Butterflies are both charming and hateful

According to new research conducted by Yale University biologists, butterflies seem to be able to both attract their partners and warn their enemies using different sides of the wings.

According to Jeffrey Oliver, postdoctoral researcher in collaboration with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology - Yale University and lead author of the study, the effort to understand the balance between these two essential acts is one The oldest antiquities about nature. The study was published online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

'Wanting to stand out and seduce your partner also means attracting the attention of others - for example, the enemy - with your own signs'.

Oliver was very interested in whether the eye spots on the top of the butterfly wings - especially the eyes of large brown butterflies - had a different purpose than those on the underside. Since Darwin's time, biologists (including Darwin) have questioned whether the shapes on the wings used to attract mates, and on the underside help to avoid. enemy or not.

In collaboration with Yale biologist Antónia Monteiro, Oliver used new tools to test ancient hypotheses. With special evolutionary models, he realized that the eye spots on the wings seemed to evolve much faster than the eye spots on the underside. This means that the upper eye spot appears and disappears more often during the evolutionary process. This result perfectly matches the hypothesis that the upper eye spot is used to attract a partner. They are signs that serve sex selection purposes, and therefore tend to evolve faster than other characteristics.

Oliver discovered that the eye spots of some butterflies, such as the Bicyclus anynana butterfly in the image, both had the effect of attracting a partner and warning the enemy. (Photo: William Piel)

This is the first study to use an evolutionary model to demonstrate that a species can use the same signal, in this case, eye spots, in different places on the body to transmit Various messages.

When the butterfly lands, their wings fold together, then the underside of the wings is revealed. They can hide some secret eyes on the front wing to trick the enemy, and they have time to escape. We still do not fully understand what the eye spots on the underside of the butterfly wings convey messages to their mates. But Oliver said this could help butterflies identify each other, also to avoid different mating crossbreeding.

At this point, Oliver will apply a longer evolutionary time to study the position and path of the evolution of the spots, and whether they will simultaneously evolve or evolve independently over time. Participating in the study was Kendra Robertson (of New York University at Buffalo).

Refer:
Jeffrey C. Oliver, Kendra A. Robertson, and Antónia Monteiro.Accommodating natural and sexual selection in butterfly wing pattern evolution.Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences, 2009;DOI: 10.1098 / rspb.2009.0182