Butterfly Wings Inspire Scientists to Come Up With Amazing Technologies

The blue iridescent wings of the tropical Morpho butterfly are inspiring a wide array of technologies, according to a recent international research. Several important findings are based on studies of this beautiful butterfly. Designs of modern fabrics, make-up and even displays are influenced by the research of these creatures.

A scientist team from the University of Exeter together with researchers from General Electric Global Research Center, University at Albany and Air Force Research Laboratory found out that the physical structure and the chemistry of the Morho butterfly’s wings have interesting properties, which could be used in a variety of useful ways. The design could be useful for protective fabrics, self-cleaning surfaces, photonic security tags and even industrial sensors.

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The scales of these butterfly species’ wings absorb and reflect certain light rays the same as pigments and dyes do. This allows them to create color and dynamically control the light flow, which is great for regulating temperature as well as camouflage. The iridescent coloring is created by tiny tree-like microstructures instead of chemical pigmentation, which is the way we usually perceive colors. The nanostructures from which the wing scales are made, respond to gases differently on the top of the scales than the bottom, making them versatile even on nanoscale, while before it was believed, that such structures were possible only on microcsale.

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The team of interdisciplinary scientists such as physicists, chemists, biologists and materials scientists unveiled the existence of surface polarity gradient which makes the Morpho butterfly scales so unique. This discovery creates a lot of possibilities when designing sensors or multicolored fabrics and similar materials. Usually sensors and multicolored fabrics are made out of a variety of separate sensors, but this finding can create sensors which work within a single chemically graded nanostructured sensing unit.

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The understanding of iridescence in flying insects such as butterflies or moths, has revolutionized the understanding of natural photonics. Now scientists can work on applying these exceptionally small photonic sensors in a wide range of different technologies.

Amazing Macro Photography of Insects

Point of view is everything. And that is particularly true when considering these amazing macro photography by Ondrej Pakan. He takes scary crawlies that you’d normally steer clear of and turns them into something stunning.

Blue Damselfly

                                                                                                         credit: Ondrej Pakan

Red Sonya

                                                                                                  credit: Ondrej Pakan

Dew Covered Bug Eyes

                                                                                                     credit: Ondrej Pakan

Red Sonya

                                                                                          credit: Ondrej Pakan

Just a Fly

                                                                                              credit: Ondrej Pakan

Can you guess what this insect is?

                                                                                                        credit: Ondrej Pakan

Rhyno

                                                                                          credit: Ondrej Pakan

Hippie

                                                                                                    credit: Ondrej Pakan

Red Head

                                                                                             credit: Ondrej Pakan

Abracadabra

                                                                                    credit: Ondrej Pakan

If you haven’t had enough , you can see more macro photography over at Ondrej’s website.

Two Gender Chimeras: Bilateral Gynandromorphs

Biologically there are three sexes: female, male and intersex. The sex of a creature is defined by internal and external bodies, sexual anatomy, chromosomes and hormones. Although most of animals fit into either female or male category, intersex in animal kingdom is more common than you might think. It can be represented in many different ways such as ambiguous genitals or DNA chromosomes that are responsible for determining the gender. This time let’s take a look at the strange nature phenomenon known as bilateral gynandromorphs.

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What are bilateral gynandromophs? Gynandromorphs are individuals that have some male and some female characteristics or in other words, they belong to intersex gender. Bilateral gynandromorphs are animals that are half male and half female, divided lengthways. Lepidoptera species that include moths and butterflies have shown a big number of such specimens. For example, in the picture above you can seePolyommatus icarus also known as the Common Blue butterfly that is half male and half female.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

This phenomenon is occasionally spotted among other species such as crustaceans, although the likelihood to see a bilateral gynandromorph specimen outside of lepidoptera species is very, very low. If we take a look at lobsters, for example, the chance of meeting a bilateral gynandromorph  lobster is 1 in 30 million. The odds are a bit higher if you look at the insect world. Fruit flies sometimes look like they have been split right in the middle and glued together – half brown, half yellow. Sometimes one eye is white while other is red. The genitalia of these specimens can be unique such as two full sets of both male and female genitalia. However, most of the time the genitalia is a mix of tissues that don’t look like either male or female reproductive organs.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The reason why this happens is because of chromosome mutations. Normally sex is determined using the XX/XY system, where females have 2X chromosomes and males have 1X and 1Y chromosome. Occasionally a mutation can happen where one female chromosome is lost during the first mitotic division in a female zygote. In this situation, one of the daughter nucleus  has 2X chromosomes (XX), and the other daughter nucleus contains only 1X chromosome (XO). The XX nucleus will create a female body while XO nucleus will create a male body in spite of the lack of Y chromosome. That means that the “splitting” of the body has happened during the first mitotic division, when the sex of both the left and the right side has been determined.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

When it comes to why the physical features are so different such as the body or eye color, the reason of this is that the eye and body color genes are found within the X chromosome. If the loss of X chromosome happens after the first mitotic division, the animal will become a mosaic gyandromorph. That means it would have patches or regions that are male and female instead of the sharp bilateral contrast between the male and female body halves. These creatures are also known as chimeras, which are essentially the opposite of identical twins, where one embryo turns into two.