The smell of speciation: chemical signalling in butterfly diversification

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The integration of genomic data with ecological and behavioural observations of the Heliconius butterflies provides anexcellent opportunity to study the genomic consequences of speciation. Interspecific wing pattern variation in this grouphas been particularly well studied but we know much less about their chemical communication, which also plays animportant role in sexual communication and species recognition. A key compound in sexual signalling has recently beenidentified in H. melpomene along with electrophysiological evidence for its role in mate choice. In addition, foundationshave been laid for investigating the genetic basis of pheromonal differences between H. melpomene and H. cydno byrecent crossing experiments and genomic (QTL) analysis. This project will study such pheromonal differences in malesand the corresponding female preferences. The work will involve experiments to follow up on the genomic analysiscurrently underway, including genetic manipulation experiments using CRISPR to test the function of candidate wingpheromone genes. This will be complemented by behavioural assays with resulting male mutants to study the role ofspecific genes in mating behaviour. In addition, I will raise additional controlled crosses and conduct chemical analysis ofhybrid butterfly wing samples to identify important compounds. I will then conduct further behavioural assays usingsynthesised compounds to study the role of specific compounds in female preference.