BryLog

Nanometric Butterfly Wings Created (via ScienceDaily)

A team of researchers from the State University of Pennsylvania (USA) and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) has developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, on a nano scale. The resulting biomaterial could be used to make optically active structures, such as optical diffusers for solar panels.

Butterfly ‘GPS’ found in antennae (via BBC News)

North America’s Monarch butterflies use a 24-hour “clock” in their antennae to help navigate the 4,000km to overwinter in Mexico, say scientists.

Every autumn about 100 million Monarch butterflies migrate to the south. The insects navigate according to the position of the Sun, adjusting their calculations as it appears to move across the sky….

They removed the antennae from a group of butterflies and compared the way they flew with a control population in a flight simulator.  The intact butterflies all flew southwest, as normal, but the insects without antennae, although they flew strongly, headed off in random directions….

Moths Cloaked In Color: Reexamining Parallel Evolution In Diurnal Neotropical Moths (via ScienceDaily)

Travelers to the neotropics—the tropical lands of the Americas—might be forgiven for thinking that all of the colorful insects flittering over sunny puddles or among dense forest understory are butterflies. In fact, many are not. Some are moths that have reinvented themselves as butterflies, converging on the daytime niche typically dominated by their less hairy relatives. Now, a new revision of the taxonomic relationships among one such group of insects, the subfamily Dioptinae, sheds light on the diversity of tropical moth species and presents a unique story of parallel evolution.

“These diurnal moths are a microcosm of butterfly evolution,” says James Miller, author of the new Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History and a research associate in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the Museum. “There are about 500 spectacular dioptine species, all of which evolved from a common ancestor—a nondescript brown nocturnal moth—into a diversity of butterfly mimics.” Miller qualifies this with a technicality, though, noting that no one is sure whether butterflies or diurnal moths evolved their colors first (and who is really mimicking whom).

The wing pattern diversity within the subfamily is enormous: some species mimic clear-winged butterflies and inhabit the darker parts of the forest understory where their co-mimics fly. The caterpillars of these species feed on palms. Still others have wings that are colored blue and yellow and feed on melastomes. About 100 species feed on Passiflora, the poisonous passion flowers famous for being consumed by the caterpillars of Heliconious butterflies. In fact, although most of the Dioptinae are diurnal, or fly during the day, a few species like those in Xenomigia have re-conquered the night. Although most dioptines are neotropical, ranging from lowland jungles to cloud forests at 4,000 meters in the Andes, Phryganidia californica occurs in the western United States….

Steampunk Butterfly (via BoingBoing)

Can you name these species? (via eatsleepdraw)

Paper Butterflies (via teacupadventure, pigneamouse, spacehalo)