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Butterflies use humidity as a cue for wing-pattern and life history trait plasticity when temperature is unreliable

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Abstract

Many butterflies have wet and dry season morphs with large and small wing eyespots respectively. Eyespot size plasticity is adaptive because butterflies develop large, conspicuous eyespots in the wet season and small, inconspicuous eyespots in the dry season, reducing predation risk in each season. Eyespot size has been shown to be regulated by rearing temperature in many species. However, temperature is an unreliable cue in some regions because it poorly predicts seasons, and other cues such as humidity may be more reliable. We investigated inter-population differences in cue use for eyespot plasticity in the butterfly Melanitis leda. We reared butterflies from three Indian populations under combinations of temperature and humidity designed to capture the differing seasonal reliability of these cues across the three regions. Butterflies from a population (Coimbatore) where temperature has the highest intra-annual variation, responded only to temperature. Butterflies from a population (Tirunelveli) where temperature and humidity are both unreliable, responded only to humidity. Butterflies from another population (Vithura) where humidity differentiates seasons but temperature does not, responded only to humidity. This suggests inter-population differences in cue use, possibly driven by local adaptation. Life-history traits also differed among populations, with the two populations from more arid regions developing faster and attaining larger body sizes than the one from the humid region. Fast development may be adaptive in dry regions where suitable host plants are available only briefly, while large body size may confer desiccation resistance. We show for the first time that humidity can regulate eyespot size, and that responses to temperature and humidity vary across populations, fitting to regional climates.

Data availability

All the data used for this project are made available in [https://gitfront.io/r/indukala3617/s9QAdUS7bgHq/Local-adaptation-in-butterfly-eyespot-size-plasticity/](https:/gitfront.io/r/indukala3617/s9QAdUS7bgHq/Local-adaptation-in-butterfly-eyespot-size-plasticity).

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Acknowledgements

We thank all Vanasiri lab members for their support and inputs throughout the project.

Funding

The work was supported by, a grant from Ministry of Education, Government of India (MoE-STARS/STARS-2/2023 − 0811) and a grant from the National Science Centre, NCN, Poland (2021/43/B/NZ8/00966).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IISER-TVM Centre for Research and Education in Ecology and Evolution (ICREEE), School of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, Maruthamala P.O, Vithura, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

    Indukala Prasannakumar & Ullasa Kodandaramaiah

  2. Department of Systematic Zoology, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Poznań, Poland

    Freerk Molleman & Urszula Walczak

Authors

  1. Indukala Prasannakumar
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  2. Freerk Molleman
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  3. Urszula Walczak
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  4. Ullasa Kodandaramaiah
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Contributions

IK, FM, UW and UK conceived and designed the study; IK and UK conducted the research. IK, FM, UW and UK analysed the data and drafted the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

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Indukala Prasannakumar.

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Prasannakumar, I., Molleman, F., Walczak, U. et al. Butterflies use humidity as a cue for wing-pattern and life history trait plasticity when temperature is unreliable.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-40471-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-40471-0

Keywords

  • Phenotypic plasticity
  • Climate
  • Seasonality
  • Body size
  • Development time
  • Melanitis leda

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