I am extremely pleased that Current Biology has featured my focus-stacked yellow fever mosquito on this week’s cover!
This image challenged me. The small size of the animal required a motionless (=dead) subject for focus-stacking dozens of input photographs. But mosquito bodies are so delicate, so fragile, that they dry out and collapse in a matter of minutes. I burned through a few samples getting the lighting and levels right before finally nailing this one.
The cover accompanies new research from Joshua Raji et al in Matt DeGennaro’s lab showing how mosquitoes find us using our stinky acidic volatiles.
