Producing different pigments is a totally different process in which an entirely new material must be made for every color you want to create, Hsiung said. To produce different structure colors, researchers just need to change the spacing between one nanostructure and the next (which changes the way the structures scatter and absorb light). "We can decrease waste and use more eco-friendly materials to produce structure colors, unlike the current dyes ," Hsiung said. The tarantula's blue hues could inspire new, non-iridescent structure colors, according to Hsiung, who noted that these colors would not only be brighter and less likely to fade than pigment-based colors, they'd also be better for the environment. Iridescence is a big constraint in those applications because we usually don't want color to change when we change our viewing angle," Hsiung said. These are advantages that people want to use to make color displays for phones, or pigments you can use in your cosmetics or in your clothes. "Structure colors are usually brighter, and won't fade over time as long as their nanostructures are still intact. These nanostructure-produced colors offer several advantages over colors created by pigments, Hsiung said. (A tablet screen that constantly changes colors just won't cut it.)Īnd taming structural colors is something that Hsiung is very interested in doing. Photonic nanostructures could be used to color things like electronic screens and even clothing, but only if the iridescent properties can somehow be tamed. The iridescence of structure colors is a problem for those who want to use these light-scattering structures in the real world, Blackledge said. That's pretty unusual for structural colors," Todd Blackledge, a biology professor at the University of Akron and one of the co-authors of the new study, told Live Science. "These blues have this low iridescence to them, so they're very consistent in their appearance as you look at them from different angles. That is, the spider's blue color doesn't seem to change when you look at it from different angles. However, the tarantula's structure color differs from those of birds and bugs in an important way - it isn't iridescent. Many species of birds and insects also get their colors from nanostructures, rather than the pigments that color the hair and skin of many animals (like humans). Structure colors like those of the blue-hued tarantulas are not uncommon in nature. Organized multilayered nanostructures were observed, which produced the bright blue reflection as seen under the microscope. "Previously only one kind of nanostructure had been recorded as producing blue color in tarantulas, but we found that there are other types."Ī critically endangered adult female gooty sapphire ornamental tarantula (P. "We discovered not just one kind of nanostructure but at least two or three different kinds of nanostructures that produce the same blue colors," Hsiung said. They examined the creatures' light-scattering photonic nanostructures, or "structure colors," using high-powered microscopes. The researchers obtained eight blue tarantulas that are indigenous to distinct geographic locations, including Singapore, India, Chile and Brazil. Maybe blue is a good trade-off - different enough from the background to be seen, but not too bright."Īfter sorting dozens of tarantula images, Hsiung and his colleagues decided to get their hands on a few live specimens. "And being too bright in an environment is not a good thing. "If they were green, and the predators and prey in their environments evolved to see green and are very sensitive to the green spectrum, then the would appear very bright," Hsiung said. They often live on the floor of rainforests and other heavily vegetated areas, where the light spectra consist mostly of green colors, Hsiung said. This preference for blue could be a result of the tarantula's typical habitat. Blue-reflecting nanostructures, on the other hand, evolved independently at least eight times in different species, the researchers found. Yet green, in particular, is not this critter's color of choice. Ecological studies of tarantula behavior will need to be conducted to confirm that hypothesis, he added.īut why blue, specifically? If a tarantula can use its nanostructures to appear blue, then presumably it could also use similar nanostructures to appear to be a different color - like yellow or green, the scientists said. I think this wavelength was selected specifically for communicating with potential predators or prey - though we don't know that," Hsiung told Live Science. (Image credit: Michael Kern, "These blues are so specific. A front view shot of a critically endangered gooty sapphire ornamental tarantula (P.
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