EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSES OF WING SIZE, FLIGHT, AND SURVIVAL IN THE WESTERN WHITE BUTTERFLY

Butterflies have distinctively large wings relative to body size, but the functional and fitness consequences of wing size for butterflies are largely unknown. I use natural and experimentally generated variation in wing surface area to examine how decreased wing size affects flight and survival in a population of the western white butterfly, Pontia occidentalis. In the laboratory, experimental reductions in wing area (reduced-wings manipulation) significantly increased wingbeat frequencies of hovering butterflies, whereas a control manipulation had no detectable effects. In contrast, behavioral observations and mark-release-recapture (MRR) studies in the field detected no significant differences in flight activity, initial dispersal rates, or recapture probabilities among treatment groups. Estimated selection coefficients indicated that natural variation in wing size, body mass, and wing loading in the population were not significantly correlated with survival in the two MRR studies. In two mark-recapture studies with manipulated butterflies, survival probabilities were not significantly different for reduced-wings individuals compared with control or unmanipulated individuals. In summary, experimental reductions in wing area significantly altered aspects of flight in the laboratory, but did not detectably alter flight or survival in the field for this population. The large wing size typical of butterflies may reduce the functional and survival consequences of wing size variation within populations.