Colouration of insects like of the depicted tiger beetle (Cicindela sylvicola) is supposed to have multifarious reasons ranging from predator avoidance to sexual advertisement. Among the proposed hypothesis, biophysical principles suggest the thermoregulatory importance of insect colouration which in turn strongly depends on species body size. In this issue, Schweiger and Beierkuhnlein found strong accordance with the existing, theoretical ideas about the size dependency of thermoregulative control mechanisms by studying the body size – colouration trade-off for Western Palearctic ground beetles on a continental scale. Photo credit: Andreas Schweiger. Full paper here.

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