Abstract
Heritable phenotypic variation is the raw material of adaptive evolution, and understanding its generation is a crucial issue in contemporary evolutionary biology. Furthermore, since genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity are a universal characteristic of living organisms, it is becoming clear that variation should be of interest across all disciplines in biology. Scientific advances from the last decade have made available the tools for a powerful dissection of the genetic basis of complex traits. The study of wing patterns in Bicyclus anynana butterflies provides an ideal system to combine that dissection with approaches from other areas of biology to give crucial insights into the processes underlying phenotypic variation and adaptive evolution. Wing patterns are visually compelling products of selection with clear adaptive value, and are also amenable to a detailed developmental characterization. However, while developmental biologists have identified genetic pathways involved in pattern formation, we do not know which of the genes contribute to trait evolution. We also know little about how the genetic and developmental basis of variation in these traits influences their evolutionary change. Bicyclus butterflies show much variation in wing patterns within and across species, and are ideally suited to combine intra- and inter-specific studies for ecologically important traits. This project will integrate the study of the genetic basis of variation using modern genomic resources in gene mapping and expression-profiling, with a more classical developmental characterization of phenotypic variation. This will involve manipulative experiments of the pre-adult developmental stages when wing pattern is being specified to understand the cellular interactions and physiological processes underlying pattern variation. Such approaches will be applied to lab stocks and natural populations of B. anynana and other Bicyclus species to compare different types of variation. This will address fundamental issues in evolution, as the origins of novelties and the patterns of evolutionary change.
Netherlands