Nature’s most dazzling colors can be strangely rare. Walk through a park or forest and you see greens, yellows and reds that ...

Fossils tend to offer a black-and-white view of the past, but new research on prehistoric beetles brings the insects' flashy metallic colors back to vivid life. The findings, published in the journal ...

In addition to providing coloration, the exoskeletal shell of beetles needs to be strong and damage tolerant, researchers explain. Beetles are creatures with built-in body armor. They are tiny tanks ...

Iridescence sparkles across many branches of the tree of life, from dazzling ruby-throated hummingbirds to bright, metallic beetles. While ostentatious coloration can woo mates, scientists had assumed ...

Nature doesn’t hold back when it comes to insects. While most people imagine bugs as brown, creepy, or bland, there’s a whole world of creatures that look like they were painted by a surrealist. Here ...

Artist and naturalist Abbott Handerson Thayer became known as the “father of camouflage” with the publication in 1909 of a book on coloration in animals. He was particularly fascinated by the ...

Flashy iridescent shells might not seem like the best evolutionary strategy for bugs trying to avoid hungry birds. But in recent years, biologists have shown that iridescence—lustrous shifts in color, ...