Bug Squad

About those mosquito s*x steroid hormones...
Mackenzie Yedlin, a doctoral candidate at The Rockefeller University, will discuss "Choreographing Reproduction: Redefining S*x Steroid Hormone Mechanisms in Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes" at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar on Wednesday, Oct. 7.
She will speak at 12:10 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. Her seminar also will be on Zoom. The link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.
"Ecdysone, a steroid hormone derived from cholesterol, is essential for mosquito reproduction, namely blood meal-induced oogenesis in Aedes aegypti," Yedlin writes in her abstract. "The current model posits that a vertebrate blood meal stimulates ovarian ecdysone synthesis, followed by free diffusion of ecdysone through the hemolymph. Transporters take up ecdysone into the fat body, where its hydroxylation into 20E enables transcription of yolk proteins."
"However, in the absence of a blood meal, the amount of exogenous 20E required to induce egg development exceeds its physiological concentration by up to five orders of magnitude," she points out. "This discrepancy forms the basis of our scientific question, leading to two potentially interconnected hypotheses to explain how steroid hormones regulate mosquito reproductive biology. The first is that an unidentified, chemically modified ecdysteroid acts as the physiological substrate for uptake into fat cells during Aedes aegypti reproduction. The second is that additional blood meal-induced transcriptional changes, possibly related to hormone transport, are required for mosquito egg development. Our work aims to tease apart this foundational s*x hormone chemistry and form a more complete understanding of ecdysteroid transport into fat cells during mosquito reproduction."

https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/targeting-s*x-steroid-hormones-mosquitoes

The E.L. Niño Bee Lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, today launched a UC Davis Crowdfund effort to fund The Great Native Bee Count: Mapping California’s Bee and Plant Connections, a project to begin next spring that would "engage Californians of all ages as community scientists documenting the relationships between bees and the flowering plants that sustain them."
The crowdfunding ends Oct. 31. The link to donate to the Bee Research Fund to make this all happen is https://giveto.ucdavis.edu/schools/UniversityofCaliforniaDavis/crowdfund-uc-davis-october-2026/pages/bees/?a=13784076.

See more on Bug Squad blog at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/mapping-great-native-bee-count-california

It's so sad to lose Hugh Di**le, a longtime member of our UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty.

He was short in stature, but tall in research.

In fact, UC Davis Professor Emeritus Richard Douglas Hugh Di**le, was considered “the world’s eminent scholar on animal migration,” a brilliant scientific collaborator, dedicated mentor, and selfless philanthropist. He died Sunday, Sept. 27, while receiving hospice care in Davis. His family attributed his death to congestive heart failure.

A resident of Larkspur, Marin County, Hugh was 89, and looking forward to his 90th birthday on Nov. 4.

He served on our faculty from 1982 to 2002 and then devoted his "retired" years to more research, gaining and sharing new knowlege, answering questions, and bolstering the Sean and Anne Duffey and Hugh and Geraldine Di**le Graduate Research Fellowship that he launched in 2014.

So Sad to Lose Hugh | Bug Squad Image

UC Davis Distinguished Professor Walter Leal, who is organizing the "Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Bruce Hammock," today announced that the event will be broadcast live on YouTube. Registration is underway at
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RyjTos_HTQyBVtqBTZ7SMg

The public memorial will take place at 1 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 10 in the California Hall, UC Davis campus. Pre-registration is underway at https://forms.gle/eRssVnZyVZBV6is9A. UC Davis Chancellor Gary May and Ashley Stokes, dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences will be among those paying tribute. The event is expected to draw a large global presence of friends, researchers and collaborators.

UC Davis Distinguished Professor Bruce Dupree Hammock, 1947-2026 a member of the UC Davis faculty since 1980, died Monday, Jan. 5, in Davis, at age 78. He was renowned for his chemistry, toxicology, biochemistry, entomology and human health research that led to elected membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors; scores of professional honors and awards; and accolades from administrators, colleagues, researchers, alumni and students.

See more at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/webinar-announced-memorial-tribute-bruce-hammock

Webinar Announced for Memorial Tribute to Bruce Hammock | Bug Squad September 29, 2026By Kathy Keatley Garvey Print UC Davis Distinguished Professor Bruce Hammock in his Briggs Hall office on Feb. 24, 2009. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)UC Davis Distinguished Professor Walter Leal, who is organizing the "Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Bruce Hammock," today a...

A monarch butterfly circles a Vacaville pollinator garden, surveys for predators and mates, and then touches down on an expired zinnia.
It sips nectar, and then lifts off.
Houston, we have lift-off.
Roger that!
The once brightly colored zinnias, now dull as ditch water, seem to have met their expiration date, but no matter. Monarchs absolutely love zinnias.
The "Z" flower may be at the bottom of the alphabet, but it appears to be topping the migratory monarchs' "fave" list.

https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/houston-we-have-lift

Insect pinning: The method of preserving dead insects on specialized stainless steel pins for display or scientific study.

Several UC Davis entomology undergraduates and graduate students did just that when they tabled at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, themed "The ABC's of Museum."

Visitors learned the basics of how to pin insects, and asked multiple questions.

Third-year entomology doctoral student Gary Ge showed how to pin a butterfly, while fourth-year entomology major Hannah Petok and third-year entomology major Andrew Chung sat at a specimen table with a sign that read "Ask Us About Pinning Insects."

How to Pin an Insect | Bug Squad Third-year graduate student Gary Ge showing how he pins butterflies.

UC Davis doctoral candidate Emma "Em" Jochim of the Jason Bond lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology will discuss trapdoor spiders at the Pacific Coast Entomological Society (PCES) meeting on Saturday, Sept. 27 at UC Davis.

The PCES members and guests will be gathering at 10:30 a.m. in the Bohart Museum of Entomology, Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane "to sort insects," announced Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake College and an entomology lecturer at UC Davis.

"We will be sorting insect specimens from Diptera and Coleoptera," said Keller.

At 1 p.m., Jochim will present her talk on speciation and species delimitation in mygalomorph spiders from California and Belize with a focus on trapdoor spiders. Her presentation is entitled: "Untangling species limits in mygalomorph spiders: Integrating genomics, morphology, and ecology across California and Belize."
See more at
https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/focus-trapdoor-spiders

Who's speaking at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematogy (ENT-NEM) fall seminars?

Lisa Baik, assistant professor of insect biology and the coordinator of the ENT-NEM seminars for the 2026-27 academic year, has announced the list of fall speakers and their topics.

All seminars will take place on Wednesdays from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall and will be hybrid.

See the list here

Who's Speaking at the UC Davis ENT-NEM Fall Seminars? | Bug Squad Mosquito researcher Lisa Baik, assistant professor of insect biology, is the c

"Today in my adventures as a biotech founder, I dissected out the guts of German cockroaches while students gathered around to take turns doing the same. Is this normal? Probably not. Is it my new normal? Absolutely.”

So wrote UC Davis alumna Nazzy Pakpour, co-founder and chief executive officer of Yeast Bay Bio, Davis, when she finished dissecting German cockroaches in the lab of Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

No, she didn’t borrow any from the Briggs Hall colony of American cockroaches, a traditional part of the UC Davis Picnic Day Roach Races.

This amounted to BYOC: Bring Your Own Cockroaches.

“I arrived carrying two boxes,” Pakpour related on a social media post. “One held live cockroaches and the other held fancy pastries for the students in Dr. Joanna Chiu’s lab, who let me commandeer their dissecting scope setup for the afternoon. All those years I spent pulling mosquito midguts out in Dr. Shirley Luckhart’s lab are suddenly coming in very handy. Who knew insect gut dissection would turn out to be a transferable skill?”

Pakpour describes herself as “scientist, biotech founder, former faculty member, author and mother of two witty and wonderful kids."

"I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and now live in Davis. I love bugs of all varieties, whether they are six-legged or microscopic. I once spent a summer doing tarantula feedings at the Smithsonian Insect Zoo!”

“I am passionate about teaching science and worked for a number of years as a professor before moving to the biotech sector as a research scientist,” Pakpour writes on her website. “I also believe strongly in giving back to the community and have volunteered for years with the Bohart Museum of Entomology and as a court appointed special advocate (CASA) for foster youth.”

Note: See how many cockroaches you can zap on her arcade games on her website at https://yeastbaybio.com/.And make she you don't kill the office cat!

See more at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/nazzy-pakpour-cockroaches-coffee-and-new-normal

Yes, there are images!

Washington State University professor/entomologist David James shared some of his photographs after radio-tagging or "e-tagging" 22 adopted monarch butterflies on Sept. 17 in Phoenix, Ore.

As part of his Adobe-a-Monarch research program, he e-tagged a total of 200 migratory monarchs in Idaho and Oregon and is now tracking their movements.

Some 50 monarch advocates watched as James released the monarchs at a Phoenix park. He discussed the project and answered their questions.

Phoenix, located in Jackson County, is a small city (population 4,475, per the 2020 U.S. census). It's about three miles southeast of Medford and eight miles north of Ashland.

One of the e-tagged monarchs is our family's adoptee: Butterfly Garvey, or "WR124 Garvey." (See Sept. 18th Bug Squad blog)

Two minutes after she was tagged and released, she nectared on a butterfly bush, Buddleja davidii.

However, as of 6:30 tonight, the mobile app showed 1617 detections ("pings") and no kilometers.

Butterfly Garvey may be in trouble. She has not left the release site.
See more at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/phoenix-rising-monarch-migrating

Photo of Butterfly Garvey by WSU entomologist David James