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Updated: Jan 29, 2026

High-throughput Analysis of Locomotor Behavior in the Drosophila Island Assay
Published on: November 5, 2017
Testing the Island Effect in a Highly Mobile Pollinator: Wing Morphological Divergence in Euglossa mixta from
Yostin Añino1,2,3, Jordan Hernández-Martelo3,4,5,6, Fernando Moya5,7
1Museo de Invertebrados G.B. Fairchild, Universidad de Panamá, Ciudad de Panamá 0824-0021, Panama.
Abstract:
Islands provide valuable opportunities to study how isolation affects phenotypic variation. Even though orchid bees are highly mobile, their movement can still be restricted by marine barriers. In this study, we assessed whether insular isolation impacts wing shape in the orchid bee Euglossa mixta across the Coiba archipelago and a nearby mainland site in Western Panama. Our study analyzed 271 individuals using geometric morphometrics, focusing on forewing venation landmarks, and evaluated the variation using multivariate analyses of shape variation and quantifying the shape of Mahalanobis distances. Additionally, we conducted a Mantel test to explore the relationship between geographic distance and morphological divergence. Our findings reveal that wing shape variation in E. mixta is largely conserved but shows fine-scale structuring consistent with spatial patterns expected in insular systems. These results suggest that even highly mobile pollinators may experience enough isolation for subtle phenotypic shifts to occur, highlighting the sensitivity of geometric morphometrics for detecting early stages of morphological differentiation.
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