Black and White

I was trying to think of some brilliant thing to blog about, and for some reason I remembered this article in National Geographic I read a couple years back about the "blackest black" and "whitest white" found in nature. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the article, but I was able to find some other information.

The blackest black is in a swallowtail butterfly, Papilio ulysses. This butterfly is endemic to Australasia, which I just learned is the region including Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and some other random islands. The structure of their scales sort of traps light, so that more of it is absorbed. The butterflies developed this super-black due to sexual selection, because the darker pigment makes the blue more striking, which attracts more females. Chemical engineers are trying to mimic the structure by using nickel-phosphorus alloys, which they could use in optical instruments. Or for really dark paint. (Yeonwoo you could use that!)

Papilio ulysses

The underside of Papilio ulysses is a lot different.

I hear these look great with caddisfly cases.

Tacky?

The whitest white in nature is found on another insect, the Cyphochilus beetle. The beetle is also covered in scales, which are made up of randomly oriented filaments that scatter light everywhere. The scales are super thin (about half the thickness of a red blood cell). This super-white could have evolved so that the beetles could blend into white fungi. That doesn't really make sense to me, though because then the beetles are more extremely white than the fungi...

The Cyphochilus beetle.

Well that was cool. I'm mad I couldn't find the National Geographic article, because it had some really cool pictures. Instead, here is a link to some really awesome pictures of nudibranchs. I know they aren't arthropods, but they're still pretty damn cool. See y'all in lab!