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捕食者。通常，一群不相关的物种通过分享单一的防御模式来相互模仿。对于像蝴蝶这样使用翅膀图案来识别自己物种的昆虫来说，特别是在它们选择配偶的时候，模仿不同的物种可能会让人感到困惑。该小组最近发现，南美洲和中美洲有毒的西番莲或赫利柯乌斯蝴蝶的色觉能够区分赫利柯乌斯黄色翅膀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是难以区分的。该项目将利用分子、解剖学、生化、电生理学和下一代测序方法，研究蝴蝶物种和性别之间的颜色视觉差异。由此产生的数据和颜色视觉模型将为颜色如何用于选择配偶和寻找产卵和取食的叶子提供证据。这项研究将对赫利诺斯色觉做出预测，这些预测可以在行为上进行测试。这项研究将以前所未有的细节揭示一组密切相关动物的颜色视觉进化与它们在日常生活中遇到的信号有关。虽然人们对动物颜色的性别差异知之甚少，但对颜色视觉的性别差异几乎一无所知。这是一个现在可以解决的重大差距。该项目产生的光谱数据将存放在仙女木数据库http://datadryad.org/中，并向公众免费提供。将对博士后、研究生和本科生进行细胞内记录和解剖学方法以及下一代测序数据分析方面的培训。这个课题组将招收数学和化学专业的本科生来分析颜色反射光谱。

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.