Neural, genetic, and developmental changes underlie evolving butterfly mate preference

Many studies have linked genetic variation to behavior, but the links between that variation and the neural circuits that drive behavior remain elusive. We investigated the architecture of mate choice behavior in Heliconius butterflies, which use vision to identify preferred mates based on wing color patterns. We found that Heliconius cydno mate preference is associated with inter-photoreceptor inhibition of ultraviolet-sensitive photoreceptors (PRs) by long-wavelength sensitive PRs; identified a small number of genetic loci associated with preference variation; and began to link these multiple layers of behavior variation together through analyses of developmental gene networks. Our results support the idea that altered peripheral neural computations, driven by changes to underlying developmental genetic processes, can significantly and rapidly alter essential behaviors. 
This dataset contains processed data, scripts, and notebooks that were used to analyze the RNA-seq data presented i...