Scale-dependent environmental effects on phenotypic distributions in butterflies.

Identifying the relative importance of different mechanisms responsible for the emergence and maintenance of phenotypic diversity can be challenging, as multiple selective pressures and stochastic events are involved in these processes. Therefore, testing how environmental conditions shape the distribution of phenotypes can offer important insights on local adaptation, divergence, and speciation. The red-yellow Müllerian mimicry ring of butterflies exhibits a wide diversity of color patterns across the Neotropics and is involved in multiple hybrid zones, making it a powerful system to investigate environmental drivers of phenotypic distributions.