[S]cientists have dissected lots of pupae, although they’ve mostly trained their scalpels on fruit flies and blowflies. By its nature, such work always destroys the insect that’s being observed. It also only provides a snapshot in time. If you want to work out what happens as metamorphosis progresses, you need to cut open many pupae that you think are at different stages of development.
But now, two teams of scientists have started to captured intimate series of images showing the same caterpillars metamorphosing inside their pupae. Both teams used a technique called micro-CT, in which X-rays capture cross-sections of an object that can be combined into a three-dimensional virtual model.
via National Geographic
Image: Lowe et al. 2013
