Name: Video: Measuring Wing Traits and Estimating Fecundity in Adult Female Butterflies
Uploaded: 2023-08-18T13:00:00
Duration: 1 min 32 s
Description: 313 Views. Measuring Wing Traits and Estimating Fecundity in Adult Female Butterflies

measuring wing traits and estimating fecundity in adult female butterflies

Artificial Rearing and Heavy Metal Tolerance in Cabbage White Butterflies

The small cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae, hereafter &#34;cabbage white&#34;) is a cosmopolitan pest species of mustard crops, such as cabbage, broccoli, and canola1,2,3. At the same time, the cabbage white is a powerful system for research in biology and a commonly used butterfly model, as they can be easily reared and manipulated in controlled lab experiments4,5. Research on cabbage white butterflies has provided critical insights with respect to host searching6,7,8, nectar resource use9,10,11, mate choice and sexual selection12,13,14, wing pattern development and evolution15,16,17, and responses to novel and changing environments18,19. Many of these insights rely on the fact that cabbage whites can be reared on artificial diets4,20,21, which can be precisely manipulated to reflect poor nutritional conditions22,23, ecologically relevant pollutant levels24,25,26,27, or transitions to novel host plants28,29. The present study uses an experiment on exposure to heavy metals to illustrate basic methods for rearing cabbage white butterflies on an artificial diet in the laboratory and key performance measures of larvae and adults. Many aspects of these methods apply to other butterflies30,31 and moths32,33,34 that can be reared on an artificial diet.
In this paper, an experiment on metal tolerance is used to illustrate the general methods of rearing cabbage white butterflies. Heavy metals are a common anthropogenic pollutant stemming from the degradation of human products, industrial processes, and legacy contamination from historical use in pesticides, paints, and other products35,36,37,38. Many heavy metals, including lead, copper, zinc, and nickel, can move from soil and water into plant tissue39,40,41,42, and metals in dust can be deposited on plant leaves43,44,45, resulting in multiple routes of exposure to phytophagous insect larvae. Heavy metal exposure early in life can have negative effects on animal development, especially on neural tissue, and high levels can be lethal35,36,46,47,48. A number of studies have shown the negative effects of metal exposure on developing insects, including both pests and beneficial insects49,50,51. The large number of heavy metal pollutants, and the fact that they often co-occur in human environments52, means that precise lab methods are needed in which researchers can expose developing insects to different levels and combinations of diverse metals to understand and mitigate their environmental effects.
The present work contrasts the impacts of common metals on cabbage white survival and development, focusing on copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and nickel (Ni), three common pollutants in human environments. For instance, forbs from rural Minnesota roadsides contain up to 71 ppm Zn, 28 ppm Cu, and 5 ppm Ni53. This experiment manipulates the levels of these metals in artificial diets of cabbage white butterflies at levels corresponding to, and exceeding, the levels seen in the environment. An artificial diet is used to contrast the relative toxicity of these metals, predicting that cabbage whites would be more sensitive to metal pollutants that are not an integral part of their physiology (nickel) relative to those that occur, albeit at small levels, in enzymes and tissue (copper and zinc; Figure 1). Throughout, this text provides methodological details and accompanying video visualizations to illustrate the rearing and research methods of this important butterfly model system.

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Tolerance of Cabbage Butterflies to Urban Pollutants 

Rearing the Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae) in Controlled Conditions: A Case Study with Heavy Metal Tolerance

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Measuring Wing Traits and Estimating Fecundity in Adult Female Butterflies  

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313 Views. Measuring Wing Traits and Estimating Fecundity in Adult Female Butterflies

Video: Measuring Wing Traits and Estimating Fecundity in Adult Female Butterflies  

The cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) is an important system for applied pest control research and basic research in behavioral and nutritional ecology. Cabbage whites can be easily reared in controlled conditions on an artificial diet, making them a model organism of the butterfly world. In this paper, a manipulation of heavy metal exposure is used to illustrate basic methods for rearing this species. The general protocol illustrates how butterflies can be caught in the field, induced to lay eggs in greenhouse cages, and transferred as larvae to artificial diets. The methods show how butterflies can be marked, measured, and studied for a variety of research questions. The representative results give an idea of how artificial diets that vary in components can be used to assess butterfly performance relative to a control diet. More specifically, butterflies were most tolerant to nickel and least tolerant to copper, with a tolerance of zinc somewhere in the middle. Possible explanations for these results are discussed, including nickel hyper-accumulation in some mustard host plants and recent evidence in insects that copper may be more toxic than previously appreciated. Finally, the discussion first reviews variations to the protocol and directions for troubleshooting these methods, before considering how future research might further optimize the artificial diet used in this study. Overall, by providing a detailed video overview of the rearing and measurement of cabbage whites on artificial diets, this protocol provides a resource for using this system across a wide range of studies.

This paper presents a detailed protocol for rearing the cabbage white butterfly in controlled lab conditions with an artificial diet, which allows precise manipulations of early-life nutrition and toxin exposure. The representative results show how heavy metal toxicity can be assayed with this protocol.

The cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) is an important system for applied pest control research and basic research in behavioral and nutritional ...