Abstract

Little is known about the genetic variation that affects life history trait variation in wild populations of outcrossing species. Ongoing work in the Glanville fritillary butterfly (Melitaea cinxia) has identified coding, expression, and indel polymorphism that appears to be involved in adult dispersal variation among demes of a metapopulation. Additional studies have recently been conducted on larval growth rate variation in the same system, revealing extensive heritable variation that interacts with thermal variation. Global analysis of gene expression variation underlying larval growth rate variation reveals significant expression variation in the same categories of genes previously identified as differing in adult butterflies in relation to metapopulation dynamics. This observation supports the notion of a life-history syndrome put forward based on ecological studies. These findings suggest that metapopulation dynamics in heterogeneous environments maintain genetic variation that affects the regulation of life history traits.