I'm interested in measuring cuticular iridescence in Nasonia (very small parasitoid wasps), does anyone happen to know of any useful resources as to how to go about it? I've found very little so far, some in beetles but mostly only birds and very little regarding reliability of the procedures
Perhaps try publications from Pete Vukusic's lab http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/physics-astronomy/staff/pvukusic/publications and see what is done there? My understanding (not having read he most relevant papers in a while, granted) is that the essence of it is to use a high quality spectrophotometer with a nice fine probe, and measure the spectral reflectance at angles from 0 to 90 degrees relative to the surface and then measure whether the hues change. With something as small as Nasonia the problem may be the small size and require SEM to confirm surface structure, although if you could collect several and use an attenuator attached to the spectrophotometer you might be able to get a beam fine enough to measure just the wasp(s) and nothing else.
May be contact Priscilla Simonis. She is working in the field of biophotonic and may be could help you. http://directory.unamur.be/staff/psimonis
Like Sarah said, the size of your specimen will impact the measurements. But microspectrophtometer seems to me the only possibility.
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