Melanism and color saturation of butterfly assemblages: A comparison between a tropical rainforest and a xeric white forest

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

Ecology and Evolution

Felipe Malheiros Gawryszewski¹  Márcio Zikán Cardoso²  Daniel Marques Almeida Pessoa³  Sofia Coradini Schirmer⁴ 

[1] Evolutionary Ecology Laboratory, Department of Zoology, Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Brasilia, Brasilia, DF, Brazil;Insect Ecology Laboratory, Department of Ecology, Institute of Biology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil;Laboratory of Sensory Ecology, Department of Physiology and Behavior, Biosciences Center, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil;Laboratory of Sensory Ecology, Department of Physiology and Behavior, Biosciences Center, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil;Evolutionary Ecology Laboratory, Department of Zoology, Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Brasilia, Brasilia, DF, Brazil;

关键词: photography;    ImageJ;    sexual selection;    sensory ecology;    lepidoptera;    Caatinga;    Atlantic forest;    camouflage;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fevo.2023.932755

 received in 2022-04-30, accepted in 2023-01-16,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The study of butterfly coloration has helped to identify the ecological pressures involved in the evolution of animal coloration. However, almost all studies that addressed this issue have focused on species that inhabit more temperate environments, leaving the species and ecological factors of tropical regions mostly understudied. Here, our purpose was to evaluate whether butterfly assemblages from two distinct Neotropical biomes (i.e., tropical rainforest and xeric white forest) differ regarding their melanism and/or color saturation. Our hypotheses were that (1) tropical rainforest butterflies should be more melanic and color saturated, and that (2) butterflies from more open/arid tropical environments should be more melanic on their dorsal wing surfaces than on their ventral wings. Therefore, we quantified melanism and color saturation from dorsal and ventral surfaces of 121 different butterfly species. Comparisons show that rainforest butterflies, when contrasted to white forest butterflies, have more melanic dorsal wing surfaces, which might be seen as a form of protection against parasites. Our data also show that rainforest butterflies, but not white forest species, have darker dorsal wing surfaces, when compared to their own ventral surfaces, a trend that was also found for species inhabiting both biomes, which might be associated to thermoregulatory advantages. At last, our results also point that butterflies' dorsal wing sides present a higher variance between species (regardless of Biome), when compared to their own ventral wing side, an indication that some ecological factor (e.g., predation avoidance) might be exerting a strong homogenizing force on ventral wing coloration.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Schirmer, Gawryszewski, Cardoso and Pessoa.