LAUSR

Description Light-manipulating materials are discovered in the eyeglitter of pelagic crustaceans Billions of animals living in open water, or pelagic habitats, can disappear into their surroundings using a variety of light-manipulating camouflage solutions. These include transparent, antireflection, and glittery reflective structures. Although such photonic camouflage allows these animals to vanish into their surroundings, they still need to eat (and avoid being eaten), which requires the ability to detect their invisible neighbors. Thus, an arms race exists between predators and prey for the ability to see and yet not be seen (1). Evolutionary tinkering across the diversity of pelagic animals has produced multiple solutions for controlling the transmission, reflection, and detection of light. On page 695 of this issue, Shavit et al. (2) report the discovery of photonic glass materials that form the basis of sparkly “eyeglitter” in the larvae of pelagic crustaceans and allows for both reflective camouflage and vision. These findings present a mechanism for producing salient, tunable coloration and light manipulation in space-limited tissues.