Research at the Materials Optics Group

  • Morpho eye mosaic

    What remains to be seen?

    Colour is integral to the visual language of many species. We are interested in understanding how animals sense and interpret the colorful signals in their environment. We study the first steps of vision in butterflies that involve interesting optical phenomena like gradient lenses, waveguiding, dichroism and reflective gratings. We use spectroscopical techniques to understand how the main optical sensor molecule, rhodopsin, has been tuned during evolution of butterflies and their diverging ecological niches. This work is conducted in collaboration with the group of Gregor Belusic (Ljubljana).