Laura C. Manella
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This page is a collection of original artwork, with (mostly) science and nature themes.
Pollinators are cool. They use visual signals (into the uv range (left), and odor signals to identify nectar sources on flowers.
Rainbow scarab beetle. "The creator, if He exists, has an inordinate fondness for beetles," said maybe JBS Haldane.
Mantis shrimp use their amazing vision to recognize other individuals by their color patterns! Which is helpful for interactions like ritualized fighting.
Lionfish, native to the Indo-Pacific, are invasive in places like Florida. There, it is always open season on lionfish because they are so detructive to local wildlife.
Aside from reminding me of the creatures in Tremors, Lampreys are ancient jawless fishes that have very simple pattern of movement: they've been used as a model to study spinal motor circuits.
Chitala chitala, knifefish, or featherback, is an south Asian river fish that can get up to 4ft long. Males protect their eggs aggressively against passersby- even people in boats!
Juvenile spotted drum, or Equetus punctatus, These fishy musicians create drum beat sounds using their own belly muscles as drum sticks on their air-filled swim bladder.
African Mormyrid fishes use species-specific weak electric signals to communicate with other electric fishes, likely because murky fresh water makes it hard to see.
Fairy wrasse are perhaps all born female. Only later do some dominant individuals become male and totally shift their body plan. Isn't sexual differentiation neat?
The octopus is a wonder of the invertebrate world: smart, able to squeeze through tiny spaces, and camouflage itself to evade predators.
Slice of a rat olfactory bulb--a concentric, layered structure. Each of the green blobs in the outer layer are called glomeruli, where odor information enters the brain from odor neurons in the nasal passages.
The mammalian hearing organ, or cochlea, is snail shaped and the size of a pea. Somehow, it still manages to convey information about sound frequency and loudness to the brain.
Polar bears are excellent mothers. They nurse their young for up to 30 months, and will risk their own lives to protect their cubs.
My cat, Freddie, crossed with the Cheshire cat. Mischievous, no?
This superb fairy wren, from Australia, forms pair bonds, but are known cheaters. This is probably why males have such elaborate feather patterns--to attract mistresses.
Not to burst your love bubble, but while love birds do form close pair bonds, they do not necessarily mate for life, and will relatively easily pair bond with another bird if the need arises.
Manduca sexta larva. Manduca are a great pollinator study species. Researchers use flower choice assays to see what flower components (particularly odors), are important to these moths.
Ostrich I painted at a wine and paint night!
Human heart, in acrylic. It amazes me that something so simple is a major key to keeping us alive.
Watercolor flowers I painted for my wedding invitations.
Small bee (?) on a wild flower.
Waves crashing onto a cliff. Fun with pallet knives!
My interpretation of a cross section of a fall colored tree.
A logo I made for Central New York chapter of Destination Imagination.
Island of Capri, on the northeast coast.
A foray into abstract splatter painting. I think it kind of looks like a neuronal network, where certain cell types are tagged with different colors.
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