Thousands of tiny scales layered like shingles comprise a painted lady butterfly wing in what Robert Reed, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, described as a microscopic mosaic. The patterns we see today—eyespots, stripes and camouflage—are the result of natural selection acting on genetic variation in hundreds of genes for pigment and placement. Reed’s investigations integrate ecology, developmental biology and genomics to discover just how novelty arises and diversifies. Photo by Robert Reed
This article was originally published in periodiCALS, Vol. 6, Issue 2, 2016. Text by David Nutt and Amanda Garris, Ph.D. ‘04
.jpg)
