A look into the ecology and evolution of butterflies in the last thesis inspired by Professor Ramon

The ecology and evolution of butterflies is the focus of the last doctoral thesis carried out at the UB under the supervision of Professor Ramon Margalef (1919-2004), the first professor of Ecology in Spain. The study, carried out by Albert Masó at the Faculty of Biology last January, contributed to check Professor Margalef’s hypotheses on the influence of plants on butterflies and, in particular, on the cell duplication as a macroevolutionary process to generate new species.

 

This thesis –the last doctoral study directly inspired by Ramon Margalef- is divided into two parts. In the first one, the author unveils a research in the geographical area of Montseny Massif to check whether plants determine the features of the butterfly community, and to do research on some biological features in some species. The study served to rule out the fact that these Lepidoptera show a determining dependence on plants and, also, whether the specific composition of plants has a predictive role regarding the butterfly community. Moreover, it also detected a big coincidence between voltinism –amount of generations of an organism appearing over a year- and the wintering phase of those species that are genetically closer.    

In the second part, Albert Masó confirms another of Margalef’s hypotheses, that shich states the phenomenon of cell duplication in butterfly wings as a potential evolutionary mechanism and biological diversification.

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