Projects per year
Abstract
Integrating and weighting sensory perception across modalities is crucial to how animals adapt to their environment. Divergence in brain structure is often in sensory processing regions, suggesting investment reflects the needs of species specific ecologies. Here, we use two parapatric, closely related species, Heliconius erato cyrbia and H. himera, to test the hypothesis that divergence in sensory brain regions affects foraging decisions. These butterflies are isolated across an ecological gradient, which is linked to differences in brain morphology, with H. e. cyrbia investing more in visual centres, and H. himera investing in olfactory centres. Here, we demonstrate that these two species vary in how they associate visual and olfactory cues with positive food rewards. We show that when individuals are trained on paired olfactory and visual stimuli, and are then presented with these stimuli in conflict, they show distinct behavioural responses. H. himera is more likely to favour positive olfactory cues than H. e. cyrbia, which favours visual cues regardless of the paired stimulus. This suggests that these species have diverged in the emphasis placed on these different sensory domains during foraging, in a way which is consistent with observed differences in brain morphology. This result strengthens evidence that speciation initiated by local adaptation is partly facilitated by changes in the neural basis of key behavioural functions.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 83-90 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Animal Behaviour |
Volume | 185 |
Early online date | 4 Feb 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We are very grateful to anonymous referees for manuscript feedback. We thank the Butterfly Ecology and Evolution Research (BEER) and Oscar Paneso for assistance in the insectaries. We also thank the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute for support in Panama and Richard Merril for thoughtful discussions at the onset of this work. This work was carried out under permission from Ministerio del Ambiente, Panama (permit SE/A-82-19) and Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, Ecuador (permit MAE-DNB-CM-2016-0045). This research was supported by a Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellowship to D.D.D. and a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Independent Research Fellowship (IRF) ( NE/N014936/1 ) and a European Research Council (ERC) Starter Grant ( 758508 ) to S.H.M.
Funding Information:
We are very grateful to anonymous referees for manuscript feedback. We thank the Butterfly Ecology and Evolution Research (BEER) and Oscar Paneso for assistance in the insectaries. We also thank the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute for support in Panama and Richard Merril for thoughtful discussions at the onset of this work. This work was carried out under permission from Ministerio del Ambiente, Panama (permit SE/A-82-19) and Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, Ecuador (permit MAE-DNB-CM-2016-0045). This research was supported by a Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellowship to D.D.D. and a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Independent Research Fellowship (IRF) (NE/N014936/1) and a European Research Council (ERC) Starter Grant (758508) to S.H.M.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour
Keywords
- Heliconius
- olfactory cues
- visual cues
- learning
- conflicting stimuli
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Dive into the research topics of 'Shifting balances in the weighting of sensory modalities are predicted by divergence in brain morphology in incipient species of Heliconius butterflies'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Neurological adaptation and ecological specialisation
Montgomery, S. H. (Principal Investigator)
2/09/19 → 31/01/24
Project: Research
Datasets
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Shifting balances in the weighting of sensory modalities are predicted by divergence in brain morphology in incipient species of Heliconius butterflies
Dalbosco Dell'Aglio, D. (Creator), McMillan, W. O. (Creator) & Montgomery, S. (Creator), Dryad, 7 Mar 2020
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.dbrv15f0h, http://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.dbrv15f0h and one more link, https://zenodo.org/record/6335629 (show fewer)
Dataset