How to Have a Buggy Holiday

If gift-giving decisions bug you, you’re in luck.

If friends tick you off, you’re in luck. 

If you’re ready to put a bee into the cowboy expression of “yee haw,” you’re in luck.

The UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) and the Bohart Museum of Entomology are ready to assist you with lots of gift choices.

Ticked off? The Bohart Museum gift shop has keychains with stuffed toy animals such as ticks and fruit flies.

Hee haw? Put a “bee” in it. EGSA is offering “Bee-Haw” T-shirts and hoodies.

EGSA has several new designs, according to EGSA treasurer and doctoral student Iris Quayle of the Jason Bond lab.

There’s the Barbie “Bugbie” T-shirt, designed by Marielle Simone Hansel Friedman, a second-year doctoral student in the lab of urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. 

The Bugbie shirt, with an illustration of a rosy maple moth,  Dryocampa rubicunda,  was a big seller at EGSA's booth at Briggs Hall during this year's UC Davis Picnic Day celebration.

Other new EGSA T-shirts:

• "Would You Love Me If I Was a Worm"--featuring lots of different worm-like creatures, Quayle says.
• "Hang in There"--a pseudoscorpion hanging onto a fly leg
• "Here for a Good Time Not a Long Time"--a female mantis eating the head of a male mantis. 

“We also now have hoodies in the Bee-Haw, Whip Scorpion, and worm designs and tank tops in the Cicada Amp and Dung Beetle ("They See Me Rollin'”) designs,” Quayle said. “We also have added a lot of new sticker designs--these are super durable matte stickers great for laptops or water bottles.”

An all-time EGSA favorite is “The Beetles,”  a take-off of The Beatles (George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon) crossing Abbey Road, outside their London studio. The EGSA's beetles, however, are Phengogidae, Curculionidae, Cerambycidae and Scarabaeidae--or glowworm,  snout, long-horned and scarab beetles. 

EGSA members design insect and arachnid-themed T-shirts that climb, crawl, jump, roll, flutter, buzz, fly or otherwise position themselves on EGSA T-shirts. They can be viewed and ordered online at https://mkt.com/UCDavisEntGrad/.  For more information, contact Iris Quayle at ilbright@ucdavis.edu.

All proceeds help support EGSA's mission. EGSA is run by and for graduate students who study insect systems. The objectives:  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. Doctoral candidate Lexie Martin of the Rachel Vannette lab serves as president of EGSA.

Bohart Museum of Entomology

The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building 455 Crocker Lane, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, a live petting zoo, and an insect-themed gift shop (in-shop sales only; no online sales).  The link: https://bohart.ucdavis.edu/line-gift-shop.

The gift shop is stocked with everything from books, posters, T-shirts,  hooded sweatshirts and jewelry to insect-themed edibles, lathe pens (crafted by Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection), insect-collecting equipment and more. 

The newest items include tardigrade (water bear) t-shirts; tardigrade, monarch and bumble bee pins;  monarch and stick insect stickers; and stuffed toy animals or keychains featuring fruit flies, bed bugs, black ants, bookworms, mosquitoes, ticks and lice--all deemed "bug-perfect" for holiday stocking stuffers. 

Tardigrades figure prominently at the Bohart Museum. Its tardigrade collection includes some 25,000 slide-mounted specimens. A six-foot-long concrete sculpture of a tardigrade by Solomon Bassoff of North San Juan, Calif., graces the entrance to the Bohart Museum.

Founded in 1946, the Bohart Museum is directed by Professor Jason Bond the  Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. He succeeds UC Davis distingished professor emerita Lynn Kimsey on Feb. 1, who retired after 34 years as director but continues a director of the Bohart Museum Society.

All proceeds from the gift shop help support the educational mission of the insect museum, said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator. The Bohart Museum is open to the public Tuesday through Thursday. "If you need to stop in quickly for some insect supplies or a gift, we can also assist you on Mondays, Fridays and/or during the scheduled weekend open houses," Yang said. Access the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or email bmuseum@ucdavis.edu for more information.

Resource: 
About the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Program