Project Lead: Laura Buckley, UW Biology

Data Science Lead: Vaughn Iverson

Heterogenous responses to climate change highlight the need to identify the underlying organismal mechanisms. Insects offer an excellent system for investigating mechanisms of climate change responses due to their high sensitivity to environmental conditions and extensive historical records. Dramatic recent declines in insect populations, including of butterflies in the Western United States, highlight their sensitivity to recent environmental change. A single butterfly phenotype—wing coloration—shapes organismal responses to climate change  at both acute and chronic timescales. Dark wings allow Pierid butterflies to absorb more sunlight to heat up sufficiently for flight and associated fitness determining activities, but dark wings can result in overheating and damage during thermal extremes. Seasonal plasticity and spatial differences in coloration enables butterflies to balance flight capacity against risk of overheating. We seek to innovate approaches to enable high-throughput techniques to assess butterfly thermoregulatory traits, which can be applied to thousands of imaged museum specimens. The approaches will enable assessing spatial and temporal shifts in wing coloration in response to recent climate change.