Decoding Butterfly Color: Aaron Pomerantz

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00:00:13.20 Have you ever wondered how butterflies create color?
00:00:17.14 My name is Aaron Pomerantz and I grew up with a passion to understand how the natural world works
00:00:22.10 I think in part because my mom is an avid gardener.
00:00:25.14 So, I grew up around the home surrounded by lots of native plants and animals.
00:00:30.23 It was during my first trip to the Amazon rainforest that I really fell in love with
00:00:34.24 the tropical biodiversity, the variety of life on the planet.
00:00:39.19 The Amazon rainforest hosts more types of plants and animals than anywhere else on Earth.
00:00:44.14 So, we're looking at the Peruvian Amazon and our trip into... deep into the jungle, where
00:00:50.10 I'll tell you about some stories and some research.
00:00:53.00 So, we take a boat ride deep into the rainforest
00:00:56.14 and you can see some incredible things out here.
00:00:59.05 You see birds gathering at clay licks, you see some beautiful sights, like rainbows,
00:01:04.14 and I really love working out here.
00:01:06.02 It's such a beautiful place... and some really charismatic animals.
00:01:10.19 But what first caught my attention were the flashy butterflies and moths.
00:01:15.09 Along the riverbank, you can see these beautiful, bright, iridescent moths, you can see butterflies
00:01:21.02 sipping up muddy water and gathering minerals, and if you're really lucky you can see this
00:01:25.14 peculiar sight of butterflies actually mobbing a turtle head and sipping up its tears.
00:01:32.00 During the jungle daytime, you can see butterflies and moths flitting around, gathering nectar
00:01:36.12 from flowers, showing off their colors, or perched at leaves, flying around, defending
00:01:41.08 their territory.
00:01:43.15 And deep in the understory, you can see more mysterious,
00:01:46.10 iridescent-to-completely transparent species.
00:01:50.12 So, I want to take you with me on this little trip and we're gonna go deep into
00:01:55.12 the Peruvian Amazon.
00:01:56.24 So, after a long flight, we're gonna get to this port, and this is in this little city
00:02:01.13 called Puerto Maldonado, and from here on out we're gonna travel by boat.
00:02:04.21 And, after a long journey, we're gonna arrive down here.
00:02:08.07 This is in the Tambopata National Reserve, and you'll see this aerial shot of the Tambopata
00:02:13.07 Research Center, where I've conducted a lot of this fieldwork.
00:02:16.11 So, I want to share with you a little bit about what it's been like to be a field biologist
00:02:21.07 in the rainforest.
00:02:23.05 It involves lots of hiking, lots of walking around, you get sweaty, you get bit by mosquitoes,
00:02:29.13 you get muddy, but it's a very rewarding experience.
00:02:33.09 I take a lot of pictures.
00:02:35.02 I use macrophotography, which is how I can document some of the smaller organisms like
00:02:39.06 these insects.
00:02:40.13 And really just make a lot of observations.
00:02:43.12 It was a lot of just looking around and observing the behaviors, and the colors, and everything
00:02:48.06 going on around me in this very diverse environment.
00:02:52.00 So, one of the first stories I want to share, sort of my... sort of my lead-in into working
00:02:58.23 on butterflies and their patterns.
00:03:00.24 So, a colleague of mine, Phil Torres, was working out at this same field site, and he
00:03:05.19 took this picture that shows a butterfly hanging out with ants on bamboo.
00:03:10.08 So, he got back to the states and he showed me this and we got very excited, because this
00:03:15.03 is an unusual sight, to say the least.
00:03:17.23 So, as an entomologist, we've never really seen this before, where a butterfly associates
00:03:22.07 with ants at the adult stage like this.
00:03:24.19 And, looking through the scientific literature, nothing is really known about an adult life
00:03:29.10 interaction like this.
00:03:30.20 So, we wanted to know more.
00:03:32.17 And, in fact, we were even curious about those three red circles that you see on the wings
00:03:37.04 of the butterflies, which we'll get to in a second.
00:03:41.04 So, we were wondering, is this just a one-off chance?
00:03:43.21 Was this a... one peculiar snapshot?
00:03:46.24 Or was there something more to this story?
00:03:49.04 So, looking at a few more of these pictures, we realized this wasn't some just... you know,
00:03:54.22 a one-off relationship.
00:03:56.14 There seemed to be something more going on here.
00:03:59.02 So, every time you see these butterflies, there can be multiple ones hanging out on bamboo
00:04:03.11 and associating... in association with these ants.
00:04:06.11 And it's just very strange.
00:04:08.07 Something seemed to be going on here.
00:04:11.12 You'll even notice that the ants were crawling along the butterfly wings, and that's very
00:04:15.21 strange because normally an ant would treat a butterfly like it would anything else -- it
00:04:20.04 would tear it to shreds and treat it like prey.
00:04:23.03 And, even more so, it looked like there could actually be butterfly eggs that were laid
00:04:28.01 on the bamboo as well.
00:04:29.22 So, at the end of the day, my colleague had wrapped up his expedition, but since I was
00:04:34.09 going back out we wanted to know more.
00:04:36.13 We wanted to solve this mystery.
00:04:38.01 What was really going on here?
00:04:40.06 The species is Adelotpya annulifera.
00:04:42.14 It belongs to what are known as the metalmark butterflies.
00:04:45.05 And they have these brilliant wing patterns, but very little is known about how they live
00:04:49.03 their life.
00:04:50.03 So, in this case, the life history was completely unknown.
00:04:53.10 So, I went back out and I started searching.
00:04:57.23 And you might imagine trying to find an insect in the middle of the jungle, it's kind of
00:05:02.13 like finding a needle in a haystack.
00:05:04.07 So, it involved lots of hiking around.
00:05:07.08 Sometimes I would be out in the middle of nowhere and just a rainstorm would hit and
00:05:10.13 I would get drenched, and not even find what I was looking for.
00:05:14.08 But that's ok because, at the end of the day, you're out there searching and after a
00:05:19.20 long, long, long hike I had stumbled upon this piece of bamboo.
00:05:23.15 So, I pulled this leaf back that was at the base of the bamboo and I saw these guys.
00:05:29.07 So, there were these two little caterpillars, you can see that head right there, that one's
00:05:33.07 flipped around... and there was an ant hanging out with them as well.
00:05:36.18 So, as I started taking some pictures and recording some video of these little caterpillars,
00:05:41.02 then at... the ant actually jumped on top of them and wouldn't move.
00:05:44.16 So, that's a very cool behavior -- it looks like there's an association with these caterpillars
00:05:49.00 and this ant -- but the story wasn't over.
00:05:51.11 Was this actually the butterfly that we were looking for?
00:05:54.10 So, I came back and I watched and eventually these two caterpillars turned into their pupae,
00:06:01.05 so I knew it wouldn't be long before we actually got an emergence of the butterfly.
00:06:05.00 So, I watched and I waited, and finally one of them eclosed -- the butterfly came out...
00:06:10.23 and it was our species of interest.
00:06:12.24 This was very exciting because now we had completed the life history, going from egg
00:06:17.11 to larva to pupa to adult of this species.
00:06:20.06 It was really exciting at the time.
00:06:22.13 I remember I had jumped on my laptop and I had tried to shoot my colleague an email,
00:06:28.02 but you can imagine, when you're in the middle of the rainforest, Wi-Fi is very sketchy.
00:06:32.03 So, it was very exciting but it took a little while for us to put this story together and
00:06:37.12 finally write it up as a publication.
00:06:39.24 So, while I was out there, I was able to make some other observations.
00:06:44.00 It also turns out that, at the caterpillar stage, other species of ants will take care
00:06:49.00 of them.
00:06:50.00 So, this is no trivial ant that you're seeing in this picture.
00:06:52.20 The species is Paraponera clavata, but it's commonly known as the bullet ant because
00:06:57.15 it has the most painful sting of any insect.
00:07:00.24 So, you can imagine that, if you're a vulnerable little caterpillar, it behooves you to have
00:07:05.10 a very strong bodyguard like this around.
00:07:07.21 And you might ask yourself, well, what does the ant get in return out of all of this?
00:07:12.02 And so it turns out that many of these species of caterpillars, that are in this metalmark
00:07:16.10 butterfly family, they actually have special organs that secrete sugars and amino acids.
00:07:21.00 So, the ant gets a free meal and in return protects these caterpillars.
00:07:25.13 So, this was a piece of our figure showing
00:07:29.09 every single life stage leading up to the butterfly.
00:07:32.17 We have the eggs that are laid at the tips of bamboo shoots.
00:07:35.02 The caterpillars emerge and they're protected by ants
00:07:37.11 as they sip up sap from the bamboo nectar.
00:07:40.10 And then all the way down to pupae.
00:07:42.10 So... but I want to bring this back to that wing pattern.
00:07:46.09 I mentioned that there were three red circles in the wings and they were hanging out with
00:07:50.02 those three red ants.
00:07:51.07 And so I want to share another evolutionary phenomenon that... that occurs in groups of
00:07:56.00 insects and arachnids.
00:07:58.02 What you're seeing in this figure are ant mimics.
00:08:00.11 And there's actually only one ant pictured -- it's this one right here -- but it was
00:08:04.21 the meal of this spider that's evolved to look like that ant.
00:08:09.11 In this top panel, as well, that's a spider.
00:08:12.06 Down here is actually a cricket.
00:08:14.11 And here is what's called an assassin bug.
00:08:16.19 But these have all evolved over time to look like ants -- this is called myrmecomorphy
00:08:21.22 and it's a very cool phenomenon that occurs because, when you look like an ant, you might
00:08:27.02 look like something that bites and stings.
00:08:29.16 And so that's a very good evolutionary advantage if you look like these animals.
00:08:33.01 And so, if we look back at this butterfly that has these wonderful wing patterns and
00:08:38.03 hangs out with these ants on bamboo, you start to realize that maybe something is going on
00:08:43.03 here with this pattern.
00:08:44.22 The butterflies aren't skittish, we didn't scare them off, so they didn't seem afraid.
00:08:49.11 And, in combination with the wing pattern, we have a hypothesis that the wing patterns
00:08:54.10 look like the ants.
00:08:56.02 And this would be very exciting because there's nothing known in the literature of a butterfly
00:09:00.04 wing pattern that looks like ants.
00:09:02.11 We know of... of other insects and other spiders have evolved to take their form, but this
00:09:06.11 would be the first case in a butterfly pattern, so that was really exciting.
00:09:11.08 There is one other piece of literature, not with a butterfly but with a moth, that actually
00:09:15.13 has evolved to look like a jumping spider in its wing pattern and behavior.
00:09:19.12 So, this could occur in moths and it could occur in butterflies, but maybe... but, one
00:09:26.05 of the questions is, is this just an... an unusual phenomenon
00:09:30.03 or does this occur more often?
00:09:32.04 So, this leads into our next jungle-y story.
00:09:35.08 So, these are weird yellow bulbs that are protruding from a tree.
00:09:39.24 And this was just sort of, well, I was walking through the rainforest and just noticed these
00:09:45.14 odd-looking protrusions coming out of this tree.
00:09:49.11 At first, I didn't think much of it, but I thought they were very strange-looking.
00:09:52.03 I mean -- what is that?
00:09:54.24 I thought, maybe, it was some sort of weird fungus or the tree had some sort of disease,
00:10:00.00 but upon closer inspection I got more excited when I saw this.
00:10:04.00 This is a caterpillar munching away on these yellow bulbs, which is very peculiar.
00:10:10.02 When I was taking my camera out and taking more video, I noticed that ants were also
00:10:14.07 taking care of these caterpillars.
00:10:16.01 It was one of those ant-caterpillar myrmecophilous relationships --
00:10:20.00 myrmecophily meaning "ant lover".
00:10:22.17 So, very strange, right?
00:10:25.13 You might ask yourself too, what does the ant get out of this?
00:10:27.19 This is another type of caterpillar that has a special structure called a dorsal nectary
00:10:32.07 organ, and that secretes sugars and amino acids to keep that ant happy.
00:10:35.15 And you can see in this little panel, here, the ant is actually tapping on the caterpillar
00:10:39.13 until it secretes a drop of this sugary, nectary reward.
00:10:43.13 So... but as I was there filming this interaction I noticed this.
00:10:47.13 And I was like, what is going on here?
00:10:51.00 This butterfly looks just like these weird yellow bulbs.
00:10:54.10 So, that was very exciting because I thought this could be the same butterfly that belonged
00:10:58.18 to those caterpillars -- it looked like it was laying eggs -- and it was just so strange.
00:11:02.23 I had to just take lots of pictures and video.
00:11:05.08 And, at the time, I didn't really understand what was going on, but I was just trying to
00:11:08.23 make observations and figure out this... this strange-looking pattern.
00:11:13.14 So, it later turned out, when I got in contact with other biologists, that these weird yellow bulbs
00:11:19.21 are actually a parasitic plant.
00:11:21.13 They belong to a strange family called Apodanthesiae.
00:11:24.21 And so they live inside of the tree, but they burst out once a year to flower, which is
00:11:29.01 what you're looking at there.
00:11:31.02 So, one year later, at this same field site, a colleague of mine snapped these pictures.
00:11:37.01 The butterfly had returned and these strange yellow bulbs had popped out to flower again.
00:11:42.09 Once again, that yellow wingspot looks strikingly similar to those weird yellow bulbs.
00:11:48.00 In addition, as I was trying to solve this and as I'm trying to write this up as a publication,
00:11:53.17 I did some work looking at the genes of these butterflies to try and identify them to species.
00:11:59.06 And it turns out that this observation may actually be an unknown species.
00:12:03.15 So, within this genus -- it's the genus Terenthina -- there are two described species, and when
00:12:09.02 we look at what's called a DNA barcode, a little snippet of DNA that allows us to identify
00:12:13.15 them to species, it looks like it could be new.
00:12:16.10 So, this is very exciting, because it's a wing pattern that could look like
00:12:20.12 a strange parasitic plant.
00:12:22.03 And this really got me thinking, you know, where did these colors come from?
00:12:27.11 And how are these patterns formed?
00:12:29.00 It was sort of my journey from looking at these strange wing patterns in the Amazon
00:12:33.17 rainforest to wondering, fundamentally, how do we get these wonderful shapes and patterns
00:12:38.24 in the wings?
00:12:40.15 So, in my lab at UC Berkeley, now, we try to answer some of these fundamental questions
00:12:45.01 in butterfly and moth wing colors and patterns.
00:12:48.08 So, what are the functions of wing colors in the first place?
00:12:51.17 Well, you can have a wing pattern that allows you to blend in or camouflage very well, like
00:12:55.22 this butterfly that looks like a dead leaf to avoid predation.
00:12:59.09 You can have these brilliant blue wing patterns, like these bright Morpho butterflies.
00:13:03.20 So, they actually do this flash and dazzle, where they're extremely hard for a bird to
00:13:07.11 track as they open and close their bright blue wings.
00:13:09.19 Or you can be like this bright orange butterfly that's actually advertising its toxicity,
00:13:15.09 warning a bird that if it eats it it's going to get sick.
00:13:17.24 And, in addition, we get mimics that will not be poisonous but will evolve to look just
00:13:23.01 like these poisonous butterflies.
00:13:26.08 And so, since butterfly colors are heritable, they're important for their survival and sexual selection,
00:13:33.10 butterflies have been excellent systems to gain insight into evolutionary
00:13:37.05 biology and ecology.
00:13:39.15 So, where do these patterns come from?
00:13:42.13 Well, if you zoom in very close on a butterfly wing, you'll notice that it's a myriad of
00:13:47.03 all of these different scales.
00:13:48.20 In each scale is one large cell that elongates and it can be... and it's the positioning
00:13:55.17 of all of these that creates these wonderful patterns that we see.
00:13:59.18 And so, the colors themselves can arise in one of two main ways.
00:14:03.21 So, throughout the color spectrum, butterflies can make just about any color imaginable.
00:14:08.18 But in... where... but where we see some of the warmer colors, like the oranges and the yellows,
00:14:13.06 these are often produced by pigments.
00:14:15.18 And so the butterflies are actually able to manufacture these biochemicals that are deposited
00:14:20.01 in the scales themselves to produce these colors.
00:14:23.04 On the other hand, if you look across animals that are brilliantly metallic green or blue,
00:14:28.13 these are usually never due to pigments,
00:14:30.06 but rather to a phenomenon known as structural coloration.
00:14:33.12 So, if you look at this Heliconius butterfly wing, you'll see that it's very brightly colored
00:14:39.19 in some of these patches and some of these darker patches.
00:14:42.02 So, here, we know, through more recent genetic work, that the black patches in these scales
00:14:47.15 are due to a gene called melanin, much like what we have in our skin and hair,
00:14:51.16 whereas the more bright orange and yellow are due to ommochromes.
00:14:55.05 Whereas, if you look at that Morpho butterfly, that brilliant blue one, there's actually
00:15:00.09 no blue pigment in here.
00:15:02.17 It's all a result of structural coloration.
00:15:04.13 So, in fact, the light is just hitting these very small structures that are present on
00:15:09.05 the scales and it's bouncing back at the blue wavelength.
00:15:13.00 And I just think this is such a cool phenomenon that butterflies are able to manufacture in
00:15:17.18 their wings these brilliant structures that create these colors.
00:15:22.01 You might think of it kind of like a rainbow or when light hits a prism.
00:15:25.20 So, light comes in and it bends or refracts into different wavelengths.
00:15:30.13 So, butterflies take advantage of this.
00:15:33.00 They're able to produce what are called nanostructures.
00:15:35.07 So, as a little demonstration, as a little trick to see what structural color looks like,
00:15:40.23 you can place a drop of alcohol on a Morpho wing and see what happens.
00:15:45.22 So, as you place a drop of alcohol on this Morpho wing, you'll notice something --
00:15:52.01 it changes color.
00:15:53.17 It goes from green and, as the wing dries, it changes back to blue.
00:15:58.12 So, this is really cool because the alcohol is interacting with those tiny structures
00:16:03.23 on the wing and changing the way the wavelength is coming back.
00:16:07.17 This wouldn't happen in a pigment structure if you placed a drop of alcohol, but it would
00:16:11.04 happen in one of these structural-colored scales.
00:16:14.23 So, in my lab at UC Berkeley, we try to answer some of the fundamentals.
00:16:20.17 How do you build a wing?
00:16:22.00 How do you build a scale?
00:16:23.12 How do you produce these tiny structures that create this structural coloration?
00:16:28.17 One of the model organisms that we work with is the buckeye butterfly.
00:16:31.21 You'll notice it has some of these beautiful patterns in the wing,
00:16:34.06 some of these eyespots and bands.
00:16:36.19 And even... we have a colony that has this beautiful blue within the wing.
00:16:41.04 And so, some of these colors are produced by pigments, but the blue color itself is
00:16:45.05 produced by that structural phenomenon.
00:16:49.18 When you're trying to investigate the development of the wing, it's important not to just work
00:16:53.19 with the adults, but the other life stages, when the wing is being built.
00:16:58.06 And so, we look at... and so we look at the larvae and the pupae, because, along the way,
00:17:05.00 the wing is being constructed.
00:17:06.17 But, this presents a challenge, right?
00:17:09.13 You can't see inside of the pupa.
00:17:11.15 It's covered by this... this chitin.
00:17:15.10 And so, in my lab, we've developed certain live imaging techniques that allow us to actually
00:17:20.01 see this process of the wing being built.
00:17:23.18 And so, this was developed by members of my lab and I've been working to continue this
00:17:28.01 in other species and see more of the dynamics of what happens.
00:17:32.03 How does this work?
00:17:34.10 Well, the wing is actually present in the caterpillar stage.
00:17:38.09 It's just a little ball of cells called an imaginal disc.
00:17:41.17 And so, if you do a little delicate surgery, you can just go in very gently.
00:17:47.06 And, just underneath the cuticle, there, you can pull out that tiny bit of cells that would
00:17:53.15 go on to create the wing.
00:17:55.18 And so, you can see in this bottom panel, here, I've just pulled out a little bit of
00:17:59.04 those cells.
00:18:00.04 So, what happens when you remove those is you actually get a window.
00:18:04.24 So, in essence you've removed the cells that would have gone on to create the forewing
00:18:09.18 and also that outer cuticle, so now we can see the hindwing develop, in this case.
00:18:14.21 So, I can then take the pupa and put it under a microscope.
00:18:18.04 I have this little setup where I have a time-lapse camera ready to go.
00:18:22.22 And I'll take an image once every 20 minutes or so.
00:18:25.22 The pupation and the process of the wing being built takes around 8 days,
00:18:29.15 depending on the species.
00:18:31.07 And so, what we get in the end is a beautiful time-lapse of a wing being constructed.
00:18:36.15 So, what you see here is the base of the wing.
00:18:40.19 You can see some movements going on as the wing grows and expands.
00:18:45.12 You can see the wing take on more form and it gets a bit more opaque as some of the proteins
00:18:50.10 are being deposited inside the scales as they've elongated.
00:18:54.09 And then the coolest thing to me is, at the very end, you get those patterns coming in --
00:18:59.15 the eyespot, the orange, and then this flash of black as the melanin
00:19:02.24 was flipped on.
00:19:04.08 So, it's a very beautiful process.
00:19:05.16 And I've watched this video a hundred times and still see something new each time.
00:19:10.08 It's very... it's a very dynamic process.
00:19:15.15 In my lab, we've worked with other species like the painted lady, and we've tried to
00:19:19.09 do some fundamental work on the development of a scale.
00:19:22.16 So, we can look very close, with very high-powered microscopes.
00:19:26.18 We can use fluorescent dyes and take snapshots, essentially, of the wing as it's being developed.
00:19:33.02 And so, with that same species, with the painted lady, I've also done one of these techniques.
00:19:37.14 But, instead of performing a surgery, you can actually just open the wing a bit.
00:19:41.20 And so what we're watching is the development over time and you can see the ventral side
00:19:46.06 of the forewing, here, and the dorsal side of the hindwing -- it has these very interesting
00:19:50.24 synchronous pulses as the wings expand, as the scales grow.
00:19:55.13 And then, finally, about 24 hours or so before the butterfly comes out, we will see the flash
00:20:00.23 of those pigments come on, right there.
00:20:03.04 So, I just love watching these videos because you can see how the patterns get set up.
00:20:08.12 You can see how the pigments get deposited.
00:20:10.15 And then, at the very end, the butterfly actually comes out.
00:20:13.11 So, it's a very cool live imaging process.
00:20:17.03 So, again, we can take snapshots of each stage, and try and get a sense of, dynamically, what's
00:20:24.09 going on as you build a butterfly scale.
00:20:27.05 How are the pigments deposited?
00:20:28.22 Where are they deposited and what's setting up that pattern?
00:20:31.05 And, ultimately, for us, where do species that create structural color, where does that
00:20:36.06 color come from and how do they make it?
00:20:38.24 So, there's future work that we're doing in the lab right now.
00:20:42.18 And, essentially, what... we want to understand the genetic mechanisms.
00:20:47.09 And part of what we do is try and knock genes out and then knock genes in.
00:20:52.16 So, if we use a technique, CRISPR/Cas9, which is a functional gene editing tool, we can
00:20:58.07 actually start to mess around with the genes themselves.
00:21:01.15 And our ultimate goal is to see the wing pattern.
00:21:05.20 And so we're getting closer to finally understanding some of these molecular mechanisms,
00:21:11.01 but how does this tie back into the big picture?
00:21:13.20 Well, even though we have a few model organisms of butterflies, there's still a lot left to
00:21:19.02 learn about patterns and where they come from.
00:21:22.03 So, even though there are just a handful of species that scientists have worked on right
00:21:25.21 now for genetic studies, there are over 200,000 different species of butterflies and moths.
00:21:31.16 So, imagine what's left to be learned about the origin of all these wonderful colors that
00:21:36.11 they can make in their wings, how they make these tiny structures, and how they make all
00:21:40.24 these different pigments, and how they put all those together to create any pattern or
00:21:45.01 color imaginable.
00:21:46.09 So, overall, I'm very excited about this work, I think there's a lot left to learn, and I
00:21:53.22 want to tie this back into the biodiversity of the rainforest at the end of the day.
00:21:58.04 So, those butterflies that we saw that interact with ants or that mimic of a weird parasitic
00:22:03.23 plant, where do those colors and patterns come from, and what can we learn with... by
00:22:08.18 studying the genetics of the wing?
00:22:10.11 So, I'd like to thank my lab at UC Berkeley, Dr. Nipam Patel and everyone else in the lab.
00:22:15.08 I'd like to thank Rainforests Expeditions, and National Geographic, and the
00:22:18.19 University of Florida for their help and support in getting out into the field.

This Talk

Speaker: Aaron Pomerantz

Audience:

Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: May 2017

Talk Overview

How is butterfly color created? In this lecture, Aaron Pomerantz takes us on a journey through the Amazon rainforest, where interesting observations about butterfly color and patterns lead him to use imaging and genetics to decode butterfly color.

This talk is part of the Young Scientist Seminars, a video series produced that features young scientists giving talks about their research and discoveries.

Speaker Bio

Aaron Pomerantz

Aaron Pomerantz grew up in Los Angeles, California, with a passion to understand how the natural world works. After completing a B.S. in Entomology at the University of California, Riverside, he completed a M.S. in Molecular Biology at the University of Florida. He then spent two years as a Field Biologist at the Tambopata Research Center,… Continue Reading