Bohart Museum to Celebrate Moth Night
Event to Take Place July 18
The Bohart Museum of Entomology will celebrate National Moth Week by hosting its annual Moth Night open house on Saturday, July 18.
The event, free and family friendly, will be held from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. in the Bohart Museum headquarters, Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus, as well as outside on the grounds where two blacklighting displays are planned.
At the blacklighting displays, visitors will watch nocturnal insects drawn to an ultraviolet light on a white sheet. One blacklighting display is to be headed by John "Moth Man" de Benedictus near the Bohart Museum, and the other by Joel Hernandez, a UC Davis entomology graduate who plans to set up a display in the nearby UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden.
De Benedictis has amassed a moth collection of some 600 species from the Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve and 300 species from his backyard in Davis. He received a grant from the former Institute of Ecology to study moths at the Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve where he collected from 1989 until the last major fire in 2020.
Hernandez maintains a blog, "The Adventures of a Moth Man," where he posts educational information and images. (See his section on blacklighting.)
The Bohart Museum's home page features an informational video on "blacklighting in a backyard at Davis," by Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas.
Kareofelas and Jeff Smith, curator of the Bohart Museum's worldwide Lepidoptera collection, will show moth specimens and answer questions.
The family arts and crafts activity "will be making moth antennae headbands," announced Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.
Chalk art will take place on the walkways in front of the Bohart Museum, where attendees can try their hand at creating moths and other insects. Inside, microscopes will be set up so visitors can examine moth specimens. They also can hold and take selfies of live stick insects (walking sticks).
"We plan to have live silk moths and hornworms, too," said Yang.
The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946, is the home of eight million insect specimens, a live petting zoo and an insect-themed gift shop.
Director of the Bohart Museum is Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair of Systematics. He is the executive associate dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and president of the American Arachnological Society.
During National Moth Week, set July 18-26, communities around the globe "come together to celebrate the beauty, diversity, and ecological importance of moths," according to the organizers.