All revealed in see through butterflies in SciTech Daily 17 June 2021, Science (AAAS) News 21 June 2021 and Journal of Experimental Biology 28 May 2021, doi:10.1242/jeb.237917.
Clearwing, or glass wing butterflies have large transparent regions in their wings that are distinct from other transparent insect wings in that they are also very non-reflective, with very little shine or glimmer when the butterfly moves its wings. A Group of scientists led by Aaron Pomerantz and Nipam Patel of University of California Berkeley have studied how the wings of the clearwing butterfly Greta oto develop, to see how the transparent regions differ from the coloured regions.
Coloured butterfly wings have a surface layer of overlapping scales that produce different colours by absorbing some wavelengths of light and reflecting others. The researchers found the clear wing areas were covered in bristles rather than scales. Between the bristles, the wings were covered in tiny bumps, called nanopillars, and these were covered by a layer of wax. The combination of bristles, nanopillars and waxy layer directed light to pass through the wing or be softly diffused, resulting in transparency without glare.
Nipam Patel commented: “It’s just fascinating to know how nature solves really interesting problems like this. You can pay extra for glasses that have an antireflective coating on them. But, of course, essentially, butterflies figured that out maybe tens of millions of years ago.”
Links: Science, SciTech Daily
Editorial Comment: More hypocritical thinking from evolutionary biologists – they recognise a piece of brilliant design, but give the credit to butterflies, who are supposed to have evolved by chance random processes, or some mythical god-like force called “nature”. They cannot bring themselves to admit they are seeing the handiwork of a personal Creator.
They even show they understand the concept of worship (worth-ship) with the comment about paying extra for anti-reflective glasses. The extra cost is the giving of “worth-ship” to the inventor of the anti-reflective coating and the manufacturer who put it on the glasses. How much more worthy is the Creator who designed and made the whole butterfly, and all the other wonderful living things we study to see how they work and what we can learn from them.
Creation Research News 30 June 2021
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