Diverse set of Turing nanopatterns coat corneae across insect lineages

Corneal surfaces of some insects are coated with nipple-like nanostructures reducing the light reflection. Here we provide an extensive analysis of corneae across insect groups. Using atomic force microscopy, we discover a striking diversity of corneal nanocoatings, omnipresent in arthropods. These fascinating bionanostructures replicate the complete set of the Turing patterns—shapes resulting from the reaction−diffusion modeling underlying many examples of patterning in biological and physicochemical systems. Our work, verging on the interface of nanotechnology and zoology, evolution and biophysics, and ecology and genetics, sheds light on the molecular origin and evolutionary diversification of a beautiful diversity of insect corneal nanostructures. It also describes, to our knowledge, the first-ever biological example of Turing nanopatterns.