Estimating the relative fitness of local adaptive peaks: the aerodynamic costs of flight in mimetic passion-vine butterflies Heliconius

ABSTRACT: In a related paper, we demonstrated that mimetic Heliconius butterflies have converged in wing-beat frequency and degree of asymmetry in the wing motion, whereas sister species are dissimilar in these same traits. Warning signals of sympatric, distasteful species converge in evolutionary models in order to educate their predators more efficiently that the signal is associated with unprofitable prey. Barring other constraints, the behaviours of the different co-mimetic pairs should ultimately converge on that behaviour which minimizes the energetic cost of flight. We estimated the energetic cost of each mimic's flight behaviour in order to predict the difference in height of each fitness peak and the direction of convergent selection qualitatively. Following adjustments for body mass, mimet

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PROVIDER: S-EPMC1690455 | biostudies-literature | 1999 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature