Membracis Treehopper - Pós-Ecdise

thanks, outsidegirl0 & GavinDickerson.

That is an amazing specimen.

awesome!

thanks, luke.
thanks, Mona.
:)

beautiful :)

Wow !! Excellent series.. Thank you to sharing :)

thanks, Adi. :)
thanks saumya, I also learned. :)) you are too kind

Amazing series Sckel ! Learned lot of new things ! Thanks to your discussions ! :) :) :)

Wow..cutie pie :) Love it :)
congratulations Kel :)

Sergio, sua "suposição ruim" levou a uma discussão informativa e divertida. Obrigada. Thank you all for your wonderful comments. :)

Very, very beautiful! ^_^

Beautiful series Sckel!

This really turned into a mad discussion!! Tree/ Plant hopper at least most of the ones I have seen have red eyes and "I" have seen White Hoppers and no... they are not Albinos... but reading all the comments was fun!! ...LaurenZarate's comment made sense : )

Damn, thats is just awesome. We started with a beautiful series and a bad assumption (mine, of course), and ended up learning a lot about albinism in insects - or, better saying, the absence of. And Lauren apparently found a new interest in insect eyes. That, my friends, is what PN is all about. Thank you guys, today I learned something new.

A quick web search reveals multiple comments (incl. one from our own Eric Eaton!) that suggest that there are no "true" albino insects as they have a chitinous exoskeleton and not a vertebrate skin with melanocytes. The whitish/pale ones are all newly molted individuals
http://bugguide.net/node/view/164079

A walking plectrum... I wonder if they can be trained to guard your guitar.

(I believe the red eyes you see in albino mammals for example are because you can see through to the red retina at back of the eye)

I don't think that applies in the insect world Hema

albino's generally have red eyes.

aaa, right Sergio, I just read the rest of the conversations... I think Lauren suggested the same before

Jaja Juan, we already passed that point. The discussion now - and I think you can give a valuable opinion - is: are there albino insects? :-)

Hello guys, I don't want to spoil the party, but I don't think this is an albino insect. I think this insect just emerged as an adult (pic.5) so the cuticle is still soft and colors are still not developed.

Extraordinary. Great discussions here. Thanks all.

Very interesting and really educational. Thank you so much again Kel, for your such beautiful and valuable spotting. You are wonderful!

This is so much fun Sergio, Sckel's treehopper has promoted a study of albinism! My silly comment to Sckel was really more of a joke without thinking through the consequences of such a statement. My husband is a doctor so I went running to him about albino eyes :) He says that the Albino gene in mammals causes a total lack of pigment, including in the iris of the eyes, resulting in a colorless grey or pale blue looking eye that can also look pinkish in certain reflected light. And, that the color of our eyes is in the pigment of the iris, which protects the eye from excessive light. Albinos do not have this protection and have an excess of light entering the eye which causes them severe irritation and a need to wear hats, glasses or contacts to protect their eyes. Insect eyes can't be compared to mammal eyes, they are so much more complex with two kinds of lenses and more than one kind of pigmentation cell. The genes for eye coloring in insects must be very complex and based on both pigmentation and light refraction. So in Horseflies and syrphids for example, it is common to see all kinds of color bands and different color patterns. Lots of insects have bright red eyes and it has nothing to do with being Albinos. In fact, I doubt such a syndrome even exists for insects, i.e..one gene causing a loss of all pigmentation. They probably exhibit types of leucistic anomalies complicated by chemical and environmental contaminants, more than simple Albinism. And you are right, of course, that insect hemolymph is generally clear and would not play a role in eye color of insects. Now I want to study insect eyes in more depth! :)