DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Shedding Light onto Butterfly Signaling: Light Environment, Signals and Visual Systems

动物在它们产生的视觉信号和它们用来感知这些信号的眼睛方面都有所不同。然而，在大多数动物中，视觉信号的产生和感知取决于环境中的光线。这项拟议的研究将研究光环境（例如森林与田野）的细微差异如何推动视觉信号多样性的演变，用于感知这些不同信号的眼睛，以及信号发送者和接收者的行为。研究人员将收集20种热带雨林蝴蝶的颜色、视觉和行为信息。 生活在阴暗的雨林地面附近的物种预计会在选择时积极寻求更黑暗的环境，眼睛可以增强视觉灵敏度，并且与生活在明亮边缘或雨林顶部的物种相比，在阴影中的颜色更明显。这项工作将扩大生活在热带雨林物种中的动物生物学知识，并将为热带生物学培训学生以及美国、巴拿马、秘鲁和其他拉丁美洲国家的机构和科学家之间的国际合作提供场所。这项研究将研究光环境中甚至细微差异的潜力（例如，阴凉的森林与明亮的开放区域），以推动视觉信号，感知和行为多样性的进化。这项工作将解决视觉生态学中的一般问题，包括：1）动物对光环境的偏好是否不同？2)动物使用不同的视觉信号取决于它们出现的栖息地和环境吗？3)视觉，包括眼睛形态和视觉生理，是否与动物所处的光环境相对应？ 该方法是比较的，与20种热带雨林蝴蝶作为焦点类群和适当的控制？物种不仅在颜色上不同，而且在热带雨林的深度上也不同。收集的数据将量化它们的颜色，它们的光环境偏好，以及它们的眼睛结构和生理。 这项工作将有助于全面了解动物色彩和眼睛的巨大多样性的原因和后果，这是生物学中的一个长期难题。此外，这项工作将扩大对热带雨林动物视觉生态学的了解，并促进国际科学合作。数据最初将记录在现场笔记本电脑中，然后上传到Dropbox（dropbox.com）提供的安全云存储，然后将备份在亚利桑那州州立大学的外部硬盘上。数据将通过Dropbox提供给所有参与者，并通过期刊数据存储库向公众提供。行为和视觉方法的成熟协议通过研究人员实验室的网站以开放访问模式在线发布。

Animals vary both in the visual signals they produce and in the eyes they use to perceive these signals. However, in most animals the production and perception of visual signals depend on the light available in the environment. This proposed research will examine how even subtle differences in light environment (e.g. forest vs. field) has driven the evolution of diversity in visual signals, in the eyes used to perceive these diverse signals, and in the behavior of signalers and receivers. Researchers will gather information on coloration, vision, and behavior for twenty species of tropical rainforest butterflies. Species that live near the shady rainforest floor are predicted to actively seek darker environments when given a choice, have eyes that enhance visual sensitivity, and have coloration that is more conspicuous in the shade compared to species that live in the bright edge or top of the rainforest. This work will expand the knowledge of the biology of animals that live in tropical rainforests species and will provide a venue for training students in tropical biology and for international collaborations among institutions and scientists in the US, Panama, Peru, and other Latin American countries. This research will examine the potential for even subtle differences in light environment (e.g. shady forest vs. bright open areas) to drive the evolution of diversity in visual signaling, perception, and behavior. This work will address general questions in visual ecology including: 1) Do animals differ in their preferences for light environments? 2) Do animals use different visual signals depending on the habitat and environment in which they occur? 3) Does vision, both eye morphology and visual physiology, correspond to the light environment in which an animal lives? The approach is comparative, with twenty species of tropical rainforest butterflies as the focal taxa and appropriate controls for phylogeny. Species differ not only in coloration but also how deep in the rainforest they are typically found. Data collected will quantify their coloration, their light environment preferences, and their eye structure and physiology. This work will contribute to a general understanding of the causes and consequences of the enormous diversity of coloration and eyes in animals, a perennial puzzle in biology. Furthermore, this work will expand knowledge of the visual ecology of tropical rainforest animals, and foster international scientific collaborations. Data will be documented in field notebooks initially and then uploaded to secure cloud storage provided by Dropbox (dropbox.com), which will then be backed up on an external hard drive kept at Arizona State University. Data will be available to all participants through Dropbox and to the public via journal data repositories. Mature protocols of the behavioral and visual methods are posted online in an open-access mode through websites of the researchers' labs.