Year: 2022

BUTTERFLY GENE DUPLICATION. "Gene Duplication and Gene Expression Changes Play a Role in the Evolution of Candidate Pollen Feeding Genes in Heliconius Butterflies." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

BUTTERFLY EXAPTATIONS. "Heliconius possess a unique ability among butterflies to feed on pollen. Pollen feeding significantly extends their lifespan, and is thought to have been important to the diversification of the genus." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

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BUTTERFLY BEAKS. "Our results suggest pollen feeding, like other dietary specializations, was likely facilitated by adaptive expansions of preexisting genes—and that the butterfly proboscis is involved in digestive enzyme production." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

FOOD EXAPTATIONS. "Adaptations to novel food sources are found in numerous species from flies to humans. During dietary specialization, modifications to gene expression regulation are likely to have played an important role. Gene expression evolution may occur through adjustments in transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation, and gene duplication events." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

"POLLEN FEEDING is one such dietary specialization that occurs at different developmental stages across herbivorous insect species. Some pollen feeding species feed only as larvae, laying down fat reserves later used for adult nutrition. Others feed as adults, and some as both larvae and adults, to provide a source of nutrition for sexual maturation and body maintenance." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

POLLEN DIETS IN INSECTS. "Female honey bees (Apis mellifera) and hoverflies, for example, require pollen for successful reproduction. Among butterflies, Heliconius are the only species known to supplement their adult diet by feeding on pollen." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

POLLEN BOOST. "Heliconius females do not require pollen for reproduction but, when ingested by females, pollen provides essential amino acids that are directly provisioned into the eggs. Additionally, adult pollen feeding for both Heliconius sexes allows for the extension of lifespan from around 3–5 weeks to 6 months, and increased reproductive output." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

ADAPTATION. "Pollen feeding in Heliconius involves a suite of adaptive phenotypes that differentiate them from nonpollen feeding species, including morphological, behavioral and metabolic differences." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

HYPOTHESIS. "We hypothesized that due to morphological differences and because pollen has a much higher amino acid content compared with nectar, we might observe an upregulation of genes annotated with morphological and proteolysis functions in our Heliconius mouthparts transcriptomes compared with the nonpollen feeding Eueides." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn