Nature’s Greatest Magicians; The Trickery of Lepidopteran Wings

By Paige Terpstra -


        As much as it may appear as such, the lady in the box is not really cut in half, and the rabbit does not just appear in the magician’s hat. “Magic” like this is just trickery, a craft that has been perfected by humans over centuries. Although there is a group of creatures whose ruses could make Houdini blush. Lepidopterans, the order of insects that include moths and butterflies, are unique in that their wings are scaled and patterned in ways that make them appear to have bright colors and false eyes. These unique tricks have not only fascinated humans but have given Lepidopterans an evolutionary leg up.

URL: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-SEM-of-the-dorsal-wing-scales-of-Heliophorus-saphir-Lycaeninae-Lycaenidae_fig1_5520245

In the outdoors, it is very easy to find greens, reds, and yellows, but perhaps one of the rarest colors in nature is blue. Many butterflies, however, bear stunning sapphire pigments on their wings, although these wings are not really blue, they just look blue to the eye. Lepidopteran wings display structural coloration, in which multilayers of scales act to bend light to appear colored as it reflects off of the wing (Imafuku). Interestingly, these scales reflect both visual and UV light, creating spectrums that are unique and species-specific (Imafuku). The illusion of colors on butterfly and moth wings is surely one of their most whimsical tricks, though it is not the only one up their sleeves.

While present in other insect orders, such as Orthoptera and Coleoptera, eyespots are most common in Lepidopteran species (Stevens). Eyespots are approximately circular patterns that are mirrored across the bilateral line of an organism, many containing multicolored concentric rings (Stevens). The substances responsible for these color patternings in developing embryos are called morphogens (Wolpert). It is thought that “unstable” morphogens in wings cause pigmentation to be dispersed to certain cells radially and unequally, leading to the appearance of concentric circles, a lepidopteran’s “eyes” (Stevens). Not all of these spots are perfectly circular, however. Several mutations change wing shape, which alters the shape of the eyespots as well. “Cyclops” and “Comet”, for example, are mutations that change the venation patterns on the wing, leading to more elongated coloration (Stevens).

URL: https://lemonbayconservancy.org/the-wings-have-eyes/

Surely, maintaining such complex colors and patterns are costly for Lepidopterans, though the payoffs are well worth it. Scientists hypothesize that the eyespots on lepidopteran wings function as mimicry, imitating the appearance of a much larger creature and intimidating organisms who may want to prey on them (“Butterfly Wings”). It is also thought that eyespots draw predators to non-vital parts of the Lepidopteran’s body (Stevens). Instead of going after the head or body of an organism, a predator may be confused by these “eyes” and attack them instead, ultimately increasing the odds that a butterfly or moth would survive this predator’s attack. After all, it is better to lose a piece of your wing instead of your head. The coloration caused by the scales of Lepidopteran wings also has many functions. When dull, these patterns are effective camouflage. The dead leaf moth, for example, uses both its coloration and texture to appear just like a curling dead leaf (“Butterfly Wings”). Bright colors are also used by these insects to advertise their toxicity to predators, a technique called aposematism (“Butterfly Wings”). Finally, Lepidopterans use coloration to recognize each other and find mates. Their sensitivity to both visible and UV light makes them especially skilled at recognizing other members of their species, which is particularly helpful in insects like the postman butterfly, where other species in their family are nearly identical (“Butterfly Wings”). 

Lepidopteran wings are certainly not as they appear, but strange scaly mirages that have tricked birds, insects, and humans for centuries. In studying these creatures, however, we have been able to appreciate them for their magic tricks and better understand their strategies for life. 


References

“Butterfly Wings: The Science behind the Colour.” Butterfly Wings: The Science behind the Colour | Natural History Museum, www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/butterfly-wings-science-behind-the-colour.html. Accessed 25 May 2023.

Imafuku, Michio, et al. “Wing Colors Based on Arrangement of the Multilayer Structure of Wing Scales in Lycaenid Butterflies (Insecta: Lepidoptera).” Entomological Science, vol. 15, no. 4, Oct. 2012, pp. 400–07. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1479-8298.2012.00525.x.

Stevens, Martin. “The role of eyespots as anti-predator mechanisms, principally demonstrated in the Lepidoptera.” Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society vol. 80,4 (2005): 573-88. doi:10.1017/S1464793105006810

Wolpert, L. “Morphogens: History☆.” Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-809324-5.02202-1. 

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