Meeting Abstract

S10-1.7  Monday, Jan. 7  Physiological genomics of color vision in butterflies BRISCOE, Adriana*; YUAN, Furong; University of California, Irvine abriscoe@uci.edu

Butterflies evolve mimetic wing coloration under selection from predators. Unless butterfly eyes have adaptations for discriminating mimetic color variation there is a risk of confusing mimics from potential mates for the butterflies themselves. The genus Heliconius, composed of 43 species, is of particular interest because unpalatable species form Müllerian mimicry rings throughout the Neotropics. We have discovered that Heliconius eyes express recently duplicated ultraviolet (UV) opsin mRNAs, and provided evidence that this gene duplication may be an adaptation for species recognition of mimetic colors, via enhanced UV color vision. Little is known, however, about the correlated changes in vision gene expression accompanying the evolution of a new UV-photoreceptor type. We report the results of a large-scale visual transcriptome study. Our results suggest that natural and sexual selection on the compound eye has varied considerably over the evolutionary history of the genus and that tradeoffs exist in evolving increased visual complexity.