• Night Photography with Bugs

Note: HORNWORMS DON'T ACTUALLY FLUORESCE under blacklight... It's just that it's easier to find them because of regular light reflection from their body stripes using the blacklight.

Still, hunting for hornworms at night is way more fun (and easy) than in the heat of the day. And with the blacklight, I saw all kinds of other insects that weren't truly fluorescing, but (like the hornworms) their white patches reflected the light really well.

hornworm with blacklight (above) and same hornworm with flashlight (below)


Over a year later, it was just luck that I tried the blacklight on the tortoise beetles, found out how cool they are. Scroll down for more on tortoise beetles...

Another gorgeous hornworm



some type of hairy fly with blacklight (below) and with flashlight (above)



Tortoise beetles ... they REALLY do fluoresce (at least, that's what it looks like to me).

Here's a link to the blog where I tried to tell the complete story:   https://nmsudesertblooms.blogspot.com/2020/07/glow-in-dark-tortoise-beetles.html

Excerpt: "Important side story: Last year, I saw a post about tomato hornworms being easier to find at night with a blacklight. Some arthropods fluoresce, or glow, under ultraviolet light (like from an electric blacklight). So I bought a $7 UV flashlight from a discount hardware store. It turns out not to be true for tomato hornworms—or not completely true. They are easier to find at night with a blacklight, but it’s not that they actually glow as much as their stripes reflect light, and it catches the eye."


the underside of tomato leaf under blacklight - again, not truly fluorescing, but reflecting light in a pretty awesome way


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