Prospects for locating adaptive genes in lepidopteran genomes: A case study of butterfly colour patterns

Abstract

The Lepidoptera is a diverse clade that has long attracted the attention of biologists interested in ecological and evolutionary processes. This dates back to classic evolutionary genetic studies of natural populations, which have contributed significantly to our current understanding of the natural world (Clarke and Sheppard 1960; Kettlewell 1973; Ford 1975). Nonetheless, such studies were limited by the fact that the link between genotype and phenotype was essentially an intractable “black box.” In contrast, we are now in an era in which it is becoming increasingly feasible to clone genes with major phenotypic effects in even the most poorly studied genomes, offering an unprecedented opportunity to understand phenotypic evolution at a molecular level (Feder and Mitchell-Olds 2003). Consequently, there is now considerable recent research interest in identifying genes controlling major phenotypic traits in the Lepidoptera, and several recent studies have made significant progress in documenting the genetic basis of phenotypic traits ranging from insecticide resistance, through dispersal ability, to morphological traits such as color pattern (Gahan, Gould, and Heckel 2001; Daborn et al. 2002; Hanski and Saccheri 2006; Joron et al. 2007).