Key Laboratory of Structural Biology of Zhejiang Province, School of Life Sciences, Westlake University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Evolution. 2023 Jun 1;77(6):1430-1443. doi: 10.1093/evolut/qpad052.
Habitat-specific thermal responses are well documented in various organisms and likely determine the vulnerability of populations to climate change. However, the underlying roles of genetics and plasticity that shape such habitat-specific patterns are rarely investigated together. Here we examined the thermal plasticity of the butterfly Bicyclus dorothea originating from rainforest and ecotone habitats in Cameroon under common garden conditions. We also sampled wild-caught butterflies from forest and ecotone sites and used RADseq to explore genome-wide population differentiation. We found differences in the level of phenotypic plasticity across habitats. Specifically, ecotone populations exhibited greater sensitivity in wing eyespot features with variable development temperatures relative to rainforest populations. Known adaptive roles of wing eyespots in Bicyclus species suggest that this morphological plasticity is likely under divergent selection across environmental gradients. However, we found no distinct population structure of genome-wide variation between habitats, suggesting high level of ongoing gene flow between habitats is homogenizing most parts of the genome.
在各种生物中，特定生境的热响应得到了充分的记录，这可能决定了种群对气候变化的脆弱性。然而，塑造这种特定生境模式的遗传和可塑性的基本作用很少被一起研究。在这里，我们在普通花园条件下，研究了来自喀麦隆雨林和生态交错带生境的蝴蝶 Bicyclus dorothea 的热可塑性。我们还从森林和生态交错带地点采集了野生蝴蝶，并使用 RADseq 来探索全基因组的种群分化。我们发现不同生境之间表型可塑性的水平存在差异。具体来说，与雨林种群相比，生态交错带种群在翅膀眼斑特征上表现出更大的敏感性，其发育温度具有可变性。翅膀眼斑在 Bicyclus 物种中的已知适应性作用表明，这种形态可塑性可能在环境梯度上受到不同选择的影响。然而，我们没有发现栖息地之间全基因组变异的明显种群结构，这表明栖息地之间高水平的持续基因流正在使基因组的大部分同质化。
