Thousands of scales cover the moth body and wings like shingles on a roof, arranged in rows and anchored in a socket. Image taken using a x100 optical microscope from the Université de Qu&eacute ...

Comparing how the scales were arranged on the wings of these ancient Lepidoptera to a modern-day group of primitive moths known as Micropterigidae, the researchers could begin to infer what colors ...

Researchers studied about 70 wing scales, and parts of scales, from the 200-million-year-old rocks and compared it with modern moths and butterflies. Research on the new fossil was published today ...

In lepidoptera, the tough, chitinous scales of the wings themselves exhibit intricate ridges and layers that can conjure vivid, ... The microstructure of wing scale on a Jurassic moth from Germany.

Butterfly wings are covered by thousands of microscopic scales split into two to three layers, which gives them their Greek order name of Lepidoptera - meaning scaled wings.

Lepidoptera exhibit in their scales some of the most diverse structural colors produced by insects, with this diversity undoubtedly having contributed to the evolutionary success of the order.

Fossils uncovered in Germany show that butterflies and moths may have been around for 200 million years – 70 million years earlier than flowering plants.

Lepidoptera Take Wing During Crystal Bridges Program. July 12, 2019 at 1:00 a.m. Photo courtesy Don Steinkraus A native moth, cecropia, the largest moth in North America, ...