

A Butterfly’s Beauty Comes from Organized Chaos (2013) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/a-butterflys-beauty-comes-from-organized-chaos

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Osmium
> 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#Structur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Structure_not_pigment)

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_Morphoge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_Basis_of_Morphogenesis)

