A psychedelic pattern was created by tinkering with a magnified image of the microscopic patterns, called plaques, on the cuticle covering the back of a common woodlouse (Porcellio scaber). Stephen Lowry, who took the original shot with a scanning electron microscope, won a prize for the image in this year鈥檚 Polaroid Photomicrography Competition.
Lowry doctored the original black-and-white shot with a computer program called the Adobe Photoshop. 鈥淚 assigned a different colour to different grey levels to produce a false colour image,鈥� says Lowry, a research fellow in the department of applied biological and chemical sciences at the University of Ulster.
Lowry, who studied woodlice for his doctorate, says that thumbnail-shaped plaques help them to stay cool. Water retained in the plaques evaporates in warm and dry conditions, cooling the body. Yellow 鈥渁eroplane鈥� shapes are tricorns, sensors thought to react to touch.
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