blue moon

tags: Frankfurter Blauer Mond, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, photography Frankfurter Blauer Mond (Frankfurt Blue Moon). Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Those are the Taunus mountains in the background. Image: GrrlScientist, 1 January 2010 [larger view]. This isn't in perfect focus and it unfortunately has a reflection from the window pane, but I managed to get one decent photograph of the Blue Moon over Frankfurt to share with you.
The drawers of the world's museums are full of pinned, preserved and catalogued insects. These collections are more than just graveyards - they are a record of evolutionary battles waged between animals and their parasites. Today, these long-dead specimens act as "silent witnesses of evolutionary change", willing to tell their story to any biologist who knows the right question to ask. This time round, the biologist was Emily Hornett, currently at UCL, and her question was "How have the ratios of male butterflies to female ones changed over time?" You would think that the sex ratios of…