Figure 7.

Tracing the evolution of Heliconius mimicry. (A) Genetic variation across most of the genome clusters H. erato races by geography, but the genomic region around optix, which controls red wing patterning, groups races by phenotype (Supple et al. 2013). A similar phenomenon occurs in H. melpomene (Hines et al. 2011). (B) However, wing patterns shared between H. melpomene and H. erato are due to convergent evolution because there is no shared genetic variation between these two distantly related species. (C) Wing-pattern mimicry has been passed among closely related co-mimics H. melpomene, H. timareta, and H. elevatus by interspecific hybridization (Heliconius Genome Consortium 2012). Evidence for adaptive introgression includes an enrichment of shared alleles (ABBA and BABA sites) near optix and phylogenetic clustering among phenotypes across species boundaries (topology 2).