dc.contributor.author | Vukusic, P | |
dc.contributor.author | Nixon, MR | |
dc.contributor.author | Orr, AG | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2017-06-06T07:57:56Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2017-05-31 | |
dc.description.abstract | The damselfly Pseudolestes mirabilis reflects brilliant white on the ventral side of its hindwings and a copper-gold colour on the dorsal side. Unlike many previous investigations of odonate wings, in which colour appearances arise either from multilayer interference or from wing-membrane pigmentation, the whiteness on the wings of P. mirabilis results from light scattered by a specialized arrangement of flattened waxy fibres and the copper-gold colour is produced by pigment-based filtering of this light scatter. The waxy fibres responsible for this optical signature effectively form a structure that is disordered in two dimensions and this also gives rise to distinct optical linear polarization. It is a structure that provides a mechanism enabling P. mirabilis to display its bright wing colours efficiently for territorial signalling, both passively while perched, in which the sunlit copper-gold upperside is presented against a highly contrasting background of foliage, and actively in territorial contests in which the white underside is also presented. It also offers a template for biomimetic high-intensity broadband reflectors that have a pronounced polarization signature | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | We acknowledge the financial support of AFOSR grant no. FA9550-10-1-0020. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 14, Iss. 130 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1098/rsif.2017.0036 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/27817 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Royal Society | en_GB |
dc.rights.embargoreason | Publisher's policy. | en_GB |
dc.rights | © 2017 The Author(s) | en_GB |
dc.subject | structural colour | en_GB |
dc.subject | whiteness | en_GB |
dc.subject | polarization | en_GB |
dc.subject | Pseudolestes mirabilis | en_GB |
dc.subject | Odonata | en_GB |
dc.title | Covert linear polarization signatures from brilliant white two-dimensional disordered wing structures of the phoenix damselfly | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.identifier.issn | 1742-5689 | |
dc.description | Article | en_GB |
dc.description | This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Royal Society via the DOI in this record. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Journal of the Royal Society Interface | en_GB |