THE SIERRA NEVADA — The windshield of Dave Hawks' 1994 Toyota 4Runner is splattered yellow, but Hawks doesn't mind. He's speeding north on U.S. 395, past Adelanto, Boron and Ridgecrest and running the wipers would only make matters worse. Besides, it's now a point of discussion.
"It's all the fat in their bodies," he says, explaining why this butterfly -- the painted lady -- makes such a distinctive impression. "They need that fat for energy because they have such a long migration."
Spend time in an entomologist's company and you make peace with insect juice. But Hawks, a 49-year-old research associate from UC Riverside, isn't just an entomologist. He's a coleopterist, a tongue-tangling sub-species devoted to the study of beetles.
Catch him in his native element -- the foothills and mountains of California -- and you'll find him chasing down a local variety of these bugs, often in the predawn and often in the cold rain.
He will probably be smiling too, for only under these conditions is he able to find the ever-elusive rain beetle, an insect whose mysterious habits might just tell us one day how California, this far-flung edge of the continent, formed and became home to such a wild diversity of flora and fauna.
Hold this beetle in your hands and you'll stare down nearly 100 million years of evolutionary history, beyond ice ages and the origins of modern man, to the extinction of dinosaurs and the drifting of continents, to a time when the western edge of North America was but a sliver of mountains, these mountains just shy of Nevada, and nothing more.
Now if only rain beetles were easier to catch.
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Perhaps the best introduction to Pleocoma, as this genus of bugs is formally known, begins at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park. Step past the dinosaurs and dioramas, take the elevator to the third floor where the Entomology Department houses 5.5 million specimens and pull out Drawer No. 04955.
Pinned to a bed of what looks like white cotton are 100 red-amber and light-brown beetles, no larger than a half-dollar, their exoskeletons glistening with oil, their undercarriages fuzzy with fur. If you pick one up by the head of its pin, you'll find beneath it a tiny label covered with tinier type.
1-20-57. 5 mi. N. Beverly Hills, Oak Pass Rd., Sta Monica Mts., LA Co., Calif, 1100', Noel McFarland.
CA Los Angeles Co. Mulholland Hwy. Allenwood Dr. 20 Nov 83 S. Riff
