Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis used statistical techniques to trace
New research shows for the first time thatButterfly-plant relationships have remained unchanged for millions of years, said first author Mariana Pires Braga, a researcher in Michael Landis's lab.
To model how the relationship between butterflies and plants develops, they used data on the origin and evolutionary paths of 66 genera of Pieridae and 33 families of angiosperms.
We know that this relationship is the result of a long history of co-evolution.
Mariana Pires Braga, first author
In the new work, the authors made statistical models that reconstruct conclusions about a coevolutionary history that occurred millions of yearsNew computational and statistical methods assign a different level of probability to each version of the relationship between butterflies and pollinators, so that scientists can choose the most likely ones.
The authors found out that in the relationship between butterfliesand plant types have a long relationship. This is a kind of memory mechanism in which butterflies increase the number of host plants they pollinate, this can happen even after millions of years without pollination. This behavior increases their chances of survival.
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