This Bug's for You

Last weekend we spotted a San Francisco-bound car sporting a bumper sticker that read simply:

"I brake for bugs."

Indeed.

Bugs rule. Bugs are cool. Bugs are definitely worth stopping for (especially if it's the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis which houses seven million specimens).

Lot of brakin' going on.

Which brings us to what the Royal Entomological Society, United Kingdom, did.

The society invited 23 distinguished entomologists and entomologists-in-training to write a daily blog about bugs during National Insect Week. The blogs are online--and let's hope this really catches on.

Two of the distinguished entomologists are from the University of California: professor Peter "Pete" Cranston of the UC Davis campus and professor Thomas "Tom" Miller of the UC Riverside campus.

They're "bug bloggers" extraordinaire.

Cranston, recently awarded an honorary membership in the Royal Entomological Society, teaches teaches systematic entomology and biodiversity at UC Davis and serves as the co-editor of the Royal Entomological Society’s journal Systematic Entomology. His research interests include the systematics, ecology and biogeography of aquatic insects, particularly the Chironomidae (non-biting midges).

His blog bio indicates: "In his childhood years in the West Midlands of the UK in the 1950s, he was allowed, even encouraged, to roam the countryside with friends and siblings, and he developed a fascination with aquatic wildlife--birds, mammals and the larger insects. His formal education built on these interests, thanks to the support of a high-school biology teacher who encouraged him to undertake fieldwork projects."

Cranston went on to earn his bachelor's degree in biology at the University of London. For his doctorate, also obtained from the University of London, he studied the development stages (larvae and pupae) of the dominant group of aquatic flies--the chironomid midges.

If you're an entomology student, you probably have a copy of the popular textbook, The Insects: An Outline of Entomology, written by Cranston and Penny Gullan, also an entomology professor at UC Davis.

As for Tom Miller, he teaches insect physiology, insect toxicology and first-year biology at UC Riverside. He earned his doctorate in entomology at UC Riverside in 1967. He then served a year as a research associate at the University of Illinois and a year as a NATO postdoctoral fellow at Glasgow University before joining the UC Riverside faculty in 1969.

Miller's research interests: the structure and function of the insect circulatory system; the mode of action of insecticides; insect neuromuscular physiology; physiology, toxicology and behavior of pink bollworm in cotton fields; transgenic insects; applied symbiosis for crop protection; and biopesticides for crop protection.

Miller received the coveted Gregor J. Mendel Medal for Research in Biological Sciences in 2003 from the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Take a look at their blogs. You'll find them fascinating. Here's the direct link to Cranston's blog. Here's the direct link to Miller's blog.