UC Davis Picnic Day Roach Races Began 32 Years Ago
They Began in 1992 with Steve Schutz, Marvin Kinsey
When the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) rolls out the racetrack for the Roach Races on Saturday, April 28 during the campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day, this will mark the 32nd year of the popular attraction.
Steve Schutz, then a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Bruce Eldridge (1933-2025) lab, introduced the Roach Races to the UC Davis campus, in 1992.
Senior staff research associate Marvin Kinsey (1931-2011) built the first UC Davis roach racetrack, using Schutz' description of the design.
This year's races will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in front of Briggs Hall.
A recent email conversation between several UC Davis entomologists resolved the mystery. UC Davis professor emerita Sharon Lawler, who retired in January 2023 after a 28-year career with the department, said it was Schutz who introduced the roach races to the UC Davis Picnic Day.
"A Cockroach Derby had been a feature of the Rutgers Ag Field Day, now Rutgers Day," Lawler said, attributing the information to Debbie Dritz (former Lawler lab member and now a vector ecologist with the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District). "He brought the tradition here. "
Idea from Rutgers
"Sharon is correct," wrote Schutz, the scientific programs manager of the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District since 1995. "When I was a postdoc in Bruce Eldridge's lab, I volunteered for the Picnic Day Committee (would have been 1992) and suggested that we add 'cockroach races' to the event. I got the idea from the Rutgers Entomology Department where I did my MS/PhD work. Cockroach races had started as an activity in the undergraduate 'Insects and Man' class, taught by Donald Sutherland at the time, and became a popular part of the annual Cook College Ag Field Day event. We gave out jars of honey from the University's hives as prizes. I thought it would also be a hit at UC Davis, although there was initially some skepticism, and apparently, I was correct, since they're still doing it. The SRA (senior staff research associate Marvin Kinsey) from the lab next door built the racetracks based on my description of the design."
Schutz holds a master's degree in entomology from Rutgers University, where he studied honey bee and bumble bee foraging behavior on cranberry bogs in response to spatial and temporal vriability of nectar rewards. He obtained his doctorate in 1990, focusing on the behavioral ecology, physiology and genetics of salt marsh Tabanids. He then served as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers in the Center for Theoretical and Applied Genetics for a year, 1990-1991, researching the genetics of pesticide resistance in mosquitoes, population genetics of deep sea hydrothermal vent mollusk.
Then it was off to UC Davis, 1991 to 1993. He was a postgraduate researcher at the Mosquito Control Research Laboratory, Parlier, where he conducted research on population genetics of Culex tarsalis and Aedes nigromaculis and conducted lab bioassays of new insecticides and repellents.
Marvin Kinsey, Inventor
Marvin Kinsey, who joined the UC Davis workforce in 1960, serving 37 years, "did many, many things for the department," noted UC Davis Distinguished Emerita Diane Ullman, who retired from teaching in 2024. Kinsey invented an electronic monitoring system that enabled scientists to study insect feeding behavior inside plant tissue. A 1994 national scientific symposium honored his contributions.
Kinsey was an internationally known entomologist and inventor. In a blog posted on the simonleather.wordpress.com site under "Don't Forget the Roundabouts," UK Professor S. R. Leather (1955-2021) wrote:
"In the early 1960s, two entomologists from the Department of Entomology, at the University of California, Davis, Donald McLean and Marvin Kinsey, came up with a system that was to revolutionise the study of the feeding behaviour of aphids and other insects that feed internally on plant using piercing mouthparts (McLean & Kinsey, 1964). In essence, what they did was to make an aphid part of an electrical circuit by attaching a thin copper wire to its back using a quick-drying silver paint. The feeding substrate, a leaf, had a 2.0 Volt, 60-cycle alternating current introduced to it and this was placed on an insulated grid connected to an amplifier connected in parallel with an oscilloscope, a chart-recorder and a speaker. The wire attached to the aphid, was joined to the grid and when the aphid began to feed this completed the circuit, and changes in voltage were able to be observed and recorded. The next step was to identify which chart recordings were associated with sap ingestion and salivation by the aphid. Using an artificial leaf, Parafilm stretched over a well containing a sucrose solution, and watching the aphids under a high power microscope, these innovative entomologists were able to identify four different stages involved in aphid feeding (McLean & Kinsey, 1965)."
The Robert Kimsey Connection
Forensic entomologist Robert "Bob" Kimsey, who retired from teaching in 2024, is an integral part of the UC Davis Picnic Day. He served as the faculty chair of the UC Davis Entomology and Nematology Picnic Day Committee from 1998 to 2024. The cockroaches are from his lab. Kimsey has served as "Dr. Death" in Briggs Hall since 1990 and will do so again on April 18. As Dr. Death, "I will be answering questions from the public about how forensic entomology evidence is used to help solve homicides and in court room combat, essentially Physiological Ecology, developmental biology and community ecology-type stuff," he related.
Now it's almost time for the celebrated Roach Races. Run, roaches, run!
