PROFESSOR Javier Alba Tercedor, of the department of zoology at the University of Granada, Spain, has been awarded the Best Film of the Year at the SkyScan Micro CT Meeting in Brussels, Belgium.
His one-minute film, ‘Micro-CT anatomical study of a female an aquatic beetle’, uses computed microtomography (CT) to show the anatomy of a small aquatic insect called Dryops, from the inside and from various angles.
Micro-CT generates high-resolution images and is non-invasive, causing no harm to the specimens.
Alba’s research has addressed several interesting aspects of beetle anatomy, such as why some species can fly by day while others only fly at night or under low temperatures (study published in the journal Plus one available at http://sl.ugr.es/01He).