Reproductive Tactics in Tropical Butterflies Love or Life: How do butterflies balance survival and reproduction?

Overview of Module: 1) Content. Students will learn about a beautiful and inspiring example of tropical biodiversity: the glasswing butterflies! This example, based on research done in a tropical forest in Costa Rica, concerns natural selection and sexual selection and how conflicts between these lead to reproductive trade-offs. It incorporates concepts about camouflage and visual predation, survival curves, and chemical defenses and their physiological costs. The module also makes connections between real experimental data and simulation data. 2) Activities. To reinforce understanding of evolutionary concepts and data literacy, students will create and interpret visual representations of data. One hands-on activity connects knowledge about culinary spices to plant defenses. Another activity uses beads to simulate natural and sexual selection and is integrated with a graphing exercise to visualize the results. There are also critical thinking and review-oriented questions for some segments. 3) Impact. This module references many standard examples of natural selection, like the peacock tail as an emblem of sexual selection, in relation to authentic research conducted in a tropical rain forest. Having a coherent narrative centered on beautiful butterflies will assist students in thinking in a more complex way about evolutionary dynamics.  Learning Objectives: Explain the evolutionary trade-off between reproductive success and survival demonstrated in the butterfly system. Interpret figures (e.g., time spent feeding on plants, survival curves) and connect them to the study’s conclusions. Connect the results of a simulation of natural selection to real biological data from a published study.   Support was provided by: A grant from the United States National Science Foundation (DBI-RCN-UBE 2120141).