It's Valentine's ❤️
It's Valentine's and this week's post is all about ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ Fun fact of the week Image modified from Glenn et al., 2010 Mosquitoes have an elongated tube-shaped heart spanning their body length. A mosquito has a heart rate of about 82 beats per minute pumping its blood towards the mosquito's head, but sometimes in a reversed direction towards the tip of its abdomen. About the image: Hillyer Laboratory at Vanderbilt University published an extensive study on mosquito cardiac system. The image here shows the heart tube running along the mosquito's abdomen. Here, muscle fibers are visualized by a green fluorescent dye. There is a network of muscle spiraling along the heart tube (blue arrows). The triangular bundles of muscles serve to anchor the heart to the mosquito 's back (red arrows). More about this cool study at: Glenn JD, King JG and Hillyer JF (2010). Structural mechanics of the mosquito heart and its function in bidirectional hemolym