In brief

Abstract

The beautiful patterns on butterfly wings are emerging as an exceptional model system that could reveal much about how the shapes, sizes and colours of specific organisms have evolved. ‘The striking variation of wing patterns of butterflies has a clear function in the wild’, Antonia Monteiro (University of Buffalo, NY, USA) stresses, noting that wing patterns differentiate one species of butterfly from another and are used by males and females to determine which individuals to mate with. To study the genetics of butterfly wing patterns, Monteiro and colleagues are developing the first transgenic butterfly, hopefully by the end of this summer. The butterfly will allow important ecological and evolutionary processes that mould variation in natural populations to be connected with underlying genetic changes. ‘Even more important, [the transgenic butterfly] will allow us to figure out the regulatory regions of genes that are ‘on’ in a particular spatial area of the wing. These will be the prime candidate regions to look for variability in DNA sequences that correlates with variability in colour pattern.’ PL