Experimental investigation on color variation mechanisms of structural light in Papilio maackii ménétriès butterfly wings

The body color in animals results from billions of years of their natural evolution in order to evade natural enemies, catch quarries or display themselves beauty, in-vestigation on mechanisms of structural light is an important aspect of bionics. Based on the phenomenon of Papilio maackii ménétriès’ blue scales changing into green ones immediately after dropping some alcohol aqua on the underwing sur-face and soon returning back to the original color, the relationship between micro-structure, optics characteristic of scales and changing color effect were studied using the Olympus Stereomicroscope, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Ultraviolet (UV)-Visible Spectropho-tometer. The color variation mechanisms of blue scales of Papilio maackii mé-nétriès in Chinese Northeast were revealed in this paper. When visible lights trav-eled through the concaver structure with multilayer reflector and the filled medium with different refractive indices, the reflected lights in definite wavelengths pro-duced interference and color at that wavelength came into being. It has important academic reference value to biomimetics design of video stealth materials.