Arthropods – which include insects, crustaceans and spiders – use colour for important behaviours like food detection, mate selection and navigation. While some species, such as moths or honeybees, have trichromatic colour vision similar to humans, others can see colour at night or use more than ten receptor types to make sense of colourful surroundings and to identify and communicate with conspecifics. The papers in this theme issue discuss the evolution of visual pigments, neural mechanisms of colour coding, colour-guided behaviours and the colour ecology. They dive deep into the colourful world of arthropods, but also highlight where more research is needed to fill in the many missing pieces of this large puzzle.

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Read a blog post by Guest Editor Ayse Yilmaz about the issue and her Guest Editing experience.