Sex-linked gene traffic underlies the acquisition of sexually dimorphic UV color vision in Heliconius butterflies.

ABSTRACT: The acquisition of novel sexually dimorphic traits poses an evolutionary puzzle: How do new traits arise and become sex-limited? Recently acquired color vision, sexually dimorphic in animals like primates and butterflies, presents a compelling model for understanding how traits become sex-biased. For example, some Heliconius butterflies uniquely possess UV (ultraviolet) color vision, which correlates with the expression of two differentially tuned UV-sensitive rhodopsins, UVRh1 and UVRh2. To discover how such traits become sexually dimorphic, we studied Heliconius charithonia, which exhibits female-specific UVRh1 expression. We demonstrate that females, but not males, discriminate different UV wavelengths. Through whole-genome shotgun sequencing and assembly of the H. char

SUBMITTER: Chakraborty M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10438391 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature