Structural colors of blue butterflies: from photonic nanoarchitectures to DNA

Gábor Piszter; Krisztián Kertész; Gábor Sramkó; Zsolt Bálint; László Péter Biró

doi:10.1117/12.2638427

3 October 2022 Structural colors of blue butterflies: from photonic nanoarchitectures to DNA

Gábor Piszter, Krisztián Kertész, Gábor Sramkó, Zsolt Bálint, László Péter Biró

Proceedings Volume 12214, Light in Nature IX; 1221408 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2638427
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2022, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The photonic nanoarchitectures in the wing scales of butterflies play an important role in the imaginal life of these insects, and they are developed under high evolutionary pressure. These nanocomposites of chitin and air can generate vivid structural colors that are mainly used for sexual communication. In the case of the butterfly species Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus), the nanostructures are reproduced so precisely, that only a ±10 nm peak position variation can be measured in the reflectance spectra of the blue structural color of the wings, which requires nanometer-scale accuracy in the reproduction of the photonic nanoarchitectures. Therefore, these precisely replicated nanoporous structures are promising templates of the future artificial photonic materials and also can be used in the potential applications. In this work, we present the results of our investigations regarding the relationship of the male structural colors with their population genetic structure across the Western Palearctic region. When natural populations were compared to an inbred lineage raised in a custom-made insectarium, variation of the structural color have been discovered which may have genetic background. The population genetic data showed significant differences between the wild European and the inbred lineages while only a minor shift was found in the structural color. This was still in the wavelength range defined by the European populations which is in good agreement with the previous observations that the sexual signaling color is essentially stable over a distance of 1600 km within Europe.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Gábor Piszter, Krisztián Kertész, Gábor Sramkó, Zsolt Bálint, and László Péter Biró "Structural colors of blue butterflies: from photonic nanoarchitectures to DNA", Proc. SPIE 12214, Light in Nature IX, 1221408 (3 October 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2638427

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