LOS ANGELES TIMES - In time for the Halloween festivities, residents in the Bay Area and Central California reported seeing clumps of web-like substances hanging from trees or drifting in the wind last week. The most likely sources of the spooky-looking webbing are baby spiders who use updraft winds to disperse themselves after hatching, according...
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE - UC Riverside entomology students have a new place to do their fieldwork — next door to the campus entomology museum. The Entomology Teaching Garden, which is open to the public, will serve as an “outdoor classroom and living laboratory for faculty and students,” a UCR news release states. The plant-filled garden is...
LIVE SCIENCE - Spiders are common critters. And, as almost all of Earth's 43,000 known spider species are venomous, it is likely that most people have encountered a venomous spider at one point or another. So that's the bad news. The good news, however, is that of these, only 25 species are known to have...
ENTOMOLOGY TODAY - Jacqueline Serrano, Ph.D., is a research entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) in the Temperate Tree Fruit and Vegetable Research Unit, in Wapato, Washington. She earned her B.S. in biology (2012) and Ph.D. in entomology (2019) at the University of California, Riverside. She first joined USDA-ARS as...
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE & NATURAL RESOURCES (UCANR) - Sugar-feeding ants protect pests that infect trees and damage the fruit they bear. Insecticides are often a go-to solution, but may kill beneficial insects in the process, too. Thankfully, Mark Hoddle, University of California Cooperative Extension entomologist and biological control specialist at UC Riverside, together with...
You never forget the moment when your path in life becomes clear. For Erin Wilson-Rankin, that moment came in an undergraduate classroom at Georgetown University when she learned about a caterpillar that evades predators by flinging its poop. “It was actually my professor, Martha Weiss, talking about her own research into the silver-spotted skipper butterfly...
NEW YORK TIMES - In the last 20 years, the rusty patched bumblebee population declined by 87 percent because of habitat loss, use of pesticides and disease. This fuzzy bee, native to the continental United States, gets its name from the rusty patch on its back. “While regional studies have tracked the decline of native...
Dear CNAS Colleagues, Over the Thanksgiving holiday, many of us reflected on this year and all we are thankful for. I would like to express my gratitude to each and every one of you. Every member of the CNAS community has been instrumental in helping our students, the college, the university, and each other navigate...
UC ANR - Termites can eat you out of house and home by chewing through wood and weakening the structure. The results of a new termite study led by entomologists at UC Riverside may enable homeowners to rid their homes of termites with a safer, effective pest control approach. “Combining a volatile essential oil with...
By Pamela Kan-Rice | UC Agricultural & Natural Resources |
CA AG TODAY - The Argentine Ant is a problem in citrus orchards and vineyards mostly because it protects sap-sucking pests from natural predators. Entomologist Dr. Mark Hoddle and his team at UC Riverside have created a tool to help farmers more effectively manage these ants based on the fact that the like to move...
