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The butterfly's ability to identify its own species is aided by ultraviolet pigment

It's a Mating Thing!

“They’re not wasting their time chasing after the wrong mate,” said Briscoe, associate professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and lead author of the study, published online recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Heliconius erato butterflies have evolved photoreceptors in their eyes for detecting UV colors and express UV-yellow pigment on their wings. Photo by Image courtesy of Bill Berthet

Heliconius Butterfly Species Has Duplicate Gene

After researchers discovered the copied gene, “we wanted to find out why it might be advantageous,” Briscoe said. They examined thousands of wing-color patches and found that butterflies with just one UV-vision gene had yellow wing pigment that was not UV. However, the pigment was UV in butterflies with both genes.

Butterfly Wing Color Mimicry

Having both genes allows molecules to form in the eyes that are more sensitive to UV light. “We think that by switching to a new way of making yellow, the mimetic butterfly species were better able to tell each other apart,” Briscoe said.

The diverse wing patterns of Heliconius butterflies have generated much scientific interest in recent years, including a genome-sequencing project co-directed by UCI’s Robert Reed, assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology.

Briscoe expresses strong reason to believe that researchers will find other examples in which vision and wing colors are linked.

In addition to Briscoe, Bybee and Reed, Furong Yuan and Marilou Sison-Mangus of UCI worked on the study, along with Gary Bernard of the University of Washington in Seattle, Andrew Warren and Jorge Llorente-Bousquets of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Chuan-Chin Chiao of the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.

The study was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County’s largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.9 billion. RESOURCE: UCI news.