Wednesday 6 February 2019

How male dragonflies adapt wing color to temperature


New research from Case Western Reserve University in how dragonflies may adapt their wing color to temperature differences might explain color variation in other animals, from lions to birds.
Further, the findings could also provide evolutionary biologists clues about whether rising global temperatures might adversely affect some species.
Michael Moore, a graduate biology student, and Ryan Martin, an assistant professor of biology, recently published their findings in the journal Ecology Letters.
"People have long been aware of variation in dragonfly wing color, but what we are showing in this new work is an overlooked environmental factor—how temperature affects coloration," Martin said. "This could turn out to also determine some of the really cool extravagant traits we like to look at, such as coloration in birds."
Their findings follow a two-year study that began with a hunch about how the wing color on male Blue Dasher dragonflies in the western United States was different from their counterparts in Northeast Ohio.
They reviewed vast amounts of dragonfly photographs compiled by citizen scientists on the website iNaturalist.org and then, with the help of graduate student Iulian Gherghel, cross-referenced that information with weather data.

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