Melanin, especially integumentary melanin, interacts in numerous ways with
electromagnetic radiation, leading to a set of critical functions, including radiation protection …

Controlling how a material interacts with light is key to optimizing its optical properties to fit a
desired function or application. The most straightforward approach is to chemically or …

Biopolymers offer vast potential for renewable and sustainable devices. While nature
mastered the use of biopolymers to create highly complex 3D structures and optimized their …

Light influences most ecosystems on earth, from sun-dappled forests to bioluminescent
creatures in the ocean deep. Biologists have long studied nano-and micro-scale organismal …

The nanostructures of natural species offer beautiful visual appearances with saturated and
iridescent colors, and the question arises whether we can reproduce or even create unique …

Several ecogeographical 'rules' have been proposed to explain colour variation at broad
spatial and phylogenetic scales but these rarely consider whether colours are based on …

To understand the diversity of ways in which natural materials interact with light, it is
important to consider how their reflectance changes with the angle of illumination or viewing …

How and why certain groups become speciose is a key question in evolutionary biology.
Novel traits that enable diversification by opening new ecological niches are likely important …

The bright, saturated iridescent colours of feathers are commonly produced by single and
multi-layers of nanostructured melanin granules (melanosomes), air and keratin matrices …

Poly (styrene-methyl methacrylate-acrylic acid) photonic crystals (PCs), with five different
sizes (170, 190, 210, 230 and 250 nm), were applied onto three plain fabrics, namely …