Department of Biology

The Department of Biology at Indiana University Bloomington will host Robert Reed, professor of biology at Cornell University and curator of Lepidoptera at the university’s entomology collection, for the Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior (EEB) Seminar Series on Feb. 28. Reed will present “Seasonal Wing Pattern Plasticity in Butterflies” in the Biology Building, A100.

Reed’s research explores how organisms adapt to their environments by translating external cues into the expression of alternate phenotypes. His lab focuses on butterfly wing pattern seasonality as a model system to understand the genetic changes driving the evolution of environment-phenotype relationships.

Reed’s abstract states: Many butterflies have distinctly different color patterns at different times of the year. This seasonal color pattern variation is thought to be adaptive due to its role in thermoregulation. The common buckeye, a widespread North American butterfly, is of particular interest because it shows strong regional variation in its seasonal wing pattern plasticity program. Our lab is using this intraspecific variation to map and identify genes that underlie the local evolution of seasonality programs.

Erica Nadolski, a Ph.D. candidate in the Moczek Lab and host for the event, highlighted the significance of Reed’s recent findings.

“I think one of the coolest aspects of his recent work is that his group has implicated a noncoding RNA in the regulation of adaptive seasonal wing color polyphenism in the buckeye butterfly,” Nadolski said. “This is only the second time that a noncoding gene has been linked to adaptation that I know of – highlighting that there may be an entire unexplored world of noncoding gene biology that evolutionary geneticists and evo-devo folks could dive into,” she said.

“I hope the audience can see that the work he has been able to accomplish using the buckeye shows the importance of developing and utilizing new molecular tools in emerging model systems that showcase exciting ecology and natural history, such as this seasonal wing pattern plasticity.”