A team of Yale engineers, physicists and evolutionary biologists said most colors in nature are produced by pigments. But the bright blue feathers found in many birds, such as Bluebirds and Blue Jays, are produced by nanostructures.
The researchers compared the nanostructures to examples of materials undergoing phase separation, in which mixtures of different substances become unstable and separate from one another. They discovered nanostructures in feathers appear to self-assemble in much the same manner -- bubbles of water form in a protein-rich soup inside the living cell and are replaced with air as the feather grows. The scientists said their finding provides insight into how organisms use self-assembly to produce color and has important implications for the role color plays in birds' plumage.
"Many biologists think plumage color can encode information about quality … a bluer male is a better mate,'" said Richard Prum, chairman of Yale's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of the paper's authors.
"I think our hypothesis that phase separation is involved provides less opportunity for encoding information about quality than most biologists
thought."
The research, which appears online in the journal Soft Matter, included Assistant Professor Eric Dufresne, Heeso Noh, Vinodkumar Saranathan and Simon Mochrie Hui Cao.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International.
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