| developing microsatellite markers for insect population structure: complex variation in a checkerspot butterfly. | we isolated and characterized two microsatellite markers from the genome of the endangered checkerspot butterfly melitaea cinxia l. in finland, this species only survives on the aland islands, where it exhibits a highly fragmented metapopulation structure on small meadows. four alleles were observed at the locus cinx1 and nine at cinx4; the total gene diversities at the two loci were ht = 0.34 and 0.80, respectively. a pilot survey showed moderate gene frequency differentiation among meadows (lo ... | 1995 | 8675443 |
| effect of iridoid glycoside content on oviposition host plant choice and parasitism in a specialist herbivore. | the glanville fritillary butterfly melitaea cinxia feeds upon two host plant species in aland, finland, plantago lanceolata and veronica spicata, both of which produce iridoid glycosides. iridoids are known to deter feeding or decrease the growth rate of many generalist insect herbivores, but they often act as oviposition cues to specialist butterflies and are feeding stimulants to their larvae. in this study, two iridoid glycosides (aucubin and catalpol) were analyzed by micellar electrokinetic ... | 2003 | 12775146 |
| determination of iridoid glycosides in larvae and adults of butterfly melitaea cinxia by partial filling micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography-electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry. | the iridoid glycosides, methyl catalpol, asperuloside, verbenalin, cinnamoyl catalpol, catalpol and aucubin, were studied from both larvae and adults of butterfly melitaea cinxia. special emphasis in the study was put on finding a correlation between the iridoid glycoside content in butterflies and plants. an optimised partial filling micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatographic-electrospray ionisation mass spectrometric (pf-mecc-esi-ms) method was employed for the separation and identifica ... | 2003 | 12811452 |
| metapopulation-level adaptation of insect host plant preference and extinction-colonization dynamics in heterogeneous landscapes. | species living in highly fragmented landscapes typically occur as metapopulations with frequent turnover of local populations. the turnover rate depends on population sizes and connectivities, but it may also depend on the phenotypic and genotypic composition of populations. the glanville fritillary butterfly (melitaea cinxia) in finland uses two host plant species, which show variation in their relative abundances at two spatial scales: locally among individual habitat patches and regionally am ... | 2003 | 14522169 |
| metapopulation genetic structure of two coexisting parasitoids of the glanville fritillary butterfly. | we investigated the metapopulation genetic structure of two specialist parasitoids, cotesia melitaearum and hyposoter horticola, attacking the glanville fritillary butterfly (melitaea cinxia) in the aland islands south-western finland. the host butterfly persists as a classic metapopulation in a network of 4,000 small habitat patches within an area of 50 by 70 km . the two parasitoids are known to differ greatly in their population dynamics and spatial pattern of occupancy in local host populati ... | 2004 | 15586293 |
| effects of quantitative variation in allelochemicals in plantago lanceolata on development of a generalist and a specialist herbivore and their endoparasitoids. | studies in crop species show that the effect of plant allelochemicals is not necessarily restricted to herbivores, but can extend to (positive as well as negative) effects on performance at higher trophic levels, including the predators and parasitoids of herbivores. we examined how quantitative variation in allelochemicals (iridoid glycosides) in ribwort plantain, plantago lanceolata, affects the development of a specialist and a generalist herbivore and their respective specialist and generali ... | 2005 | 15856784 |
| dispersal-related life-history trade-offs in a butterfly metapopulation. | 1. recent studies on butterflies have documented apparent evolutionary changes in dispersal rate in response to climate change and habitat change. these studies often assume a trade-off between dispersal rate (or flight capacity) and reproduction, which is the rule in wing-dimorphic species but might not occur equally in wing-monomorphic species such as butterflies. 2. to investigate the relationship between dispersal rate and fecundity in the glanville fritillary butterfly melitaea cinxia we re ... | 2006 | 16903046 |
| snp discovery by mismatch-targeting of mu transposition. | single nucleotide polymorphisms (snps) represent a valuable resource for the mapping of human disease genes and induced mutations in model organisms. snps may become the markers of choice also for population ecology and evolutionary studies, but their isolation for non-model organisms with unsequenced genomes is often difficult. here, we describe a rapid and cost-effective strategy to isolate snps that exploits the property of the bacteriophage mu transposition machinery to target mismatched dna ... | 2007 | 17311815 |
| age-dependent survival analyzed with bayesian models of mark-recapture data. | we describe a bayesian random effects model of mark-recapture data that accounts for age-dependence in survival and individual heterogeneity in capture probabilities and survival. the model is applied to data on the glanville fritillary butterfly (melitaea cinxia) collected from a population enclosed in a large cage in the field. the cage population consisted of a mixture of butterflies originating from newly established and old populations in a large metapopulation in the aland islands in finla ... | 2007 | 17824428 |
| analytical and numerical tools for diffusion-based movement models. | i present a general diffusion-based modeling framework for the analysis of animal movements in heterogeneous landscapes, including terms representing advection, mortality, and edge-mediated behavior. i use adjoint operator theory to develop mathematical machinery for the assessment of a number of biologically relevant quantities, such as occupancy times, hitting probabilities, quasi-stationary distributions, the backwards equation, and conditional probability densities. i derive finite-element a ... | 2008 | 18199463 |
| genetic spatial structure in a butterfly metapopulation correlates better with past than present demographic structure. | the glanville fritillary butterfly (melitaea cinxia) has been studied in the aland islands in finland since 1991, where it occurs as a classic metapopulation in a large network of 4000 dry meadows. much ecological work has been conducted on this species, but population genetic studies have been hampered by paucity of suitable genetic markers. here, using single nucleotide polymorphisms and microsatellites developed for the glanville fritillary, we examine the correspondence between the demograph ... | 2008 | 18466229 |
| tracking butterfly movements with harmonic radar reveals an effect of population age on movement distance. | we used harmonic radar to track freely flying glanville fritillary butterfly (melitaea cinxia) females within an area of 30 ha. butterflies originated from large and continuous populations in china and estonia, and from newly established or old (> 5 years) small local populations in a highly fragmented landscape in finland. caterpillars were raised under common garden conditions and unmated females were tested soon after eclosion. the reconstructed flight paths for 66 individuals comprised a tot ... | 2008 | 19060191 |
| genotype by temperature interactions in the metabolic rate of the glanville fritillary butterfly. | metabolic rate is a highly plastic trait. here i examine factors that influence the metabolic rate of the glanville fritillary butterfly (melitaea cinxia) in pupae and resting and flying adults. body mass and temperature had consistent positive effects on metabolic rate in pupae and resting adults but not in flying adults. there was also a consistent nonlinear effect of the time of the day, which was strongest in pupae and weakest in flying adults. flight metabolic rate was strongly affected by ... | 2010 | 20228340 |
| differential performance of a specialist and two generalist herbivores and their parasitoids on plantago lanceolata. | the ability to cope with plant defense chemicals differs between specialist and generalist species. in this study, we examined the effects of the concentration of the two main iridoid glycosides (igs) in plantago lanceolata, aucubin and catalpol, on the performance of a specialist and two generalist herbivores and their respective endoparasitoids. development of the specialist herbivore melitaea cinxia was unaffected by the total leaf ig concentration in its host plant. by contrast, the generali ... | 2011 | 21691810 |
| genetic variation in hif signaling underlies quantitative variation in physiological and life-history traits within lowland butterfly populations. | oxygen conductance to the tissues determines aerobic metabolic performance in most eukaryotes but has cost/benefit tradeoffs. here we examine in lowland populations of a butterfly a genetic polymorphism affecting oxygen conductance via the hypoxia-inducible factor (hif) pathway, which senses intracellular oxygen and controls the development of oxygen delivery networks. genetically distinct clades of glanville fritillary (melitaea cinxia) across a continental scale maintain, at intermediate frequ ... | 2012 | 23550759 |
| the glanville fritillary genome retains an ancient karyotype and reveals selective chromosomal fusions in lepidoptera. | previous studies have reported that chromosome synteny in lepidoptera has been well conserved, yet the number of haploid chromosomes varies widely from 5 to 223. here we report the genome (393 mb) of the glanville fritillary butterfly (melitaea cinxia; nymphalidae), a widely recognized model species in metapopulation biology and eco-evolutionary research, which has the putative ancestral karyotype of n=31. using a phylogenetic analyses of nymphalidae and of other lepidoptera, combined with ortho ... | 2014 | 25189940 |
| evidence for common horizontal transmission of wolbachia among butterflies and moths. | wolbachia is one of the most widespread bacteria on earth. previous research on wolbachia-host interactions indicates that the bacterium is typically transferred vertically, from mother to offspring, through the egg cytoplasm. although horizontal transmission of wolbachia from one species to another is reported to be common in arthropods, limited direct ecological evidence is available. in this study, we examine horizontal transmission of wolbachia using a multilocus sequence typing (mlst) strai ... | 2016 | 27233666 |
| wolbachia infection in a natural parasitoid wasp population. | the maternally transmitted bacterium wolbachia pipientis is well known for spreading and persisting in insect populations through manipulation of the fitness of its host. here, we identify three new wolbachia pipientis strains, whho, whho2 and whho3, infecting hyposoter horticola, a specialist wasp parasitoid of the glanville fritillary butterfly. the whho strain (st435) infects about 50% of the individuals in the åland islands in finland, with a different infection rate in the two mitochondrial ... | 2015 | 26244782 |
| a fish-based chromosome map for the european corn borer yields insights into ancient chromosomal fusions in the silkworm. | a significant feature of the genomes of lepidoptera, butterflies and moths, is the high conservation of chromosome organization. recent remarkable progress in genome sequencing of lepidoptera has revealed that syntenic gene order is extensively conserved across phylogenetically distant species. the ancestral karyotype of lepidoptera is thought to be n=31; however, that of the most well-studied moth, bombyx mori, is n=28, and diverse studies suggest that three chromosomal fusion events occurred i ... | 2016 | 26264548 |
| genetics of personalities: no simple answers for complex traits. | identifying the genes that underlie phenotypic variation in natural populations, and assessing the consequences of polymorphisms at these loci for individual fitness are major objectives in evolutionary biology. yet, with the exception of a few success stories, little progress has been made, and our understanding of the link between genotype and phenotype is still in its infancy. for example, although body length in humans is largely genetically determined, with heritability estimates greater th ... | 2010 | 20456219 |