A new study led by butterfly curator Bob Robbins from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History shows the evolutionary tale of how six poisonous butterflies got their toxin-laced defenses, and their bold colors and their behaviors telling all potential predators "to steer clear."
Phys.org reported that recently discovered were the Atala butterfly or Eumaeus Atala and five of its closest relatives in the "genus Eumaeus like to exhibit to display their toxicity."
Essentially, the toxicity of this sextet comes from what they're eating as caterpillars. These are plants called cycads. They have existed since before the times dinosaurs roamed on Earth and contained a possible liver toxin identified as cycasin.
Since the Eumaeus are poison-filled, they are described as "big, gaudily iridescent," and they flap about as if they have nowhere to go.
More so, even their caterpillars are noticeable, assembling in groups to eat cycad plants as they sport flashy red and gold colors.
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Toxicity for Protection
These species' flashy qualities are all signaling to predators that they are not an ideal meal. In nature, their toxicity is for protection from being attacked should their predators know about it.
Robbins explained, butterflies do not have claws or teeth to shield themselves. He added, though, they are using their wing color and flight behavior as an indicator of their unappetizing qualities to predators, at times, deceptively and in others truthfully, as in the Eumaeus' case.
With the newly discovered capability of sequencing genomes with relative ease, the study authors said they now have the opportunity of looking at that for the first time, in great detail.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal's February 8 issue, depends on more than 40 sequenced butterfly genomes, which include all six Eumaeus members, and the number of "members of the 1,000-strong group of butterflies Eumaeus" is linked to the so-called "hairstreaks."
The 'Hairstreaks'
The hairstreaks take place extensively in North and South America, and nearly all of them are small, elusive, and somewhat uninteresting.
The caterpillars that typically eat a diverse diet of flowering plants are typically well-camouflaged and do not assemble in groups. The ranks of Eumaeus are remarkable exceptions, so much so that for years, some experts proposed that "Eumaeus might even be hairstreaks at all."
Additionally, due to the ancient evolutionary history of cycads, most scientists presumed that the Eumaeus' six members developed their tolerance for cycasin, as well as their conspicuousness quite such a long time ago into their history of evolution.
Their study findings showed that the ability to eat toxic cycads was such an advantage to Eumaeus that it encouraged a frenzy of rapid change in evolution that outperformed all other hairstreaks.
The team of scientists learned as well that Eumaeus had separated in two evolutionary after they started eating cycads, so they were able to assess the evolutionary dash two times, including the marked genetic resemblances the pair of lineages had in responding to their new poisonous diet.
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