bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.14.093450; this version posted May 15, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Transparency in butterflies and moths: structural diversity, optical properties and 2 ecological relevance 3 4 Authors : 5 D. Gomez1, C. Pinna2, J. Pairraire3, M. Arias1,2, J. Barbut2, A. Pomerantz4,5, C. Noûs6, W. Daney de 6 Marcillac3, S. Berthier3, N. Patel4, C. Andraud7, M. Elias2 7 8 Corresponding author:
[email protected] 9 10 Affiliations: 11 1 CEFE, CNRS, University of Montpellier, University of Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, EPHE, IRD, 12 Montpellier, France 13 2 ISYEB, UMR 7205, CNRS, MNHN, Sorbonne University, EPHE, France 14 3 INSP, Sorbonne University, CNRS, Paris, France 15 4 Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA 16 5 Department Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, USA 17 6 Cogitamus Laboratory, France 18 7 CRC, MNHN, Paris, France 19 20 21 ABSTRACT: 22 In water, transparency seems an ideal concealment strategy, as testified by the variety of transparent 23 aquatic organisms. By contrast, transparency is nearly absent on land, with the exception of insect 24 wings, and knowledge is scarce about its functions and evolution, with fragmentary studies and no 25 comparative perspective. Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) represent an outstanding group to 26 investigate transparency on land, as species typically harbour opaque wings covered with coloured 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.14.093450; this version posted May 15, 2020.