Sackey Juliet, Berthier Serge, Maaza Malik, Beuvier Thomas, Gibaud Alain
UNESCO-UNISA Africa Chair in Nanosciences/Nanotechnology, College of Graduate Studies, University of South Africa (UNISA), Muckleneuk Ridge, PO Box 392, Pretoria, South Africa.
Institut des NanoSciences de Paris (INSP), Pierre and Marie University - Paris 6 (UPMC), CNRS-UMR 7588, 4 Place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France.
IET Nanobiotechnol. 2018 Oct;12(7):951-955. doi: 10.1049/iet-nbt.2017.0320.
A characteristic feature of the giant owl butterfly, i.e. , is its big wing eyespot. This feature could serve as deceiving functionality for the butterfly against predators. As evidenced by scanning electron microscope (SEM) image on black part of eyespot, the scales on wing eyespot contain nanostructured ridges and cross-ribs. Applying direct measurement, statistical method, and Fourier analysis, the authors evidence that these nanostructures display order-disorder in their shape and position. The autocorrelation of SEM image provides average values of characteristic periods of the order-disorder nanostructures together with an estimation of corresponding correlation lengths. Linecuts obtained from the Fourier transform of SEM image were also analysed with the Hosemann function to extract similar information. These analyses indicate that the nanostructured order-disorder may contribute to blackness on wing eyespot. The authors thus conclude that the blackness on wing eyespot of could be attributed to contributions from both the nanostructured order-disorder and melanin pigment.
例如，大猫头鹰蝶的一个显著特征是其翅膀上的大眼斑。这一特征可能对蝴蝶起到欺骗捕食者的作用。扫描电子显微镜（SEM）图像显示，眼斑黑色部分的翅膀鳞片含有纳米结构的脊和交叉肋。通过直接测量、统计方法和傅里叶分析，作者证明这些纳米结构在形状和位置上呈现出有序-无序状态。SEM图像的自相关提供了有序-无序纳米结构特征周期的平均值以及相应相关长度的估计。从SEM图像的傅里叶变换获得的线切割也用霍斯曼函数进行了分析，以提取类似信息。这些分析表明，纳米结构的有序-无序可能有助于翅膀眼斑的黑色。作者因此得出结论，大猫头鹰蝶翅膀眼斑的黑色可能归因于纳米结构的有序-无序和黑色素色素的共同作用。
