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Conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies
BACKGROUND: Developmental plasticity is thought to have profound macro-evolutionary effects, for example, by increasing the probability of establishment in new environments and subsequent divergence into independently evolving lineages. In contrast to plasticity optimized for individual traits, phen...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5327525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28241743 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-017-0907-1 |
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author | van Bergen, Erik Osbaldeston, Dave Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa Brattström, Oskar Aduse-Poku, Kwaku Brakefield, Paul M. |
author_facet | van Bergen, Erik Osbaldeston, Dave Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa Brattström, Oskar Aduse-Poku, Kwaku Brakefield, Paul M. |
author_sort | van Bergen, Erik |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Developmental plasticity is thought to have profound macro-evolutionary effects, for example, by increasing the probability of establishment in new environments and subsequent divergence into independently evolving lineages. In contrast to plasticity optimized for individual traits, phenotypic integration, which enables a concerted response of plastic traits to environmental variability, may affect the rate of local adaptation by constraining independent responses of traits to selection. Using a comparative framework, this study explores the evolution of reaction norms for a variety of life history and morphological traits across five related species of mycalesine butterflies from the Old World tropics. RESULTS: Our data indicate that an integrated response of a suite of key traits is shared amongst these species. Interestingly, the traits that make up the functional suite are all known to be regulated by ecdysteroid signalling in Bicyclus anynana, one of the species included in this study, suggesting the same underlying hormonal regulator may be conserved within this group of polyphenic butterflies. We also detect developmental thresholds for the expression of alternative morphs. CONCLUSIONS: The phenotypic plasticity of a broad suite of morphological and life history traits is integrated and shared among species from three geographically independent lineages of mycalesine butterflies, despite considerable periods of independent evolution and exposure to disparate environments. At the same time, we have detected examples of evolutionary change where independent traits show different patterns of reaction norms. We argue that the expression of more robust phenotypes may occur by shifting developmental thresholds beyond the boundaries of the typical environmental variation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-017-0907-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5327525 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53275252017-03-03 Conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies van Bergen, Erik Osbaldeston, Dave Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa Brattström, Oskar Aduse-Poku, Kwaku Brakefield, Paul M. BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Developmental plasticity is thought to have profound macro-evolutionary effects, for example, by increasing the probability of establishment in new environments and subsequent divergence into independently evolving lineages. In contrast to plasticity optimized for individual traits, phenotypic integration, which enables a concerted response of plastic traits to environmental variability, may affect the rate of local adaptation by constraining independent responses of traits to selection. Using a comparative framework, this study explores the evolution of reaction norms for a variety of life history and morphological traits across five related species of mycalesine butterflies from the Old World tropics. RESULTS: Our data indicate that an integrated response of a suite of key traits is shared amongst these species. Interestingly, the traits that make up the functional suite are all known to be regulated by ecdysteroid signalling in Bicyclus anynana, one of the species included in this study, suggesting the same underlying hormonal regulator may be conserved within this group of polyphenic butterflies. We also detect developmental thresholds for the expression of alternative morphs. CONCLUSIONS: The phenotypic plasticity of a broad suite of morphological and life history traits is integrated and shared among species from three geographically independent lineages of mycalesine butterflies, despite considerable periods of independent evolution and exposure to disparate environments. At the same time, we have detected examples of evolutionary change where independent traits show different patterns of reaction norms. We argue that the expression of more robust phenotypes may occur by shifting developmental thresholds beyond the boundaries of the typical environmental variation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-017-0907-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-02-27 /pmc/articles/PMC5327525/ /pubmed/28241743 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-017-0907-1 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article van Bergen, Erik Osbaldeston, Dave Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa Brattström, Oskar Aduse-Poku, Kwaku Brakefield, Paul M. Conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies |
title | Conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies |
title_full | Conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies |
title_fullStr | Conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies |
title_full_unstemmed | Conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies |
title_short | Conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies |
title_sort | conserved patterns of integrated developmental plasticity in a group of polyphenic tropical butterflies |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5327525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28241743 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-017-0907-1 |
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