CONTENTS

Directors Note 1

Spotlight on a Species 1

Museum news 2

Campus outreach award 3

More museum news 5

Adventures in New Zealand 6

The Bug Doctor 7

In This Issue

Bohart Museum Society

Spring 2016 Newsletter No. 66 SPOTLIGHT ON A SPECIES

Zika Virus and Pest Mosquitoes, a Reality Check By Lynn S. Kimsey

There has been a great deal of recent news about Zika virus and its potential health implications in the Americas. However, much of this news deserves/needs a closer examination.

Zika virus was first recognized in Africa in the 1940’s. It belongs to the family Flaviviridae, which also includes dengue, West Nile and yellow fever viruses. It was originally described in primates from the Zika Forest in Uganda in 1947 and later in Tanzania in 1948. By 2000 it was known from across central Africa. The virus was found in Pakistan and south Asia in the 1970’s and by 2013 the virus was found on islands in the southern Pacific and later recognized in Brazil in 2015. Since then the virus has been found throughout much of Central and South America. It is not clear when the virus actually arrived in the Americas as no one was looking for it until last year.

In the vast majority of people, Zika virus causes few if any symptoms. Most won’t even know they have it. In those who do develop symptoms, the symptoms are generally mild – fever, rash, joint pain, headache, red eyes and muscle pain. No deaths have yet been reported from infection with Zika virus.

However, some acute pathology has been correlated with infection by Zika virus, including microcephaly in babies born to infected mothers and Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults. To date these are just correlations. There is no firm evidence that the virus does in fact cause these problems. Part of the confusion about the public health effects of this virus is that until recently there were no reliable tests for current or past infection by the virus .Even now blood tests for Zika may cross-react with related viruses, such as dengue and the virus is undetectable in the blood after more than two weeks after the initial infection.

So why is the virus a problem now? There are four components necessary to sustain a new zone of infection of the Zika virus. First, the virus had to be brought to a new geographic region. Second, there had to be susceptible hosts available. Third, these hosts had to be close enough together to make transmission effective. Fourth, effective vector mosquitoes needed to be present to move the virus from new host to host.

The virus was probably introduced via people traveling by air between islands and continents. Although most infected individuals are asymptomatic, they may still circulate enough of the virus to infect mosquitoes. The human population in the Americas consists of largely susceptible individuals as the virus was new to the region. Urbanization, and the resulting crowding and poverty creates ideal conditions for the spread of mosquito borne viruses to humans.

The most effective vectors of this virus seem to be Aedes aegypti,

Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Spring 2016

Continued on page 4.

Directors Note-

This has been a terrific spring, and its still green! Along with greenness we’re seeing an increase in a variety of insect populations. It should be a fun summer of collecting and if you’re into mosquitoes it should be a banner year for them too.

The Bohart Museum is getting more and more recognition. We are now highly rated in Trip Advisor and Yelp. This is to a large extent due to our fabulous group of staff and volunteers. We highlight our current volunteers in this newsletter.

Finally, thank you to everyone for my campus outreach award mentioned inside!

-Lynn Kimsey

Aedes aegypti in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Photo courtesy of Muhammad Mahdi Karim.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Spring 2016

MUSEUM NEWS

The Bohart had two big outreach adventures this spring, Biodiversity Day and Picnic Day. Both events had large public attendance and our staff and volunteers did a terrific job.

Biodiversity Day, Saturday February 13, was a great success this year! The weather remained clear and sunny all day, and we had many, many visitors—nearly 2,000 came to the Bohart alone. Visitors came from throughout the Sacramento Valley Region and the San Francisco Bay Area, with a few coming from even further.

This year participating museums included the Anthropology Museum, Arboretum, Bohart Museum, Botanical Conservatory, Center for Plant Diversity, Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, Museum of Wildlife & Fish Biology, Nematode Collection, Paleontology Collection, Phaff Yeast Culture Collection, and the Raptor Center. This was the first time that the Honey Bee Haven, Nematode Collection, Phaff Yeast Collection and Raptor Center participated in the event. Everyone had a great time.

Picnic Day, Saturday April 16 was fun as always. The theme this year was “Cultivating Our Authenticity”. Nearly 80,000 visitors came to the campus for the festivities this year. We had more than 3,500 visitors at the Bohart, which was slightly down from last year but that’s probably because we changed how people moved through the museum, which made counting difficult.

In keeping with the Picnic Day theme we put out new displays on mimicry, especially “wanna bees” (flies confused with honey bees) and Robbin Thorp showed live carpenter bees to visitors.

The Bohart Museum won the Picnic Day award in the “Family Friendly” category by popular vote for our exhibit "Real Insects and Mimics”.

Biodiversity Day and Picnic Day

Biodiversity Museum Day. Steve Heydon explaining a display box to a visitor. Photo courtesy of Kathy

Garvey.

Museum mascot Peaches greeting a visitor. Photo courtesy of Kathy Garvey.

Joel Hernandez showing morpho butterflies in the museum. Photo courtesy of Kathy Garvey.

Ziad Khouri discussing bees with a visitor. Photo courtesy of Kathy Garvey.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Spring 2016

Lynn Kimsey: Academic Senate's Distinguished Public Service Award

by Kathy Keatley Garvey

has also served as interim chair and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, now the Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Nominators spotlighted some of her major accomplishments and activities:

Bohart Museum of Entomology: Kimsey turned a tiny museum, a hole in the wall, into a thriving world- renowned museum through her highly successful leadership, knowledge and dedicated efforts to make the museum the place to be—not only for scientific collaborators but for the public. The museum holds open houses on many weekends during the academic year. It has a gift shop and a live “petting zoo” filled with Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and a rose-haired tarantula named “Peaches,” a crowd favorite. Kimsey has written spring, summer, fall and winter newsletters since 1994 and a total of 56 insect/arthropod educational fact sheets, with topics ranging from bed bugs, cockroaches and black-widow spiders to ticks, fleas, scorpions and kissing bugs.

Got an Insect Question? For two decades, the department has asked on its website “Got an Insect Question? Ask It Here!” Kimsey is the key person who answers them. She is widely considered as the most accomplished faculty member in understanding the general knowledge of insects, according to Entomological Society of America fellow Robert Washino, emeritus professor and former chair of the department. Kimsey is not only the go-to entomologist to answer questions about insects on the

Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis, is the 2016 recipient of the Academic Senate's Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award.

The award recognizes a faculty member's significant public service contributions that benefit the local, regional, national, and/or international community.

Kimsey will receive the award at the Academic Senate and Academic Federation awards program, set for 5:30 p.m., Monday, May 2 in the AGR Room of the Buehler Alumni Center.

“Dr. Kimsey has made outstanding contributions to public service and education through the numerous programs she has envisioned and directed through the Bohart Museum of Entomology,” said Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. “She is very deserving of this prestigious award.”

Highly esteemed for her public service, teaching and research, Kimsey administers the world-renowned Bohart Museum of Entomology, which houses a global collection of some eight million insect specimens. She consults with international, national and state agencies; identifies thousands of insects every year for scientific collaborators, public agencies and the general public; answers scores of news media calls and insect questions; and encourages a greater appreciation of insects through the Bohart Museum open houses, workshops and lectures.

Kimsey's areas of expertise include insect biodiversity, systematics and biogeography of parasitic wasps, urban entomology and arthropod-related industrial hygiene.

Kimsey, joined the entomology faculty in 1989. The director of the Bohart Museum and executive director of the Bohart Museum Society since 1990, she

UC Davis campus and beyond, but is a primary go-to person for the news media. The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, BBC, and Associated Press, among others, seek her out. “Her inter-views are always informative, educational and animated,” her nominators said.

Research: Her colleagues refer to her fondly as “The Wasp Woman” for her expertise on aculeate wasps. She works with some of the most difficult groups, including tiphiids and chrysidids. She is heavily involved in ongoing studies with the endemic insect species of the Algodones Dunes in southern California and with the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups in Indonesia. “Scientists and students from throughout the world clamor to work with her,” her nominators said.

Teaching: Kimsey is described as “enthusiastic about teaching and highly responsive to students' questions and needs.” She is one of the innovators of One-Minute Entomology, at which students researched and developed one-minute videos on an important insect or arthropod. Her students say she makes entomology both fun and educational and that her sense of

Lynn showing specimens to Caleb and Alia Symkowick-Rose of Sacramen-

to. Photo by Kathy Garvey.

Continued on page 5.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Spring 2016

the yellow fever mosquito, and Aedes albopictus, the Asian tiger mosquito. In the past 20 years or so both species have greatly expanded their geographic ranges due to increasing urbanization, warming climates, air travel and other forms of transportation. Today they are widely distributed globally. Combine these changes with attempts to control their populations that have been limited by economic and political factors and you have an ideal situation for these mosquitoes to thrive. Both species are considered to be peridomestic (living in and around human habitations). They do very well in urban settings. They can breed in small containers of water and they have drought resistant eggs that can dry out for extended periods. In addition, both species preferentially bite humans, and feed primarily during the day when the largest number of people are out-of-doors. These mosquitoes can feed and breed indoors.

Mosquito eradication programs in Latin America in the 1950’s and 1960’s to battle yellow fever and eradicate Aedes aegypti were largely successful. The programs greatly reduced populations of the mosquito, but by the 1980’s support for these programs waned and by 2000 the mosquito had made a full return to regions where it had been eradicated.

So this brings us to California. In 2001 Aedes albopictus was discovered in Los Angeles Co in shipments of lucky bamboo from China. Since then this species and Aedes aegypti have been found in cities across the state. In 2013 complaints about day biting mosquitoes led to the discovery of Aedes aegypti in Fresno, Madera and San Mateo counties. By 2015 the species was known from Kern, Tulare, Los Angeles, Orange, Imperial, Alameda and San Diego counties. They may be more widespread than this, but detecting them requires different trapping techniques than the ones typically used to survey mosquitoes in the state.

Continued from page 1.

Furthermore, there are 12 counties that have no mosquito abatement districts (see the map to the right).

At this point there are no known cases of transmission of Zika, chikungunya or dengue viruses within California. However, the clock is ticking. In 2014 there were more than 21 human cases of dengue and/or chikungunya in Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties, and 11-20 cases in San Diego, Alameda and San Mateo counties; all involved travelers infected overseas. Eventually a traveler with an active case of one of these viruses will be bitten by a mosquito capable of transmitting the virus.

A confounding factor in the control of many flaviviruses is that they can be transmitted transovarially, from mother mosquito to her off-spring. This makes control of these viruses very difficult unless the mosquito populations can be greatly reduced. Fortunately, there are apparently no alternative hosts other than humans for Zika, chikungunya or dengue viruses in North America.

Fortunately, there are a number of innovative techniques being tested to control the mosquitoes. Sterile male techniques have been used in the past but have a number of drawbacks. The original technique required the release of large numbers of sterile males, so that females were unlikely to mate with a male that could fertilize her eggs. This control technique is costly and works best in regions with physical boundaries, such as islands. Newer techniques involve the release of mosquitoes carrying a dominant lethal gene, or mosquitoes infected with the bacterium Wolbachia into the natural population. Wolbachia prevents viruses from replicating in the mosquitoes, thus preventing transmission.

Only time will tell how this situation will develop in California. Increased funding for abatement districts, development of districts in regions lacking them and increased funding for research and teaching are all critical for us to avoid problems with these viruses in the future.

California Department of Public Health map showing the distribution of species of mosquitoes that can transmit Zika virus . Counties in pale blue do not have mosquito abatement districts.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Spring 2016

The Bohart Museum could not function without the help of a cadre of dedicated volunteers. How these volunteers come to us is always a matter of wonder and providence. Some come to us through what could be considered more traditional means. Jeff Smith, honorary curator of Lepidoptera, has been around the Bohart as long as any of us can remember. He worked for many years as a technical advisor in a pest control company and he is a long-time collector of all things moth and butterfly. Jeff treats the Bohart Lepidoptera collection as an extension of his own and is always working to improve our holdings. Some of our volunteers come as interns looking for school credit.

Noah Crockette is a volunteer of this kind. He attends and alternative high school in Sacramento called “The Met” that requires its students to get some kind of internship where they work two days a week. They are required to do a project with an educational goal. Last year Noah worked on identifying the insects from our Belize expeditions. He is continuing this work this year, but is also competing a statistical estimate of the size of the Bohart Museum collection for his statistics class.

Some of our volunteers have had a lifelong interest in insects and come to

*Mea Culpas*

Unfortunately, we missed several important donors in our winter issue of the newsletter. Thus, we need to thank:

Financial Donors: Larry Allen, Bob Kimsey, and Bob & Connie Washino.

Book Donor: Laurel Walters

Donated Visitor Tickets: Turtle Bay Exploration Park

us as volunteers when they enter UC Davis. We get help from them and they get the satisfaction of finally meeting kindred spirits in Entomology. Brennen Dyer and Ushrayinee Sarker both started at UC Davis last fall and are now valued members of our research and outreach efforts. They have been working hard to integrate a large recent donation of insects into the collection. If the student volunteers show enough enthusiasm and skill, they often end up as employees. Brennan is currently being paid to upgrade portions of our bee collection. Some volunteers come to us in the most random ways. Our newest volunteer is Ethan Hicks. He is a running back on the Davis football team. His roommate toured the museum and talked about it as being such a great place that Ethan thought it would be a good place to visit. He came visit us and we talked him into working here a day or two a week.

Quite a number of short-term visitors have come to us as part of a class. Tabatha Yang, our outreach coordinator has collaborated with faculty in the design department and we have gotten a number of new exhibit drawers as class projects. Currently she is getting help on her class tours from four students signed up for a class on public speaking and communicating scientific information and one on environmental education.

Volunteers

Museum silliness. Graduate student Charlotte Herbert modeling a slice of phone book.

Photo courtesy of Brennan Dyer.

MORE MUSEUM NEWS

Continued from page 3.

humor is contagious.

NASA SPLAT—She was the only entomologist selected for the NASA SPLAT/Boeing team to research how to decrease bug splats on aircraft and thus increase fuel efficiency in commercial jets. “Her work is a great public service to NASA, the airline industry and air worldwide passengers who depend on travel,” her nominators said.

FBI Assist: In a highly publicized, first-of-its-kind criminal case, Kimsey identified the bugs on the radiator and air filter of a new rental car involved in a major homicide case. The suspect drove a rental car from Ohio to California and killed his family but claimed he had not

been out of Ohio. Kimsey testified that some of the bugs on the car are found only in California and/or west of the Rockies. The suspect was found guilty and trial made entomological history.

Bee Garden: As interim chair of the department, Kimsey coordinated the development and installation of the bee garden on Bee Biology Road that was named one of the top 10 garden destinations by the Sacramento Bee.

The garden (primarily funded by Häagen-Dazs), became a showpiece for the department and is a key educational effort illustrating the importance of honey bees and other pollinators.

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Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Spring 2016

Adventures in Kiwi Land

By Lynn Kimsey

This February we visited New Zealand with some old friends. As with all our trips this one was part vacation and part collecting trip. We started in Christchurch on the South Island and drove north to Picton. From there we took the ferry to Wellington on the North Island and drove up the coast to Auckland where we caught our return flight.

New Zealand has an unusual flora and fauna with perhaps the largest number of exotic species I’ve ever seen. The native flora has many trees and shrubs that date back to the Cretaceous many of which like the southern beech, are shared with other southern continents. The native fauna is equally weird. Before humans arrived on the islands there were no mammals. There were also a fairly large number of flightless birds including the moa (now extinct) and kiwis. The first humans to reach the islands, were the Maori followed by European, primarily English settlers. The European settlers brought a number of different of mammals, birds, plants and, unintentionally, insects with them from Europe In addition to the usual livestock, including horses, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and chickens, several species of deer are raised for meat. Mammals and birds were introduced for hunting, including pigeons, pheasant, and deer. California quail were also introduced for hunting. Then there were the pets. The islands now have a serious problem with feral cats. Hedgehogs, pigeons, European sparrows and ferrets were also introduced.

Then there are the exotic plants. There are literally thousands of hectares of Monterey pines and Eucalyptus, which are grown for timber. Nearly all the weeds we see in California are here too, the annual grasses, Scotch broom, gorse, and various thistles.

The insects followed a similar pattern. The dominant

pollinator species include honey bees, leaf cutter bees and several European bumblebee species. Two of the commonest butterflies that we saw on both islands were monarchs and cabbage whites. The monarchs apparently made it to New Zealand on their own. Whereas the cabbage whites seem to have found their way to the islands the same way they made it to California. There are also the usual pest scavengers, such as paper wasps and yellow jackets.

There are some really unusual native insects on the islands. Perhaps the most striking are the diverse, wingless crickets, locally known as “wetas”. These are large, sometimes really large, nocturnal crickets found in areas of native bush. They range in size from about half an inch to two or more inches long. The males often have really large protruding jaws and are capable of giving the careless handler a mighty pinch. A few found in caves have disproportionately long legs, giving them a very spider-like appearance.

One of the most peculiar insects we saw was a primitive species of mosquito, Opifex fuscatus, which is only found in New Zealand. The wrigglers and adults can be found in large numbers in tide pools on the coast (first unusual thing). The females do not

blood feed, or feed at all (second unusual thing). Finally, the males skate around on the surface of the pools like water striders searching for emerging females. They mate with females as they emerge from their pupal skin (third unusual thing).

Overall, New Zealand is a fantastic place to visit. Plenty to see and cogitate over, friendly locals, and really weird insects. Overall a great place for entomologists.

Opifex fuscatus male (left), larval tidal pool (above), with close-up of adult mosquitoes skating on the pool surface.

Me holding a smallish male weta stupidly.

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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.

Mystery Insect

We recently had an Internet request from a family in Texarcana, Texas. They wanted to know the identity of an odd insect they found in their hydroponic system (shown in the photo above).

Best we can determine this is a newly emerged, not yet hardened chironomid midge.

Piano Weirdness

Not long ago we were contacted by John Leggett, a piano tuner, who discovered something massively odd in a piano he was working on in a home near Copperopolis, California. Inside the piano where there should have been a thick layer of green and pink felt there was instead a half inch thick layer of insect skins and multicolored frass. It turned out that this was one of the most enormous infestations of carpet beetles we’ve ever seen.

The felt lining the inside of the piano was almost entirely gone, converted into beetles, skins and frass, except what was stuck to the adhesive gluing it to the piano.

Bohart Museum Society Newsletter Spring 2016

Odd Mosquito Happening

Sometimes things happen with insects that seem particularly odd or at least ironic. Recently, museum scientist Tom Zavortink identified a mosquito that had bitten retired professor and medical entomologist Bob Washino. It turns out that Bob was bitten in the Washino family garden by the mosquito named after him, Aedes washinoi.

Aedes washinoi is most closely associated with rivers in the Central Valley, particularly in areas with willow thickets, as well as estuaries and flooded thickets. Not something you think of in Davis.

Crane Flies Galore!

Crane flies, also known as mosquito hawks, mosquito eaters and daddy long legs, are one of our most distinctive spring insects. Perhaps because of the previous years of drought, followed by good rainfall this winter we have had a remarkable emergence of crane flies in the Central Valley, with unusually large numbers emerging over the past month or so.

Adult crane flies (family Tipulidae) are short-lived, generally only live a few days. Urban myths to the contrary, they don’t eat mosquitoes, nor are they giant mosquitoes. In fact adult crane flies generally don’t eat at all. Their entire, brief adult lives are spent searching for mates and laying eggs.

Carpet beetle damage inside a piano. Photo courtesy of John Leggett.

Aedes washinoi female. Photo courtesy of the

Bohart Museum.

Mystery insect. Photo courtesy of Tara Butler.

Davis crane fly. Photo by Tom Nguyen.

mailto:bmuseum@ucdavis.edu

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

Yay Spring!