Comparative analysis of proboscis length and its predictive relevance with nectar plant utilization among different families of butterflies
Mode of Presentation: Poster
Conference Name: First conference of the Indian Society of Evolutionary Biologists (ISEB1)
Year: 2019
Area: Entomofauna
Authors: Manjushree Ray, Arka Pal, Sarika Baidya, Archan Paul, Souparno Roy, Namrata Das and Arjan Basu Roy
Abstract
Resource utilization is a key component that shapes the dynamics of a particular population. In insect herbivory, resource utilization is one of the main guiding forces which dictate the survivability of the individuals through insect-plant interaction. This leads to the co-evolution of both plants and insects and enables insects to develop specialized morphological modifications, especially in mouthparts, such that to incorporate preference for available resources as well as to maximize the utilization of the resource. Butterflies have evolved siphoning mouthparts where the mandibles and maxillae are modified to form a coiled siphon tube called proboscis to collect nectar from flowers. But it is unclear whether butterflies belonging to different families have different proboscis length as well as varied choice for nectar plant or not. In this study, we investigated the level of preference of different families towards flowers of different corolla tube length and also tried to find out its relation with proboscis length. We found that (1) different families of butterflies have different length of proboscis as well as different degree of preferences towards nectar plants, (2) butterflies with longer proboscis prefer long corolla tube, (3) butterflies with shorter proboscis prefer short corolla tube and (4) butterflies with intermediate length of proboscis use maximum range of nectar plants. We assume that, this interfamilial variation in nectar preference helps in niche segregation by the butterflies in a particular spacio-temporal point. This kind of ‘niche selection’ by resource partitioning helps in co-existence of different species in the same habitat reducing the inter-specific or inter-familial competition within the population and stabilizes it.