ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
Crossing fitness valleys: empirical estimation of a fitness landscape associated with polymorphic mimicry.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution of dominance in a Mendelian trait is linked to the evolution of environmental plasticity.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2026Article
- Evolution of dominance in a Mendelian trait is linked to the evolution of environmental plasticity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Unexpected colour pattern variation in mimetic frogs: implication for the diversification of warning signals in the genusRoyal Society open science · 2023Article
- Article
- Multispecies colour polymorphisms associated with contrasting microhabitats in two Mediterranean wrasse radiations.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- The impact of life stage and pigment source on the evolution of novel warning signal traits.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
- The integrative biology of genetic dominance.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2021Review
- Balanced polymorphisms and their divergence in aEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- Hard to catch: experimental evidence supports evasive mimicry.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- How do predators generalize warning signals in simple and complex prey communities? Insights from a videogame.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Appearance before performance? Nutritional constraints on life-history traits, but not warning signal expression in aposematic moths.The Journal of animal ecology · 2020Article
- Weak warning signals can persist in the absence of gene flow.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Geographic contrasts between pre- and postzygotic barriers are consistent with reinforcement in Heliconius butterflies.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2019Article
- Article
- Diversity in warning coloration: selective paradox or the norm?Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2019Review
- Adaptation, fitness landscape learning and fast evolution.F1000Research · 2019Article
- Polymorphism at a mimicry supergene maintained by opposing frequency-dependent selection pressures.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
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7 authors.
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Abstract
Characterizing fitness landscapes associated with polymorphic adaptive traits enables investigation of mechanisms allowing transitions between fitness peaks. Here, we explore how natural selection can promote genetic mechanisms preventing heterozygous phenotypes from falling into non-adaptive valleys. Polymorphic mimicry is an ideal system to investigate such fitness landscapes, because the direction of selection acting on complex mimetic colour patterns can be predicted by the local mimetic community composition. Using more than 5000 artificial butterflies displaying colour patterns exhibited by the polymorphic Müllerian mimic Heliconius numata, we directly tested the role of wild predators in shaping fitness landscapes. We compared predation rates on mimetic phenotypes (homozygotes at the supergene controlling colour pattern), intermediate phenotypes (heterozygotes), exotic morphs (absent from the local community) and palatable cryptic phenotypes. Exotic morphs were significantly more attacked than local morphs, highlighting predators' discriminatory capacities. Overall, intermediates were attacked twice as much as local homozygotes, suggesting the existence of deep fitness valleys promoting strict dominance and reduced recombination between supergene alleles. By including information on predators' colour perception, we also showed that protection on intermediates strongly depends on their phenotypic similarity to homozygous phenotypes and that ridges exist between similar phenotypes, which may facilitate divergence in colour patterns.
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