Abstract
Flight morphological variations and its consequences on animal performance are common in winged insects. In the butterfly Heliconius charithonia, sex-related differences in the wing morphological design have been described resulting in differences in foraging behavior, daily flight distances and flight aerodynamics. It has been suggested that these differences should be reflected in the metabolic capacities and energetic budgets associated with flight in both sexes. In this study, we analyzed the relationship between wing morphological variation and metabolic performance, flight aerodynamics and energetic reserves in females and males of Heliconius charithonia over two years. The results confirm the presence of wing shape sexual dimorphism, but also show an unexpected sex-related annual variation in wing shape, mirrored in the metabolic condition (resting metabolic rate) of individuals. However, contrary to expectation, intersexual variations in wing shape are not related to differences between the sexes in terms of flight aerodynamics, flight metabolic rates, or energetic reserves (carbohydrates, lipids and proteins). Our results indicate a considerable plasticity in H. charithonia wing shape, which we suggest is determined by a trade-off between environmental pressures and reproductive restriction of each sex, maintaining an optimum flight design. Finally, similarities in metabolic rates between young and older males and females in both years may be a consequence of the ability of Heliconius species to feed on pollen.
Highlights
Flight is a costly activity for insects, for which the condition and aerobic capacity of the individual, as well as the availability of fuel, are important factors in the locomotor effort involved for take-off, sustained flight, evasive maneuvers and landing [1,2,3]
Sex-related interannual plasticity in wing morphological design in Heliconius charithonia that this factor could modify the Resting metabolic rate (RMR) [13, 23, 25], we considered the age of the individuals as the time between the day of marking and the measurement of the RMR and used linear regressions per sex and sampling period to evaluate whether there was a relationship between age and RMR
The Canonical Variates Analysis conducted to determine wing shape in individuals of H. charithonia showed no significant differences in shape between females of both collections (i.e. 2016 and 2017) (Fig 2), but did show significant differences between females and males in each year of sampling (Fig 2) and between the males of both sampling years (Axis 1: Lambda = 0.06, chisq = 338.87, d.f. = 42, p
Summary
Flight is a costly activity for insects, for which the condition and aerobic capacity of the individual, as well as the availability of fuel, are important factors in the locomotor effort involved for take-off, sustained flight, evasive maneuvers and landing [1,2,3]. Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo 2019 for providing economic resources for proofreading of the English version of the manuscript to VIRP
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