Report on Hybrid Zone Exercise Chong Guo TA: Indrani Singh 1.

The three characteristics that are measured on the Limenitis Butterfly are white band, iridescence and wing length. The whit band is located on the ventral and dorsal sides of both fore- and hind- wings and it is most commonly observed in the arthemis population. The iridescence is blue-green in color and is located across the dorsal surface of the hind wings of the astyanax. Wing length is defined as the length of the hind wing measured from its apex to the place where wing attaches to the thorax. Wing length is only measured in females. Some difficulties involved in the quantification process are, one, the linkage between the thorax and the wing is not easy to identify in many pictures due to over saturation of the image, and two, both white band and iridescence are scored via qualitative observations thus are not as objective and standardized as we would like them to be.

All Traits
Hybrid Index or Length (cm) 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 35.0

Wing Length White Band Iridescence

38.0

41.0

44.0

47.0

50.0

Latitude (South to North)

2. The figure above has all three traits plotted on one set of axis. The clines appear to center around the same location. However, the cline for wing length is the least steep of all three, white band and iridescence displayed a similar steepness. 3. It appears that both the spatial resolution provided by the populations sampled along with the current sampling size provides a sufficiently clear picture of the clinal variations in the traits that are measured. The highest priority would be to measure more traits because one the data is already at hand and two what we really want to know is how different traits vary within the hybrid zone. 4. The data offers some evidence for a secondary hybrid zone. It is observed that the clines are centered at the same point, implying that the transition is likely not caused by extrinsic ecological factors but rather by dispersal (gene flow) when two formally allopatric populations meet again. We can further hypothesize that the hybrid is not at a disadvantage in the hybrid zone judging from the fact that the

clines all have shallow slopes that reflect a strong effect of gene flow as oppose to selection pressure. We should not however, conclude from the data that that the origin of the hybrid zone is indeed a secondary contact. This is because of the small sample size, lack of spatial resolution and the few traits that are selected for analysis. Further data collection and experiments need to be designed to distinguish the two hypotheses on the origin of the hybrid zone. 5. Some taxa are more related than others therefore even if they coexist in the same region, not all of of the pairs will form hybrid zones. Is it is possible also that the multiple hybrid zone originated in situ as natural selection independently altered allele frequencies of several different taxa at once. Considering the above two putative explanations we cannot use the presence of multiple hybridizing taxa pair to distinguish between different scenarios for hybrid zone origins. 6. It is reasonable to refer to the hybridizing form as a subspecies. The gradual slope of the cline points to the fact that selection is not strong enough to fully segregate the two populations and complete the speciation process. Also, the fact that the two populations can and continue to mate indicates that they dont fully qualify as separate species despite their morphological differences. We can measure the relative fitness of the hybrid from in the hybrid zone and see that this is indeed not lower than the parent taxa, allowing us to be confident in claiming that speciation is not likely to occur any time soon.

More figures and data:

White Band Std Mean Dev 1 0 1 0 2.41666 0.90033 2.58333 0.79296 3 0 3 0 Iridescence Mean 1 1.33333 1.83333 2.16666 2.75 2.75 St Dev 0 0.49236 0.71774 0.71774 0.452267 0.866025 Wing Length Mean 29.5714 29.5714 30.1666 32.6666 37 35 St Dev 2.76026 3.04724 3.18852 3.93276 1.78885 4.09878 Wing Length in cm Mean 2.95714 2.95714 3.01666 3.26666 3.7 3.5 St Dev 0.27602 0.30472 0.31885 0.39327 0.17888 0.409878

Pop 1 2 3 4 5 6

Latit. 47.8 46.1 42.4 41.8 37.8 36.0

White Band
3 2.5 Index (1-3) 2 1.5 1 0.5 35.0 38.0 41.0 44.0 47.0 Latitude (South to North) 50.0

Iridescence
4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 35.0

Index (1-4)

38.0

41.0 44.0 47.0 Latitude (South to North)

50.0

Wing Length
35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 35.0

Length (mm)

40.0 45.0 Latitude (South to North)

50.0