Google's doodle today celebrates the 366th birthday of Maria Sibylla Merian. In 1699 Merian traveled to Dutch Surinam in South America and spent two years studying tropical plants and animals, and in 1705 published the first book to show tropical organisms interacting in their environment. Earlier she had published two books on European insects that were the first to show plant/animal interactions in a way that modern scientists now think of as ecological relationships.
Trained as an artist from her childhood, Merian illustrated her own books, and she is often more celebrated for her art than for her science. But her work was groundbreaking, and she spent decades studying the life cycles of insects, their behavior and relationships with plants and other animals. Her writings are as important as her beautiful images, but are sometimes overlooked.
I apologize for the short diary (busy day), but hope the images below and above from her 1705 book on the insects of Surinam will speak for themselves. There are many websites and scholarly articles on her biography and work on-line; the wikipedia entry is not bad as an introduction to her work. Kim Todd's biography is also a nice read. Maria Sibylla Merian's work was hugely influential on naturalists and natural history artists who followed her, and it is wonderful that Google salutes her today.