A collaborative work
In our « Physics goes wild » HFSP project, we bring physicists, electrophysiologists, molecular and evolutionary biologists together on the field to identify the evolutionary drivers of iridescence in Morpho!
Quantifying iridescence
Marco Giraldo‘s great team in Medellin uses a diversity of techniques to quantify and finely characterize iridescence across sprecies, but also to identify its morphological bases, investigating the nanostructures covering the scales.
Investigating Morpho vision through electrophysiology
With his amazing team in Ljubljana Gregor Belusic does his magic and explores Morpho’s visual sensitivity using some crazy electrophysiological techniques! Does vision drive the evolution of wing iridescence, or is it the other way around ? Is the vision of blue species spectrally tuned to blue wave lengths?
Investigating Morpho vision through molecular analysis of opsins
In collaboration with Violaine Llaurens at CIRB (College de France), Adriana Briscoe and collegues investigate the evolution of opsins and their expression in the eyes of morphos, using a diversity of approaches, including analysis of genomic sequences, expression data, immunohistochemistry and eyeshine imaging.
www.evomorpho.com 