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

The complete album can be viewed here.