Credit: Therry The and Marilee Sellers/Northern Arizona University
The flower beetle, commonly found in cotton fields and other agricultural crops, is one of the gang of contenders in the 2011 Ugly Bug Contest, hosted on ASU’s “Ask A Biologist” website. Voting for the ugliest bug continues through Dec. 15. A scanning electron microscope was used to capture this vivid, highly magnified image, which was colorized in the Arizona State University W.M. Keck Bioimaging Laboratory.