Lesions in the wingless gene of the Apollo butterfly (Parnassius apollo, Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) individuals with deformed or reduced wings, coming from the isolated population in Pieniny (Poland)

Detection of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis in Apollo Butterfly (Parnassius apollo, Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) Individuals from a Small, Isolated, Mountain Population

“…Since Apollo butterfly genome has not been sequenced yet, in order to amplify some genes, primers were designed on the basis of DNA sequences from other insects. Although this strategy was often successful [11,12], specific DNA fragments were unambiguously identified (e.g., those amplified with primers for dpp, hh, and ptc genes, listed in Table 1; this was also a positive control for the quality of DNA samples) in some cases and no amplification products of desired genes could be obtained. Instead, in a few cases, PCR-derived DNA fragments of unexpected lengths appeared and were particularly abundant.…”

“…Bacteria may be excreted with feces of sheep, causing contamination of local plants [21,22], and then, they can be spread through various animals, becoming potential infectious agents for insects in Pieniny National Park. One might suppose that infections of P. apollo by Y. pseudotuberculosis could contribute to developmental abnormalities of butterflies, due to weakening of the insects and causing physiological disturbance, especially in combination with genetic, biochemical, and symbiosis problems which the population in Pieniny suffers from (and which were described previously [11][12][13]). Interestingly, insecticidal activity of cell extracts from Yersinia enterocolitica, a species closely related to Y. pseudotuberculosis and producing the same kinds of toxins, was demonstrated to be present only when bacteria were cultured at low temperature (10°C), in contrast to higher temperature (30°C) [23].…”

“…These results indicate that there are genetic, biochemical, and microbiological reasons for malformations of wings in the isolated population of P. apollo. On the other hand, statistical analyses indicated that none of the mentioned reasons can be considered a sole cause of the developmental changes [11][12][13]. Therefore, further studies on this phenomenon appear to be warranted.…”

“…However, when genetic materials from normal and malformed insects were compared, some significant differences could be identified. In butterflies with deformed or reduced wings, mutations in the wingless gene, coding for a protein involved in wing development, were found to be common [11]. Deficiency in laccases, enzymes which are involved in detoxification of some compounds found in normal diet of caterpillars, was significantly more frequent in malformed than in healthy butterflies [12].…”

winglessis a positive regulator of eyespot color patterns inBicyclus anynanabutterflies

“…Levels of wg expression are associated with wing length in polymorphic planthoppers, and wg RNAi individuals developed significantly shorter and deformed wings (Yu et al, 2014). Lesions in the wg gene found in natural populations of Apollo butterflies after a bottleneck were proposed to lead to a high frequency of reduced and deformed wings in individuals of this population (Lukasiewicz et al, 2016). These studies all show that wg is required for normal wing growth (Swarup and Verheyen, 2012).…”