Meeting Abstract

P1.167  Friday, Jan. 4  Visual transcriptomics of seasonal forms of the butterfly Bicyclus anynana MACIAS, A*; YUAN, F; MONTEIRO, A; BRISCOE, A; University of California, Irvine; University of California, Irvine; Yale University; University of California, Irvine amaciasm@uci.edu

Males and females allocate resources differently to avoid high energy costs. Vision is an example of a high-cost trait in which sophistication should decrease as the need for the trait decreases. The butterfly species Bicyclus anynana has two seasonal forms that are produced in response to different rearing temperatures. The sex that displays the brightest wing patterns and who performs most of the courtship displays changes with rearing temperature. In butterflies reared at high temperatures, mimicking the wet season, males court females and females are choosy, whereas when rearing temperatures are low females court males and males are choosy. We expect choosy individuals to have more complex visual functions and thus to vary in gene expression from that of its non-choosy same-sex form. We extracted RNA from the eyes of dry season and wet season males and females. We then created RNA sequencing libraries using Illumina technology and did de novo assemblies to explore the genes that are being expressed. We focus our study by looking at differences in phototransduction gene expressions across sexes and seasonal forms. These results will show how males and females differ in their visual systems and will also test whether visual function decreases from choosy to non-choosy individuals with changes in rearing temperature.