his week, we published something a little different than our typical taxonomic output. Roughly three years ago, my friend, fellow PhD student David Prötzel, discovered a fascinating phenomenon in chameleons: shining a UV torch on them made patterns of fluorescence appear on their heads and in some species across their bodies! Around the same time, we came across a beautiful photograph by the incredible Paul Bertner showing a fluorescing Brookesia superciliaris. Our research group then embarked on a mission to study how widespread this phenomenon is, the underlying physiology, and its potential significance. The results of our investigation into the phenomenon were published on the 15th of January 2018 in Scientific Reports; you can access the PDF here! The story has received quite a bit of media attention (it is already the 7th most popular Scientific Reports article of its age!). It will certainly be the crowning jewel of David’s PhD – which is as it should be, as he put an immense amount of work into this project (another of his papers was published recently as well). Here I want to give a bit of an insider view of the findings, their meaning, and how we got them.
发表于 2018-1-19 22:19
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