CONTENTS

Directors Note 1

Spotlight on a Species 1

Museum News 2

Open House calendar 3

More Museum News 5

Scoliid wasps 6

The Bug Doctor 7

In This Issue

Bohart Museum Society

Fall 2015 Newsletter No. 64

SPOTLIGHT ON A SPECIES

Pesticides, Oh How Bad It Was By Lynn S. Kimsey

Insects and humans have a long history together. They are one of our most successful competitors, and as a result we are always looking for new ways to wipe them out or at least control their populations. At this point a reality check is in order. Regardless of how much we want to completely destroy insect pests it's just not going to happen. However, in the process of trying to do so we've used some very toxic chemicals.

When we were hunter gatherers insect pests and parasites weren't much of an issue. We were too dispersed and spent too little time in any one place for insect pest populations to build up in any significant way. It was only once humans settled into fixed communities and began growing crops for food that pests and parasites became an issue. Humans and domesticated animals living in crowded conditions over long periods led to the build-up of pests and parasites , such as fleas, cockroaches and lice. The presence of blood feeding parasites and crowded conditions then led to diseases such as malaria and dengue to become increasingly common.

Ancient communities explored a diversity of ways to kill pests and one of these was the use of chemicals available at the time. One of the first recorded pesticides was elemental sulfur, which the Chinese used to control mold around 1000 BC. The Chinese also used arsenic based compounds to control insect pests.

In the U.S. pest issues and control methods have changed considerably over the past couple of centuries. This is partly because characteristics of the American population have changed. In the 1700's only 3% of the population lived in cities, everyone else lived on farms. Today the reverse is true, with only about 19% of the population living on farms. Until the 20th century farmers primarily produced food that their families needed, and any excess they could do without was sold at markets. Farmers also changed how they grew crops, growing much more than their families needed and specializing in only a few cash crops, such as wheat or corn. By the mid-20th century most of the farms in many parts of the country specialized in one or more cash crops resulting in what were essentially monocultures. Monocultures are the ideal feeding places for pests. As more and more

Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2015

Continued on page 4.

Directors Note-

This issue of the newsletter covers a diversity of insect related topics, some looking at the past others the future. One thing’s for sure there will always be interesting and entertaining news about insects. Its one reason why I’m an entomologist.

Now that we’re heading into winter, or at least we’re supposed to be, a new season will begin and we’ll have new insect adventures in the coming year.

Please join us at one of the museum open houses or any time you can come by, and don’t forget to renew your annual membership.

-Lynn Kimsey

Spraying lead arsenate on lodge pole pines infested with larvae of needletiers Coeur d'Alene FIL photo no. 263 from WFIWC archives.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2015

MUSEUM NEWS

This year’s open houses have been posted on our website and you can see the dates and events on page 3.

We hope you can attend one or more of these happy days!

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The first fall open house was held on September 20—Thar Be Dragonflies. We had a great turnout; nearly 200 people attended.

We also had five local dragonfly experts volunteer their valuable time to talk about dragonflies, including Andrew Rehn, Kathy Claypole Biggs, Sandra Hunt-von Arb, Rosser Garrison and Greg Kareofelas. Rehn received his doctorate at UC Davis and is now working as a stream ecologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Biggs is author of the "Dragonflies of California", "Dragonflies of the Greater Southwest", and a children’s coloring book on dragonflies.

Open Houses 2015-2016 Year

3-D Tardigrade

We’re thinking the museum needs a 3D printer. This is a 10 inch long tardigrade printed by our collaborator, Carl Johansson at Fresno City College.

Hunt-von Arb is a senior biologist at Pacific Northwestern Biological Resources in McKinleyville, California. She started Western Odonata on Facebook and leads dragonfly workshops in northern California. Rosser Garrison is Senior Insect Biosystematist in the California Department of Food and Agriculture's Plant Pest Diagnostics Branch, in Sacramento. His collection of 45,000 specimens represents over half of the world’s dragonfly and damselfly species. Greg Kareofelas is a research associate of the Bohart Museum, and is responsible for the fabulous dragonfly photographs we’ve used on museum posters and t-shirts.

Rosser Garrison exhibited collections of dragonflies and damselflies and Kathy Biggs was available for book signing.

Our dragonfly experts, left to right, Andrew Rehn, Rosser Garrison, Kathy Biggs, Greg Kareofelas and Sandra Hunt-von Arb. Photo by Kathy Garvey.

Heather Lindsay of Elk Grove playing with a walking stick. Photo by Kathy Garvey.

Jonathan Romero playing with another walking stick. Photo by Kathy Garvey.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2015

REGULAR HOURS:

MONDAY-THURSDAY

9 AM-NOON & 1-5 PM

CLOSED:

FRIDAY-SUNDAY &

UC Davis holidays

Special weekend hours are free and open

to individuals and families. Organized

groups & visiting scientists should contact

us to make other arrangements.

PHONE: 530.752.0493

EMAIL: bmuseum@ucdavis.edu

www.bohart.ucdavis.ed

Biodiversity Museum Day

Feb. 13, Saturday,

Time TBD

Celebrate Moths/

Celebrar Polillas

July 31, Saturday,

8-11 pm

Thar be

Dragon(flies)!

September 20

Sunday, 1-4 pm

UC Davis Picnic Day

April 16, Saturday,

10 am-3 pm

Photos from Kathy Keatley Garvey and the Center for Disease Control (bed bug only)

Keep Calm & Insect On

December 5

Saturday, 1-4 pm

Parasitoid

Palooza II

January 10, Sunday,

1-4 pm

FREE Admission

+Parking

LOCATION:

1124 ACADEMIC SURGE

BUILDING

UC Davis Campus

Davis, CA 95616 (near the corner of La Rue Rd. &

Crocker Lane)

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2015

acreage was devoted to these cash crops pest problems became increasingly severe.

By the 1930's farmers were using pesticides based on arsenic, and the botanicals - pyrethrum (from chrysan-themum) and nicotine (from tobacco) to control insect pests. The most commonly used arsenicals were Paris Green and Sheele's Green (copper acetoarsenate), and London Purple (calcium arsenate); so named because of their colors. Lead arsenate was another commonly used pesticide during this period.

W. Harry Lange, who was a professor in the Department of Entomology at UC Davis between the 1950's and the 1980's, told a story about how when he was in high school in the 1920’s he worked summers at the Citrus Experiment Station (now UC Riverside). Two weeks before they were going to apply pesticides to the citrus orchards the department issued cigarettes to everyone to smoke before they went into the orchards. The reason for this was that they were going to apply nicotine to the orchards and only smokers could tolerate the levels of nicotine they would be exposed to during the application. Can you imagine anyone doing this now!

The sad thing about many of these pesticides is that they weren't always particularly effective. They were difficult to apply and needless to say they were quite toxic to animals including humans,

Continued from page 1.

with long term environmental consequences. Arsenates were used at least until the 1980's in the U.S. and they can still be used in China for pest control, which may explain why apple juice from China was recently found to contain traces of arsenic. (However, this is not why rice from California some-times has measureable levels of arsenic. That has more to do with rice being grown on ultramafic soils, which naturally contain arsenic, as well as magnesium, boron and selenium.)

Today we still use forms of pyrethrum and nicotine as pesticides. Although the modern formulation of these compounds are not particularly toxic to humans and other animals with backbones, we're now finding that these pesticides are harming insects we consider beneficial, like honey bees.

The bottom line is that there is no perfect solution to pest problems, but what we did in the past was potentially a lot more dangerous than pesticides we use today. Most current organic insecticides breakdown in a relatively short period, but those based on lead and arsenic remain in the watershed forever.

Even though we know how toxic some of these compounds can be, they are still used in a variety of sometimes bizarre ways, particularly in herbal treatments and supplements, such as strychnine being used as a hang-over treatment! Will we never learn.

The original source of pyrethrin Chrysanthemum indicum. Photo by Kenpei. GFDL,Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.1 Japan License

Lead arsenate being applied by hand to control boll weevils in the early

1900’s.

Grasselli lead arsenate. Photo from Viriginia Polytechnic Institute.

Categories of Pesticides

I. Minerals/metals

a. Arsenic (lead arsenate, arsenic trioxide— insecticides, herbicides

b. Sulphur—fungicide, bactericide

II. Plant-based compounds

a. Strychnine—rodenticide

b. Pyrethrins—insecticides

c. Rotenone—insecticide, fish poison

III. Synthetic pesticides

a. Organochlorines (DDT)

b. Organophosphates

c. Carbamates

IV. Insect growth regulators

A natural product containing strychnine intended to treat hangovers.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2015

MORE MUSEUM NEWS More on Traveling T-shirts

Our t-shirts have already been to some exotic places, including Guam and West Virginia! Show us where your museum t-shirt has gone and send us a photo!

More News on the Tardigrade Front!

Our National Science Foundation tardigrade water bear project with Carl Johannson, Fresno City College and William “Randy” Miller, Baker University, is advancing nicely. To date, students Tom Nguyen, John So and Alison Stewart have scanned 19,000 slide-mounted

tardigrades in the Bohart collection. The collection contains more than 23,000 specimens from around the world. Alison has now graduated is moved on to another position. We will be hiring several students to continue the work.

In September Randy Miller spent several days working with our students, correcting tardigrade identifications and reviewing their remounting technique for saving specimens that were degrading because of the mounting medium used by the original collectors.

Karoo and Louie Yang in Seneca Rocks, West Virginia.

Hugh Dingle and Micah Freedman in Guam.

Museum Evacuation

Thanks to some remodeling being done in another part of the building, museum personnel, visitors and the petting zoo had to be evacuated overnight due to the spread of toxic fumes. No one, human or cockroach, was injured and all was back to normal 24 hours later.

Randy Miller in his office at Baker University. Photo by Elvyn Jones. Image above: photo of tardigrade egg by Carl Johannson.

Laurie Casebier helping evacuate the petting zoo. Photo by LS Kimsey.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2015

Scoliid Wasps By Ziad Khouri

What do people usually think of when they hear “wasp”? For many, the image of a stinging, black and yellow insect that can be a nuisance at picnics. However, the precise meaning of the word can be somewhat elusive. Most people associate the term with the yellow jackets and paper wasps. But then there are sand wasps (tribe Bembicini), which are more closely related to bees than to yellow jackets, jewel wasps (family Chrysididae) that are distant relatives of both, wood wasps (family Orussidae) that are even more distant cousins, and many, many other groups. This is an immensely diverse group with over 115,000 described species – more than twice as many as all species of vertebrates

combined. While some wasps like yellow jackets are well known, others are rarely seen and seldom are the subjects of research. Scoliid wasps fall into the latter category.

The family Scoliidae contains about 560 species on all major land masses. Most species are tropical and only 20 species are known to from The U.S. In California scoliid wasps are most common in arid and semi-arid areas and are not usually seen around Davis.

Scoliids are on the large and heavy-bodied end of the wasp spectrum, with some species larger than the notorious Asian hornet (Vespa mandarinia). They have a stocky build, relatively short legs, and numerous bristles and spines. Most scoliid wasps are black or brown, with bright yellow, orange, red, or

white markings. Many have beautiful iridescent wings. This iridescence is the result of light striking the thin outer layer of the wasp’s wing in a phenomenon is called thin-film interference. This is the same phenomenon responsible for producing the shimmering colors on soap bubbles.

Larval insects need a source of protein to support their growth. While bees collect pollen to feed to their larvae and yellow jackets capture insects and scavenge meat, scoliid females seek out the grubs of scarab beetles. These grubs are usually found in the soil, feeding on plant roots. It is unknown what cues female wasps use to locate suitable patches of ground to investigate. They do, however, seem able to detect, on contact, chemicals left behind by the beetle grubs. Once a female finds a suitable site, she uses her powerful mandibles, legs, and abdomen to burrow into the soil and search for the grubs.

Upon locating a beetle grub, the female wasp delivers a sting that causes permanent paralysis. She then burrows even deeper and constructs a small subterranean chamber where she deposits the grub. Once the grub is in place, the wasp attaches a single egg to the grub’s underside and departs. After a short incubation period, a scoliid larva hatches and starts feeding on the body fluids of its living but paralyzed host. Within a few days to slightly over a week, the host is killed and almost entirely consumed. The wasp larva

then spins a cocoon and pupates. After metamorphosis the adult wasp digs its way out of the ground.

Adult scoliids feed on nectar and pollen. Both sexes can be observed at flowers where they contribute to pollination. Additionally, males can sometimes be seen in large swarms patrolling areas where females are emerging from the soil or arriving to search for hosts.

Scoliids have been used several times for the biological control of agricultural pests due to their relationship with scarab beetles. Because of this the life cycles of a few scoliid species have been well studied. Little is known about the biology of the vast majority of species and the taxonomy is in chaos.

However, the same can be said about the vast majority of insects, which comprise the greatest portion of animal diversity. A few species are very well studied. Drosophila has taught us much of what we know about genetics. At the same time most insects are still unknown to science. Systematists, the scientists who study and catalogue biodiversity, will be kept busy for a long time yet, discovering, describing, and naming organisms and unraveling the relationships among them, thereby performing the essential first steps to making them accessible to meaningful study.

Campsomeris female. Photo courtesy of Mark Yokoyama.

Campsomeris tolteca scoliid female with milkweed pollinia. Photo by Ziad Khouri.

Scoliid wing iridescence. Photo by Ziad Khouri.

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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.

Pest Mosquitoes, An Update

The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albo-pictus and the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, are small, brightly colored, day biting mosquitoes. Unlike our native species these two are cause for concern because they are excellent vectors of the viruses that cause dengue fever and a variety of encephalitis viruses, such as chikungunya and Japanese encephalitis that fortunately aren’t yet found in California.

The latest information available indicates that they are spreading into new regions in California. The tiger mosquito is now found in Kern, Los Angeles and San Diego counties. The yellow fever mosquito is still more widespread occurring in Alameda, Fresno, Kern, Modesto, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Tulare counties.

More Exotic Species in California

The moral of this story is that if you don’t look you don’t find. Three exotic species of Drosophila have now been found established in California, suzukii,

Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Fall 2015

gentica and flavohirta*. The first species, suzukii, was found only after it had been widely established in the state for several years. It is a major pest of fruit, such as figs, cherries and raspberries. The other two species were found in urban Los Angeles during a survey project using Malaise traps. Drosophila gentica was found to be the second most common Drosophila in the samples. This species was previously only known from Central and South America and the Caribbean. The third species, D. flavohirta, originates from Australia and is associated with Eucalyptus. It is known to be in South Africa and Madagascar, two other regions where Eucalyptus is now grown.

*For more information see Grimaldi et al. 2015. Strange little flies in the big city: exotic flower Drosophilidae in urban Los Angeles. Plos One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122575.

Africanized Honey Bees in the Bay Area

In a study published in Plos One** by Yoshiaki Kono and Joshua Kohn found genetically Africanized bees in Lafayette, near Dixon and Rio Vista. Prior to this study, these bees were only known from as far north as Mariposa County. The presence of this bee so far north may be due to the increasingly warm year round temperatures.

**Kono and Kohn. 2015. Range and frequency of Africanized honey bees in California. Plos One DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0137407

Mealworms, What You Didn’t know…

Turns out mealworms have some hidden talents. They’re not just good for feeding to pet reptiles or eating in snacks from HotLix. It turns out that these darkling beetle larvae have some dynamic gut bacteria. A group at Stanford University, led by Craig Criddle discovered that these larvae can digest polystyrene (Styrofoam)! Their guts break down the plastic into CO2 and recyclable organic waste. The bacteria were first discovered by a Taiwanese high school student, Tseng I-Ching in 2009. You just never know what’s going to be discovered about insects next.

Mealworms eating styrofoam. Source: http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mealworms-590x330.jpg

Female Aedes albopictus. Photo by Andrew Richards.

Oops. Corrections of Previous Newsletters…

In the last newsletter Dave Kistner pointed out that in the Bug Doctor article on the beaded lacewing, Lomamyia latipennis, this lacewing was given as African, it is actually New World. Also the use of chemicals to incapacitate termites was first mentioned by Ding Johnson some decades ago.

Steve Seybold pointed out that the western pine beetle is Dendroctonus brevicornis not ponderosae and there are several bark beetles impacting conifer forests in the west right now.

Bottom line: be skeptical of things you read/see on-line, whether science news blogs or websites; errors are common.

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Bohart Museum Society c/o Department of Entomology & Nematology University of California One Shields Ave. Davis, CA 95616