On the fate of seasonally plastic traits in a rainforest butterfly under relaxed selection

Ecology and Evolution

Vicencio Oostra¹  Paul M. Brakefield¹  Yvonne Hiltemann¹  Bas J. Zwaan¹ 

[1] Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

关键词: Bicyclus anynana;    Bicyclus martius;    Bicyclus sanaos;    constraints;    life‐history evolution;    phenotypic plasticity;    reproductive investment;    seasonality;   

DOI  :  10.1002/ece3.1114

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Many organisms display phenotypic plasticity as adaptation to seasonal environmental fluctuations. Often, such seasonal responses entails plasticity of a whole suite of morphological and life-history traits that together contribute to the adaptive phenotypes in the alternative environments. While phenotypic plasticity in general is a well-studied phenomenon, little is known about the evolutionary fate of plastic responses if natural selection on plasticity is relaxed. Here, we study whether the presumed ancestral seasonal plasticity of the rainforest butterfly Bicyclus sanaos (Fabricius, 1793) is still retained despite the fact that this species inhabits an environmentally stable habitat. Being exposed to an atypical range of temperatures in the laboratory revealed hidden reaction norms for several traits, including wing pattern. In contrast, reproductive body allocation has lost the plastic response. In the savannah butterfly, B. anynana (Butler, 1879), these traits show strong developmental plasticity as an adaptation to the contrasting environments of its seasonal habitat and they are coordinated via a common developmental hormonal system. Our results for B. sanaos indicate that such integration of plastic traits – as a result of past selection on expressing a coordinated environmental response – can be broken when the optimal reaction norms for those traits diverge in a new environment.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.