Larval transcriptomes reflect the evolutionary history of plant-insect associations

Over many decades we have observed that the potential host repertoire of a phytophagous caterpillar is different than the plant repertoire chosen by its butterfly mother for oviposition. These observations have been done particularly in species within the Nymphalidae family of butterflies. The discrepancy between life stages in terms of host range provides a possible explanation for the appearance of a polyphagous taxon within a clade of specialists taxa, as we have also observed in our phylogenetic analysis. We tested whether there is a "transcriptional" memory inspecting gene expression in the gut of different species of caterpillars in the Nymphalini tribe of butterflies exhibiting discrepancies of host range between life stages.