Females Butterflies Can Smell If a Male Butterfly Is Inbred

Title of the Article: Females Butterflies Can Smell If a Male Butterfly Is Inbred

Source: Science Daily.
Website URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130305200457.htm

While I was browsing through “science related” websites, hunting for a topic for my current event, I came upon this article. The reason why it caught my eye is simple: in the past month in our ESS class, we have discussed evolution, adaptation, speciation, pretty much the transformations animals/humans go through in order to survive and “become better are surviving”. We have also discussed the genes, and how offspring are determined. The final reason why I chose this article is because it focused on “Inbred” offspring, and this was interesting since we discussed how ‘weak’ the offspring of two related parents are as well as how their productivity level is low. By choosing this article, I have informed myself more on this topic since it covered the weakness and sterility offspring are prone to if the parents are related.
To give you a quick overview of the article: Scientists at the University of Cambridge came upon the discovery that most female butterflies have the ability to ‘smell’ or identify inbred male butterflies. The color patterns of the inbred butterflies are ‘less conspicuous’ and they release small quantities of pheromones (pheromones are describe as chemical substances released by mammals and insects – attractant for the opposite sex). The reason why the female butterflies can ‘smell’ the inbred counterparts is because the inbred males have a 50% chance of being sterile. The eggs of the female butterfly will still be fertilized however, the offspring won’t develop and live. I thought of evolution when I read this article. The female butterflies have wasted time and energy carrying ‘unfertilized’ eggs which were ‘fertilized’ by inbred males. They were blocked from reproducing since the inbred males did not ‘carry out their part of the job’. After centuries the female butterflies have developed a sense which foretold them if a male is inbred in order to avoid mating with that specific butterfly – which ultimately reduced the female’s nurture of ‘dead egg’s’. This has contributed to the population of the butterflies since female ones focus more on finding the ‘right’ mates, thus their specie manages to reproduce. I find this to be fascinating since a lot of time and effort has been saved for the butterfly population just because of that one adaptation. Even thought ‘inbred’ humans are much easier to identify, I hope that in the future of mankind the opposite gender will ‘develop’ some sense which would warn them about the inbred counterpart – which would lead to less deformed offspring.

By Mihajlo