A new species of Penaincisalia (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) from Peru

The penelfin Penaincisalia alina sp. nov. is described from Department Apurímac, Peru on the basis of wing and genitalia characters. Spectral analysis of structural colours carried out on congeneric species is presented. A hitherto unnamed Penaincisalia species from the vicinity of the type locality is also documented

Substance specific chemical sensing with pristine and modified photonic nanoarchitectures occurring in blue butterfly wing scales

Nowadays, the potential applications of photonic crystal type materials in sensing [1] are in the focus of attention [2,3]. As sensors penetr ate the everyday life, the vigorous development of sensorics tries to cover the need for miniature sensor systems which are capable of making distinction between vapors of different vola tile organic compounds (VOCs) and have fast response time combined with low energy consum ption [3]. Selective chemical sensors based on photonic nanoarchitectures, like those in the wing scales of butterflies possessing structural coloration [4] may offer cheap solution to this problem

SZÍNEK HARMÓNIÁJA: A BOGLÁRKALEPKÉK SZERKEZETI KÉK SZÍNÉNEK FAJFELISMERÉSI SZEREPE – I. RÉSZ

Az MTA TTK MFA Nanoszerkezetek Osztályán pásztázó és transzmissziós elektronmikroszkópos módszerekkel, valamint optikai reflexiós spektrometriával tanulmányoztuk kilenc boglárkalepkefaj szárnyainak kék színét adó pikkelyek nanoszerkezetét és optikai tulajdonságait, valamint ezek kapcsolatát a lepkék rajzási idejével. A lepkepikkelyek fotonikus nanoszerkezeti jellemzôit egy saját fejlesztésû számítógépes program segítségével jellemeztük a pásztázó és transzmissziós elektronmikroszkóppal készült felvételeken, míg a színt a szárnyakon mért fényvisszaverési spektrumok alapján határoztuk meg. Az így nyert szerkezeti és spektrális információk alapján mesterséges neurális hálózat segítségével kimutattuk a lepkék színének és pikkelyeik fotonikus nanoszerkezetének fajspecifikusságát. Ezek alapján megállapítottuk,hogy mind a spektrális, mind pedig a szerkezeti adatok alapján 90%-ot meghaladó pontossággal végezhetô el a lepkefajok azonosítása. A reflexiós spektrumokat további elemzésnek is alávetettük: közös színinger- diagramban ábrázoltuk a megvizsgált egyedek színinger-koordinátáit úgy, hogy számításba vettük a tanulmányozott boglárkalepkék szemének négyféle színérzékelô receptorát. Az így adódó háromdimenziós színingertérben fajonként sokkal jobban elkülönülnek az egyedek színinger-koordinátái, mint a három emberi színérzékelô receptor érzékenységi görbéit felhasználó, korábban alkalmazott kétdimenziós színingertérben. Megvizsgáltuk továbbá a lepkefajokra jellemzô színek és a lepkék rajzási idejének korrelációját, amihez több mint 100 példány fényvisszaverését mértük roncsolásmentesen. Kimutattuk, hogy a hasonló színû fajok életterükben idôben elkülönülnek, így eredményesen kiküszöbölik a szín helytelen azonosításából eredô tévesztéseket, egyben lehetôvé téve a sikeresebb párválasztást

Changes in structural and pigmentary colours in response to cold stress in Polyommatus icarus butterflies

While numerous papers have investigated the effects of thermal stress on the pigmentary colours of butterfly wings, such studies regarding structural colours are mostly lacking, despite the important role they play in sexual communication. To gain insight into the possible differences between the responses of the two kinds of colouration, we investigated the effects of prolonged cold stress (cooling at 5 °C for up to 62 days) on the pupae of Polyommatus icarus butterflies. The wing surfaces coloured by photonic crystal-type nanoarchitectures (dorsal) and by pigments (ventral) showed markedly different behaviours. The ventral wing surfaces exhibited stress responses proportional in magnitude to the duration of cooling and showed the same trend for all individuals, irrespective of their sex. On the dorsal wing surface of the males, with blue structural colouration, a smaller magnitude response was found with much more pronounced individual variations, possibly revealing hidden genetic variations. Despite the typical, pigmented brown colour of the dorsal wing surface of the females, all cooled females exhibited a certain degree of blue colouration. UV-VIS spectroscopy, optical microscopy, and scanning and transmission electron microscopy were used to evaluate the magnitude and character of the changes induced by the prolonged cold stress

Optical properties of bioinspired disordered photonic nanoarchitectures

Bioinspired 1+2D nanoarchitectures inspired by the quasi-ordered structures occurring in photonic nanoarchitectures of biological origin, like for example butterfly scales, were produced by depositing a layer of SiO2 nanospheres (156 nm and 292 nm in diameter) on Si wafers, over which a regular multilayer composed from three alternating layers of SiO2 and TiO2 was deposited by physical vapor deposition. Flat multilayers were deposited in the same run on oxidized Si (324 nm SiO2 thickness) for comparison. Different types of disorder (in plane and out of plane) were purposefully allowed in the 1+2D nanoarchitectures. The positions of the specular reflection maxima for the flat multilayer and for the two different bioinspired nanoarchitectures were found to be similar. Additionally to this, the bioinspired nanoarchitectures exhibited angle independent diffuse reflection too, which was absent in the flat multilayer. Different model calculations were made to explain the specular and diffuse optical properties of the samples. Satisfactory agreement was obtained between experimental data and model calculations

Optical Detection of Vapor Mixtures Using Structurally Colored Butterfly and Moth Wings

Photonic nanoarchitectures in the wing scales of butterflies and moths are capable of fast and chemically selective vapor sensing due to changing color when volatile vapors are introduced to the surrounding atmosphere. This process is based on the capillary condensation of the vapors, which results in the conformal change of the chitin-air nanoarchitectures and leads to a vapor-specific optical response. Here, we investigated the optical responses of the wing scales of several butterfly and moth species when mixtures of different volatile vapors were applied to the surrounding atmosphere. We found that the optical responses for the different vapor mixtures fell between the optical responses of the two pure solvents in all the investigated specimens. The detailed evaluation, using principal component analysis, showed that the butterfly-wing-based sensor material is capable of differentiating between vapor mixtures as the structural color response was found to be characteristic for each of them

Variability of the structural coloration in two butterfly species with different prezygotic mating strategies

Structural coloration variability was investigated in two Blue butterfly species that are common in Hungary. The males of Polyommatus icarus (Common Blue) and Plebejus argus (Silver-studded Blue) use their blue wing coloration for conspecific recognition. Despite living in the same type of habitat, these two species display differences in prezygotic mating strategy: the males of P. icarus are patrolling, while P. argus males have sedentary behavior. Therefore, the species-specific photonic nanoarchitecture, which is the source of the structural coloration, may have been subjected to different evolutionary effects. Despite the increasing interest in photonic nanoarchitectures of biological origin, there is a lack of studies focused on the biological variability of structural coloration that examine a statistically relevant number of individuals from the same species. To investigate possible structural color variation within the same species in populations separated by large geographical distances, climatic differences, or applied experimental conditions, one has to be able to compare these variations to the normal biological variability within a single population. The structural coloration of the four wings of 25 male individuals (100 samples for each species) was measured and compared using different light-collecting setups: perpendicular and with an integrating sphere. Significant differences were found in the near UV wavelength region that are perceptible by these polyommatine butterflies but are invisible to human observers. The differences are attributed to the differences in the photonic nanoarchitecture in the scales of these butterflies. Differences in the intensity of structural coloration were also observed and were tentatively attributed to the different prezygotic mating strategies of these insects. Despite the optical complexity of the scale covered butterfly wings, for sufficiently large sample batches, the averaged normal incidence measurements and the averaged measurements using an integrating sphere are in agreement. © 2016 Piszter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited