Backyard Orchard News
Scientists Reveal New Method to Characterize Physiological Responses to Parasitism
Have you ever seen a wasp oviposit or lay its eggs inside a caterpillar? Or the egg of a moth? it's...
A parasitic wasp, Microplitis demolitor, laying an egg (ovipositing) in larva of soybean looper moth. (Photo by Jena Johnson of the Michael Strand lab, University of Georgia)
About That Three-Cornered Alfalfa Hopper...
It's green, it's tiny, and everyone is hoping it doesn't wreak any havoc in the vineyards. "It" is...
The three-cornered alfalfa hopper, Spissistilus festinus. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The three-cornered alfalfa hopper, Spissistilus festinus, is a clear-winged, wedge-shaped (thus the name "three-cornered") insect that's about a quarter of an inch long. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Shedding New Light on Honey Bee Chromosomes
Honey bee geneticists with long ties to UC Davis are putting together those missing pieces of the...
"The honey bee genome,” Robert Page Jr. explained, “is composed of about 15,000 genes, each of which operates within a complex network of genes, doing its small, or large, share of work in building the bee, keeping its internal functions operating, or helping it function and behave in its environment. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey bee geneticist Robert Page Jr. (left) with colleagues: bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk of UC Davis, and Martin Beye, former postdoctoral fellow in the Page lab and now a professor at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany.
The Sad State of the Overwintering Monarch Population in California
Where are all the overwintering monarchs? If you traveled to the Natural Bridges State Park in...
Overwintering monarchs in the Berkeley Aquatic Park on Nov. 26, 2015. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Native bees buzz a monarch sipping on Tithonia in Vacaville, Calif. Nov. 14, 2016. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Those Amazing Ticks: And How Hungry Ticks Work Harder to Find You
They ticked me off. Ticks can do that to you. I never think about ticks during the holiday...
Two Dermacentor occidentalis (Pacific Coast ticks) "collected" during a Sonoma outing: male on the left and female on right, as identified by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. They are about the size of a sesame seed. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)