The patterns on butterfly wings have been found to show researchers how organisms evolved - a type of research that may create a new outlook on morphological evolution.
Morphological evolution is the change in an organism's shape and form over evolutionary time. The field combines population genetics, phylogenetics and developmental biology in an attempt to understand the changes and patterns inherent in evolution. At UB, the most popular subject to research is the butterfly.
According to Antonia Monteiro, assistant professor of biological sciences and co-author of the studies, butterflies have, over time, evolved a large diversity of color patterns on their wings to improve the odds of survival. These patterns change in size, shape and coloration from species to species.
Butterfly wings are made up of flat, epithelial cell layers where pattern develops, essentially on a two-dimensional surface. "This makes butterfly wings ideal model systems to study the evolution of pattern formation and morphology," Monteiro said. "It is easier to study morphological evolution on a two-dimensional surface than to study the evolution of shape and size or coloration in a structure like the heart or a limb. But the principles learned from two-dimensional systems may apply to the evolution of any structure."
Monteiro first became involved in the field as an undergraduate.
"I was interested in morphological evolution and genetics and was looking for a lab to do my Ph.D. work. The only thing I was sure about is that I didn't want to work in a Drosophila lab. I wanted to work with an animal I could see with my bare eyes."
Drosophila melanogaster is a fly about 3 mm long, the kind that hovers around spoiled fruit. It is also one of the most valuable of organisms in biological research, particularly in genetics and developmental biology, because it reproduces rapidly.
The research team hopes this study, and others like it, will help to better understand genetics and its role in evolution. Morphological evolution is fairly new and has little competition within its field.
The new field is a made up of a blend of developmental biologists, who traditionally do not care about variation in the system they are studying, and evolutionary biologists, who focus primarily on variation because they consider it the "bread and butter" of evolution, said Monteiro.
Butterflies - African satyrid butterflies in particular - are ideal models for research. The wing patterns of the butterflies can be so diverse that species which diverged from a common ancestor only a few million years ago may have significantly different marks.
Part of Monteiro's research will be to create a transgenic butterfly, or a butterfly whose genes have been manipulated in an attempt to locate the genes responsible for the color patterns and variations.
"The sky is the limit from what we can learn from these animals," said Monteiro. "We will not run out of work for a very long time."
The Human Frontiers Sciences Program, based in Strasburg, France, funded her previous work. Monteiro is working with W. Owen McMillan and Durell Kapan of the University of Puerto Rico.
