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Estimating the age of Heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs

Mating behaviour and predation avoidance in Heliconius involve visual colour signals; however, there is considerable inter-individual phenotypic variation in the appearance of colours. In particular, the red pigment varies from bright crimson to faded red. It has been thought that this variation is...

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Autores principales: Dalbosco Dell’Aglio, Denise, Akkaynak, Derya, McMillan, W. Owen, Jiggins, Chris D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5622606/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28970967
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3821
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author Dalbosco Dell’Aglio, Denise
Akkaynak, Derya
McMillan, W. Owen
Jiggins, Chris D.
author_facet Dalbosco Dell’Aglio, Denise
Akkaynak, Derya
McMillan, W. Owen
Jiggins, Chris D.
author_sort Dalbosco Dell’Aglio, Denise
collection PubMed
description Mating behaviour and predation avoidance in Heliconius involve visual colour signals; however, there is considerable inter-individual phenotypic variation in the appearance of colours. In particular, the red pigment varies from bright crimson to faded red. It has been thought that this variation is primarily due to pigment fading with age, although this has not been explicitly tested. Previous studies have shown the importance of red patterns in mate choice and that birds and butterflies might perceive these small colour differences. Using digital photography and calibrated colour images, we investigated whether the hue variation in the forewing dorsal red band of Heliconius melpomene rosina corresponds with age. We found that the red hue and age were highly associated, suggesting that red colour can indeed be used as a proxy for age in the study of wild-caught butterflies.
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spelling pubmed-56226062017-10-02 Estimating the age of Heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs Dalbosco Dell’Aglio, Denise Akkaynak, Derya McMillan, W. Owen Jiggins, Chris D. PeerJ Animal Behavior Mating behaviour and predation avoidance in Heliconius involve visual colour signals; however, there is considerable inter-individual phenotypic variation in the appearance of colours. In particular, the red pigment varies from bright crimson to faded red. It has been thought that this variation is primarily due to pigment fading with age, although this has not been explicitly tested. Previous studies have shown the importance of red patterns in mate choice and that birds and butterflies might perceive these small colour differences. Using digital photography and calibrated colour images, we investigated whether the hue variation in the forewing dorsal red band of Heliconius melpomene rosina corresponds with age. We found that the red hue and age were highly associated, suggesting that red colour can indeed be used as a proxy for age in the study of wild-caught butterflies. PeerJ Inc. 2017-09-27 /pmc/articles/PMC5622606/ /pubmed/28970967 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3821 Text en ©2017 Dalbosco Dell’Aglio et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Dalbosco Dell’Aglio, Denise
Akkaynak, Derya
McMillan, W. Owen
Jiggins, Chris D.
Estimating the age of Heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs
title Estimating the age of Heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs
title_full Estimating the age of Heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs
title_fullStr Estimating the age of Heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs
title_full_unstemmed Estimating the age of Heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs
title_short Estimating the age of Heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs
title_sort estimating the age of heliconius butterflies from calibrated photographs
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5622606/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28970967
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3821
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