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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2024.1454212

Structural colouration in Drosophila wings is thermally plastic and exhibits ecological variation

Provisionally accepted
Divita Garg Divita Garg 1Kanak Dhotre Kanak Dhotre 2Harshad V. Mayekar Harshad V. Mayekar 1Raghwinder Singh Raghwinder Singh 2Subhash Rajpurohit Subhash Rajpurohit 1,3*
  • 1 Division of Biological and Life Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad, India
  • 2 Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University,, Ahmedabad 380009, India
  • 3 Ahmedabad University, Navrangpura, Gujarat, India

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Transparent insect wing surfaces produce structural colours when exposed to light. These colours appear upon the scattering of light on the transparent wing surface. Such colouration in insects is known as wing interference patterns (WIPs). WIPs have been found associated to male attractiveness and female choice. Interestingly, the thermal properties of WIPs are not well studied. In this study we report WIPs variation along elevation and its response to different growth temperatures. An altitudinal cline in WIPs was observed in cosmopolitan Drosophila melanogaster originating from Western Himalayas. Parallel thermal response in WIPs was observed in two sibling species i.e. Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila simulans. We observed significant differences in relative redness, relative greenness, and relative blueness of wings across elevation and varying temperatures. Estimates of wing thickness based on Newtonian colour series suggest variations within population as well as across different growth temperatures. Such patterns might have appeared in the presence of alternative selection pressures leading to flight related adaptations.

    Keywords: insect, wing interference pattern, Altitudinal cline, Thermal plasticity, Wing thickness, Newton colour series

    Received: 24 Jun 2024; Accepted: 09 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Garg, Dhotre, Mayekar, Singh and Rajpurohit. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Subhash Rajpurohit, Division of Biological and Life Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad, India

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