Fig 1.
Temperature ranges leading to the production of wet, intermediate and dry season forms and their occurrence across the year in Malawi [7,19].
Seasonal forms occurrence and changes throughout season may vary according to specific climatic conditions in other parts of the species distribution area [24]. Red, green and blue lines show when WS, IS and DS forms are found in the field in Malawi, respectively. There is no data about the IS presence in the field at other times of the year.
Fig 2.
The dorsal (first and third columns) and ventral (second and fourth columns) parts of female (right) and male (left) wings of the (A) wet, (B) intermediate and (C) dry seasonal forms. The wing morphological traits most frequently measured to quantify polyphenism in published literature are highlighted in black: areas of (fv2) the anterior eyespot on ventral forewing, (hv2) the second eyespot on ventral hindwing and (hv5) the fifth eyespot on ventral hindwing, and (jct) the junction of the two veins (M3) and (Cu1a) to (band) distal band highlighted in grey. The following secondary sexual traits are written in light grey: (fd5) the relative brightness and area of the anterior eyespot on dorsal forewing pupil and (androconia) the organs producing the 3 MSP components.
Table 1.
Descriptive statistics of the wing traits per developmental temperature (17°C, 21°C, 23°C, 27°C) in experiment A.
Table 2.
Descriptive statistics of the sexually-selected traits per male age and rearing temperature (20°C and 27°C) in experiment B obtained from Nieberding et al. [45]’s database.
Fig 3.
Characterization of the most polyphenic traits.
(A) The first two Linear Discriminants (LD1 and LD2) from the Linear Discriminant Analysis of the polyphenic, wing morphological traits (hv5, hv2, and fv2 areas, and jct, each divided by wing size) and the visual sexually-selected traits (fd5 area divided by wing size and fd5 relative brightness) in both sexes across developmental temperatures (square: 17°C, disk: 21°C, triangle: 23°C, diamond: 27°C combined with decreasing darkness). (B) Area of hv5 eyespots divided by wing size (mm2) for both sexes (males in grey triangle and females in black diamonds) across developmental temperatures.
Fig 4.
Variation in secondary sexually-selected traits as a function of the developmental temperature (°C) experienced by 8-day old males (grey triangles) and females (black diamonds) in experiment A.
(A) fd5 area (mm2)/wing size (mm2); (B) fd5 relative brightness, (C) MSP1, (D) MSP2 and (E) MSP3 amounts (ng/individual), (F) MSP2/MSP1, (G) MSP2/MSP3 and (H) MSP1/MSP3 ratios. Lines represent the model estimates that best fit the data.
Fig 5.
Variation in MSP composition as a function of the age of males reared at 20°C (black diamonds) and at 27°C (grey triangles) in experiment B.
(A) MSP1, (B) MSP2 and (C) MSP3 amounts (ng/individual), (D) MSP2/MSP1, (E) MSP2/MSP3 and (F) MSP1/MSP3 ratios. Lines represent the model estimates that best fit the data.
Table 3.
Comparison of sexually-selected traits between dry and wet season phenotypes using this and other studies.