![How do Mosquitoes find their dinner?
Mosquitoes are crepuscular feeders who hunt their blood hosts at dawn and dusk. But how exactly do they find them?
[[MORE]]Mosquitoes have been found to have a distinct ordered process for hunting; smell, then...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/21fbd689a6849ad883e1e89a409c5c00/88cf5fca5019fd27-0a/s500x750/8da845a9cbf2aa4e1c2c71a205e17e152d9c7688.jpg)
How do Mosquitoes find their dinner?
Mosquitoes are crepuscular feeders who hunt their blood hosts at dawn and dusk. But how exactly do they find them?
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Amelanism
Previously I wrote about melanism (https://tmblr.co/Zyv2JsYpZGm-qa00), amelanism also exists and is characterised by a lack of melanin pigments (making it the opposite of melanism). Melanin is a pigment produced from an amino acid by a melanosome. Amelanism can affect a range of animals including fish, mammals, birds, and amphibians. However, difficulty in producing melanins affects these groups of animals differently.
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Dinosaur Tails and Birds
These 2 pictures show distinct tails in dinosaurs. The large animal is of course, Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil at the Field Museum in Chicago. The other skeleton, from the same museum, is a Deinonychus, the carnivorous dinosaurs that were the inspiration for the way the Jurassic Park series showed velociraptors. I want you to take a close look at the tails, because in these two shots you can see one of the steps involved in dinosaurs evolving into something resembling birds.
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![Morning Glory Pool
This spot, especially when caught at the right time of year, is one of the most colorful in Yellowstone National Park, flashing all the colors of the rainbow.
[[MORE]]The intense blue at the center of many hydrothermal features...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/232c28365298ad91df41d9d0cfbfe04c/60e23273d1a54544-ca/s500x750/b81c2cee1ec213285651ce001dfa722605ae84c4.jpg)
Morning Glory Pool
This spot, especially when caught at the right time of year, is one of the most colorful in Yellowstone National Park, flashing all the colors of the rainbow.
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The red eye shine seen in alligators arises when light enters the eye and hits a layer of cells called the tapetum lucidum. This membrane is located beneath the photoreceptor cells (rods and cones) in the retina and reflects light back into these cells to increase the amount of light detected, which improves an alligator’s vision in low light conditions.
Several species exhibit this phenomenon, with different colour ‘shines’ observed. Most species with eyeshine are night hunters who must make use of limited light.
-Jean
Photos by Larry Lynch (http://www.lynchphotos.com/) and David Moynahan (http://www.davidmoynahan.com/)
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A look back and update on the debate over the features in the martian meteorite ALH 84001, which led a group of researchers to propose in 1996 that they had identified evidence for martian life. Today, many of the individual features identified in that sample have been produced in the lab without the help of life, but mechanisms to produce all of them in a single rock other than the presence of life still elude researchers, leaving this rock a tantalizing mystery.
Singing Spiders
Many organisms in the animal kingdom use calls and distinct sounds to communicate with and attract potential mates (which is known as courtship behaviour). The Wolf Spider (Gladicosa gulosa) has been found to generate a sound that is similar to purring in order to attract females. Using this knowledge, researchers managed to stimulate these sounds using female scent cues to trigger the males to produce the sounds.[[more]]
Spiders in general often detect physical vibrations using organs in their legs called sensillae, which can be used to locate prey and predators. However, this sound produced by the males dragging their stridulatory organ across a surface produced both an airborne sound and vibrations. This is unique as when only the sound (not the vibrations) were played to the female spiders, they reacted in the same way as would be expected if the vibrations had been present too. Spiders do not have ears, thus how could the females hear this noise without it’s accompanying vibrations? Unfortunately, we are yet to know!
~SA
Listen to the spider noises here: http://bit.ly/1LmgPeM Picture: http://bit.ly/1FQ73TL By Philip N. Cohen Further Reading: http://bit.ly/1Ly8tQX
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Cold Water Corals
While most coral reefs are found in shallow, warm waters, there are also many species of coral that can live in cold, deep waters than live in shallow seas. How deep is deep and how cold is cold? These corals have been found at depths between 40 – 6,000 m and at temperatures as low as -1 degree Celsius.
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Troglobites: Creatures of the Cave
Troglobites are generally small creatures which are adapted to live in caves. These adaptations are so extreme that these creatures are unable to survive on the surface, and thus spend their entire life in caves. For example, due to the dark nature of caves eyes are not used; many Troglobites, therefore, have underdeveloped eyes which may even be covered with skin. Darkness also removes the need for camouflage colouring animals on the surface may have, as such many Troglobites are albino. As seen in the photo, the Titanophyllum spiriarum is a species of millipede which is a Troglobite. This species was discovered in 2011 in Greece, has no eyes, and has a very palely pigmented body. Other Troglobites include the White Cave Velvet Worm, the Alabama Cave Shrimp, and the Beauty Rat Snake.
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Stygofauna: Return to the Subterranean
The last post I wrote was a piece on Troglobites (which can be found here: http://on.fb.me/1AnfDqN). A Troglobite is an animal that lives in a cave, which is adapted to it’s surroundings to the extent they cannot live on the surface. Today I shall discuss the other type of underground fauna, stygofauna.
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