Meeting Abstract
The evolution of wing patterning diversity in North American Admiral butterflies (Limenitis spp.) has been marked by the continued and often widespread hybridization between both species and different wing pattern races. Recent findings have identified variation in WntA is linked to mimetic wing pattern shifts in the Limenitis arthemis species complex. Previous work examining patterns of mitochondrial and genomic sequence divergence in admiral butterflies has shown strong support for a monophyletic North American lineage. However, the historical relationships of Limenitis arthemis subspecies have been difficult to characterize due to ongoing hybridization. For hybridizing taxa, phylogenetic relationships are complicated by genealogical discordance in most regions of the genome except those regions linked to genes responsible for species differences. In an attempt to better characterize the historical relationships among wing pattern races in the Limenitis arthemis species complex we present a nuclear phylogeny using variation in genes linked to wing patterning in Limenitis, Heliconius, and other butterfly species.
