蝴蝶着色.pdf

J Comp Physiol A (2014) 200:547–561 DOI 10.1007/s00359-014-0901-7 OrIgInAl PAPer The colouration toolkit of the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly, Battus philenor : thin films, papiliochromes, and melanin Doekele G. Stavenga · Hein L. Leertouwer · Bodo D. Wilts received: 16 December 2013 / revised: 17 March 2014 / Accepted: 19 March 2014 / Published online: 9 April 2014 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract The ventral hindwings of Pipevine Swal- Introduction lowtail butterflies, Battus philenor, display a colour- ful pattern, created by variously coloured wing scales. Butterflies have attracted scientific interest since time reflectance and transmittance measurements of single immemorial, initially because of their colourful wings that scales indicate that the cream and orange scales contain intrigued the human observer (Kinoshita 2008), but in the papiliochrome pigments, while brown, black and blue last century also because butterfly vision has become well scales contain melanin. Microspectrophotometry and investigated (Arikawa 2003). Already Hooke recognised scatterometry of both sides of the wing scales show that that insect vision relies on the multifaceted compound the lower lamina acts as a thin film, with reflection prop- eyes, but he was astounded at how the tiny visual instru- erties dependent on the scale’s pigmentation. notably in ments of insects were able to perform their task (Hooke the orange scales, the reflectance spectrum of the lower 1665). Much anatomical detail and optical insight were lamina is tuned to the pigment’s absorbance spectrum. obtained in the nineteenth century (exner