Abstract
Palatable animals sometimes mimic the color patterns of noxious animals to gain protection from predators. This phenomenon, known as Batesian mimicry, is seen in many butterflies of the genus Papilio, and in some species the mimicry is limited to females. Although female-limited Batesian mimicry has been hypothesized to be caused by females preferring to mate with non-mimetic males, this hypothesis is rarely tested. In this study, we tested whether female mate choice is driving female-limited Batesian mimicry in Papilio polytes. Males have white spots on the dorsal forewings, which are absent in mimetic female sand in the toxic model, Pachliopta aristolochiae. Hence, we conducted mate choice experiments to examine whether these white spots are important to females. We offered females a choice of males with intact dorsal forewing white spots and males with artificially blackened dorsal forewings, resembling the model. Females did not show a preference for males with the white spots, suggesting that they are not being maintained by female mate choice. Future studies should investigate the presence of female mate choice on other parts of males’ wings to further understand the role of female mate choice, as well as explore other factors driving female-limited mimicry in these butterflies.
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Acknowledgements
Work was supported by the Department of Biological Sciences (DBS) Undergraduate research program of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and DBS, NUS R-154-000-608-651 LHK fund.We also thank Entopia by Penang Butterfly Farm for supplying live Papilio polytes pupae for this research and Jocelyn L. Q. Wee for assistance with the reflectance spectra measurement and plotting.
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Conceived and designed the experiments: XHL and AM. Performed the experiments: XHL. Analyzed the data: XHL. Wrote the paper XHL and AM.
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Low, X.H., Monteiro, A. Dorsal Forewing White Spots of Male Papilio polytes(Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) not Maintained by Female Mate Choice. J Insect Behav 31, 29–41 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-017-9656-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-017-9656-7