MEETINGS FOR 2009-2010 Wednesday 5 May 2010

AGM and Supporting Colour Programme: Insect Colouring

Notice is hereby given of the Annual General Meeting of the Colour Group (Great Britain).
This will be held City University, London EC1 at 14.00 hrs
It is open to Group members only, but the rest of the meeting is open to non-members from 14.30 hrs.



The guest speaker will be Pete Vukusic from Exeter University whose talk will be Current Developments in Insect Colouring.

Abstract: The study of structural colour in brightly coloured animals is an exciting interdisciplinary area of research¹. Complex photonic bandgap (PBG) structures in Colepotera² and Lepidoptera³ suggest broad innovation in nature's use of materials and its manipulation of light.  In certain butterflies, ultra-long-range visibility of up to one half-mile is attributed to photonic structures that are formed by discrete multilayers of cuticle and air³. This contrasts, in other butterfly species, to photonic structures designed more for crypsis and which not only produce strong polarisation effects but can also create additive colour mixing using highly adapted structures⁴. Optical systems also exist that employ remarkable 2D and 3D photonic crystals of cuticle to produce partial PBGs, with the effect that bright colour is reflected, or fluorescence emission is inhibited⁵, over specific angle ranges.  From the perspective of modern optical technology, these structures arguably indicate a significant evolutionary step, since in principle, such 2D and 3D periodicities are potentially able to manipulate the flow of light more completely.
This presentation will offer an overview of this emerging field of study, as well as several of the exciting recent discoveries that reflect nature's optical design ingenuity, and some technological applications to which they are currently being applied.
¹ P. Vukusic & J.R. Sambles, Nature 424, 852-855 (2003)
² P.Vukusic, B. Hallam and J. Noyes, Science, 315, 348 (2007)
³ P. Vukusic, et al., Proc Roy Soc B 266: 1403-1411 (1999)
⁴ P. Vukusic, J.R. Sambles, C.R. Lawrence Nature 404, 457 (2000)
⁵ P. Vukusic and I. R. Hooper, Science, 310, 1151, (2005)

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