Collaborative Research: Physiological genomics of color vision in butterflies

许多有毒动物都有鲜艳的警告色，以阻止鸟类和蜥蜴等掠食者。通常，一群不相关的物种通过共享一种防御模式来相互模仿。对于像蝴蝶这样用翅膀图案来识别自己物种的昆虫来说，尤其是在选择配偶的时候，模仿不同物种可能会让人感到困惑。该研究小组最近发现，南美和中美洲的有毒西番槐或蝴蝶的颜色视觉能够区分出蝴蝶翅膀上的黄色色素和它们的仿制品，而这两种黄色色素产生的颜色对于鸟类的颜色视觉来说是无法区分的。本项目将利用分子、解剖、生化、电生理和下一代测序等方法，研究蝴蝶种类和性别之间的色觉差异。由此得出的色觉数据和模型将提供证据，说明颜色是如何用于选择配偶、寻找可以产卵的叶子和可以喂养的花朵的。这项研究将对Heliconius色视觉进行预测，并可用于行为测试。这项研究将以前所未有的细节揭示一群密切相关的动物在日常生活中遇到的信号中颜色视觉的进化。虽然我们对动物颜色的性别差异了解很多，但对色觉的性别差异却知之甚少。这是一个现在可以解决的主要差距。该项目产生的光谱数据将存储在Dryad数据存储库http://datadryad.org/中，并向公众免费提供。将培训一名博士后、研究生和本科生，学习细胞内记录和解剖方法，以及分析下一代测序数据。本课题组将招收数化学专业本科学生，从事颜色反射光谱分析。

Many toxic animals have bright warning colors to deter predators such as birds and lizards. Often a group of unrelated species mimic one another by sharing a single defensive pattern. For insects such as butterflies that use wing patterns to recognize their own species, especially when they are choosing mates, mimics of different species might be confusing. This group has recently found that the color vision of toxic passion vine or Heliconius butterflies of South and Central America is able to distinguish the Heliconius yellow wing pigments from those of their mimics, whereas the two types of yellow pigment produce colors that are indistinguishable for bird color vision. This project will investigate the differences in color vision between species and sexes of Heliconius butterflies, using molecular, anatomical, biochemical, electrophysiological and next-generation sequencing methods. The resulting data and models of color vision will provide evidence on how color is used for both choosing mates and finding leaves on which to lay eggs and flowers to feed. This study will make predictions about Heliconius color vision that can be tested behaviorally. This research will reveal in unprecedented detail the evolution of color vision within a group of closely-related animals in relation to the signals they encounter in their daily lives. Whereas much is know about sexual differences in animal coloration, virtually nothing is known about sexual differences in color vision. This is a major gap that can now be addressed. Spectral data resulting from this project will be deposited in the Dryad Data Repository http://datadryad.org/ and made freely available to the public. There will be training of a postdoc, graduate and undergraduate students in intracellular recording and anatomical methods, as well as in the analysis of next-generation sequencing data. This research group will recruit undergraduate math and chemistry majors to analyze color reflectance spectra.