Stavenga Doekele G, Leertouwer Hein L, Meglič Andrej, Drašlar Kazimir, Wehling Martin F, Pirih Primož, Belušič Gregor
Department of Computational Physics, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
Department of Biology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
PeerJ. 2018 Apr 11;6:e4590. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4590. eCollection 2018.
The palm borer moth (Castniidae; giant butterfly-moths) has brown dorsal forewings and strikingly orange-coloured dorsal hindwings with white spots surrounded by black margins. Here, we have studied the structure and pigments of the wing scales in the various coloured wing areas, applying light and electron microscopy and (micro)spectrophotometry, and we analysed the spatial reflection properties with imaging scatterometry. The scales in the white spots are unpigmented, those in the black and brown wing areas contain various amounts of melanin, and the orange wing scales contain a blue-absorbing ommochrome pigment. In all scale types, the upper lamina acts as a diffuser and the lower lamina as a thin film interference reflector, with thickness of about 200 nm. Scale stacking plays an important role in creating the strong visual signals: the colour of the white eyespots is created by stacks of unpigmented blue scales, while the orange wing colour is strongly intensified by stacking the orange scales.
棕榈蛀蛾（Castniidae；巨型蝶蛾）前翅背面呈棕色，后翅背面颜色鲜艳，为橙色，带有白色斑点，斑点周围有黑色边缘。在此，我们运用光学显微镜、电子显微镜以及（显微）分光光度法，研究了不同颜色翅区的翅鳞片结构和色素，并通过成像散射法分析了其空间反射特性。白色斑点处的鳞片无色素，黑色和棕色翅区的鳞片含有不同量的黑色素，橙色翅鳞片含有一种吸收蓝光的眼色素。在所有鳞片类型中，上表皮起漫射器作用，下表皮起薄膜干涉反射器作用，厚度约为200纳米。鳞片堆叠在产生强烈视觉信号方面起着重要作用：白色眼斑的颜色由无色素蓝色鳞片堆叠形成，而橙色翅的颜色则通过橙色鳞片堆叠而强烈增强。
