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Hello, and welcome.
You may have noticed that I am not one of your regular hosts, and you are correct.
My name is Sarah Suta and you can normally see me over at Bizarre Beasts,
but I heard that James, our master of microscopes,
had found something a little more macro than usual and I wanted to take a look.
I actually spent a good number of years looking through dissecting microscopes at everything
from beetles to mosquitos, and I'm excited to see what he found at an even greater magnification.
Whenever we venture together into the microscopic world,
as we often do on this channel, we never fail to find both beauty and mystery in equal measure.
It's pretty much the only guarantee we have when we point our microscope at a new sample.
We don't know exactly what we'll see, but we know it will leave us enchanted and full of questions.
And the particular beautiful mystery that we’re exploring
in this episode came to us via an unlikely source:
a gang of ruthless cats…
Let me explain.
See, a little while ago, James found himself with a bit of a problem.
He was keeping some wheat grains at home to use as food for the microbes
that he cultures and films for our enjoyment.
But before he could feed the grains to his microbes, they became infested with the larvae..
of moths.
And while James worked to find the infestation,
his pet cats took it upon themselves to deal with the situation in their own way.
What you’re looking at now, bursting with color like the northern lights,
are the wing fragments of some moths that were slain by James’s cats.
Because what does a microscopist do when they find themselves with
an unexpected abundance of moth wings?
Well, you guessed it, they place the fragments under a microscope
and attempt to reveal their secrets, of course.
But what could be that complex or enigmatic about something as everyday as a moth wing?
It turns out, the wings of moths contain many secrets that science has yet to fully explain.
Like, for example, the reason behind this mesmerizing fluorescence unfolding in front of us.
After all, you would be forgiven for generally
thinking of moths as rather drab, as far as insects go.
They’re not the most vibrant or dazzling of critters to our eyes.
But it turns out that perception is more a result
of the limitations of our sight than of their actual appearance.
Because, under ultraviolet light, the wings of these moths glow like an aurora.
Both how and why this happens, no one is honestly entirely sure.
Perhaps by exciting the wings with high energy UV light,
their scales release fluorescent particles into the water of the sample.
These particles absorb UV and re-emit the energy as visible light in the form of
vivid greens and oranges, allowing us to glimpse the hidden beauty and vibrant colouration that,
under normal circumstances, would be totally invisible to us.
And, because the wing scales themselves are hydrophobic by nature, the water
bursts with mists of fluorescent particles, resulting in the waves of light we see here.
Another idea is that the wing scales have some sort of innate UV reflection
or absorption properties, and what we’re seeing are cones of light reflected by the
deforming nanostructures that are responsible for those properties.
See, it might be surprising to learn that the overlapping microscopic
wing scales of moths and butterflies are actually one of their defining features.
Their scientific name - lepidoptera - is a reflection of this characteristic trait,
it literally translates to ‘scaly wings’.
You might have even noticed this before, if you’ve ever held a butterfly or moth,
they might have left behind a fine powder on your hand.
That powder is made up of hundreds or thousands of these wing scales,
which we’re looking at right now at high magnification.
And the intricate, complex nanostructures that line the
scales of their wings have been found to have some interesting advantages.
For example, they play very strange roles in their struggle for survival.
Some species possess elaborate nanostructures on their scales that interact with sound,
rather than light, providing them with a form of sophisticated acoustic camouflage.
For tens of millions of years, they’ve been targeted by echolocating bats that
zero in on prey by bouncing soundwaves off their bodies.
So, in response, the wing scales of some moth species have evolved to
absorb these soundwaves, cloaking their acoustic signature from unfriendly ears.
Perhaps the wing structures we’re looking at now, which interact with light waves, also evolved
for a similar defensive role in this species, scattering light as a means of visual camouflage
Or dazzling and obscuring the sight of potential predators that can perceive certain wavelengths.
Though, unfortunately for these particular moths, it clearly doesn't work against cats…
But predator avoidance is just one of many possibilities.
Lepidoptera are an ancient and diverse bunch, and their scaly wings are adapted
for a range of functions that we’re only just beginning to understand.
Some seem to use their UV reflecting wings not to hide or confuse,
but the total opposite - to communicate.
Like many other insect groups - but unlike us - the eyes of lepidopterans
are exquisitely sensitive to the UV part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
It’s the reason why researchers and hobbyists will often collect them by
shining a UV blacklight against a sheet of fabric, drawing in a range of species from far and wide.
And various lepidopterans are thought to use their UV perception and manipulation
abilities to signal amongst each other for mate attraction, species recognition,
and other secret messages we can only guess the meaning of.
So maybe the aurora we’re gazing at is more like fragments of a language that we can’t decipher,
brimming with information that only other moths can comprehend.
But the truth is, we simply don’t know.
For now at least, the beautiful mystery
of this moth wing light-show reveals just one clear message:
we still have so much left to learn.
Thank you for coming on this journey with us as we explore the unseen world that surrounds us.
And thank you to Nautilus for sponsoring this episode.
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