Pérochon et al., 2025 - Müllerian mimicry in Neotropical butterflies: One mimicry ring to bring them all, and in the jungle bind them

This repository contains the code and data used to carry out analyses for this research article:

Pérochon et al., 2025 - Müllerian mimicry in Neotropical butterflies: One mimicry ring to bring them all, and in the jungle bind them. in prep.

Müllerian mimicry is a remarkable example of convergent evolution driven by natural selection where coexisting prey species converge in their warning signal advertising their defense abilities to predators. Heliconiine and ithomiine butterflies found throughout Neotropical rainforests were instrumental in Fritz Müller’s historical model providing the mechanism for such resemblance. Leveraging decades of fieldwork observations, we show that phenotypically similar species present striking broadscale associations in spatial distributions both within and between tribes. Such co-occurrence appears reinforced by the convergence of climatic niche among look-alike species . Our findings emphasize the influential role of mutualistic interactions in shaping large-scale distribution patterns and driving convergence in species niches, spanning across phylogenetically distant clades.

All content (including, maps, models, outputs, environmental variables rasters and stacks) is available here.

Contents

:file_folder: controls directory contains plots used to control the quality of SDM outputs.

:file_folder: figures directory contains graphs and figures produced for the research article.

:file_folder: functions directory contains homemade functions used in the analyses.

:file_folder: input_data directory contains the raw and curated data used in the analyses, including occurrence databases, environmental layers, phylognies, and phenotypic classification.  (./Species_data/Env_stacks/ ; ./envData/bioclim_elev/ ; ./envData/bioclim_var/ ; ./envData/nasa_forestcover/ are available on Zenodo)

:file_folder: Ithomiini directory contains all data related to ithomiine butterflies used to caryy out analyses between the two tribes. Data were extracted from Doré et al., 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13455 and Doré et al., 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14198 

:file_folder: maps directory contains distribution maps and biodiversity maps generated during the study. (available on Zenodo)

:file_folder: models directory contains outputs of Species Distribution Models (SDMs). (available on Zenodo)

:file_folder: outputs directory contains all files generated by the scripts that are not maps, figures, tables, or SDM outputs. (available on Zenodo)

:file_folder: scripts directory contains the scripts used to run the analyses. Scripts are ordered such as one can generate the study outputs by running scripts in the provided order.

:file_folder: tables directory contains the summary tables generated during the study.

How to run it

This research has been developed using the statistical programming language R. To run the analyses, you will need installed on your computer the R software itself and optionally RStudio Desktop.

You can download the entire project as a .zip from this URL. After unzipping:

Open the Heliconiini_Diversity.Rproj file, found at the root of the project, in RStudio

Run sequentially the scripts found in the :file_folder: scripts folder. It will rebuild the model outputs, maps, graphs and figures, including the final ones presented in the main text of the article.

How to cite

Please cite this research article as:

Pérochon, E., Rosser, N., Kozak, K., McMillan, W.O., Huertas, B., Mallet, J., Ready, J., Willmott, K., Elias, M. & Doré, M. (2025). Müllerian mimicry in Neotropical butterflies: One mimicry ring to bring them all, and in the jungle bind them, in prep.

Associated online archives

The occurrence dataset used to run the analyses is made publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10906853

The phenotypic classification of heliconiine subspecies defined for this study is made publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10903197

The distribution maps generated throughout the analyses are made publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10903661

The folders with all files generated/used throughout the analyses are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14765685

The R scripts and input data used throughout the analyses are publicly available at github.com/EddiePerochon/Heliconiini_Diversity