The mystery behind an insect’s spotted pattern A leopard can’t change his spots but what if — with the help of scientists — he could swap those spots for stripes? The way animals develop specific color patterns has always been a mystery. Until now.
A team of researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison is the first to uncover the key ingredients to explain this decorative process in a species of fruit fly, Drosophila guttifera. The group investigated how the fruit fly generates a complex pattern of 16 black spots on its wings. The results, which appear online in the April 7 edition of the journal Nature, could potentially apply to color patterns on larger animals as well.
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