A closer look at seemingly drab, transparent insect wings has revealed realms of previously unappreciated color, visible to the naked eye yet overlooked for centuries. Until now, the wing colors of ...

Heliconius butterflies are a diverse and colorful group of species that live throughout tropical regions of Central and South America. Many of them have wing patterns and colors that mimic other ...

Butterfly wings get their color in ways that almost feel impossible. Up close, each wing is made of countless tiny scales that either hold pigment or manipulate light. The oranges, reds, and browns ...

Butterfly wings are so synonymous with bold color that few people may wonder what makes them that way. But Yale University researchers studying the green color on the wings of five butterfly species ...

A selective mating experiment by a curious butterfly breeder has led scientists to a deeper understanding of how butterfly wing color is created and evolves. A selective mating experiment by a curious ...

The desired color for the butterfly wings was achieved by changing the relative thickness of the wing scales — specifically, those of the lower lamina. It took less than a year of selective breeding ...

Harvard and Russian researchers have documented natural selection's role in the creation of new species through a process called reinforcement, where butterfly wing colors differ enough to avoid ...

Male butterflies seek out mates with the same wing color as they find them more attractive, reveals new research. Genetics, vision and neural processing are all linked to mating behavior in Heliconius ...

Color patterns play central roles in the behavior of insects, and are important traits for taxonomic studies. Here we report striking and stable structural color patterns—wing interference patterns ...