> A butterfly’s colors come from its scales, each a single cell, pigmented a single hue. Fascinating article but I think "pigment" is perhaps misleading. I was

> A butterfly’s colors come from its scales, each a single cell, pigmented a single hue. Fascinating article but I think "pigment" is perhaps misleading. I was taught that butterfly wings are often structurally coloured, i.e. the colour is the result of the microstructure (shapes) of the cells, rather than a dye or specific molecule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Structure_not_pigment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Structur... Also of relevance to complex patterning (though I'm not sure if this applies to butterflies, or if this is what the article was hinting at) is Turing's Morphogenesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_Basis_of_Morphogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_Basis_of_Morphoge...