Artificial selection for structural color on butterfly wings and comparison with natural evolution.

ABSTRACT: Brilliant animal colors often are produced from light interacting with intricate nano-morphologies present in biological materials such as butterfly wing scales. Surveys across widely divergent butterfly species have identified multiple mechanisms of structural color production; however, little is known about how these colors evolved. Here, we examine how closely related species and populations of Bicyclus butterflies have evolved violet structural color from brown-pigmented ancestors with UV structural color. We used artificial selection on a laboratory model butterfly, B. anynana, to evolve violet scales from UV brown scales and compared the mechanism of violet color production with that of two other Bicyclus species, Bicyclus sambulos and Bicyclus medontias, which have evolved violet/bl

SUBMITTER: Wasik BR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4142997 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature