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Island biogeography of mimetic butterflies in the Indo-Australian Archipelago
Presented by: David Lohman, Department of Biology, The City College of New York, New York, USA
Abstract: Islands have been called natural laboratories for the study of evolution, but most studies of island taxa focus on a small number of simple oceanic island groups such as the Galapagos, Hawaiian, and Canary Islands. The Indo-Australian Archipelago comprises more than 20,000 oceanic and continental islands in Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and other countries in the most geologically complex area of the planet. This provides an ideal setting for investigating the roles of area and isolation on diversification and trait evolution, including the evolution of mimetic wing patterns. Using examples from focal butterfly taxa including Amathusiini, Danaini, Delias, and Elymnias, I will explore how the complex and dynamic geography of this region affects the evolution of its butterfly fauna and provides opportunities for wing pattern diversification related to Batesian and Müllerian mimicry. Much of this work was made possible through ButterflyNet (butterflynet.org), a global collaboration of butterfly biologists working together to document species distributions, aggregate trait data, and infer the evolutionary history of butterflies.
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Thomas C. Emmel Seminar Series presents: Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research
Continuing from Fall 2020, the McGuire Center is hosting this webinar series as an opportunity for both early career researchers as well as established leaders in the field to present their work. We hope that you will join us to hear about current advances in many diverse fields of Lepidoptera research.