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From cryptic to colorful: Evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies

Many animals undergo complete metamorphosis, where larval forms change abruptly in adulthood. Color change during ontogeny is common, but there is little understanding of evolutionary patterns in these changes. Here, we use data on larval and adult color for 246 butterfly species (61% of all species...

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Autores principales: Medina, Iliana, Vega‐Trejo, Regina, Wallenius, Thomas, Symonds, Matthew R. E., Stuart‐Fox, Devi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7006464/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32055409
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evl3.149
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author Medina, Iliana
Vega‐Trejo, Regina
Wallenius, Thomas
Symonds, Matthew R. E.
Stuart‐Fox, Devi
author_facet Medina, Iliana
Vega‐Trejo, Regina
Wallenius, Thomas
Symonds, Matthew R. E.
Stuart‐Fox, Devi
author_sort Medina, Iliana
collection PubMed
description Many animals undergo complete metamorphosis, where larval forms change abruptly in adulthood. Color change during ontogeny is common, but there is little understanding of evolutionary patterns in these changes. Here, we use data on larval and adult color for 246 butterfly species (61% of all species in Australia) to test whether the evolution of color is coupled between life stages. We show that adults are more variable in color across species than caterpillars and that male adult color has lower phylogenetic signal. These results suggest that sexual selection is driving color diversity in male adult butterflies at a broad scale. Moreover, color similarities between species at the larval stage do not predict color similarities at the adult stage, indicating that color evolution is decoupled between young and adult forms. Most species transition from cryptic coloration as caterpillars to conspicuous coloration as adults, but even species with conspicuous caterpillars change to different conspicuous colors as adults. The use of high‐contrast coloration is correlated with body size in caterpillars but not adults. Taken together, our results suggest a change in the relative importance of different selective pressures at different life stages, resulting in the evolutionary decoupling of coloration through ontogeny.
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spelling pubmed-70064642020-02-13 From cryptic to colorful: Evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies Medina, Iliana Vega‐Trejo, Regina Wallenius, Thomas Symonds, Matthew R. E. Stuart‐Fox, Devi Evol Lett Letters Many animals undergo complete metamorphosis, where larval forms change abruptly in adulthood. Color change during ontogeny is common, but there is little understanding of evolutionary patterns in these changes. Here, we use data on larval and adult color for 246 butterfly species (61% of all species in Australia) to test whether the evolution of color is coupled between life stages. We show that adults are more variable in color across species than caterpillars and that male adult color has lower phylogenetic signal. These results suggest that sexual selection is driving color diversity in male adult butterflies at a broad scale. Moreover, color similarities between species at the larval stage do not predict color similarities at the adult stage, indicating that color evolution is decoupled between young and adult forms. Most species transition from cryptic coloration as caterpillars to conspicuous coloration as adults, but even species with conspicuous caterpillars change to different conspicuous colors as adults. The use of high‐contrast coloration is correlated with body size in caterpillars but not adults. Taken together, our results suggest a change in the relative importance of different selective pressures at different life stages, resulting in the evolutionary decoupling of coloration through ontogeny. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-12-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7006464/ /pubmed/32055409 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evl3.149 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Evolution Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Letters
Medina, Iliana
Vega‐Trejo, Regina
Wallenius, Thomas
Symonds, Matthew R. E.
Stuart‐Fox, Devi
From cryptic to colorful: Evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies
title From cryptic to colorful: Evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies
title_full From cryptic to colorful: Evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies
title_fullStr From cryptic to colorful: Evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies
title_full_unstemmed From cryptic to colorful: Evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies
title_short From cryptic to colorful: Evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies
title_sort from cryptic to colorful: evolutionary decoupling of larval and adult color in butterflies
topic Letters
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7006464/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32055409
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evl3.149
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