Giraldo M A, Yoshioka S, Liu C, Stavenga D G
Biophysics Group, Institute of Physics, University of Antioquia, Calle 70 #52-21, AA 1226, Medellín 050010, Colombia
Tokyo University of Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Physics, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda-shi, Chiba-ken 278-8510, Japan.
J Exp Biol. 2016 Dec 15;219(Pt 24):3936-3944. doi: 10.1242/jeb.148726.
Morpho butterflies are universally admired for their iridescent blue coloration, which is due to nanostructured wing scales. We performed a comparative study on the coloration of 16 Morpho species, investigating the morphological, spectral and spatial scattering properties of the differently organized wing scales. In numerous previous studies, the bright blue Morpho coloration has been fully attributed to the multi-layered ridges of the cover scales' upper laminae, but we found that the lower laminae of the cover and ground scales play an important additional role, by acting as optical thin film reflectors. We conclude that Morpho coloration is a subtle combination of overlapping pigmented and/or unpigmented scales, multilayer systems, optical thin films and sometimes undulated scale surfaces. Based on the scales' architecture and their organization, five main groups can be distinguished within the genus Morpho, largely agreeing with the accepted phylogeny.
闪蝶因其翅膀上呈现出的虹彩蓝色而广受赞誉，这种蓝色源于其翅膀上具有纳米结构的鳞片。我们对16种闪蝶的色彩进行了比较研究，探究了不同组织结构的翅膀鳞片的形态、光谱和空间散射特性。在之前的众多研究中，闪蝶明亮的蓝色完全归因于覆盖鳞片上表层的多层脊状结构，但我们发现覆盖鳞片和底面鳞片的下层通过充当光学薄膜反射器发挥了重要的额外作用。我们得出结论，闪蝶的色彩是重叠的有色素和/或无色素鳞片、多层系统、光学薄膜以及有时呈波浪状的鳞片表面的微妙组合。基于鳞片的结构及其组织方式，闪蝶属内可区分出五个主要类别，这在很大程度上与公认的系统发育一致。
