I'm working on posts on the next steps in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear cleanup and China's evolving climate policy, but have been briefly diverted (I was once described as too A.D.D. to get a Ph.D.) by a fly:
Goniurellia tridens is a 3-in-1 insect
[photo: Peter Roosenschoon] http://t.co/i8ThAOkrvN
— Zoanthrope (@ziyatong) 4 Nov 13
David Rothenberg's engaging reflection on evolution and aesthetics, "Survival of the Beautiful," came to mind as this amazing photograph, taken in Dubai by Peter Roosenschoon, a conservation officer at the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, circulated on Twitter (thanks to Ziya Tong, a host of Daily Planet, a Discovery program in Canada).
I did a bit of sifting and found more photos from Roosenschoon on the UAE Birding Web site and a very nice description of what's known about this species in The National, an English language Emirates newspaper. Here's an excerpt from the fascinating piece, by Anna Zacharias:
[A] closer examination of the transparent wings of Goniurellia tridens reveals a piece of evolutionary art. Each wing carries a precisely detailed image of an ant-like insect, complete with six legs, two antennae, a head, thorax and tapered abdomen.
"The image on the wing is absolutely perfect," says Dr. Brigitte Howarth, the fly specialist at Zayed University [link] who first discovered G. tridens in the UAE.
It is a member of tephritidae, a family – there are two – of 5,000 species of fruit flies whose colorful markings have earned them the name "peacock flies."
In the UAE alone, 27 picture wing species are known. Some have wings bearing simple shapes but others, like G. tridens, are far more complex.
Dr Howarth first saw G. tridens on an oleander shrub in northern Oman. "I was looking at the stem of the leaves and I noticed that there were some insects crawling around. When I sort of honed in I started to notice what I thought was a couple of ants moving around."
At first she suspected an infestation on the fly's wings. "But it was so symmetrical that I thought, 'oh this is not possible'. When I got it under the microscope I realized that these were insects painted onto the wings."
[Read the rest.]
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 5, 2013
I initially spelled Ziya Tong's last name Tang. A tweet directed me to the error.
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