Aspen Bibliography

Plant Ecotones and Butterfly Hybrid Zones: Biological or Physical Causes?

Document Type

Conference

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America

Volume

71

Issue

2

First Page

320

Last Page

320

Publication Date

6-1990

Abstract

The Great Lake region of North America contains an ecotone between boreal and temperature deciduous forests. For Papilio glaucus, we have recently documented numerous differences in wing morphology, color, diapause, foodplant usage abilities, allozymes, mitochondrial DNA, and larval characters between the glaucus and canadensis subspecies. Our goal has been to determine the relative importance of abiotic variables (e.g. climatic regimes) versus biological interactions (e.g. host affiliations) in maintaining this zone of disjunction. Tests of oviposition preferences of populations north, south, and across the Great Lake hybrid zone included more than 5,500 oviposition bouts of 75 different females collected from Alaska to southern Florida. Three-choice studies using Liriodendron tulipifera (Magnoliaceae), Populus tremuloides (Salicaceae), and Prunus serotina (Rosaceae) exhibited intriguingly different latitudinal step clines in oviposition preferences near the plant ecotone and insect hybrid zone. Choice of Liriodendron decreases from more than 60% to only 30% from 43°N latitude to 46°N, while Populus preference increases from 12% to 36% across the same zone. Larval survival shows trends that are even more sharply delineated. Allozyme alleles with fixed differences for canadensis and glaucus (LDH, PGD, and HK) separate geographically in the same latitude.

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