Well it's more to do with what you mentioned, but observing biology is very inspiring to my art and more specifically, using concepts from evolutionary theory in order to "evolve" my art has yielded very positive results.
Also, microscopic imagery, like of diatoms, is of huge value to me artistically.
I think that studying the "emergence" of things like visual patterns, is equal to or even more important than simply studying the patterns themselves. It gives you more power to improvise or come up with your own original work instead of just copying something else.