Peeking Into a Chrysalis, Incredible Videos Capture Butterfly Wings Forming
Larger, overlapping scales in red and green begin to form their structural details midway through development (right). Each image is 75 μm wide. Credit: Anthony McDougal and Sungsam Kang
The findings could inform the design of new materials such as iridescent windows or waterproof textiles.
If you brush against the wings of a butterfly, you will likely come away with a fine sprinkling of powder. This lepidopteran dust is made up of tiny microscopic scales, hundreds of thousands of which paper a butterfly’s wings like shingles on a wafer-thin roof. The structure and arrangement of these scales give a butterfly its color and shimmer, and help shield the insect from the elements.
Now, 
SEM imaging is typically used to visualize the developing scales on a butterfly wing (two individual scales shown, top left); a new approach uses quantitative phase imaging to show individual scales in more detail (top right and bottom). Width of scales is approximately 50 μm. Credit: Anthony McDougal and Sungsam Kang
The team’s study, published today (November 22, 2021) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers the most detailed look yet at the budding architecture of butterfly scales. The new visualizations also could serve as a blueprint for designing new functional materials, such as iridescent windows and waterproof textiles.
“Butterfly wings control many of their attributes by precisely forming the structural architecture of their wing scales,” says lead author Anthony McDougal, a research assistant in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “This strategy might be used, for example, to give both color and self-cleaning properties to automobiles and buildings. Now we can learn from butterflies’ structural control of these complex, micro-nanostructured materials.”
McDougal’s co-authors at MIT include postdoc Sungsam Kang, research scientist Zahid Yaqoob, professor of mechanical engineering…
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