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Contribution of Distal-less to quantitative variation in butterfly eyespots

Nature volume 415, pages 315–318 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

The colour patterns decorating butterfly wings provide ideal material to study the reciprocal interactions between evolution and development. They are visually compelling products of selection, often with a clear adaptive value, and are amenable to a detailed developmental characterization1. Research on wing-pattern evolution and development has focused on the eyespots of the tropical butterfly Bicyclus anynana2. There is quantitative variation for several features of eyespot morphology3,4,5 but the actual genes contributing to such variation are unknown. On the other hand, studies of gene expression patterns in wing primordia have implicated different developmental pathways in eyespot formation6,7,8,9,10,11. To link these two sets of information we need to identify which genes within the implicated pathways contribute to the quantitative variation accessible to natural selection. Here we begin to bridge this gap by demonstrating linkage between DNA polymorphisms in the candidate gene Distal-less (Dll) and eyespot size in B. anynana.

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Figure 1: Bicyclus anynana selection lines divergent for the size of the dorsal forewing eyespots.
Figure 2: Test for an association between alleles at the Dll locus and dorsal eyespot size in B. anynana.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Koops for rearing the butterflies, and B. Zwaan for help with the crosses; C. Brunetti, J. Selegue and S. Carroll for the B. anynana cDNA library, the P. coenia Dll probe and the Dll antibody; N. Glansdorp for help with wing extractions, and G. Lammers for help with the confocal microscopy; K. Broman for deriving the likelihood function; F. Marec for information on butterfly chromosomes; M. Brittijn for help with the figures; and A. Monteiro, H. Teotónio and B. Zwaan for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Luso-American Foundation under the Gulbenkian Program (P.B.), the Human Frontier Science Program Organization (P.M.B.) and the US National Institute of Health (A.D.L.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Evolutionary and Ecological Sciences, University of Leiden, PO Box 9516, Leiden, 2300 RA, The Netherlands

    Patrícia Beldade & Paul M. Brakefield

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, 92612, California, USA

    Anthony D. Long

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  1. Patrícia Beldade
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  2. Paul M. Brakefield
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  3. Anthony D. Long
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Correspondence to Patrícia Beldade.

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Beldade, P., Brakefield, P. & Long, A. Contribution of Distal-less to quantitative variation in butterfly eyespots. Nature 415, 315–318 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/415315a

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