Scientists are puzzling out how butterflies assemble their brightly colored scales

From the danger-sign orange of Monarch butterflies, to the regal blues of the Blue Morpho, butterflies come in a veritable rainbow of colors. The insects display those incredible hues thanks to scales on their wings. Those scales are made up of crystals, which are made up of a sugar molecule called chitin (the same stuff that makes up insect exoskeletons and mushrooms). The tiny crystals on butterflies' scales are called gyroids. They're of interest to biologists, but also to materials scientist