News Highlights:
Scientists from National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) have discovered secrets behind Butterflies that bedazzle predators and escape.
Key takeaway:
The study conducted by NCBS discovered secrets of a long evolutionary game through which butterflies come to warn, fool, and escape their predators using traits such as wing colour patterns and even flight behaviour.
The objective of the Discovery:
- To study the use of Mimicry by butterflies as an Adaptive phenomenon to escape their predators.
- Investigating the evolution of Mimicry traits in butterflies.
- The study was conducted on Butterfly “mimetic communities” of the Western Ghats.
Adaptive phenomenon:
- Mimicry:
- Mimicry is an adaptive phenomenon in which a palatable organism resembles an unpalatable organism in order to deceive predators.
- The unpalatable ones are known as models (Müllerian co-models), and the palatable ones are known as “mimics” (Batesian mimics).
- Mimicry in butterflies is not limited to wing colour patterns alone, as some mimics have evolved to imitate the flight behaviours of model species.
- Multiple models and mimic butterflies may be found in the same habitat at the same time in nature. These similar-looking co-occurring butterflies form a mimetic community.
- Location:
- These mimetic communities are common in tropical and subtropical biodiversity hotspots.
- The NCBS team investigated the butterfly mimetic communities of the Western Ghats to learn more about how these two mimetic traits (wing colour patterns and flight morphology) evolve over time.
- Types of Mimicry:
- Batesian mimicry:
- Batesian mimicry is a type of mimicry in which a harmless species has evolved to replicate a harmful species‘ warning signs geared at a predator of both of them.
- Müllerian mimicry:
- Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon in which two or more well-defended species, often foul-tasting and sharing common predators, have come to mimic each other’s honest warning signals, to their mutual benefit.
- Batesian mimicry:
Evolution of trait:
- Rate of trait evolution:
- According to the researchers, their findings shed light on how the rate of trait evolution aids butterflies in escaping predators.
- These findings can be carried forward to investigate whether the rate of trait evolution is similar in young communities, such as in the Western Ghats versus large, old communities in NE India, SE Asia and the neotropics.
- Evolutionary dynamics:
- The evolutionary dynamics of functional traits are heavily influenced by the age, size, and complexity of biological communities.
- For the first time, the evolution of multiple traits was investigated in a biological community, specifically in a biodiversity hotspot of the Indian subcontinent.
Significance of Western Ghats:
- About:
- Western Ghats consist of a chain of mountains running parallel to India’s Western Coast and passing from the states of Kerala, Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
- Significance:
- The Ghats influence the Indian monsoon weather patterns that mediate the warm tropical climate of the region.
- They act as a barrier to rain-laden monsoon winds that sweep in from the southwest.
- Western Ghats are home to tropical evergreen forests, as well as to 325 globally threatened species.
Pic Courtesy: Freepik
Content Source: The Hindu