UV Fluorescence in Millipedes and Scorpions
Up til this shoot, I had always assumed that scorpions were the only creatures that fluoresced under Ultra Violet (UV) light. While testing my new uber powerful UV torch in the night, I noticed a millipede that could glow under UV as well, with the strongest fluorescence from the legs.
Update 20 Nov 2013: My UV photos were recently published on WIRED, with more details on this phenomenon: The Secret World of Fluorescent Arthropods.
#1 With a normal torch, it looked like any other millipede and we would have given it a miss
#2 With a UV torch… voila!
#3 The legs and antennae were particularly bright
#4 Had a lot of shots, but mostly blur as it was moving non-stop
#5 An example where the scorpion glows under UV light, but the prey (a house centipede) does not
#6 A different scorpion with a bright glow (Hemiscorpiidae?)
#7 The babies of scorpions do not glow as much under UV light. Probably only having low amounts of beta-carboline on their exo-skeleton.
#8 Having a UV torch really makes it easier to find these beauties!
More information posted in an earlier post regarding UV fluorescence: Why do Scorpions Glow Under UV light?
#9 In this trip, we actually went straight to the fishing spiders
#10 trying to highlight the tension on the water surface
#11 The flash needs to be tilted at certain angles to get the full reflection off the water surface
#12 Unidentified caterpillar with back lighting to highlight the hair
#13 Nyctixalus pictus – Melvyn was super happy to find this!! A usual resident of Durian Loop but first time seeing it here.
#14 Quietly resting at the edge of the boardwalk. Some cyclists went past and it simply remained motionless.
#15 We got it to move to safety, and it seemed like a nicer position to shoot. lol
#16 No nice compositions, need to learn from frog king mel
#17 How it looked when Melvyn was shooting from the other side
#18 Huggy
#19 The Peekaboo
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