Painted wings
The colourful world of insects
Life bursts with colour, and our perception of it brings much beauty to the world.
Colour and vision have evolved together, allowing animals to use hues, patterns and shading in many ways, perhaps to find food, avoid being eaten, or to attract a mate.
Light pours energy onto everything it touches, and objects absorb or reflect this electromagnetic radiation in different ways. We see the results as colour, which is just our perception of frequencies of light.
Structure and pigment
Animal colours are made either with pigments or by tiny structures that manipulate light.
As we can see here, Earth’s most diverse animal group – the insects – contains spectacular uses of both pigment and structural colour.
Let's take a closer look at this in butterflies and moths.
Pigment
Colours can be produced by chemical pigments. Different pigment molecules absorb certain light rays and reflect others, becoming visible as particular colours. As when mixing paints, the more pigment there is, the stronger the colour. Pigment colour is less intense than structural colour, and is fragile, fading over time, like furniture near a sunny window.
Butterflies make a variety of pigments. We can perceive many of their colours, but they also make pigments in the ultraviolent light range that we can't see, but which are visible to other butterflies.
Melanin is a pigment that produces a colour we perceive as brown, black, or grey. It is a common pigment in many animals, providing colour to hair, fur, feather and skin, as well as to butterfly wings. Melanin also absorbs heat and ultraviolet radiation from sunlight.
Ommachrome and pterin pigments have orange hues. Common in insects, they can produce different eye colours in addition to fiery butterfly wings.
Papiliochrome pigments produce yellow and off-white tones, but also the hidden patterns visible to butterflies in the ultraviolet light range.
Heliconius butterfly
Heliconius sp.
Structural colour
To our eyes, structural colour produces some of the most vivid and intense hues in nature, including shimmering, jewel-like iridescence.
The wings and bodies of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) are covered in thousands of tiny scales which reflect the light. The molecules that make these are black but have particular shapes. When light interacts with microscopic structures on the scale surface it can produce shifting structural colours depending on the angle and intensity of the light. This type of colour is shiny, lasts a long time and is sometimes even preserved in fossils. Blues and greens are often structural colours.
Green Hairstreak
Callophrys rubi
Through the eyes of a bee: colour perception beyond the optical
Some animals, including insects, have adapted to perceive regions of the light spectrum undetectable to humans.
Bees, as well as butterflies, can see in the ultraviolet range. This helps these pollinators to detect flowers, which reflect ultraviolet light. In many cases flower petals have patterns which are visible to insects, but not to humans. These patterns direct insects to the centre of the flower towards the nectar.
Red Mason Bee (Osmia rufa)
Red Mason Bee (Osmia rufa)
Other insects, such as blood-feeding mosquitos and bed bugs, detect sources of heat through infrared vision, perceiving light waves in a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The Ganzia flower as we see it - vibrant yellow petals with red centres.
The Ganzia flower as we see it - vibrant yellow petals with red centres.
A UVIVF (Ultraviolet Induced Visible Fluorescence) image of a Gazania flower - revealing patterns that are visible to some insects that can see in the ultraviolet range.
A UVIVF (Ultraviolet Induced Visible Fluorescence) image of a Gazania flower - revealing patterns that are visible to some insects that can see in the ultraviolet range.
Colour and vision, evolving together
Driven by the need to identify sources of food and danger, many animals have evolved the ability to sense light and perceive it as colour.
At the same time, the colour of animals has evolved for many reasons, including to communicate danger and to avoid being eaten.
Evolution has created many examples of colour and pattern, as organisms have adapted to changing environments and predators.
In their natural habitat, brightly coloured insects may be well camouflaged. By combining colour with body shape and behavioural adaptions, some animals blend seamlessly into the background to evade detection.
Bright colours and markings could also act as a warning to predators by signalling toxicity or an unpleasant taste. Eye spots may make an insect look like a different, larger animal in order to confuse attackers. Distinctive patterns can also help insects recognise members of the same species or signal reproductive maturity.
Visit the Life in colour display
Opened between 2022 and 2024, our new displays on biodiversity showcase the variety of life on Earth and consider important questions about preserving this diversity for future generations.
The Life in colour display explores colour and vision in the natural world using specimens from the Museum's collections. Visit the display to see the specimens highlighted here surrounded by many more insects in full-colour.
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