Colour in nature - Summer Science 2011 | Royal Society

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Colour in nature

How nature dresses to impress

Pollia fruit has iridescent blue and UV colour from rings laid down by cell walls.
Introduction

Colours in nature are omnipresent and serve an essential role in providing a wide range of signals: “I am fertile!”, “I am tasty!”, “I am dangerous”.

Nanostructures in plants produce special structural colours that attract and guide animals. While the existence of structural colours in animals is well known, in plants they were thought to be rare. Now scientists have discovered that plants as well as animals dress themselves in such structural colours, and are exploring what they signal to pollinators and how to mimic them in the lab. In this exhibit you will see plant nanostructures, learn how these produce colours and see how they appear to insects.
Opal made from self-assembly of polymer nanospheres shows structural colour changed by deformation.
How does it work?

Colours arise either from the selective absorption of light by pigments, or through the interference of light with transparent periodic structures on the nanometre length scale. The latter, termed “structural colours”, are typically more brilliant and optically striking.

While most colours in nature are based on pigments, which absorb part of the light, particularly vivid colours arise from transparent materials with periodic structures on the 1/1000 mm length scale. The rainbow colours observed on CDs are a familiar example of surface structure producing colour. Now scientists are discovering how extremely small nanostructures, invisible to our eyes, are producing similar striking colours for plants. Intricate structures are tuned to produce UV colours, invisible to us but clear signals to insects which play the important role of pollinator. For further information please see this exhibit's website.

Video

This video demonstrates some of the science of this exhibit.

Meet the scientists

Dr Beverley Glover works at University of Cambridge.

This exhibit is presented by University of Cambridge and University of Exeter.
Hands-on at this exhibit

Talk to live insects with invisible signals

Play the pollination and diffraction games

Create colours from your own interactive nanostructure replica
Blog posts about this exhibit

The amazing world of structural colour (4 July 2011)
Journal papers relating to this exhibit

Finlayson C.E. et al. (2011) 3D bulk-ordering in macroscopic solid opaline films by edge-induced rotational-shearing Adv. Mat., DOI: 10.1002/adma.201003934.

Thomas K.R. et al. (2010) Function of blue iridescence in tropical understorey plants J. R. Soc. Interface, DOI: 110.1098/rsif.2010.0201.

Whitney H.M. et al. (2009) Floral iridescence, produced by diffractive optics, acts as a cue for animal pollinators Science, 323, 130-133.
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