seminar, set for 4:10 p.m., Monday, Oct. 21 in Room 122 of Briggs Hall.

The seminar also will be on Zoom. The link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.

He never expected to discover a new praying mantis species.

But a juvenile mantis that UC Davis alumnus Lohitashwa “Lohit” Garikipati collected on a 2019 trip to Madera Canyon, Arizona, proved not to be the commonly known California mantis, Stagmomantis wheelerii, but a new species.

Climate change is rapidly restructuring North American bumble bee communities, according to newly published research from the laboratory of Professor Neal Williams, a pollination ecologist in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Microbes found in the immature stages of a solitary bee that nests in sand cliffs along Pacific Coast beaches may be helping the bee defend itself from pathogens and protect it from cold stress, according to newly published research led by microbiologist Shawn Christensen of the Rachel Vannette Lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

(See June 3rd presentation on YouTube at:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa2eHuvPLHQ)

California's fruit fly invasion is in crisis mode, says UC Davis distinguished professor James R. Carey, a noted authority on the invasion of tropical fruit flies.