Fast Fauna Facts #3 - Winged Argonaut (Argonauta Hians)

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Photinus fireflies are probably one of North America’s most iconic and beloved beetles, and rightfully so. P. pyralis is big and bright, with a yellow-green color to its bioluminescence

I also often see these smaller Photinus with a warm orange glow. I think they could be P. scintillans, which aligns with their size, flash pattern, the yellow sclerites on males, and where I’m located. females of that species are short-winged and flightless, so I’ll try to find one to figure out the ID for sure.

reminder that fireflies eat slugs and snails as larvae! if you like seeing them in your garden, stop trying to exterminate land gastropods and leave some vegetation where the adults can sleep during the day. slugs and “weeds” = more magic glowing bugs

Snails in the genus Julia have a bivalved shell, like a clam!

Even though they have a clam like shell, with 2 sections, they are in fact snails (class Gastropoda). They are marine snails, found throughout the Ino-Pacific. There are 6 species which are various shades of green. Julia are tiny, only reaching a length of up to 6 mm long. They feed on algae, and incorporate the chloroplasts from the algae into their bodies. Some of the chloroplasts remain photosynthetic, and the snails are able to feed on the products of this photosynthesis. This process is called kleptoplasty.

Photos: Julia sp. from Australia  - profmollusc | Inaturalist cc; Julia exquisita from Reuinion Island - Alexandre LaPorte | Wikipedia cc

phys.org

New 'chiral vortex' of light allows chemists to 'see' molecules through the mirror

An entirely new structure of light is helping to measure chirality in molecules more accurately and robustly than ever before, in a major po

An entirely new structure of light is helping to measure chirality in molecules more accurately and robustly than ever before, in a major potential step for the pharmaceutical industry. Published in Nature Photonics, a team from King's College London and the Max Born Institute have created an entirely new structure of light that traces out a chiral curve over time. This chiral curve has different shapes at different points in space, forming a vortex structure. By interacting with chiral particles it moves through over time, the new "chiral vortex" provides an accurate and robust form of measurement.

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my fish delivered a hot new reaction image

ScienceAlert

Ancient Genes of Zombie Viruses Revealed as Hidden Drivers of Cancer

When viruses pay us a visit, they sometimes leave parts of themselves behind.

When viruses pay us a visit, they sometimes leave parts of themselves behind. Silently tucked away in our genomes, some of these bits of foreign DNA can get passed down through the generations. They were long thought inactive, but we've since learned these stowaway sequences can be turned back on to wreak all sorts of havoc. Now researchers led by University of Colorado bioinformatician Atma Ivancevic, have found cancers can make use of some of these zombie virus parts for their own benefit.

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A Chart of Various Cephalopod Orders