Benito Wainwright

So happy to be presenting to one of my favorite community of scientists! (@neuroethology.org )
Come join us, to check out some of my “old” work with new insights about arthropod eyes and their molecular make-up!
#Neuroethology

New from Jessie Foley!

#Heliconius have elongated lives and excellent memory, but do they have excellent memory across their elongated lives? Find out now!*

Featuring learning and memory assays in 330 butterflies, and an absolute pig of an experiment to do.

*the title is a spoiler 🧪

Genomic analyses in Drosophila do not support the classic allopatric model of speciation Abstract. The allopatric model of speciation has dominated our understanding of speciation biology and biogeography since the Modern Synthesis. It is uncon

New paper out: “allopatric” Drosophila species aren’t so allopatric after all. We show that most currently allopatric species pairs probably overlapped in the past and exchanged genes at levels similar to sympatric pairs. @evolletters.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/evle... [1/6]

YouTube video by Benito's Explanations Hiding in plain sight: How katydids evolved leafy costumes to trick predators (PLoS Biology 2025)

VERY late to the party, but a lil video abstract featuring a) a summary of our findings and b) a lot of me fangirling over leafy perfection is now up on my YouTube channel here: youtu.be/Av9NHy0Qi9I?... @plosbiology.org @uniofstandrews.bsky.social

A long blue-brown trumpetfish swimming above and close to a blue stoplight parrotfish

🚨NEW PAPER🚨 Need to #camouflage on the move? Easy - simply seek out something that's coloured like you and move along with it! 🐠 Read the latest #trumpetfish instalment here: tinyurl.com/4tb5h5hk
@royalsociety.org
#shadowing #predator #experiment #marine #movement

Bravo Rochelle on this huge and amazing piece of work! 👏👏👏

Slide of katydids that look like leaves

How to be a convincing leaf! Learning about the spectrum of leafiness with @benitoexplains.bsky.social 🍃 🐛 🍃 🐛 #ASABWinter2025

blown away by this, given the names of previous winners - recent and not so recent - hugely grateful to @zslofficial.bsky.social, and all the many students, postgrads, postdocs and collaborators who have helped make the last 14 years so fun and exciting

Will go back to avoiding cameras now… 🫣

🚨Two funded PhDs on the evolutionary ecology of antipredator colouration 🦋 with myself and Iliana Medina.

One in Swansea tinyurl.com/4thtbph6 deadline Jan 12th @crocus-dla.bsky.social

The other in Melbourne - deadline Jan 1st

Please share among potential students!

Online now: Evolutionary influences of sexual signalling on protective colouration

And of course, a huge shout out to @royalcom1851.bsky.social for giving me the freedom during this postdoc to ramble about whatever the hell I want (peer review permitting of course 😂) Any ideas/comments are super welcome as always! ❤️ 7/n @uniofstandrews.bsky.social

This was one the most fun things I’ve ever written, not least because I wrote most of it in Panama, with this gorgeous view, but also because I get to work with the Lennon & McCartney of academic writing, Graeme Ruxton and Nathan Bailey (not willing to disclose which is which). 🌴☺️ 6/n

Specifically, we hypothesise that sexual signalling a) constrains the evolution the specialist camouflage (e.g. masquerade), b) drives sexual dimorphism in camouflage and c) restricts adaptive crypsis polymorphism. Here is a smattering of the study systems we suggest could provide some answers. 5/n

BUT what about concealment strategies like camouflage? Here, the existing literature is a lot more hazy. We propose that in this scenario, sexual signals could act as an evolutionary ratchet, giving rise to subpar concealment... 🤷🏽🤷🏽🤷🏽 4/n

For aposematic species like this strawberry poison dart frog, this is not an issue. Here, sexier colours = more effective warning colouration. Thus, the two traits coevolve positively and there’s already lots of wonderful theoretical and empirical work to support this across various taxa. 🐸🦋🐝 3/n

a black bird with a blue tail standing on a rock ALT: a black bird with a blue tail standing on a rock

We know sexual signals can can evolve in the face of naturally selected adversity. (I.e Stand out from the crowd = 💀 by predation), but is the reverse also true? Can survival adaptations also be constrained by ‘sexually selected adversity’? I.e. can surviving better make you less sexy? 💋 👀 2/n

Very happy to see our opinion article out in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social today. 🥳 We ask whether sexual signals can influence the evolutionary trajectory of naturally selected adaptations, such as protective colouration, for better or for worse 🧐 1/n
doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

Shades of blue and red in a slice through an immuno stained brain showing some deliciously lovely looking mushroom body lobes - ripe for investigation during a funded PhD - and the central complex. Image credit: Dr Max Farnworth

🚨RA/PhD position available in evolutionary neurobiology 🚨

Working on a deep dive into circuit changes during mushroom body expansion in Heliconius butterflies @camzoology.bsky.social

- employment benefits
- 4 years funding
- 1000% fun

Deadline: 14/1/2026

Details:
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Ah thanks so much Stu!

YouTube video by Butterfly Conservation Hot topics with Benito Wainwright: The very latest in butterfly and moth research! (2022)

…and incase you don’t believe we’re actually friends, here are 80% of authors together, preaching all things Lep, in a fun video I made with @savebutterflies.bsky.social a few years ago. Nice to see our sentiment validated (and to see my jokes haven’t aged one bit…) youtu.be/AXDXL4CfMw8?...

What a joy to work with a bunch of my closest pals from my PhD on this review!

And lastly, thanks to @royalcom1851.bsky.social for funding and all BCI staff at STRI for their wonderful hospitality! 14/n

Functional synergy underlies effective leaf masquerade in the wild. Top: Photographs of Itarissa costaricensis (left) and Aegmia maculofolia (right), leaf-masquerading katydid species (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) found at the field site in Panama. Photos courtesy of Dr Hannah ter Hofstede and Dr Laurel Symes. Bottom: All experimental color × shape treatment combinations in situ, pinned to tree bark with a mealworm (Tenebrio molitor larvae) as bait. From left to right: “green oval,” “green elongated oval,” “green rectangle,” “brown oval,” “brown elongated oval,” “brown rectangle,” “blue oval,” “blue elongated rectangle,” “blue rectangle.”

#Evolution of complex adaptations can involve changes in multiple traits that lack standalone function. @benitoexplains.bsky.social &co show that leaf masquerade in #katydids evolved via concurrent modification in wing colour & shape, driven by evolutionary synergy @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4oUE741

Nevertheless, I certainly would not have got very far without the incredible support of Nathan Bailey and Graeme Ruxton, who really helped bring this work to life. Also huge kudos to summer intern student Lotte Rolfe for doing most of the legwork on the predation experiment. 💪🏼13/n

This is my most independent piece of work to date so on a personal level, I’m pretty proud of it. The (synergistic? 😜) blend of methodologies involved is also a nice nod to how I began my research career as a master student, and the amazing mentors I learnt from. 12/n

So then, the co-occurrence of traits with synergistic effects provide a viable mechanism through which exquisitely sophisticated adaptations, such as leaf masquerade, can evolve! 11/n

But most excitingly of all, we found that (controlling for phylogeny) colour and shape are evolutionarily correlated with path analysis suggesting that these leafy traits were acquired simultaneously during the evolution of leaf masquerade in katydids. 10/n

In concordance with our predation experiment, we found that to score highly in the human leafiness rankings, wings needed to be the right colouration AND the right shape. 9/n

Having collected these wings, I designed a survey where 55 human participants had the honour of assigning them a ‘leafiness score’. Pictured on the left is our leafy winner (leafiness score: 9.05), and on the right is our wooden spoon prize (leafiness score: 1.88). Better luck next year mate 😢. 8/n

To answer this, I had to exchange fieldwork in bonnie Scotland for the lush rainforests of Barro Colorado Island, Panama… 🌴 My newfound hobby of katydidling yielded 250+ katydid wings across 58 species, with leafy features having evolved several times independently. 7/n