#daddylonglegs

#daddylonglegs

Winners of the Close-up Photographer of the Year 2021The top 100 winners of Close-up Photographer of the Year 03 (2021) or CUPOTY 03 are now featured on its website showing the winners gallery.The Close-up Photographer of the Year website was the brainchild of husband-and-wife duo Tracy and Dan Calder of Winchester, UK. They wanted to put close-up, macro and micro photography on the center stage and be celebrated in its own right.Tracy, a former editor of Outdoor Photography and a features editor at Amateur Photography, has over 20 years experience in the photo magazine industry. She’s also a photography instructor at West Dean College in Sussex, and an author of Close-up & Macro Photography, which has been translated into French and Chinese. Dan is a contributor to Black + White Photography magazine.This year’s Close-up Photographer of the Year (CUPOTY 03) has more than 9000 photos from 55 countries across nine different categories. These categories are insects, animals, plants and fungi, underwater, butterflies and dragonflies, intimate landscape, manmade, micro, and young.From each category, the top three winners were chosen alongside with the other finalists. Here are the top three winners per category.#photography #CUPOTY #MacroPhotography #CloseupPhotography #photographycompetitionInsects

Scientists Genetically Engineered Daddy Longlegs Into Daddy Short LegsWhy do daddy longlegs have, well, such long legs? To find out the answer, scientists created a mutated version of the arachnid - call 'em daddy shortlegs - to find out how the animal's genetic codes evolve over time and how their legs became so lengthened.First, researchers led byGuilherme Gainett of the University of Wisconsin-Madison sequenced the genome of Phalangium opilio, a species of harvestmen or daddy longlegs. Then they used a technique called 'mRNA interference' to turn off a pair of genes associated with leg development in the embryo. The result is an animal with six of its eight legs abnormally shortened.  Gainett observed that the legs also seemed to have been transformed into a different kind of appendage called pedipalp, which is used to handle food."The genome of the daddy long legs holds great potential to clarify the complex history of arachnid genome evolution and body plan, as well as to reveal how daddy long legs make their unique long legs," said Gainett to CNET."Looking forward, we are interested in understanding how genes give rise to novel features of arachnids, such as spider fangs and scorpion pinchers, and also leveraging the genome to develop the first transgenic harvestmen," he added.Image: Gainett et al.#spider #daddylonglegs #harvestmen #geneticengineering #mRNA