POV-Ray
POV-Ray Include Files
I created these include files either because I was using the objects in several images or because I thought they might be useful to others. Feel free to use them, but please cite me as the author of the include files.
Longhorned Beetle Model
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This is a rough model of a longhorned beetle (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae). The coding is far from elegant, and I never got around to including legs. It is based loosely upon Glycobius speciosus (Say), the sugar maple borer. There are links to my publications about this fascinating insect on my publications page.
Beetle Traps
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Three types of traps so far are included. These are all traps that are commonly used in surveys for wood-boring beetles. They are usually hung from tree branches or metal stakes. So far I have modeled a Lindgren multiple funnel trap, a purple sticky trap (made famous by surveys for the new North American invasive ash tree killer, the emerald ash borer (Coleoptera: Buprestidae)), a window flight intercept trap, and a black panel trap produced by Advanced Pheromone Technologies under the name panel trap for bark beetles. This latter trap is not quite finished, but I will finish it someday and get a new include file up here when I do. The tree in the image is not included. I generated this with POV-Tree.
Indiana Crop Plants
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Don't look closely at these plants, but from far away they make moderately acceptable crop fields by copying into rows and rows into fields. Both the corn and the soybean are very simple models, in fact the corn is really only a single leaf. The soybean plant is a sphere with some very heavy bumps applied and a color gradient based on radius. They may be useful for creating landscape images with agricultural fields as with the one here.
POV-Ray Images
These are images I have generated for different purposes over the years. Feel free to use them but please just cite me as the artist. If you would like any particular piece of code or help creating some effect you see here just let me know. I am not a POV-Ray expert however, and the knowledge base community at POV-Ray is a very good source of information.
Robot Insect
This is a poster I put together for an event at the Purdue University annual Bug Bowl in April. Bug Bowl is hosted by the Department of Entomology and the Robot Insect Battles I was promoting are put on by the undergraduate entomology society, the Thomas Say Society.
Dispersal Kernel
Different individuals within a species end up moving different distances from where they start. A dispersal kernel is a probability density function that describes the probability of moving different distances. The image here shows a hypothetical dispersal kernel for some species leaving a forest patch and moving into the surrounding landscape.
Insect Cabinet
An insect collection cabinet I'm designing. The drawers will be held at a slight angle so that the specimens can be seen through the UV resistant glass. Light emitting diodes in the sides will light the cabinet from within.
Cerambycidae Tarsal Segmentation
Longhorned beetles share an unusual tarsal segmentation with the leaf beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae). The tarsi are usually 5-5-5 but appear to be 4-4-4 (five segments in the pro-, meso-, and meta-tarsi) with the fourth segment small and hidden in the notch of the third segment. This useful diagnostic feature can be difficult to see and explain in hairy-footed specimens, so I modeled the tarsi of a stainless steel longhorned beetle to show this feature. I had fun with the reflections on this model as well.