Université de Fribourg

Structural diversity with varying disorder enables the multicolored display in the longhorn beetle Sulawesiella rafaelae

Bermúdez-Ureña, Esteban ; Kilchoer, Cédric ; Lord, Nathan P. ; Steiner, Ullrich ; Wilts, Bodo

In: iScience, 2020, vol. 23, no. 7, p. -

Light control through layered photonic nanostructures enables the strikingly colored displays of many beetles, birds, and butterflies. To achieve different reflected colors, natural organisms mainly rely on refractive index variations or scaling of a fixed structure design, as opposed to varying the type of structure. Here, we describe the presence of distinct coloration mechanisms in the...