ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
Stable structural color patterns displayed on transparent insect wings.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers.
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Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Deadliest Animals with the Thinnest Wings: Near-Infrared Properties of Tropical Mosquitoes.Applied spectroscopy · 2025Article
- Application of wings interferential patterns (WIPs) and deep learning (DL) to classify some Culex. spp (Culicidae) of medical or veterinary importance.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Sexual dimorphism in the structural colours of the wings of the black soldier fly (BSF) Hermetia illucens (Diptera: Stratiomyidae).Scientific reports · 2024Article
- A social learning primacy trend in mate-copying: an experiment inRoyal Society open science · 2024Article
- Research Progress of Bioinspired Structural Color in Camouflage.Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- DNA Barcoding Supports "Color-Pattern''-Based Species ofInsects · 2024Article
- An annotated wing interferential pattern dataset of dipteran insects of medical interest for deep learning.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Insect diversity estimation in polarimetric lidar.PloS one · 2024Article
- Species identification of phlebotomine sandflies using deep learning and wing interferential pattern (WIP).Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Discrimination of Hover Fly Species and Sexes by Wing Interference Signals.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2023Article
- Wing Interferential Patterns (WIPs) and machine learning for the classification of some Aedes species of medical interest.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Deep learning and wing interferential patterns identify Anopheles species and discriminate amongst Gambiae complex species.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Bio-Inspired Highly Brilliant Structural Colors and Derived Photonic Superstructures for Information Encryption and Fluorescence Enhancement.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2023Article
- Light diffraction by sarcomeres produces iridescence in transmission in the transparent ghost catfish.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- New Color-Patterned Species ofInsects · 2023Article
- When details matter: Integrative revision of HolarcticBiodiversity data journal · 2023Article
- Wing Interferential Patterns (WIPs) and machine learning, a step toward automatized tsetse (Glossina spp.) identification.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Heightened condition dependent expression of structural coloration in the faces, but not wings, of male and female flies.Current zoology · 2022Article
- Potential for identification of wild night-flying moths by remote infrared microscopy.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
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4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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 (WIPs)--in the transparent wings of small Hymenoptera and Diptera, patterns that have been largely overlooked by biologists. These extremely thin wings reflect vivid color patterns caused by thin film interference. The visibility of these patterns is affected by the way the insects display their wings against various backgrounds with different light properties. The specific color sequence displayed lacks pure red and matches the color vision of most insects, strongly suggesting that the biological significance of WIPs lies in visual signaling. Taxon-specific color patterns are formed by uneven membrane thickness, pigmentation, venation, and hair placement. The optically refracted pattern is also stabilized by microstructures of the wing such as membrane corrugations and spherical cell structures that reinforce the pattern and make it essentially noniridescent over a large range of light incidences. WIPs can be applied to map the micromorphology of wings through direct observation and are useful in several fields of biology. We demonstrate their usefulness as identification patterns to solve cases of cryptic species complexes in tiny parasitic wasps, and indicate their potentials for research on the genetic control of wing development through direct links between the transregulatory wing landscape and interference patterns we observe in Drosophila model species. Some species display sexually dimorphic WIPs, suggesting sexual selection as one of the driving forces for their evolution.
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