Meeting Abstract

76.4  Monday, Jan. 6 08:45  An Integrative Approach to Dissecting the Nanoscopic Morphogenesis of Structural Color in Butterflies NULL, RW*; KRUP, AL; SINHA, M; PATEL, NH; Univ. of California, Berkeley; Univ. of California, San Francisco; Univ. of California, Berkeley; Univ. of California, Berkeley ryan.null@berkeley.edu

The adaptive evolution of animal coloration is influenced at both micro and macroevolutionary levels by sexual selection and predation resulting in many well-known phenomena such as sexual dimorphism, crypsis, aposematism, and mimicry. Coloration itself is best understood as the product of pigmentation of the mesoderm and ectoderm of an organism. However, there is a second means of coloration, structural coloration, which is created by repeating “structural” elements on the order of 100nm that manipulate the physical properties of light. Despite being found in all bilaterian phyla, the developmental mechanisms producing these structures are poorly understood. The cellular nanostructures used by butterflies to make color on their wings have been shown to be of diverse organization despite arising on homologous cell types. We are using several species of butterfly to investigate the underlying cell biology of how structural color is built and evolves. Our work to date on the cytoskeleton in Papilio palinurus has demonstrated a radical reorganization of cortical actin immediately preceding the formation of the species’ color-producing structure. We are further dissecting the developmental mechanisms leading to the creation of structural coloration using an ex vivo system that we believe will allow us to experimentally manipulate these butterfly systems.