Global biogeography of warning coloration in the butterfly
            <i>Danaus chrysippus</i>

Liu, Wanzhen; Smith, David A. S.; Raina, Gayatri; Stanforth, Rowan; Ng'iru, Ivy; Ireri, Piera; Martins, Dino J.; Gordon, I.; Martin, Simon H.

doi:10.1098/rsbl.2021.0639

Cited by 9 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The different colour morphs converge in a broad contact zone across East Africa, where they are thought to be brought together by the winds surrounding the movement of the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone or ITZC . The precise extent of the contact zone between the different morphs has been recently described in detail using extensive citizen science data and we refer the reader to the distributions described by Liu et al (2022). We view this recent meeting of the different morphs as an example of admixture polymorphism (Smith et al, 2021;Wall, 2000), as the morphs can readily interbreed, and the corresponding heterozygotes are therefore common across the contact zone .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Penetrance interactions of colour pattern loci in the African Monarch and their implications for the evolution of dominance

ffrench‐Constant,

Bennie,

Gordon

et al. 2024

Ecology and Evolution

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Scoring the penetrance of heterozygotes in complex phenotypes, like colour pattern, is difficult and complicates the analysis of systems in which dominance is incomplete or evolving. The African Monarch (Danaus chrysippus) represents an example where colour pattern heterozygotes, formed in the contact zone between the different subspecies, show such intermediate dominance. Colour pattern in this aposematic butterfly is controlled by three loci A, B and C. The B and C loci are closely linked in a B/C supergene and significant interaction of B and C phenotypes is therefore expected via linkage alone. The A locus, however, is not linked to B/C and is found on a different chromosome. To study interactions between these loci we generated colour pattern heterozygotes by crossing males and females bearing different A and B/C genotypes, collected from different parts of Africa. We derived a novel scoring system for the expressivity of the heterozygotes and, as predicted, we found significant interactions between the genotypes of the closely linked B and C loci. Surprisingly, however, we also found highly significant interactions between C and the unlinked A locus, modifications that generally increased the resemblance of heterozygotes to homozygous ancestors. In contrast, we found no difference in the penetrance of any of the corresponding heterozygotes from crosses conducted either in allopatry or sympatry, in reciprocal crosses of males and females, or in the presence or absence of endosymbiont mediated male‐killing or its associated neoW mediated sex‐linkage of colour pattern. Together, this data supports the idea that the different colour morphs of the African Monarch meet transiently in the East African contact zone and that genetic modifiers act to mask inappropriate expression of colour patterns in the incorrect environments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The A locus controls the extent of the white hindwing patch, a phenotype found predominantly in the West of Africa (Liu et al, 2022), and the B/C supergene controls the pattern and extent of both black and white elements on the butterfly forewing (Smith et al, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Penetrance interactions of colour pattern loci in the African Monarch and their implications for the evolution of dominance

ffrench‐Constant,

Bennie,

Gordon

et al. 2024

Ecology and Evolution

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“…Then, guided by the available information on the genetic basis of colouration in P. muralis-the alleles that explain the deposition S1), assuming these two loci were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (e.g. Liu et al, 2022). We first estimated the allelic frequencies at the orange locus, where the frequency of the recessive allele ('q', hereafter, 'o' for the orange locus) was estimated based on the proportions of the morphs that express the orange colouration: thus, 'o' = √'o 2 ' and 'O' = 1 -'o'.…”

Section: Selection On Colour Morphsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of historical biogeography in shaping colour morph diversity in the common wall lizard

Aguilar,

Pérez i de Lanuza,

Carneiro

et al. 2024

Molecular Ecology

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The maintenance of polymorphisms often depends on multiple selective forces, but less is known on the role of stochastic or historical processes in maintaining variation. The common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) is a colour polymorphic species in which local colour morph frequencies are thought to be modulated by natural and sexual selection. Here, we used genome‐wide single‐nucleotide polymorphism data to investigate the relationships between morph composition and population biogeography at a regional scale, by comparing morph composition with patterns of genetic variation of 54 populations sampled across the Pyrenees. We found that genetic divergence was explained by geographic distance but not by environmental features. Differences in morph composition were associated with genetic and environmental differentiation, as well as differences in sex ratio. Thus, variation in colour morph frequencies could have arisen via historical events and/or differences in the permeability to gene flow, possibly shaped by the complex topography and environment. In agreement with this hypothesis, colour morph diversity was positively correlated with genetic diversity and rates of gene flow and inversely correlated with the likelihood of the occurrence of bottlenecks. Concurrently, we did not find conclusive evidence for selection in the two colour loci. As an illustration of these effects, we observed that populations with higher proportions of the rarer yellow and yellow‐orange morphs had higher genetic diversity. Our results suggest that processes involving a decay in overall genetic diversity, such as reduced gene flow and/or bottleneck events have an important role in shaping population‐specific morph composition via non‐selective processes.

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“…The African monarch butter y, Danaus chrysippus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) is a species belonging to the family Danainae. It is one of the most common and widely distributed butter ies in Africa and Australasia 47,48 and is increasingly common in southern Europe, especially during summer 49,50 . The species is found in many different habitats, such as mountains and deserts, but they do primarily occur in open landscapes such as around farmlands 47 .…”

Section: Samplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infection with a male-killing Spiroplasma bacterium might drive morphological changes in female reproductive organs in a butterfly

Malmberg

Martin

Gordon³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Sexual selection, and conflicts between sex or within sex, can induce morphological variations within species. This may challenge the identification and characterization of diagnostic morphological characters from reproductive organs that are of utmost importance for the morphology-based classification of faunal diversity, particularly on species level. In Lepidoptera, and in some other insects, females have evolved reproductive organs that can accommodate and/or digest nuptial gifts, or so called spermatophores, transferred from the males during copulation. The properties of the spermatophores principally depend on the male’s condition, which is defined by resources acquired and depleted across life stages. In these conditions, the size and/or shape of the female reproductive organs are likely to differ visually between females of different mating status, and with their mates’ condition. The widespread African monarch, Danaus chrysippus, can host an endosymbiotic bacterium, Spiroplasma that induces son-killing in this species. When prevalent, such symbionts distort their host population sex-ratio, which can increase the reproduction load on the few uninfected males, lead to a local excess of unmated females, and resource-depletion in males. Here, we characterized variation in the female genitalia across populations with different levels of Spiroplasma infection. First, virgin females have smaller organs, while mated females show expanded organs; and further, females from highly female-biased and male-killing Spiroplasma infected populations have a larger area of their corpus bursae covered with signa structures. These observations potentially suggest that females from populations that are male depleted may have evolved an efficient mechanical way to optimize the digestion of small nutritious spermatophores.

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Global biogeography of warning coloration in the butterfly Danaus chrysippus

Cited by 9 publications

References 26 publications

Penetrance interactions of colour pattern loci in the African Monarch and their implications for the evolution of dominance

Penetrance interactions of colour pattern loci in the African Monarch and their implications for the evolution of dominance

The role of historical biogeography in shaping colour morph diversity in the common wall lizard

Infection with a male-killing Spiroplasma bacterium might drive morphological changes in female reproductive organs in a butterfly

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