Cuckoo Wasp
The contributor, Ulrike Schulz, reports: “I was sitting with my computer on my garden terrace in the city of Jena, Germany, as this little insect sat down on my arm. I put it on my finger and took the photograph with my iPhone 11. It’s such a nice example of perfect optics in nature!”
The insect is a cuckoo wasp (Chrysis ignita), which, according to Schulz, can be found across the European continent. “It shows brilliant interference colors produced by well-defined nanostructures. The beautiful coloration changes with the angle of light incidence.”
—Ulrike Schulz, Fraunhofer, IOF