We're talking about leafhoppers, common insects found in gardens and farms, where they are considered pests of crops. They are unremarkable except for one unique feature not seen in any other insect – They produce highly complex nanoparticles called brosomes that look like tiny soccer balls. These hollow balls are half the size of a single bacterium, filled with tiny pores, and are surprisingly uniform across species of different sizes in different parts of the world.
Leafhoppers secrete these brocosomes and then cover their entire bodies with them, which seems to have several advantages. Firstly, The particles are very hydrophobicWhich can protect insects from water and their super-viscosity urine. And it seems so too They do strange things with lightIn order to investigate, scientists from Pennsylvania State University decided to create their own brosomes in the laboratory and test them.
It's difficult to create objects this small, so the team created larger models of them, although “larger” is of course a relative term, as they were still only 20,000 nanometers wide. Then he illuminated them with infrared light of different wavelengths and observed – in fact, it turned out that the particles cut off almost all light reflection, indicating that their The main purpose is to hide insects from predators.
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