Question Corner: How do squids tune colour and brightness of iridescence of their skin?
The Hindu
Readers may send their questions/answers to questioncorner@thehindu.co.in
(Subscribe to Science For All, our weekly newsletter, where we aim to take the jargon out of science and put the fun in. .) Squids adeptly change the colour and patterns on their skin for camouflage and communication. Like their cephalopod cousins the octopus and cuttlefish, Squids have specialised pigment-filled cells called chromatophores that expand to expose them to light, resulting in various shades of pigmentary colour. Squids shimmer and flicker, reflecting different colours and breaking light over their skin. Researchers have found that proteins called reflectins are responsible for their iridescence. Now, researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, have found () what allows squids to tune the reflected light. Daniel Morse’s team from the University had already found that structures (subwavelength-wide grooves) and mechanisms by which light-reflecting cells (iridocytes) in the skin can take on virtually every colour of the rainbow.
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