Fig 1.
Examples of the ventral wing colouration found within Delias.
(a) Delias timorensis, (b) Delias hyparete luzonensis, (c) Delias albertisi, (d) Delias aganippe, (e) Delias ennia nigidius, and (f) Delias harpalyce. (Source: Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University).
Fig 2.
Artificial Delias hyparete models used across all trials.
(a) the Painted Jezebel, Delias hyparete at rest, displaying its ventral wings (Credit: Sunny Chir). (a) Achromatic Grey model that served as the control model in every comparison. (b) Test pattern (Wt) resembling the wild-type colouration of D. hyparete. (c) Red model with the yellow component of the colouration converted to greyscale. (d) Yellow model with the red component of the colouration converted to greyscale. (e) Blackless model that resembles the achromatic control model, but with black venation pattern removed.
Fig 3.
Photo of model in the field and localities of where field experiments were conducted.
(a) Artificial butterfly model attached to live mealworm and a wooden rod via a coiled green metal wire. (b-d) The vegetation/general terrain found at each field site: (b) Jurong Eco Garden (Trial 3), (c) Kent Ridge Road (Trial 1), and (d) Tampines Eco-Green (Trial 2).
Table 1.
Comparison of attack rates across different studies which used artificial butterflies’ paper models to study predator-prey interactions in field experiments.
Fig 4.
Plot of mean smoothed reflectance spectra of natural and artificial (paper) Delias hyparete hindwings.
Shown are the mean values with shaded areas representing the standard deviation of the spectral data (n = 5 for each type) along with a ventral image of D. hyparete with an arrow indicating the colour that is being quantified through spectral measurements. Line colours for all three graphs indicate the specimen that is being measured, red: natural wings, blue: artificial wings. (a) White reflectance spectra, (b) Red reflectance spectra, and (c) Yellow reflectance spectra.
Table 2.
Chromatic contrasts values from colour discriminability calculations when spectral data was processed through avian visual systems (both UVS and VS).
Fig 5.
Number of predated test models relative to Grey models in each of the three trials and estimates of predation for each model type.
(a-d) Asterisks represent the p-values from Fisher’s exact test (two-tailed) testing for differences in predation between the two model types. (e) Estimated predation rates for each model type across the three sites obtained from a generalised linear mixed-effects model (GLMM) analysis followed by post-hoc pair-wise comparisons (Tukey corrected). Only significant differences are indicated in the graphs. In both tests: *, p < 0.05, **, p < 0.01 and NS, not significant (p < 0.05).
Table 3.
Number of days the models stayed in the field and Fisher's exact test (two-tailed) probability (p) for observed predation differences between control Grey model and each of the coloured models assuming no differences in signal effectiveness between the two models.
Table 4.
Number of predation events for Grey and each of the coloured models across all three sites. t and p values (two-tailed) were calculated using paired sample t-tests.
M and SD values denote mean predation and standard deviation across sites, respectively.
Table 5.
Test statistics for post-hoc pairwise comparisons of predation probability across model types (using Tukey’s correction) after running a generalised linear mixed effects model (GLMM) analysis with binomial distribution, logit link function, where model type was used as a fixed variable and locality and duration of each experiment were used as random variables.
Fig 6.
Parsimony reconstruction of the evolution of dorsal colour amongst 138 species of Delias using the molecular phylogeny of Muller et al. (2013).
(a) Red colour evolution. (b) Yellow colour evolution. Branches are coloured as follows: yellow–yellow colour is present; red–red colour is present; white–white with black patterns are present. Only male specimens are considered in this study.
Fig 7.
Parsimony reconstruction of the evolution of ventral colouration amongst 138 species of Delias using the molecular phylogeny of Muller et al. (2013).
(a) Red colour evolution. (b) Yellow colour evolution. Branches are coloured as follows: yellow–yellow colour is present; red–red colour is present; white–white with black patterns are present. Only male specimens are considered in this study.