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Metapopulation biology of the Glanville fritillary butterfly

Researchers: Ilkka Hanski, Saskya van Nouhuys, Mikko Frilander
Post docs: Chris Wheat, Ines Klemme
Post graduate students: Kristjan Niitepõld, Jouni Kvist
Research assistants: Evgeniy Meyke, Suvi Ikonen, Toshka Nyman

The long-term research on the Glanville fritillary butterfly (Melitaea cinxia) in the Åland Islands in SW Finland was started in 1991. This study encompasses the entire distribution of the species in Finland in a network of ca 4,000 habitat patches (dry meadows) within an area of 50 x 70 km. The survey of all local populations in the entire network was started in 1993 and has provided a unique record of long-term and large-scale dynamics of a species inhabiting a fragmented landscape as well as material for specific observational and experimental studies. The Glanville fritillary has become an internationally recognized model system for metapopulation biology due to the many significant contributions to the literature that this project has made over the past decade (reviewed by Hanski 1999, Metapopulation Ecology, Oxford University Press, and many chapters in the volume edited by Ehrlich and Hanski in 2004, On the Wings of Checkerspots). The average size of the Åland metapopulation has remained the same since 1993, but the amplitude of fluctuations in total metapopulation size has increased, perhaps due to more frequent extreme climatic conditions in the more recent years. Since 2007, we have conducted laboratory experiments at the Lammi Biological Station, where we have 600 m 2 of space for rearing of plants and caterpillars and doing experiments. Since 2006, we have integrated molecular and genomics studies into the ecological research. Among other things, our collaboration with Prof. James Marden (Penn State, USA) has resulted in the first de novo assembly of a eukaryote transcriptome using 454 pyrosequencing data.

Recent publications:

Hanski, I. and Saccheri, I. 2006. Molecular-level variation affects population growth in a butterfly metapopulation. PLoS Biology 4:719-726.

Saccheri, I. and Hanski, I. 2006. Natural selection and population dynamics. TREE 21:341-347.

Saastamoinen, M. and Hanski, I. 2008. Genotypic and environmental effects on flight activity and oviposition in the Glanville fritillary. The American Naturalist 171: E701-E712.

Vera, J.C., Wheat, C.W., Fescemyer, H.W., Frilander, M.J., Crawford, D.L., Hanski, I. and Marden, J.H. 2008. Rapid transcriptome characterization for a non-model organism using massively parallel 454 pyrosequencing. Molecular Ecology 17: 1636-1647.

Orsini, L., Corander, J. Alasentie, A. and Hanski, I. 2008. Genetic spatial structure in a butterfly metapopulation correlates better with past than present demographic structure. Molecular Ecology, in press.

Collaborators:

Prof. James Marden, Penn State University , USA
Dr. Rongjiang Wang, Peking University , China