Meeting Abstract

78.1  Tuesday, Jan. 6  Duplicate UV opsins for co-mimicking Heliconius butterflies SISON-MANGUS, M.P.*; ZACCARDI, G.; KELBER, A.; BRISCOE, A.D.; Univ. of California, Irvine; Lund University, Sweden; Lund University, Sweden; Univ. of California, Irvine msisonma@uci.edu

Heliconius erato has tetrachromatic color vision, with the ability to see from the ultraviolet (UV) to the red part of the light spectrum. Red-green color vision in this animal is facilitated by the opponent interaction of two long-wavelength (LW) receptors; one receptor with a LW opsin and another receptor produced by the co-expression of the LW opsin and a non-opsin red filter pigment. Remarkably, we found that besides the LW and blue opsins, the animal also possesses two copies of UV opsins, the first time a duplication of this gene family member has been observed among Lepidoptera. Since the closely-related nymphalid butterflies Danaus plexippus (Subfamily Danainae) and Vanessa cardui (Subfamily Nymphalinae) only possess a single copy of UV opsin, we investigated the evolutionary origin of this unique opsin duplication. We screened cDNAs for UV opsin duplicates among butterflies from different tribes (Argynini and Heliconini) of the subfamily Heliconiinae and found that the UV opsin duplication is only seen among Heliconius species. Phylogenetic reconstruction of the lepidopteran UV opsin family shows the monophyletic grouping of Heliconius UV opsins suggesting that the duplication occurred prior to the speciation of Heliconius butterflies. In addition, a relative rates test indicates that the two opsin duplicates are not evolving at an equal rate, hinting that the two copies may have diversified functionally.