What is it about?
2. Nudibranch sea slugs (a group of diverse marine molluscs) are known for their diverse colours and patterns. But up until now, the mechanism underpinning the generation of these colours wasn’t fully understood. In this paper, it was revealed that these colours have a structural origin, rather than a pigmentary one. That is to say, the colours arise from light interference from reflections from nanoscale structures (rather than from a single chemical pigment). These structural colours are arranged in pixels, which allows multiple colours to be combined and mixed by eye, increasing the possible range of hues through colour mixing (while maintaining the increased brightness allowed by structural colouration). The effect is similar to the optical mixing of adjacent brushstrokes in impressionist paintings, or pixelation in colour televisions.
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Why is it important?
This work is important because it uncovers a previously unheard-of mechanism to generate colour. This way, an amazing array of colours can be generated from a single material, explaining how this group of animals is one of the most chromatically diverse on earth.
Perspectives
This mechanism may serve as inspiration for man-made systems in both photonics and design, and has implications for the evolution of colour in animals in general.
Silvia Vignolini
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Wissenschaften
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nudibranch color diversity shares a common physical basis in guanine photonic structure ‘pixels’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2525419123.
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