CONTENTS

Directors Note 1

Spotlight on a Species 1

Museum News 2

Bio Boot Camp 3

More Museum News 5

Comings and Goings 6

The Bug Doctor 7

In This Issue

Bohart Museum Society

Fall 2014 Newsletter No. 60

SPOTLIGHT ON A SPECIES

Wool Carder Bees

By Lynn S. Kimsey

We tend to think of all exotic species of insects as being pests. By and large that’s true but there are exceptions. The wool carder bee, Anthidium manicatum, may be one of these exceptions. The wool carder is a species of European leafcutter bee that has successfully colonized North America. However, North America isn’t the only place these bees have invaded. They are now found in north Africa, South America, Asia, the Canary Islands and even in New Zealand. World domination is ahead.

This bee was accidentally introduced into the U.S. from Europe some time in the early 1960’s. It was first discovered in New York State but since then has rapidly spread throughout North America. The first California record was in the early 2000’s and the bee had reached Davis by 2007.

Wool carder bees received their common name from the female behavior of collecting fibers from plants and other sources to build their nests. They use their front legs to scrape (card) fibers from the surface of leaves, stems and even clothing.

These bees are roughly honeybee-sized, but unlike honeybees they are brightly marked with yellow on a black background, with a bright yellow face. Only honey bees in Disney movies are black and yellow. Males are considerably larger than females, and have a spine on either side of the last two abdominal segments and three spines on the last segment, with a bright yellow face. Despite tales on the Internet these are not stingers, only female bees have those.

Males are aggressively territorial and as soon as they are mature they start patrolling territories that include plants visited by females. Territorial males will attack other bees, flies and even small birds, like hummingbirds. Males have been observed killing foraging honey bees but this is simply part of their territorial behavior and is unlike to affect honey bee populations. They will also check out humans, flying up to them and hovering.

Females are less obvious than males. They are smaller with a hairy face. They build their nests

Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2014

Male wool carder bee. Photo courtesy of Kathy Garvey.

Directors Note-

Fall is a time of contradictions for us. It is the end of the summer and the beginning of the overwintering phase of local plants and animals. Yet on campus it is the beginning of the new year, with new faces and fresh starts. The students will be back on campus soon and the fun will begin.

We’re looking forward to the members night open house near the end of October to meet old and new members, show off the latest changes in the museum and have a great time. I hope you can attend!

-Lynn Kimsey

Wool carder bee. Photo courtesy of Kathy Garvey.

Continued on page 4.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2014

We had a wonderful mid-summer open house in July. The first open house we’ve held during the summer at the Bohart. The theme was "Arachnids: Awesome or Awful?"

About 183 people visited the museum to learn more about arachnids. They came from all over central California, Sacramento, Rio Vista, Pleasanton, and Yolo Co. to name a few places. If you look at the photo below you can see in the informal poll that "awesome" won over "awful." (We did allow people to

change their "vote" and several switched to "awesome" after their visit!)

“Bees” was also a theme because Robbin was on-hand to discuss his new bumble bee book (below right)!

MUSEUM NEWS

New Guide to Bumble Bees Robbin Thorp and his coauthors have published a marvelous new guide to the bumble bees. Everything you ever wanted to know about these charismatic bees is in their book. It is a available through the museum gift shop. Check it out!

Open House staff, clockwise from right front, Evan White, Robbin Thorp, James Heydon, Greg

Kareofelas, Alex Nguyen, Matan Shelomi, Christine Melvin, Laura Morgan, Nichole Tam, Ziad Khouri and

Tabatha Yang. Photo by Kathy Garvey.

Ryeanne Bender of Lodi holding Rosie the tarantula. Photo by Kathy Garvey.

Emperor scorpion fluorescing blue under ultraviolet light. Photo by Kathy Garvey.

Visiting Graduate Student

Dáercio Lucena from the Universidad de São Paulo received a grant from the Brazilian government to come to the museum to study the chrysidid wasps in the genus Ipsiura. He will be here through November 2014.

Dáercio is revising the Brazilian Ipsiura for his Ph.D. thesis at the university.

July—Arachnids: Awesome or Awful?

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2014

Museum Summer Camps by Tabatha Yang

was a week-long, museum-based day camp in Davis, CA, in June. It was cool and rainy the first few days of the camp. The project they did was a survey of butterflies along the nearby Putah Creek watershed. The rains made this challenging.

This year we moved the camp to the Sagehen Creek Field Station outside of Truckee, CA and to August. We expected the days to be warm and dry and the nights to be cool and clear. To our surprise we had heavy rains the first few days of camp. It was cold and wet, yet puddle-wonderful and mud-luscious (apologies to e.e. cummings).

Ten campers, eight of whom were alumni of our other camps, plus two graduate student instructors spent a week at Sagehen Field Station north of Truckee, CA. They explored the area, went on hikes, did a group project and learned how to do science by doing their own mini-ecology experiments. They also played games and dressed up in wacky outfits for their final meal

Bio Boot Camp, our summer camp program just completed its 4th year. This year we did two camps, one for junior high school and a second for high school students. The museum runs these camps with the Museum of Wildlife & Fish Biology and UC Davis Campus Recreation Youth Programs.

The week-long junior high camp, simply called Bio Boot Camp, had 16 students and 3 counselors. Joel Hernandez, a recent undergraduate in Entomology, was one of their instructors. Steve Heydon, the Museum’s curator, taught the students to pin and point mount insects, and Jeff Smith, a museum associate, taught them to spread butterflies. The last two days of camp were spent on an overnight field trip to Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory. The students collected a few dozen insect specimens for the museum, and had a great time.

Once again, we had strange weather for the start of Bio Boot Camp 2.0, our camp for high schoolers. Last year this camp

together. They also blogged about their experiences for their families back home. Here is what Racha and Nate wrote about Day 3.

Day 3

We woke up to the happy surprise that it wasn’t raining. After getting dressed and having breakfast we started setting up our individual projects. I accumulatively spent hours in a fish house observing the different creatures in the different depths of the creek. It was very interesting and observing the fish was amazing. Other camp mates went out to the meadows or the bog to do their own projects. Some were observing the local population of lichen growing on the trees while others were out collecting insects and observing how diverse they were. After lunch we set off for TERC [Tahoe Environmental Research Center] where we learned about the geology and geography of Lake Tahoe. We also learned about its inhabitants (native and invasive) and what we need to do to “Keep Tahoe Blue”. We then boogied down to Sand Harbor on the north side of Lake Tahoe where we took a “refreshing” swim (editor’s note: lifeguards were present!). We got to see first hand how beautiful and clear Lake Tahoe really is and took a couple of group pictures overlooking the amazing scenery. The new warm weather was a nice surprise and made the whole experience better, especially the swimming. After running some errands and taking a nice scenic drive back to Sagehen, everyone chilled out and the day came to a close.

-Racha & Nate

We look forward to conducting these camps next year. If you or someone you know would be interested in the camp email us at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu and we will let you know when we have the information on the 2015 camps. Partial scholarships are available for both camps through the generosity of donations to the Bohart Museum Society for education and outreach programs.

Bio Boot Camp for high schoolers students, standing left to right Asher Albrecht, Noah Crockette, Madison

McGlathery, Anthony Field, Hannah Titche, and Nick Roy. Sitting (clockwise from yellow shirt): Annapurna

Leon, Mia Poppenga, Racha Elsbach, and Nathan Dao.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2014

in existing cavities in rotting wood or even walls, and use fibers to line and partition their nest cells. They visit a variety of flowers for nectar and pollen but will also visit these and other plants to collect hairs. Wool carder females are particularly fond of lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantina) and as a result this is often where males will be found. Females use their jaws to scrape, or card, the hairy leaves to collect fibers, as seen in the photos to the right, taken by Lloyd Davidson at Northwestern University. They can be pretty entertaining if they decide that exposed socks are a good source of fibers too. Museum scientist Tom Zavortink discovered this while observing wool carder bees visiting lamb’s ears plants. Several females decided that his wool socks were just the ticket and began pulling fuzz from them too.

Although wool carder bees belong to the family of insects often called leaf cutter bees, they do not cut leaves to use in their nests. They use preexisting tunnels, such as beetle burrows in wood located above ground for their nests. They use fibers to partition these tunnels into individual cells. Each cell is provisioned with a mixture of pollen and nectar. They tend to favor collecting pollen and nectar from flowers in the mint family. Beginning at the back of the tunnel, the female lays an egg on the ball of food and closes the cell, moving on to the next one. Females build at least one nest per season, but only produce one generation per year.

There are more than 50 native species of Anthidium in the western U.S. None of them are as large as male wool carder bees nor are they as likely to be found in gardens. Male wool carder bees have a wingspan of 20 mm (0.8 inches) and body length of 15 mm (0.6 inches. Native species of Anthidium use resin, mud or other materials in nest construction rather than plant fibers like wool carder bees do, and many of them nest in the ground.

Female leaf cutter bees all carry pollen in special brushes of hair on the underside of their abdomens. They pack pollen they collect from flowers into these hairs using all their legs. Wool carder bees also use their legs to collect fibers. They hold the fibers with their legs when they carry them back to the nest.

Wool carder bees are harmless. Females can sting but rarely do unless their life is threatened. Other than the aggressive in your face behavior of the males, these bees provide valuable pollination services.

Continued from page 1.

Photographs of a female wool carder bee collecting fibers from lambsear; courtesy of Lloyd Davidson, Ph.D., Ldavids@northwestern.edu , Posted on Bugguide.net.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2014

MUSEUM NEWS

public display. These included invertebrates, vertebrates and herbarium sheets.

Realizing that the dumpster is not a solution for the collections they were no longer using, they contacted area museums, including the Bohart.

Together with Irene Engilis, the collections manager for the UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, we went to CuriOdyssey to bring the insect specimens back and some of the rarer, older bird specimens that dated from the early 1900’s.

In total the collection they donated to the Bohart consisted of approximately 1884 pinned or point-mounted specimens, representing 18 orders and at least 130 families. Most of the specimens were from California in the 1940’s-1960’s, representing an important historical snap shot of an area in transition. There were even a few agricultural specimens collected from the Davis/Winters area in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Unfortunately their only identified bed bug was missing, but the pin and data remained. It was collected at Stanford University in the 1950’s!

Because they do a wonderful job exposing people to the natural world, including insects, we in turn gave them 65 specimens of large, showy insects that could be more easily used in their public programming.

Daniel Kurtak Collection

A collection made in the 1960’s in Kern Co., California by Daniel Kurtak was just was donated to the museum. His collection contained 373 spread and labeled butterflies and 43 moths.

More Collection Donations Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

The California State University at San Luis Opispo (Cal Poly SLO) has down-sized its insect collection and several thousand specimens came to the Bohart Museum as a result. These include many insects collected by students in the vicinity of San Luis Obispo but also specimens collected in the 1940’s from northern California. We have only a small number of specimens collected in the coastal counties of central California, so these specimens are valuable distribution records of California species.

Brian W. Bahder Collection

UC Davis postdoct Brian Bahder donated part of his personal collection to the museum at the urging of his wife. This collection consisted of 529 beetles, flies, wasps, butterflies and many other beautifully prepared specimens.

Frank Maglio Collection

Frank Maglio from the San Francisco Bay Area donated his collection of large moths and six glass-topped specimen drawers.

Ralph Wells Field Notebooks

Finally, Ralph Wells deposited all of his field notebooks in the museum. We will archive these in the museum library.

CuriOdyssey at Coyote Point, a science center in San Mateo, donated the majority of their insect collection to the Bohart this summer. CuriOdyssey, which opened in 1953 as the San Mateo County Junior Museum and later changed its name to the Coyote Point Museum for Environmental Education, was known for its dioramas and displays on the various habitats of San Mateo County. They’ve also always had live California animals on display. Behind the scenes they had a collection of well-curated specimens with properly labeled data that were clearly prepared for research, rather than

Noah Crockette, museum intern, standing next to CuriOdyssey collection drawers (right) and the specimens condensed into Bohart drawers (left).

Do you know of a science center or collector that may have scientifically valuable specimens? Ask them about it and, if it is no longer of use to them or they don’t have the time, funds or knowledge to properly manage it, then have them contact us (bmuseum@ucdavis.edu) or another established research museum. We can offer advice and help. This is what CuriOdyssey did and it was a win-win for everybody.

CuriOdyssey Collection

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2014

COMINGS AND GOINGS New Faces in the Museum

We have two new students working in the museum, Tom Nguyen and Alison Stewart. Tom and Alison are both entomology majors and are active in the UC Davis Entomology Club. They are joining Maia Lundy, Laurie Casebier and Christine Melvin in the museum, curating specimens, doing database entry and many other fun things.

Tom Nguyen and Alison Stewart.

Matan Shelomi

Matan Shelomi has left us. Matan started graduate school in the museum in 2009 and he turned in his Ph.D. thesis, Digestive Physiology of the Phasmatodea this August. He has started a position as a postdoct in Germany funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Unless he succeeds in getting a faculty position somewhere he will be in Germany for two years. We will definitely miss Matan, but we know that he will go far in academics.

Lewis Nielsen

1920-2014

Lew Nielsen was one of the premier mosquito researchers in the U.S. He primarily studied mosquitoes

that breed in tree holes and assembled a large collection of nearly 10,000 domestic and exotic mosquitoes, which he donated to the Museum in 2002.

Dr. Nielsen lived and studied in Utah most of his life. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Utah (UT) in 1955, and went on into a faculty position at UT until he retired. He collected throughout the western US, Canada, and overseas.

He was an active member of the American Mosquito Control and Utah Mosquito Abatement Association, serving as president of both, and was made honorary member of each. After his retirement, Lew continued his mosquito studies and published papers and identification manuals on the mosquitos of Utah and New Mexico.

Don’t forget the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine & Food Science event in November. The Bohart Museum will benefit from the proceeds of this event:

New T-Shirts

New museum T-shirts being modeled by Nichole Tam, museum intern.

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ASK THE BUG DOCTOR If you have an insect question, need advice, want an identification of something you’ve found, or would like to see an article in the newsletter on a particular topic let us know. Email us at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.

World’s Largest Aquatic Insect

Chinese media reported the largest known aquatic insects. A huge Dobson fly (family Corydalidae) was collected from the mountains near Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. This beast has an 8 inch wing span! Males in this group have large sickle-like jaws. Females have much shorter, blunt jaws.

Although this insect has a really big wingspan it does not hold the record for the largest wingspan of all. This record is held by the white witch moth, with a wingspan of nearly 12 inches.

For all of you fishermen, imagine the size of the aquatic larva (commonly called hellgrammites in this country) of this beast. It would have to be at least 4 inches long!

Mystery Object

There are times when we are sent requests for identifications and simply have no idea what we’re looking at. The request for an identification from John DiPirro in Fair Oaks, CA was one of these times.

He described a soft, white golf ball-sized mass in a pot with a tree in his garden. He also sent a photograph. We were stumped.

After asking around we finally realized that this white object was the fruiting

Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2014

This has been a big year for the western yellow jacket, Vespula pensylvanica. These wasps are some-times called meat bees in California, but they are not bees. We have had numerous reports of nests in urban backyards. This social wasp can build huge nests in cavities and other protected spaces out of paper made from plant fibers mixed with saliva.

The western yellow jacket is a pest because of both its nesting habits and food preferences. Unlike other wasps and even most other yellow jackets that only take live food (insects), this species is a scavenger. It will feed on live insects, but also pet food, fruit, and standard picnic fare.

In most regions this wasp has annual nests. This means that nests have to be founded in the spring by new queens and by late fall the nests are finished. In regions with relatively warm winters or no winters per se, like Hawaii, the nests become perennial and can become enormous, with hundreds of thousands of workers or more.

The wasp chair below was discovered in Winterhaven, Florida. Yellow jackets probably started a nest under the chair and over the years the nest eventually got so large it became the chair. You have to wonder why no one noticed...

body of a slime mold, which is colorfully called the “dog vomit fungus”.

Slime molds are not insects, they’re probably closer to animals than fungi. They feed on bacteria, yeasts and fungi and are common in soil, lawns and the forest floor. Slime molds are good creatures to have in your yard.

They generally live and feed as single celled creatures but when food becomes scarce they get together and form a single, tiny, often slug-like body. This is when they produce spore containing masses like the one below found by Mr. DiPirro.

Yellowjackets from Hell

Giant Dobson fly. Photo courtesy of China News Service, http://www.cbc.ca/favicon.ico.

http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/__NEW/_News%20Channel/nc_waspchair_140821.nbcnews-fp-440-320.jpg

Slime mold fruiting body in potted tree container.

Photo by John DiPirro.

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Bohart Museum Society c/o Department of Entomology

University of California

One Shields Ave.

Davis, CA 95616