Optics of the ultraviolet reflecting scales of a jumping spider.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Land MF
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2169283 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jul
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Optics of the ultraviolet reflecting scales of a jumping spider.
Land Michael F MF Horwood Julia J Lim Matthew L M ML Li Daiqin D
Proceedings. Biological sciences 20070701 1618
The jumping spider Cosmophasis umbratica from Singapore is strongly sexually dimorphic. The males, but not the females, reflect ultraviolet as well as green-orange light. The scales responsible for this are composed of a chitin-air-chitin sandwich in which the chitin layers are three-quarters of a wavelength thick and the air gap a quarter wavelength (where lambda=600 nm, the peak wavelength of the principal reflection maximum). It is shown that this configuration produces a second reflectance p ...[more]
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