Mimics here and there, but not everywhere: Müllerian mimicry inCeroglossusground beetles?

Abstract

The ground beetle genus Ceroglossus contains co-distributed species that show pronounced intraspecific diversity in the form of geographical colour morphs. While colour morphs among different species appear to match in some geographical regions, in others, there is little apparent colour matching. Mimicry is a potential explanation for covariation in colour patterns, but it is not clear whether the degree of sympatric colour matching is higher than expected by chance given the obvious mismatches among morphs in some regions. Here, we used reflectance spectrometry to quantify elytral coloration from the perspective of an avian predator to test whether colour similarity between species is, indeed, higher in sympatry. After finding no significant phylogenetic signal in the colour data, analyses showed strong statistical support for sympatric colour similarity between species despite the apparent lack of colour matching in some areas. We hypothesize Mü llerian mimicry as the responsible mechanism for sympatric colour similarity in Ceroglossus and discuss potential explanations and future directions to elucidate why mimicry has not developed similar levels of interspecific colour resemblance across space.

HyRAD-X Exome Capture Museomics Unravels Giant Ground Beetle Evolution

“…2001 ; Sota and Vogler 2001 , 2003 ; Su et al 2003 , 2005 ; Osawa et al. 2004 ; Sota and Ishikawa 2004; Su, Imura, Okamoto, Kim, et al 2004 ; Su, Imura, Okamoto, and Osawa 2004 ; Sota et al 2005 ; Andújar et al 2012a ; Andújar et al 2012b ; Deuve et al 2012 ; Deuve and Faille 2013 ; Muñoz-Ramírez 2015 ; Muñoz-Ramírez et al 2016 ; Imura et al 2018 ; Toussaint and Gillett 2018 ; Sota et al 2020 ). An early attempt to employ RAD-sequencing within the genus Carabus L., 1758 aimed to construct a molecular phylogeny of the charismatic subgenus Carabus ( Chysocarabus ) Thomson, 1875, indicating that a potential strength of such an approach is the inference of relationships at the intrageneric level ( Cruaud et al 2014 ).…”

Evolution of adult male horn developmental phenotypes and character displacement in Xylotrupes beetles (Scarabaeidae)

“…A previous empirical study has shown that both deterministic and contingent mechanisms have contributed to the body shape convergence in Lerista lizards (Morinaga & Bergmann, 2017). On the other hand, a study focusing on the imperfect Müllerian mimicry in a Chilean ground beetle complex has statistically eliminated the effect of evolutionary contingency on generating phenotypic convergence between sympatric species (Muñoz‐Ramírez et al., 2016). Nevertheless, while the selection pressure might be strong enough to promote convergence in aposematic body coloration, they hypothesized that demographic histories, yet another evolutionary force of stochasticity (e.g., Huang et al., 2018), may have impacted the pattern of imperfect mimicry among Ceroglossus species.…”

Evolution and diversification of the Southern Chilean genus Ceroglossus (Coleoptera, Carabidae) during the Pleistocene glaciations

“…According to the molecular results by Okamoto et al (2001), the origin of this genus dates back to only 25-30 Mya. Afterwards, two phylogenies based on the mitochondrial cox1 fragment (Muñoz-Ramírez et al, 2016;Muñoz-Ramírez, 2015) also recovered C. darwini, C. chilensis, C. buqueti and C. suturalis as monophyletic groups. The last study (Muñoz-Ramírez, 2015) also concluded that the described species C. guerini and C. ochsenii were not supported by the molecular data.…”

“…This means that ecological and/or environmental factors are responsible for colour diversity (Kratochwil, 2019). Similarities in coloration among sympatric taxa deviate from a random distribution in this genus (Muñoz‐Ramírez et al ., 2016). Jiroux (2006) believes that the advantages derived for Ceroglossus from this interspecific convergence are related to Müllerian mimicry.…”