[HELICONIUS] Yet another Kronforst paper!

[James Mallet]

The Heliconius list has been quiet for a while 
but I thought I would let you know about this 
recent paper available online on FirstCite from Proc Roy Soc B:

Kronforst, M. R. and L. E. Gilbert. 2007. The 
population genetics of mimetic diversity in 
Heliconius butterflies. Proc. Roy. Soc. B, doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.1378

Abstract: Theory predicts strong stabilizing 
selection on warning patterns within species and 
convergent evolution among species in Müllerian 
mimicry systems yet Heliconius butterflies 
exhibit extreme wing pattern diversity. One 
potential explanation for the evolution of this 
diversity is that genetic drift occasionally 
allows novel warning patterns to reach the 
frequency threshold at which they gain 
protection. This idea is controversial, however, 
because Heliconius butterflies are unlikely to 
experience pronounced population subdivision and 
local genetic drift. To examine the fine-scale 
population genetic structure of Heliconius 
butterflies we genotyped 316 individuals from 
eight Costa Rican Heliconius species with 1428 
AFLP markers. Six species exhibited evidence of 
population subdivision and/or isolation by 
distance indicating genetic differentiation among 
populations. Across species, variation in the 
extent of local genetic drift correlated with the 
roles different species have played in generating 
pattern diversity: species that originally 
generated the diversity of warning patterns 
exhibited striking population subdivision while 
species that later radiated onto these patterns 
had intermediate levels of genetic diversity and 
less genetic differentiation among populations. 
These data reveal that Heliconius butterflies 
possess the coarse population genetic structure 
necessary for local populations to experience 
pronounced genetic drift which, in turn, could 
explain the origin of mimetic diversity.



James Mallet
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/taxome/jim/