Coloration, anole [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]anoleEncyclopædia Britannica, biology, the general appearance of an organism as determined by the quality and quantity of light that is reflected or emitted from its surfaces. Coloration depends upon several factors: the colour and distribution of the organism’s biochromes (pigments), particularly the relative location of differently coloured areas; the shape, posture, position, and movement of the organism; and the quality and quantity of light striking the organism. The perceived coloration depends also on the visual capabilities of the viewer. Coloration is a dynamic and complex characteristic and must be clearly distinguished from the concept of “colour,” which refers only to the spectral qualities of emitted or reflected light.

Many evolutionary functions have been suggested for the effects of coloration on optical signaling. An organism with conspicuous coloration draws attention to itself, with some sort of adaptive interaction the frequent result. Such “advertising” coloration may serve to repel or attract other animals. While conspicuous coloration emphasizes optical signals and thereby enhances communication, coloration may, conversely, suppress optical signals or create incorrect signals and thereby reduce communication. This “deceptive” coloration serves to lessen detrimental or maladaptive interactions with other organisms.

Coloration may also affect an organism in ways other than its interaction with other organisms. Such nonoptical functions of coloration include physiological roles that depend on the molecular properties (e.g., strength and type of chemical bonds) of the chemicals that create colour. For example, dark hair is mechanically stronger than light hair, and dark feathers resist abrasion better than light feathers. Coloration may also play a part in the organism’s energy budget, because biochromes create colour by the differential reflection and absorption of solar engery. Energy absorbed as a result of coloration may be used in biochemical reactions, such as photosynthesis, or it may contribute to the thermal equilibrium of the organism. Nonoptical functions of coloration also include visual functions in which coloration or its pattern affects an animal’s own vision. Surfaces near the eye may be darkly coloured, for instance, to reduce reflectance that interferes with vision.

Emitted light, the product of bioluminescence, forms a portion of the coloration of some organisms. Bioluminescence may reveal an organism to nearby animals, but it may also serve as a light source in nocturnal species or in deepwater marine animals such as the pinecone fishes (Monocentris). These fishes feed at night and have bright photophores, or bioluminescent organs, at the tips of their lower jaws; they appear to use these organs much like tiny searchlights as they feed on planktonic (minute floating) organisms.

Because many pigments are formed as the natural or only slightly modified by-products of metabolic processes, some coloration may be without adaptive function. Nonfunctional coloration can, for example, be an incidental effect of a pleiotropic gene (a gene that has multiple effects), or it can result from pharmacological reaction (as when the skin of a Caucasian person turns blue in cold water) or from pure chance. It seems unlikely, however, that any apparently fortuitous coloration could long escape the process of natural selection and thus remain totally without function.

Regardless of its adaptive advantages, a particular coloration or pattern of coloration cannot evolve unless it is within the species’ natural pool of genetic variability. Thus a species may lack a seemingly adaptive coloration because genetic variability has not included that coloration or pattern in its hereditary repertoire.

Because humans are highly visual animals, we are naturally interested in and attentive to biological coloration. Human attention to coloration ranges from the purely aesthetic to the rigidly pragmatic. Soft, pastel colorations aid in increasing work efficiency and contribute to tranquil moods; bright, strongly contrasting colours seem to contribute to excitement and enthusiasm. These phenomena may be extensions of the basic human response to the soft blue, green, and brown backgrounds of the environment as opposed to sharply contrasting warning colorations found on many dangerous organisms. It is possible that much of the aesthetic value humans attach to coloration is closely related to its broad biological functions.

Human interest in coloration has led to biological studies. The classical work by the Moravian abbot Gregor Mendel on inherited characteristics, based largely on plant coloration, formed the foundation for modern genetics. Coloration also aids in the identification of organisms. It is an easily perceived, described, and compared characteristic. Related species living in different habitats, however, frequently have strikingly different colorations. Since coloration is susceptible to alteration in various functional contexts, it usually lacks value as a conservative characteristic for determining systematic relationships between all but the most closely related species.

Related articles of interest include animal behaviour; mimicry.

Structural and biochemical bases for colour

Organisms produce colour physically, by submicroscopic structures that fractionate incident light into its component colours (schemochromes); or chemically, by natural pigments (biochromes) that reflect or transmit (or both) portions of the solar spectrum. Pigmentary colours, being of molecular origin, may be expressed independently of structural colour and are not altered by crushing, grinding, or compression. Structural colours are often reinforced by the presence of biochromes and are altered or destroyed by crushing, grinding, or compression.

Structural colours (schemochromes)

The physical principles of total reflection, spectral interference, scattering, and, to some extent, polychromatic diffraction, all familiar in reference to inanimate objects, are also encountered among tissues of living forms, most commonly in animals. In plants these physical principles are exemplified only by the total reflection of white light by some fungi and bacteria and by the petals of some flowers and barks, and by some spectral interference in certain sea plants.


Total reflection of light—which imparts whiteness to flowers, birds’ feathers, mammalian hair, and the wings of certain butterflies—often results from the separation of finely divided materials by minute air spaces. Secretions or deposits in tissues may also contribute to the whiteness; for example, the fat and protein in mammalian milk and the calcium carbonate in the shells of mollusks, crustaceans, certain echinoderms, corals, and protozoans.


Rivoli’s hummingbird [Credit: Earl Kubis—Root Resources/EB Inc.]Rivoli’s hummingbirdEarl Kubis—Root Resources/EB Inc.Fractionation of white light into its components occurs in organisms (chiefly animals) through interference: the incident light penetrates the animal structure and is reflected back through successive ultrathinly layered films, giving striking iridescence, even in diffuse light, as a result of the asynchrony between the wavelengths of visible light that enter and those that return.

Brilliant interference colours may display variety or be predominantly of one kind, depending upon the relative thicknesses of layers and interlaminar spaces giving rise to the colours. Such colours also are changeable with the angle of vision of the viewer.

Purely prismatic refraction of light (sometimes confused with interference iridescence) is probably rare in animals and is limited to instances in which direct beams of light impinge upon certain microcrystalline deposits. Polychromatic diffraction—e.g., by natural, fine gratings or regular fine striations—may be observed among certain insects, but, like prismatic refraction, it is conspicuous only when a direct beam of light strikes such structures and they are viewed at an angle.


superb tanager [Credit: Eric Hosking]superb tanagerEric HoskingA special instance of diffraction, often referred to as the Tyndall effect (after its discoverer, the 19th-century British physicist John Tyndall), results in the presence of blue colours in many animals. The Tyndall effect arises from the reflection of the shorter (blue) waves of incident light by finely dispersed particles situated above the dark layers of pigment, commonly melanin deposits. In these blue-scattering systems, the reflecting entities—whether very small globules of protein or lipid, semisolid substances in aqueous mediums, or very small vesicles of air—are of such small size as to approximate the shorter wavelengths of light (about 0.4 micron). The longer waves, such as red, orange, and yellow, pass through such mediums and are absorbed by the dark melanin below; the short waves, violet and blue, encounter bodies of approximately their own dimensions and consequently are reflected back.

Two types of coloration may act in combination; in some instances, for example, structurally coloured and pigmented layers may be superimposed. Most of the greens found in the skin of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and birds do not arise from the presence of green pigments (although exceptions occur); rather, they result from the emergence of scattered blue light through an overlying layer of yellow pigment. Extraction of the yellow pigment from the overlying cuticle of a green feather or of a reptilian skin leaves the object blue.

Pigments (biochromes)

Plants and animals commonly possess characteristic pigments. They range in plants from those that impart the brilliant hues of many fungi, through those that give rise to the various browns, reds, and greens of species that can synthesize their food from inorganic substances (autotrophs), to the colourful pigments found in the flowers of seed plants. The pigments of animals are located in nonliving skin derivatives such as hair in mammals, feathers in birds, scales in turtles and tortoises, and cuticles and shells in many invertebrates. Pigments also occur within living cells of the skin. The outermost skin cells may be pigmented, as in humans, or special pigment-containing cells, chromatophores, may occur in the deeper layers of the skin. Depending on the colour of their pigment, chromatophores are termed melanophores (black), erythrophores (red), xanthophores (yellow), or leucophores (white).

Chemical and biochemical features

The colour of a chemical compound depends on the selective absorption of light by molecules whose size or vibrational wavelengths or both lie between 3000 and 7000 angstroms (one angstrom equals 10-7 millimetre). Selective absorption of visible light results from retardation in the relative speed or vibrational frequency of the many rapidly vibrating electron pairs found in a compound. Sufficient modification in the frequency of vibration imparts to the whole molecule a special motion, or chemical resonance, that absorbs entering light rays of matching frequency with the evolution of heat; the residual, unabsorbed light is transmitted to the eye.

If the molecular resonance involves short, rapid waves, the shorter visible light waves are absorbed (i.e., violet and blue) and the compound appears yellow or orange; red-appearing substances, having slightly longer resonance values, absorb light from the blue and green regions; and blue and green compounds result from cancellation of light in the red or orange realms. Black substances absorb all light equally and completely; white compounds absorb no light in the visible spectrum. The colour reflected by a pigment usually includes all the wavelengths of visible light except the absorbed fraction; the observed colour of a compound thus depends upon the dominant wavelength reflected or transmitted.

The more important natural pigments may be grouped into (1) classes whose molecules lack nitrogen and (2) those that contain nitrogen. Of the nonnitrogenous pigments, by far the most important, conspicuous, and widely distributed in both plants and animals are the carotenoids. Naphthoquinones, anthraquinones, and flavonoids are other nitrogen-free pigments that occur in animals, all being synthesized originally in plants, as are the carotenoids. But unlike the carotenoids, the others have a limited distribution in animals, and little is known of their physiological attributes in either kingdom.

Prominent among the nitrogenous biochromes are the tetrapyrroles, including both the porphyrins (i.e., the red or green heme compounds present in the blood of many animals and the green chlorophylls of many plants) and the bile pigments, which occur in many secretions and excretory products of animals and in plant cells. Equally prominent are the melanins, which are dark biochromes found in skin, hair, feathers, scales, and some internal membranes; they represent end products from the breakdown of tyrosine and related amino acids.

Below are outlined the basic colours, sources, and metabolic features of some representative biological pigments.

Nonnitrogenous pigments


The carotenoids constitute a group of yellow, orange, or red pigments of almost universal distribution in living things. Carotenoids generally are insoluble in water but dissolve readily in fat solvents such as alcohol, ether, and chloroform. They are readily bleached by light and by exposure to atmospheric oxygen and are also unstable in acids such as sulfuric acid.

Carotenoids occur as two major types: the hydrocarbon class, or carotenes, and the oxygenated (alcoholic) class, or xanthophylls. Some animals exhibit a high degree of selectivity for the assimilation of members of one or the other class. The horse (Equus caballus), for instance, absorbs through its intestine only the carotenes, even though its green food contains mostly xanthophylls; the domestic hen (Gallus domesticus), on the other hand, stores only members of the xanthophyll class, as do many fishes and invertebrates. Other animals, including certain frogs, Octopus species, and humans, assimilate and store both classes in the liver and in fat deposits.

American flamingo [Credit: C. Laubscher/Bruce Coleman Inc.]American flamingoC. Laubscher/Bruce Coleman Inc.Carotenoids are synthesized by bacteria, fungi, algae, and other plants to highly evolved flowering forms, in which they are most conspicuous in petals, pollen, fruit, and some roots—e.g., carrots, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and citrus fruits. All animals and protozoans contain carotenoids, although the blood plasma of a number of mammals (e.g., swine, sheep, goats, some carnivores) is almost entirely free of these pigments. The livers of animals often yield carotenoids; all animals depend upon a nutritional supply of vitamin A or one of its precursors, such as carotene, for maintenance of normal metabolism and growth. Carotenoids are relatively more concentrated in such structures as ovaries, eggs, testes (some animals), the liver (or the liver-like analogue of invertebrates), adrenal glands, skin, and eyes. In birds, carotenoid pigmentation may be conspicuous in the yellow tarsal (lower leg) skin, external ear, body fat, and egg yolk (especially in poultry) and in red-coloured feathers. Carotenoids are also found in the wings or wing covers of many insects and in the milk fat of cattle.


The quinones include the benzoquinones, naphthoquinones, anthraquinones, and polycyclic quinones.


Benzoquinones occur in certain fungi and in roots, berries, or galls (abnormal growths) of higher plants, from which they can be recovered as yellow, orange, red, violet, or darker coloured crystals or solids. Small quantities of pale-yellow crystals of coenzyme Q, often called ubiquinones, are almost universally distributed in plants and animals. The ubiquinones impart no recognizable coloration to an organism because of their very small concentrations; they play an important role, however, as respiratory enzymes in catalyzing cellular oxidations.


echinochrome: sea urchin coloration [Credit: Cy LaTour]echinochrome: sea urchin colorationCy LaTourNaphthoquinones are encountered in some bacteria and in the leaves, seeds, and woody parts of higher plants. They can be recovered as yellow, orange, red, or purple crystals. They are soluble in organic solvents and have been used extensively as dyes for fabrics. Among the naphthoquinones of biochemical and physiological importance are the K vitamins. Another series within the naphthoquinone class manifests conspicuous red, purple, or sometimes green colours in a few animal types. These are the echinochromes and spinochromes, so named because they are conspicuous in tissues and in the calcareous tests (shells) of echinoids, or sea urchins.


The anthraquinones occur widely in plants but in only a few animals. These brilliantly coloured compounds have found wide application as dyes and as chemical indicators of acidity or alkalinity.

Polycyclic quinones

The polycyclic quinones occur in some bacteria, fungi, and parts of higher plants. One of the more interesting representatives is the aphin group, so called because of their initial recovery from the hemolymph (circulating fluid) of several coloured species of aphids; aphids parasitize plants, as do the other quinone-assimilating insects.


The biochromes in the class of flavonoids, another instance of compounds lacking nitrogen, are extensively represented in plants but are of relatively minor and limited occurrence in animals, which rely on plants as sources of these pigments. Flavonoids consist of a 15-carbon skeleton compound called flavone (2-phenylbenzopyrone), in which one or more hydrogen atoms (H) is replaced either by hydroxyl groups (-OH) or by methoxyl groups (-OCH3). Flavonoids occur in living tissue mainly in combination with sugar molecules, forming glycosides. Many members of this group, notably the anthoxanthins, impart yellow colours, often to flower petals; the class also includes the anthocyanins, which are water-soluble plant pigments exhibiting orange-reds, crimson, blue, or other colours.


The variety of anthoxanthins is greater than that of anthocyanins, and new anthoxanthins are continuously being discovered. A prominent flavonoid is the pale-yellow flavonal quercitin, first isolated from an oak (Quercus) but widely distributed in nature. A weak acid, it combines with strong acids to form orange salts, which are not very stable and readily dissociate in water. Quercitin is a strong dyestuff; it yields more than one colour, depending on the mordant used. A yellow pigment isolated from the wings of the butterfly Melanargia galatea possesses chemical properties closely allied to those of quercitin. Other well-known anthoxanthins include chrysin, found in the leaf buds of the poplar (Populus), and apigenin, found in the leaves, stem, and seeds of parsley (Petroselinum) and the flowers of the camomile (Anthemis).


The anthocyanins are largely responsible for the red colouring of buds and young shoots and the purple and purple-red colours of autumn leaves. The red colour becomes apparent when the green chlorophyll decomposes with the approach of winter. Intense light and low temperatures favour the development of anthocyanin pigments. Some leaves and flowers lose anthocyanins on reaching maturity; others gain in pigment content during development. Often an excess of sugars exists in leaves when anthocyanins are abundant. Injury to individual leaves may be instrumental in causing the sugar excess in such cases. Anthocyanins also occur in blossoms, fruits, and even roots (e.g., beets) and occasionally in larval and adult flies and in true bugs (Heteroptera).

A typical anthocyanin is red in acid, violet in neutral, and blue in alkaline solution. Thus, the blue cornflower, the bordeaux-red cornflower, the deep-red dahlia, and the red rose contain the same anthocyanin, the variation in colour resulting from the different degrees of acidity and alkalinity of the cell sap. More than one anthocyanin may be present in a flower or blossom, and the colours of many flowers are caused by the presence of both anthocyanins and plastid pigments in the tissues. Moreover, small genetic changes in varieties or species may be associated with the development of different anthocyanins.

No physiological functions seem to have been definitely established for the flavonoids in animals and plants. It has been pointed out, however, that flower colour is valuable in attracting bees, butterflies, and other pollen-transporting visitors that implement fertilization in plants; brightly coloured fruits have improved seed dispersal by animals attracted to them as food.

Nitrogenous pigments

Tetrapyrroles, porphyrins, and their derivatives

A biologically important class of water-soluble, nitrogenous 16-membered ring, or cyclic, compounds is referred to as porphyrins. The elementary structural unit of all porphyrins is a large ring itself composed of four pyrrole rings, or cyclic tetrapyrroles. This basic compound is known as porphin.

Porphyrins combine with metals (metalloporphyrins) and protein. They are represented by the green, photosynthetic chlorophylls of higher plants and by the hemoglobins in the blood of many animals.


white-crested turaco [Credit: Kenneth Fink—Root Resources/EB Inc.]white-crested turacoKenneth Fink—Root Resources/EB Inc.Many invertebrates display in their skins or shells porphyrin pigments (or salts of them), some showing fluorescence (i.e., the emission of visible light during exposure to outside radiation). In addition, various porphyrins occur in secretory and excretory products of animals, and some kinds, predominantly the phorbides, which result from the breakdown of chlorophyll, have been recovered from ancient natural deposits such as coal and petroleum and from muds of long-buried marine and lacustrine strata. Ooporphyrin is responsible for the red flecks on the eggshells of some plovers and many other birds. The African turacos (Musophagidae) secrete a copper salt of uroporphyrin III into their wing feathers. This deep-red pigment, turacin, is readily leached from the feathers by water containing even traces of alkali. The green plumes of these birds owe their colour to the presence of turacoverdin, a derivative of turacin.


Hemoglobins are present in the red blood cells of all vertebrate animals and in the circulatory fluids of many invertebrates, notably annelid worms, some arthropods, echinoderms, and a few mollusks. The hemoglobin molecule consists of a heme fraction and a globin fraction; the former consists of four pyrrole moieties (porphin) with a ferrous iron (Fe2+) atom in the centre. The globin fraction is a protein that may constitute more than 90 percent of the total molecular weight of hemoglobin. Hemoglobins have the capacity to combine with atmospheric oxygen in lungs, gills, or other respiratory surfaces of the body and to release oxygen to tissues. They are responsible for the pink to red colours observed in combs and wattles of birds and in the skin of humans and other primates. Particularly prominent are portions of the face, buttocks, and genital areas of baboons.


Chlorophyll is one of the most important pigments in nature. Through the process of photosynthesis, it is capable of channeling the radiant energy of sunlight into the chemical energy of organic carbon compounds in the cell. For a detailed account of this process, see photosynthesis. A pigment very much like chlorophyll was probably the first step in the evolution of self-sustaining life. Chlorophyll exists in several forms. Chlorophylls a and b are the chief forms in higher plants and green algae; bacteriochlorophyll is found in certain photosynthetic bacteria.

The chlorophylls are magnesium porphyrin compounds in which a cyclic tetrapyrrole is attached to a single central magnesium atom. They contain two more hydrogen atoms than do other porphyrins. The various forms differ in minor modifications of side groups attached to the pyrrole groups. In higher plants, chlorophyll is bound to proteins and lipids aschloroplastin in definite and specific laminations in bodies called chloroplasts. The combination of chlorophyll with protein in chloroplastin is of special significance, because only as a result of the combination is chlorophyll able to remain resistant to light.


Among the metabolic products of certain porphyrins, including the heme portion of hemoglobin, is a series of yellow, green, red, or brown nonmetallic compounds arranged as linear, or chain, structures rather than in the cyclic configuration of porphyrins. These are the so-called bilins, or bilichromes. Small quantities of the red waste compound, bilirubin (C33H36O6N4); a green product formed from it by the removal of two hydrogen atoms, biliverdin (C33H34O6N4); and various other chemically similar compounds occur in normal tissues and may be conspicuous in excretory or secretory materials under normal circumstances and certain pathological conditions. The bile pigments, although first identified in mammalian tissues or products (e.g., in the bile of the gall bladder), are by no means confined thereto. Various members of the bilichrome series are encountered in invertebrates, lower vertebrates, and in red algae and green plants.

Although the bile pigments of animals arise in all probability from the catabolism of heme precursors, there is evidence that bilirubin, accompanied by iron salts, promotes the synthesis of new hemoglobin when injected into humans, dogs, or rabbits suffering from secondary anemia.

In addition to the chlorophylls, plants also contain linear bilichromes, which have especially important roles in green plants. Among them are the blue phycocyanins and the red phycoerythrins, which serve, in red algae, as accessory pigments in photosynthesis. Another example is phytochrome, a bilichrome pigment of blue colour, which, although present in very minute quantities in green plants, is indispensable in various photoperiodic processes.

Phytochrome exists in two alternative forms: P660 and P730. Of these, P730 triggers the germination and respiration of seeds (and of spores of ferns and mosses), the flowering of long-day plants (or inhibition of flowering in short-day plants), etiolation (growth in darkness), cuticle coloration, anthocyanin synthesis (e.g., in apples, red cabbage, and turnips), and several structural and physiological responses. P660 is capable of reversing many physiological reactions initiated by P730. Even very brief exposures to light absorbed by P660 delays flowering in some short-day plants otherwise geared to flower by previous exposure to light of such wavelength that only the P730 phytochrome is involved. Much yet remains to be learned about the biochemistry of phytochromes and the reactions catalyzed or otherwise regulated by them.

Indole pigments


These pigments produce buff, red-brown, brown, and black colours. Melanins occur widely in the feathers of birds; in hair, eyes, and skin of mammals, including humans; in skin or scales or both of many fishes, amphibians, and reptiles; in the ink of cephalopods (octopus, squid); and in various tissues of many invertebrates.

Melanins are polymers (compounds consisting of repeating units) of variable mass and complexity. They are synthesized from the amino acid tyrosine by progressive oxidation, a process catalyzed by the copper-containing enzyme tyrosinase. Extractable in very dilute alkali, melanins are also soluble when fresh and undried in very dilute acid solutions; they are bleached by hydrogen peroxide, which is sometimes applied to growing hair to create a blond effect, and by chlorine, chromate, and permanganate.

Pale-yellow, tawny, buff, reddish, brown, and black colours of hair and some feathers can arise from the presence of melanins in various phases of formation or subdivision in granules. The dark, light-absorbing sublayers of melanin that intensify reflected structural (Tyndall) blues or iridescent displays in feathers were mentioned above. Black melanins and brown melanoproteins occur in many invertebrate animals. Certain worms and many crustaceans and mollusks exhibit melanism in the skin.

The degree of natural melanization depends upon relative concentrations of copper and of the copper-containing enzyme tyrosinase. Dark hairs contain higher traces of copper than pale hairs do; should the intake of copper fall substantially below a fraction of a milligram per day, new fur emerges successively less dark. This trend is reversed by restoring sufficient copper to the diet.

All human skin except that of albinos contains greater or lesser amounts of melanin. In fair-skinned persons the epidermis, or outermost layer of the skin, contains little of the pigment; in the dark-skinned races epidermal deposits of melanin are heavy. On exposure to sunlight, human epidermis undergoes gradual tanning with increases in the melanin content, which helps to protect underlying tissues from injurious sun rays.


Like melanins, the indigo compounds are excretory metabolic breakdown products in certain animals. But, in contrast to the melanins, their distribution as conspicuous pigmentary compounds is very limited, and they are not dark but red, green, blue, or purple.

One of the most common members of this group is indigo, or indigotin, which occurs as a glucoside (i.e., chemically combined with glucose) in many plants of Asia, the East Indies, Africa, and South America. It has long been used as a blue dye.

Phenoxazones and sclerotins

Once confused with melanins, biochromes such as phenoxazones and sclerotins show a similar colour series (yellow, ruddy, brown, or black). Genetic research, notably with reference to eye pigments of the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, has resulted in the description of a class of so-called ommochromes, which are phenoxazones. The ommochromes not only are conspicuous in the eyes of insects and crustaceans but have also been detected in the eggs of the echiurid worm Urechis caupo and in the changeable chromatophores in the skin of cephalopods. In addition to being responsible for the brown, vermilion, cinnabar, and other colours of insect eyes, ommochromes are also sometimes present in the molting fluid and integument. They are distinguished from the melanins by solubility in formic acid and in dilute mineral acids, by manifestation of violet colours in concentrated sulfuric acid, and by showing reversible colour changes with oxidizing and reducing agents. The ommochromes, which are derived from breakdown of the amino acid tryptophan, include ommatins and ommins. The ommatins, although complex in chemical structure, are relatively small molecules. The ommins are large molecules, in which the chromogenic moiety is seemingly condensed with longer chains, such as peptides (amino acids linked together).

Sclerotins arise as a result of an enzyme-catalyzed tanning of protein. Certain roaches secrete a phenolase enzyme, the glucoside of a dihydroxyphenol, and a glycosidase. Mixing of these substances results in the release of the phenolic compound from glucose and its combination, via a reaction catalyzed by the phenolase, with protein; the products are pink, ruddy, and ultimately dark-brown polymers that are incorporated into the insect’s body cuticle and egg cases. Similar reactions take place in the carapace (the shell covering the body) of certain crustaceans.

Purines and pterins

butterfly fish: coloration [Credit: Bruce Barnetson—NHPA/EB Inc.]butterfly fish: colorationBruce Barnetson—NHPA/EB Inc.Although the purine compounds cannot be classed as true pigments—they characteristically occur as white crystals—they often contribute to the general colour patterns in lower vertebrates and invertebrates. That purines are excretory materials is illustrated by the uric acid (or urates) and guanine found in the excrement of birds and of uric acid found in that of reptiles. Uric acid has also been detected in the mucus excreted by sea anemones, and urates are present in small amounts in the urine of higher apes and humans.

The white, silvery, or iridescent chromatophores, both stationary iridocytes and changeable leucophores, of some fishes, amphibians, lizards, and cephalopods contain microcrystalline aggregates of the purine guanine; a layer of white skin on the underside of many fishes, called the stratum arginatum, is particularly rich in guanine.

Closely related to the purines and formerly classed among them are the pterins, so named from their notable appearance in and first chemical isolation from the wings of certain butterflies. Both purines and pterins contain a six-atom pyrimidine ring; in purines this ring is chemically condensed with an imidazole ring; pterins contain the pyrazine ring. Pterins occur as white, yellow, orange, or red granules in association with insect wing material.

Flavins (lyochromes)

Flavins constitute a class of pale-yellow, greenly fluorescent, water-soluble biochromes widely distributed in small quantities in plant and animal tissues. The most prevalent member of the class is riboflavin (vitamin B2).

Flavins are synthesized by bacteria, yeasts, and green plants; riboflavin is not manufactured by animals, which therefore are dependent upon plant sources. Riboflavin is a component of an enzyme capable of combining with molecular oxygen; the product, which is yellow, releases the oxygen in the cell with simultaneous loss of colour.

Miscellaneous pigments

The chemical constitution of many pigments remains imperfectly known. Only a few of the more conspicuous examples are mentioned below.


Copper-containing proteins called hemocyanins occur notably in the blood of larger crustaceans and of gastropod and cephalopod mollusks. Hemocyanins are colourless in the reduced, or deoxygenated, state and blue when exposed to air or to oxygen dissolved in the blood. Hemocyanins serve as respiratory pigments in many animals, although it has not been established that they perform this function wherever they occur.


Iron-containing, proteinaceous pigments, hemerythrins are present in the blood of certain bottom-dwelling marine worms (notably burrowing sipunculids) and of the brachiopod Lingula; the pigments serve as oxygen-carriers.


Pale-green pigment, hemovanadin, is found within the blood cells (vanadocytes) of sea squirts (Tunicata) belonging to the families Ascidiidae and Perophoridae. The biochemical function of hemovanadin, a strong reducing agent, is unknown.


A relatively rare pigment, actiniochrome occurs in red or violet tentacle tips and in the stomodeum (oral region) of various sea anemones. The pigment plays no recognized physiological role.


Adenochrome is a nonproteinaceous pigment that occurs as garnet-red inclusions at high concentrations in the glandular, branchial heart tissues of Octopus bimaculatus. The compound contains small amounts of ferric iron and some nitrogen and gives a positive reaction for pyrroles. It is believed to be an excretory product.

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