Heat shock in the developmentally sensitive period of butterfly eyespots fails to increase fluctuating asymmetry.

Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is considered to provide a means of evaluating developmental stability and to reflect an individual's quality or the stress experienced during development. Stress is predicted to increase the phenotypic variation of both FA and trait size. In this study we examined the effect of a particular heat shock on both FA and size of eyespots in the butterfly, Bicyclus anynana.