Picture of the Week: "Jewel Caterpillar"

Photo taken by Gerardo Aizpuru

This was too interesting for me to not share it with everyone. I learned a lot from reading about this wicked looking larvae. Number one: there is this awesome website for posting nature finds called Project Noah where you can post pictures of wildlife and add the exact location where it was spotted. It acts as a social network for citizen scientists who can help each other identify the awesome creatures in their area. Number two: gelatinous caterpillars exist and they are very very pretty!  Found amongst some Mangroves in Mexico by Gerardo Aizpuru, this unusual animal was identified by one Project Noah user as Acraga coa, a buttercup colored moth. Number three: there are many moths with larvae of this type belonging to the Dalceridae family. Ferris Jabr, a blogger from Scientific American has the scoop on these glass-like organisms. The pictures in the article are awesome and just wait until you read about their sticky, gooey, spine armor. 

Picture of the Week: The Fairy Wasp

Photo Credit: A. Polilov

There has been a lot of buzz about this miniscule insect this week after a publication by Alexey Polilov demonstrated that the fairy wasp's nervous system operates with only 5% of the nucleated neurons of similar species. As you can see from the picture, which is on a 200 micron scale, the wasp is as tiny as some unicellular organisms such as the paramecium and the amoeba. The study showed that in order to exist as such a tiny multicellular creature, some structural sacrifices must be made. Thus, the loss of the nuclei from the nerve cells. This aquatic wasp is so incredibly tiny that it lays its eggs inside the eggs of other insects that also live in ponds. For more on this tiny creature, read Ed Yong's overview of this paper at Discover Blogs.