Natural designs for manipulating the appearance of surfaces

The surfaces of animals and plants are frequently adorned with a wealth of pattern, colour, and texture. Some insects for example, exhibit uniformly-coloured unpatterned white surfaces; some display bright iridescent blue or green hues; others may present varying shades of black, brown or selected combinations of spectral colours. Additionally, unseen by human observers, certain species' wing or body surfaces may produce strong ultra-violet or polarisation signatures. This review will introduce the characteristics of structural colour effects and describe examples of them in the natural world. It will summarise some of the recent work on a range of insect species, focussing predominantly on Lepidoptera as an exemplar order.