Microstructures minimize reflected light and maximize light absorbed by the wasp’s body, creating an effect of “overseen”
Nature is full of colorswith each one of them having a different purpose. These coloring can serve as species survival mechanisms, either to attract partners, ward off predators or even camouflage in the environment.
In this sense, a new study described, for the first time, the presence of ultrasound colors in wasps known as can-squeaks. In Brazil, these insects live in open regions of Cerrado and Caatinga.
Coloring creates an effect of “overseen”
- Witch ants, despite the name, are a group of wasps belonging to the Mutillidae family.
- One of those responsible for the work is Vinicius Marques Lopez, PhD in Entomology from the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters of Ribeirão Preto at the University of São Paulo (USP).
- He was responsible for collecting small animals.
- The analysis of these creatures revealed that rare colors are formed by microstructures that minimize reflected light and maximize the light absorbed by the wasp’s body, creating a “overestricity”.
- The findings were described in an article published in the magazine Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology .
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Color serves to ward off predators
During the study, researchers used microscopic procedures to investigate the adaptive advantages brought by ultrasound colors in wasps. They found that the material used for analysis reflected more light than the animal itself, according to the USP Journal.
In the exoskeleton of T. Bifurca Very specialized cuticles were found formed by arrangements of localized microstructures on the surface of the insect body. It has been found that the light that reaches the cuticles is progressively, being directed into these arrangements, ordered as thin pages of a book, so that very little light escape and be reflected.
It seems that, along with these ordered structures, there is also quite melanin pigment. This integument increases the time that light interacts with the structure as a whole. Because it interact longer with this structure that has melanin, the light ends up being more absorbed
Vinicius Marques Lopez, researcher at USP
The work also revealed that the colors of the wasps serve to push predators, such as birds and lizards. These animals detect the color and end up moving away by associating the tones with negative effects, such as stingers and poison.
Collaboration for the digital look
Alessandro Di Lorenzo has a degree in Journalism from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and has been working in the area since 2014. He worked on BandNews FM newsrooms in Porto Alegre and São Paulo.
