Spectro

This project investigates the causes and consequences of host plant specialisation in tropical butterflies, with a particular focus on their fundamental host repertoires — that is, the full range of plants the caterpillars of a butterfly species is able to feed on, whether or not they do so in nature. 

We will test three possible causes for higher specialisation in the tropics by answering the following questions: 

(1) Do tropical species have the same diversity of genetic tools to use host plants that temperate species have?

(2) Is the observed specialisation in the tropics simply a result of lack of data?

(3) Did different processes drive the evolution of butterfly-plant interactions in the tropics versus in temperate regions?

We will answer these questions by developing a comprehensive dataset of both fundamental and realised host plant repertoires for tropical species in the tribes Nymphalini and Melitaeini. Field and lab work will be done in Brazil in collaboration with local researchers from the Ecology and Systematics of Butterflies Lab (LABBOR) at the University of Campinas. Then, we will augment our dataset with predicted interactions for the entire Nymphalidae family (both tropical and temperate).

Finally, we will examine the consequences of host specialisation in the context of environmental change. Specifically, we will quantify the risk of coextinction — the loss of species due to the extinction of its host — to assess whether tropical butterflies are more vulnerable to biodiversity loss in a rapidly changing world.