The optix gene has been implicated in butterfly wing pattern adaptation by genetic association, mapping, and expression studies. The actual developmental function of this gene has remained unclear, however. Here we used CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to show that optix plays a fundamental role in nymphalid butterfly wing pattern development, where it is required for determination of all chromatic c...

Any metric quadrangulation (made by segments of straight line) of a point set in the plane determines a 2-coloration of the set, such that edges of the quadrangulation can only join points with different colors. In this work we focus in 2-colorations and study whether they admit a quadrangulation or not, and whether, given two quadrangulations of the same 2-coloration, it is possible to carry o...

Many animals use concealing markings to reduce the risk of predation. These include background pattern matching (crypsis), where the coloration matches a random sample of the background and disruptive patterns, whose effectiveness has been hypothesized to lie in breaking up the body into a series of apparently unrelated objects. We have previously established the effectiveness of disruptive col...

In vertebrates, melanin-based coloration is often associated with variation in physiological and behavioural traits. We propose that this association stems from pleiotropic effects of the genes regulating the synthesis of brown to black eumelanin. The most important regulators are the melanocortin 1 receptor and its ligands, the melanocortin agonists and the agouti-signalling protein antagonist...

There is now good evidence in several taxa that animal coloration positively reflects an individual's antioxidant capacity. However, even though telomeres, a marker of ageing, are known to be vulnerable to reactive oxygen species (ROS) attacks, no studies have ever assessed whether colour fading reflects the rate of biological ageing in any taxa. Here, we measured colour fading, telomere erosio...