The Wonderful World of Bugs

May 19, 2015

Forget about “fun and games.” Think  “fun and names.”

The open house at the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, last Sunday afternoon  focused on the theme, "Name That Bug! How About Bob?"

One of the activities involved matching a photo of a celebrity or well-known person with the genuine name of an insect.

Harrison Ford has an ant named for him: Pheidole harrisonfordi.

Someone named an Australian horse fly after singer Beyonce. It's Scaptia beyonceae

Bill Gates? Eristalis gatesi, a Costa Rican flower fly.

Charlie Chaplin is immortalized with in an insect named Campsicnemius charliechaplini, a long-legged fly.

Greta Garbo is a solitary wasp: Rostropria garbo.

Then there's the slime mold beetle that someone opted to name Agathidium bushi, for former President George W. Bush, the 43rd president. (That one proved quite controversial.)

The Bohart Museum sponsors a nonprofit biolegacy program, an opportunity to name an insect after yourself or a loved one.  This is a lasting dedication and will help support future research and discovery at the Bohart, said Lynn Kimsey, museum director and a professor of entomology at UC Davis. 

For example, there's a new wasp species named Lanthanomyia bockleri  or “The Bockler Wasp,” thanks to a concerted drive to memorialize award-winning biology teacher Donald “Doc Boc” Bockler of Arlington (Mass.) High School.  Two of his former students from the Class of 1993--Tabatha Bruce Yang of the Bohart Museum and Margaret Dredge Moore of Arlington--launched the fundraising drive to name an insect after him.  Senior museum scientist Heydon  published his work on Lanthanomyia bockleri Heydon in Zootaxa, a worldwide mega-journal for zoological taxonomists and the name is now official.  (For more information, and to get a list of species available for naming, contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.)

The Sunday crowd enjoyed meeting scientists from the Bohart Museum and the California Department of Food and Agriculture. They talked about names and admired the insect specimens and held the critters in the live "petting zoo." The pets?  Rose-haired tarantulas, walking sticks and Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

The Bohart Museum, founded by UC Davis entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007),  houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. The museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The facility is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free. Open houses, focusing on specific themes, are held on weekends throughout the academic year. 

The last open house of the year is "Moth Night," set from 8 to 11 p.m., Saturday, July 18 on the Bohart Museum grounds. Participants will learn how to collect moths and identify them.

More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting  Tabatha Yang, education and public outreach coordinator at (530) 752-0493 or tabyang@ucdavis.edu.