How do warning colours vary across a time and space?
White Antenna Wasp Moth (Amata nigriceps) Image Stuart Ash
In collaboration with Prof. Marie Herberstein, Prof. Johanna Mappes, and Dr. Kate Umbers, and funded by the Australian Research Council, PhD student Georgina Binns and postdoc Liisa Hämäläinen are researching variation in warning colours and chemical defences of the tiger moth Amata nigriceps, across several populations along eastern Australia.
Our aim is to quantify how variation in climate and predator community structure affects the expression of prey warning colours across time and space
Publications
Hämäläinen, L., Binns, G. E., Hart, N. S., Mappes, J., McDonald, P. G., O’Neill, L., Rowland, H. M., Umbers, K. D. L., Herberstein, M. E. Predator selection on multicomponent warning signals in an aposematic moth.
Binns, G., Hämäläinen, L., Kemp, D. J., Rowland, H. M., Umbers, K. D. L., Herberstein, M. E. Additive genetic variation, but not temperature, influences warning signal expression in Amata nigriceps moths (Lepidoptera: Arctiinae). Ecology and Evolution, 12(7): e9111. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9111