Alternative developmental and transcriptomic responses to host plant water limitation in a butterfly metapopulation

摘要: Predicting how climate change affects biotic interactions and their evolution poses a challenge. Plant-insect herbivore are particularly sensitive to change, as climate-induced changes in plant quality cascade into the performance of insect herbivores. Whereas immediate survival individuals depends on plastic responses induced nutritional stress, long-term population persistence via evolutionary adaptation requires genetic variation for these responses. In order assess prospects under it is therefore crucial characterise response mechanisms stressors, quantify variability natural populations. Here, we test developmental transcriptomic water limitation host Glanville fritillary butterfly (Melitaea cinxia) metapopulation. We combine nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy metabolome, larval assays an RNA seq analysis transcriptome. observed that feeding limited plants, which amino acids aromatic compounds enriched, showed marked intrapopulation variation, with some families performing better control others plants. The were concordant responses: Families exhibiting opposite also produced responses, e.g. growth associated intracellular signalling. between differences organic compound catabolism storage protein production. results reveal heritable plasticity, suggesting potential drought-induced Finnish M. cinxia