Richard Mitchell Bohart (September 28, 1913 – February 1, 2007) was an American

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

, university professor, and a member of the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

Department of Entomology for more than 50 years. He taught courses in general entomology, insect systematics, and summer field courses in insect identification. From 1963 to 1967 he served as chair of the Department of Entomology for the University of California at Davis. In 1946 the Department of Entomology established a research-oriented insect collection, and Richard Bohart contributed research material in the

Diptera Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced ...

Hymenoptera Hymenoptera is a large order (biology), order of insects, comprising the sawfly, sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are Par ...

and Strepsiptera. Bohart's interests in aculeate wasps resulted in one of the most comprehensive collections in the USA. His contributions to the Department of Entomology led to the dedication of the on campus

Bohart Museum of Entomology The Bohart Museum of Entomology was founded in 1946 on the campus of the University of California, Davis. The museum is currently the seventh largest insect collection in North America with more than seven million specimens of terrestrial and f ...

, named after him in 1986.

Early life

Bohart was born in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

, in 1913. As a child he had many interests: playing around with clay, looking at pretty woman, playing sports, and collecting fossils, rocks and bugs. He was known as "Dick" to friends and family.

Research history

Bohart's experiences in butterfly collecting transitioned to a more scientific endeavor after making an insect collection to satisfy requirements for a University of California, Berkeley field course in entomology. He found a bee ('' Andrena'') which had a sack-like parasite protruding from its abdomen which was identified by E. C. VanDyke as a female ''

Stylops ''Stylops'' is a genus of obligately endoparasitic insects in the family Stylopidae. Hosts are typically members of the order Hymenoptera. The name "stylops", used without a capital "s", refers as a common name to any member of the order Stre ...

'' (order Strepsiptera). This interested Bohart enough to a point where he continued to study Strepsiptera and eventually made them the subject of his Ph.D. thesis in 1938. After he was married, in 1939, and moved to

West Los Angeles West Los Angeles is an area within the city of Los Angeles, California. The residential and commercial neighborhood is divided by the Interstate 405 freeway, and each side is sometimes treated as a distinct neighborhood, mapped differently by di ...

, Bohart was doing research and teaching at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. There Bohart was researching the sod webworm that was infesting his own front yard lawn from 1938 to 1941. In November 1942 Bohart was drafted into the

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

then transferred into the US Navy Medical Corps as an ensign. Here he taught

malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...

and mosquito control at Camp LeJeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and then at Marine base,

Camp Perry Camp Perry is a National Guard training facility located on the shore of Lake Erie in northern Ohio near Port Clinton. In addition to its regular mission as a military training base, Camp Perry also boasts the second largest outdoor rifle range ...

in Williamsburg, Virginia. In the spring of 1944 Bohart was transferred to Washington, D.C., and assigned to Naval Medical Research Unit #2 housed at the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. Almost immediately Bohart was sent to Orlando and Tallahassee, Florida, to study mosquitoes for a month. In the fall of 1944 Bohart was assigned abroad to Guam then Okinawa for the purposes of malaria control. In the fall of 1945 Bohart remained in the navy to complete his research on mosquitoes. In the spring of 1946 Bohart was released from the navy with the rank of lieutenant commander and returned to the

. The number of journal article publications authored by Bohart total over 200 over his research career.

University of California, Davis career

Richard Bohart transferred to the

University of California at Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

from the University of California campus in Los Angeles in 1946. As the Davis campus began to declare administrative independence from the campus at Berkeley the departments of entomology at both campuses became independently governed. Bohart became vice chairman of the Davis campus Department of Entomology in 1957. From 1963 to 1967 Bohart served as chair for the Department of Entomology at UC Davis. During the time Bohart spent at the University of California, Davis, he contributed in building the university's insect collection. In the early 1940s the insect collection used for study at UC Davis had a limited number of specimens available. The university's commitment to establish a research-oriented collection in 1946 required that the collection be expanded. Bohart contributed insects in the orders of

and Strepsiptera. His interest in aculeate wasps contributed to how comprehensive the collection has become today. The collection is now housed in the university's

and is the seventh largest insect collection in North America. In 2001 Bohart married Chilean entomologist , who was a graduate student at the Bohart Museum. Elizabeth is a

coleopterologist Coleopterology (from Coleoptera and Greek , ''-logia'') is the scientific study of beetles, a branch of entomology. Practitioners are termed coleopterists and form groups of amateurs and professionals for business and pleasure. Among these is Th ...

who works at the

Essig Museum of Entomology The Essig Museum of Entomology is a research museum dedicated to terrestrial arthropods, located at the University of California at Berkeley. It contains perhaps the world's largest collection of California insects and has been ranked among the top ...

(UC Berkeley).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bohart, Richard M. 1913 births 2007 deaths Academics from Palo Alto, California American entomologists University of California, Davis faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area United States Navy Medical Corps officers United States Army soldiers United States Army personnel of World War II 20th-century American zoologists Military personnel from Palo Alto, California

Early life

Research history

University of California, Davis career

See also

References