[1] In 1946 the Department of Entomology established a research-oriented insect collection, and Richard Bohart contributed research material in the Diptera, Hymenoptera and Strepsiptera.
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 (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.
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.
In the fall of 1944 Bohart was assigned abroad to Guam then Okinawa for the purposes of malaria control.
In the spring of 1946 Bohart was released from the navy with the rank of lieutenant commander and returned to the University of California, Los Angeles.