Hot temperature during development alters iridescence in blue morpho butterflies

Clicks: 28
ID: 322326
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #28 of 151 articles by views in PNAS nexus

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 151 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract Environmental temperature during critical stages of development can define the phenotype of an individual, especially for ectotherms. Color is a particularly biologically important phenotypically plastic trait, but has been primarily studied in the context of pigmentary, rather than structural, coloration. In Morpho butterflies (Nymphalidae), structural coloration created by nanostructures on the wing scales leads to their striking blue iridescent effect. We reared Morpho helenor larvae and exposed the pupae to three temperature regimes during development: control tropics, temperate cool, and hot house, with hotter temperatures simulating the business-as-usual greenhouse gas emission IPCC model (SSP2-4.5). We hypothesized that the hot house treatment would be the most disruptive to iridescence. In support of this hypothesis, hot conditions reduced the brightness of adult butterfly wings and altered the color profile enough that they would look different from control butterflies to bird predators and conspecifics. For certain bird perceivers, hot conditions would obliterate the iridescent effect entirely. The mechanism underlying these shifts appears to be, at least in part, driven by a decrease in the gap between nanostructures on the wing scale and consequent narrowing of the entire scale. Our study highlights the ways in which structural color is alternately vulnerable or robust to environmental temperature during development. From this work we can glean insight into the environments that would be most supportive of iridescence in tropical butterflies and make predictions about the effects that changing climate regimes will have on the diversity of some of the earth’s most dazzling organisms.
Reference Key
openalex_W7170170503 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Juliette J. Rubin, Leo T. Camino, Yanileth F. Lopez-Tacoaman, Pushkar Ravindra Wagh, Greta Hernández, W Owen McMillan
Are you one of these authors? Claim your profile
Journal PNAS nexus
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag243
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag243
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.