Sexual selection drives the evolution of male wing interference patterns

Abstract

The seemingly transparent wings of many insects have recently been found to display unexpected structural coloration. These structural colours (wing interference patterns: WIPs) may be involved in species recognition and mate choice, yet little is known about the evolutionary processes that shape them. Furthermore, to date investigations of WIPs have not fully considered how they are actually perceived by the viewers' colour vision. Here, we use multispectral digital imaging and a model of Drosophila vision to compare WIPs of male and female Drosophila simulans from replicate populations forced to evolve with or without sexual selection for 68 generations. We show that WIPs modelled in Drosophila vision evolve in response to sexual selection and provide evidence that WIPs correlate with male sexual attractiveness. These findings add a new element to the otherwise well-described Drosophila courtship display and confirm that wing colours evolve through sexual selection.

Climate Predicts UV Floral Pattern Size, Anthocyanin Concentration, and Pollen Performance in Clarkia unguiculata

“…We used the "Multispectral Image Analysis Toolbox" (Troscianko and Stevens, 2015), which is a plugin for ImageJ (Schneider et al, 2012). Several studies have used this toolkit (Stevens et al, 2017;Gómez et al, 2018;van den Berg et al, 2019;Hawkes et al, 2019;Price et al, 2019;Šulc et al, 2019), which has many advantages including; easy linearization, high precision, and low data loss in image analysis due to 32-bit floating-point image processing (Troscianko and Stevens, 2015). The image frame included a fixed position ruler and Spectralon TM diffuse reflectance standard with a flat reflectance value of 20% across the entire light spectrum, including red, blue, green, and UV wavelengths 9 (North Sutton, NH, United States).…”

Color vision in insects: insights from Drosophila

“…1d; Shevtsova et al 2011). Two recent studies, one on Drosophila melanogaster and one on Drosophila simulans demonstrate that these wing interference patterns serve intraspecific communication and sexual selection behavior (Katayama et al 2014;Hawkes et al 2019).…”

“…d Color vision can enable the detection of wing interference patterns (WIPs) that are displayed by the wings of most Hymenoptera and Diptera (here Drosophila melanogaster). WIPs have been suggested to serve intraspecific communication and were recently shown to be an important trait in sexual selection behavior in Drosophila (Shevtsova et al 2011;Hawkes et al 2019). e Insect color vision with sensitivity in the UV range of the spectrum, in addition to sensitivity for longer wavelengths, allows many insects to detect patterns on flowers that are hidden to the human eye.…”

Camouflage in arid environments: the case of Sahara-Sahel desert rodents

“…It allows the analysis of entire visual scenes, such as fur colouration compared to background (Fig. 3), and utilizes several colour metrics to enable quantification of colours and patterns simultaneously (Gómez et al 2018, Hawkes et al 2019.…”