Abstract
The brilliant blue wing of Morpho butterfly has attracted the attention of scientists for a long time. Following the era of optical microscopic observation, the invention of electron microscope in the middle of the 20th century greatly accelerated the study of the structural color: microstructures hidden below the brilliant colors were revealed one after another. Since they look periodic in a size comparable with the wavelength of light, it became undoubtful that optical interference is involved in the coloration mechanism. However, the microstructure is not everything in the structural color in nature. Other factors such as large-size modification and pigmentation are also important. Here, we describe several examples of lepidopteran wing’s structural colorations and discuss the present, and future of the study in this field.
