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.

Scattering

A 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.

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.