Our research trip to Brazil

Story by Mar Repullés & Pável Matos

Last April, Mar and Pável travelled to Campinas, in southeastern Brazil, as part of our ongoing collaboration with André Freitas and his team at the “Laboratorio de Borboletas” (LABBOR) at UNICAMP.

Why did we travel to Campinas?

Our research project, funded by the Czech Science Foundation and FAPESP, Brazil, aims to understand the evolutionary mechanisms that shaped the extant biodiversity patterns in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. We study this from different angles, from macroevolution (i.e., the evolution of macro taxa, such as the major taxonomical groups like mammals, beetles, butterflies, etc) to population genomics and contemporary patterns of species diversity. Our focus is on butterflies, beautiful insects whose ecology, systematics and genomic resources have shed light on the origin and maintenance of neotropical biodiversity.

Figure 1: Butterflies found during the fieldwork in Serra do Japi, from topleft, clockwise: Charis cadytis (Riodinidae), Hypothyris ninonia (Ithomiini), Methona themisto (Ithomiini), Myscelia orsis (Nymphalidae). Photos by Mar Repullés.

With our partners at LABBOR, a Workshop titled “Advances in the Biology, Ecology, and Evolution of Neotropical Butterflies” was organised for students and researchers at UNICAMP. The speakers who joined were researchers based in some of Brazil’s top universities and biodiversity institutions, whose expertise ranges from butterfly monitoring, taxonomy, biotic interactions, population genetics, and conservation. It was a multidisciplinary event and, more importantly, everyone engaged in networking and brainstorming about directions to advance our understanding of neotropical butterfly biodiversity through collaborative research.

Figure 2: Together with André Freitas’ team, we organized a Workshop on Neotropical Butterflies at the University of Campinas. Photos by LABBOR.

Cuticular Hydrocarbons Study

Besides the workshop and social events where we interacted with local researchers, we could not miss the opportunity to travel around and discover the huge diversity that the Atlantic Forest hosts, despite the extremely high habitat fragmentation and degradation seen in the region.

One of the research questions we had in mind for this trip was about the role of organic compounds on the cuticles of butterflies in preferential mating. Imagine, now that summer is almost here in Europe, we see butterflies flying around and some of them trying to mate! In this context, many of us have asked at some point “How do butterflies recognise each other?” With some species having little visual signals, how can they tell apart different species? And sexes?

Communication in butterflies adopts different forms, from wing colours involved in aposematism warning predators of their unprofitability to chemical signalling involved in mating. For instance, organic compounds that cover their body and wings, such as cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC), may act as prezygotic barriers in sister species and may have an important role in the early stages of sympatric radiations. Irena explained to us a bit more about this in a post she wrote last October about her fieldwork in the Alps, where she is studying the role of CHC in promoting species differentiation by preventing the hybridization of recently diverged, co-occurring Erebia butterflies.

With this background and our team members’ experience, we strived to replicate the methodology in our fieldwork in Brazil. To do so, we studied skipper butterflies (family Hesperiidae) from the subfamilies Pyrginae and Eudaminae at two different localities near Campinas. Our overall aim was to test whether chemical differentiation is higher between close-related species that co-occur in different environments. Our main questions, thus, are:

[1] Are the CHC profiles species-specific, with potential use for discovering cryptic diversity in tropical localities?

[2] How fast do the CHC profiles evolve? Will we find similar compounds and abundances in closely related species, or will it be the opposite?

The researchers involved

We worked closely with Ricardo Siewert, a specialist in skipper butterfly biology, taxonomy and systematics. His research interests also include the study of scent organs and their use in delimiting and classifying species. With his knowledge of the abundance and diversity of skipper butterflies in our fieldwork sites, we designed our sampling strategy to include closely related species (within a genus) that co-occur in sympatry (i.e., overlapping their distribution in the same location).

Figure 3: Identifying and processing the samples for the study of cuticular hydrocarbons in skipper butterflies. Photos by LABBOR.

We were also fortunate to meet Marianne Elias, who was visiting André Freitas at the time. She is an expert in the biology, ecology and evolution of Ithomiini butterflies. Her research has inspired us many times when designing new projects and writing papers, and we finally had the chance to interact closely with her during the Workshop, leisure time, and fieldwork.

Of the two localities where we sampled, the most beautiful was undoubtedly Serra do Japi. There, remnant patches of the mighty Atlantic rainforest exist, which are now protected to preserve the unique endemic species that we can find in this spot in the southeast of the state of São Paulo. We loved this place, not only for its uniqueness but also for the company. Aline Vieira, a PhD student at LABBOR, is developing her research there on Ithomiini butterflies and guided us around this fantastic natural park. Marianne, who joined us too, taught us more about the biology and defence strategies used by Ithomiini butterflies, which include unpalatability, Müllerian mimicry involving other butterfly and moth species, and transparency of their wings.

Figure 4: Fieldwork in great company! Photos by Mar Repullés & Pável Matos.

Last but not least, back in the Czech Republic, we are processing the samples with Gass Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis, aided by two fantastic collaborators, Martin Moos and Petr Vodrážka, from the Laboratory of Analytical Biochemistry and Metabolomics, at the Biology Centre CAS. This international, and multidisciplinary collaboration is for sure one of the big wins of this study.

What did we achieve?

In short, this trip was highly productive, motivating and enjoyable. Our fieldwork was successful, and you will read about the results soon. The networking was, without a doubt, one of the best outputs of this project. From researchers 8,000 km away to our colleagues working in the next building to us in the Czech Republic, passing through Paris with Marianne, we all worked together and discussed interesting questions before, during, and after this amazing trip.

Figure 5: A fantastic trip to Campinas and we hope to meet people from LABBOR in person soon!

Chemical signals as a pre-zygotic barrier in Alpine butterflies

Story by Irena Klečková

Exchange visit funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation: Project number IZSEZ0_218818

During summer 2023 (July-October), Irena visited the laboratory of Nadir Alvarez, at the University of Geneva, to study chemical communication of alpine butterflies in the genus Erebia. It is known that the ongoing climate change induce changes in the timing of flight of mountain butterflies (Konvicka et al. 2021) and also uphill shifts of their occurrences (Scalercio et al. 2014). Thus, previously isolated species might get into secondary contact in the future, increasing the chances that closely related species hybridize (Capblancq et al. 2015). This might lead to maladaptive introgression, promoting species declines and extinction. However, an important yet understudied aspect of barriers to hybridization is chemical communication during courtships.

Figure 1: Subalpine wet meadow with cottongrass, locality of Erebia melampus. Photo by Irena Klečková.

Insect cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC) serve as a primary defence against desiccation. However, CHCs might also function in chemical communication among mating butterflies, as signalers of species identity similarly as it is known for social insects. Indeed, butterflies first follow each other in flight and after sitting on vegetation male and female “dance” around each other and touch their body parts with their antennae during courtship.

Figure 2: Erebia tyndarus in a sterile container on its locality, alpine meadow with rocky patches. Photo by Irena Klečková.

On the slopes of the impressive Swiss mountains, Irena sampled males and females of seven Erebia species. Her aim was to study the CHC composition on wings and bodies of butterflies by using gas chromatography mass spectrometry in collaboration with the FARCE lab, Neuchâtel (Dr. Mary Clancy). To study CHC composition, Irena chose closely related species pairs, whose adults occur in secondary contact zones (E. tyndarus and E. cassioides) or are predicted to come into secondary contact as a consequence of climatically induced uphill shifts (E. melampus and E. sudetica). She also studied E. ligea, which co-occurs with its closely related species E. euryale. Finally, to account for within-species differentiation rate in CHC composition, she also studied two parapatric young subspecies, whose differentiation has been driven by their non-overlapping lengths of larval development (E. euryale isarica and E. e. adyte).

Figure 3: The samples prepared for gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Photo by Irena Klečková.

The preliminary results revealed substantial differences between the closely related species pairs, but not between the recently evolved subspecies of E. euryale. The composition of CHCs differed among wings and body of butterflies, as expected, and the differences were larger than between sexes. Future analyses will focus on the detection of species and sex specific CHC compounds.

The evidence points toward a role of CHCs as prezygotic barriers, perhaps by aiding in species recognition and preventing mating of closely related butterfly species that come into secondary contact. The non differentiation in CHC composition among the study subspecies of E. euryale suggests that the evolution of chemical communication is probably not fast nor adaptive for this subspecies pair, however the situation might differ in sympatric populations. Last, we confirmed that the study of CHC composition in butterflies provides further ecologically relevant information for understanding the rapid formation of prezygotic barriers to gene flow, and enables us to distinguish species-specific chemical profiles. This knowledge is also useful for studying cryptic butterfly species that are difficult to identify and breed in captivity. Future research should also focus on behavioural responses of Erebia butterflies to different composition of CHCs, for example, on dummy butterflies, to confirm their significance in communication during courtships. In this direction, we are going to apply a similar methodology to study the role of chemical communication in sympatric cryptic species whose external morphologies do not differ much.

Figure 4: Locality of Erebia euryale, which flies on meadows around timberline. Photo by Irena Klečková.

The scientific exchange supported by SNSF was a stimulating experience, which provided novel collaborations and knowledge exchange among researchers from Czechia and Switzerland. This is opening up novel directions for future research that is important also for the maintenance of Swiss biodiversity.

References

[1] Konvicka, M., et al. (2021): Low winter precipitation, but not warm autumns and springs, threatens mountain butterflies in middle-high mountains. PeerJ 9: e12021. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.12021.

[2] Scalercio, S., et al. (2014): Better up, worse down: bidirectional consequences of three decades of climate change on a relict population of Erebia cassioides. Journal of Insect Conservation 18: 643-650. DOI: 10.1007/s10841-014-9669-x.

[3] Capblancq, T., et al. (2015): Hybridization promotes speciation in Coenonympha butterflies. Molecular Ecology 24: 6209-6222. DOI: 10.1111/mec.13479.

Specialization to climatic extremes in mountain butterflies of Holarctic genus Erebia

Story by Irena Klečková

Erebia is the largest butterfly genus in the Palaearctic region, and across the cold regions of the Holarctic, it has about 100 described species. Still, the evolutionary mechanisms originating such an astonishing diversity remain unresolved. Although dull at first glance, having brownish wings dotted with tiny orange spots, these butterflies attracted the attention of collectors and scientists for their fascinating natural history (Figure 1). In order to sample them, one has to climb to mountain summits or to ride a horse to remote arctic areas. The saga does not end there, as it is during the fine inspection back home when subtle variation in wing coloration and body morphologies among mountain populations will make you continue collecting and to discover new butterfly forms. In our study published in the journal Insect Systematics and Diversity (doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/isd/ixad002), we asked whether evolution of climatic niches (i.e., the set of climatic conditions within which a species occurs) contributed to the origin of Erebia global diversity.

Figure 1: Illustration of the unspectacular beauty of three sympatric Erebia species, E. epiphron with metallic reflections, E. sudetica resting during a fresh mountain morning and E. euryale nectaring on a Senecio plant in Jeseniky Mts., Czech Republic. Photos by Tomáš Kuras, Katerina Žohová and Irena Klečková.

Our team of passionate collectors and curious scientists asked how extant climatic requirements have shaped the diversity and distribution of Erebia. Based on a new and more robust genus phylogeny and geo-referenced occurrence records, we calculated ancestral states of climatic niches describing temperature (Figure 2) and precipitation regimes. Although we expected that shifts in climatic niches might have facilitated speciation events along altitudinal gradients, we actually detected that closely related species tend to occupy similar climates. Thus, the diversification of climatic niche has likely followed a neutral evolution trajectory, that is, evolutionary change has been gradual and influenced mainly by genetic drift.

Figure 2: Illustrative photos of European (A) and Asian mountains (B). Species of the “Asian Erebia clade” evolved climatic niches characterized by colder climate (in blue), whereas species of the diverse European clade by warmer (yellow and red) annual mean temperatures. Photos by Martin Česánek.

Then, we were even more curious and asked whether Erebia clades differed in their climatic niche width in relation to the occupied geographical regions. We found that the species-rich clade occurring mainly in European mountains, in which we have previously detected rapid species diversification, tends to have narrower climatic niches. Interestingly, we showed that species occupying areas with extreme climatic conditions for Erebia (warm lowlands, the coldest arctic regions or mountain summits) tended to have even narrower climatic niches (Figure 3). This suggests that Erebia was able to colonize such extreme environments thanks to specializations in their climatic niches. This is a rarely documented pattern for a temperate insect group.

Figure 3: Species climatic niches in Erebia were narrower in the coldest or the warmest areas of their distributional range. Each point represents one species, specified by species niche width (i.e., range of inhabited temperatures) and mean temperature calculated for all occurrence points of this species. Orange points represent the species rich clade, which rapidly diversified mainly in European mountain ranges. Blue points represent species of less diverse Asian clade. The European clade has narrower niches than the Asian clade.

Thanks to our series of research questions about such brownish butterflies, we were able to discover a new macroecological pattern for a butterfly group in the Holarctic region.

Figure 4: Irena Klečková in the field with Erebia aethiops.

Congresses attended by our lab in 2022

Story by Pedro Ribeiro

At this point, it really goes without saying how much any scientist missed attending in-presence congresses. The opportunity of being surrounded by people who share so many similar interests with you, or even by people you admire, is just unmatchable. The new discoveries in the field, the methods, that one talk that gives you an idea of how to approach your own work, the debates, and the conversations, all of these, are what make congresses at least one of the most important experiences in academia.

In the year 2022, many members of our lab have attended different conferences, including the XXII European Congress of Lepidopterology (SEL) in Estonia and the XXVI International Congress of Entomology (ICE) in Finland. The SEL Congress in Estonia was a rather small conference with lots of opportunities to interact during coffee breaks, dinners and of course at the talks and poster sessions themselves. Since no more than 150 people were there, everyone attended every talk, making it possible for us to be in contact with different types of butterfly research. And speaking of butterflies, we had three amazing talks there by Alena Suchačková, one of our postdocs, and by Daniel Linke and Pedro Ribeiro, our PhD students. The ICE congress is a much bigger congress, more than 1000 people working on many different subjects in Entomology, from evolution to crop bugs, and this is where Pável, our P.I, presented his work.

Let’s dig a little bit into the content of these talks.

Alena’s presentation focused on an area of evolutionary biology called phylogeography. This aims to understand how groups of individuals within a single species, also called populations, occupied and dispersed across landscapes. One of the major resources available for us to study phylogeography is the DNA of the organisms, and not the whole DNA (that we call genomes), but small fragments of DNA that we call “markers”. Alena’s talk was centered around the use of a particular marker that has been widely used in the study of the evolution of a myriad of organisms: the barcode. The barcode is a fragment of cytochrome c oxidase I gene (COI) belonging to the mitochondrial genome. Such a marker carries differences in its genetic composition that are sufficient to genetically distinguish species. The main advantage of this marker is that a huge public database of barcodes of samples originating from different parts of the world exists: the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD). Alena argued in her presentation that the barcode is a useful and robust marker to understand the distribution of many butterfly populations in Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic (Fig 1).

Figure 1: Alena’s presentation.

Nowadays, however, we find ourselves in the era of genomic studies, where researchers can obtain not only one marker, but thousands of markers, from hundreds of individuals at the same time from something that we call whole-genome sequencing (WGS). Pedro’s research is about using WGS to understand major evolutionary patterns of a butterfly family, the Hesperiidae, also called the skipper butterflies. For this, the first chapter of his research relied on exploring how to improve the processing of the raw sequencing data. Basically, this raw product is composed of millions of reads (small fragments of DNA sequence) that have to be processed by bioinformatic pipelines in strong computers. Pedro’s presentation tried to show a “go-to way” of processing this raw product of the sequencing, so even researchers with less bioinformatic experience could analyze their data for their research on phylogenetics (Fig 2).

Figure 2: Pedro’s presentation.

Finally, in Estonia, we had Daniel’s presentation that elegantly investigates an idea of how butterflies in the Hesperiidae family avoid their predators. A very common feature in butterflies is something called aposematism. Aposematism is the use of warning colors by butterflies advertising to their predators that they should not be eaten because they are defended (for example, they taste bad). Because of this, some butterflies might mimic the color patterns of other defended butterflies, so predators are at least deceived by it if the mimicking butterfly tastes normal. But apart from tasting bad, some butterflies are extremely fast fliers that avoid predators by flying away. Daniel’s question is centered on this subject: can butterflies in the Hesperiidae family, which are very skilled fliers (hence their common name as skipper butterflies), mimic each other so predators are aware of their escaping abilities? He is nowadays conducting experiments in the field in Peru to approach this question (Fig 3).

Figure 3: Daniel’s presentation.

We also had Pavel’s presentation at the ICE in Finland. Pavel’s work throughout his career has touched on the theme of the connection between macroevolution and microevolution. As the names suggest, both themes differ on the scale. Whilst macroevolution explores patterns of evolution of major groups, like superfamilies and families, microevolution explores the patterns of evolution of minor groups, like populations of species. However, if we go back to markers a little bit, we come across a problem: genetic markers evolve differently, so some work well for macroevolution and some for microevolution, but it is a challenge to approach both macroevolution and microevolution with the same set of markers. Because of this, Pavel gave a presentation on how to use whole-genome sequencing to explore subjects that belong in these two areas of the evolutionary field. More than this, his most recent project addresses macro and microevolutionary patterns of butterflies in the amazingly diverse Brazilian Atlantic Forest. His presentation also talked about how to use whole-genome sequencing to untangle deep biodiversity questions in this region of the world (Fig 4).

Figure 4: Pável’s presentation.

For now, this is it. We hope to be part of many more conferences so we can both share our ideas and be amazed by others’ ideas and projects. Conferences are the perfect place to get excited about your project while talking to people that are just as excited as you are to be there!

Figure 5: Pedro, Alena and Daniel at the beach in Laulasmaa, Estonia – Baltic Sea.

I am too fast to be caught and my predators remember my looks to avoid me

Story by Daniel Linke and Pável Matos

A new study led by Daniel about the abilities of cognitive predators to learn the shapes of evasive butterflies was published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. See the paper here

In this blog, we have talked about “cryptic species” and mimicry, but in the case of skipper butterflies (family Hesperiidae), these two apparently go hand in hand. The species we are studying (Eudaminae: Eudamini; Figure 1) have been taxonomically challenging for decades due to phenotypic resemblances among unrelated species. Only with the recent help of molecular markers, we are now beginning to understand how phenotypes evolved in this group: There is a mix of species evolving for millions of years with no major morphological divergence (“phenotypic retention”) and species with convergent phenotypes across lineages.

Figure 1: A small collection of Eudamini butterflies from our last field season in Tarapoto, San Martin, Peru (August, 2022). From top left to bottom right: Telegonus fulgerator, Spicauda tanna, Spicauda simplicius, Chioides catillus, Urbanus esmeraldus, Cecropterus longipennis, Cecropterus dorantes, Epargyreus sp. and Urbanus pronta. Photos by Daniel Linke.

Adult skippers are notoriously evasive; hard to catch even for trained entomologists. The leading hypothesis for explaining the convergent phenotypes among unrelated species suggests that cognitive predators (birds) might actively avoid pursuing skippers due to their evasive behaviour. Evasive mimicry was coined in the 1950s (van Someren and Jackson 1959, Holling 1965), but it has been notoriously difficult to test it in the field.

During the past years, we ran behavioural experiments to shine upon the abilities of birds to learn and generalise phenotypic cues of evasive species: Contrasting colour patterns (white patches in a dark background) and body shape (hindwing tails). We followed the protocols of a recent study that tested escape mimicry driven by aposematic colouration (Páez et. al. 2021). Briefly:

We taught European blue tits the evasive butterfly phenotypes (Figure 2) and compared their learning behaviour between different cue combinations. Afterwards, we observed the bird’s reactions to the different phenotypes and compared their attack rates to those of birds that have not had any experience with such phenotypes. In the first year, we tested whether birds are able to learn an evasive model having both cues, hindwing tails and white bands. In the second year, we tested the effects of such cues, separately to better understand the importance of shape and colour when acting as the positive (rewarding) or the negative (escaping/frustration) cue. For this, we ran two experiments, one where the evasive model had hindwing tails and the other where the evasive model had white bands (see Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2: Experimental setup for the two years. The red circle marks the evasive model during the Learning phase. The phenotypes resemble Neotropical butterflies: (A) Spicauda simplicius, (B) Cecropterus carmelita, (C) C. casica, and (D) C. zarex (photographed in the Natural History Museum Berlin). Initiation was introduced during Year 1 resulting in a lower sample size. Photos by Daniel Linke 2022.

We found that blue tits can learn to avoid evasive phenotypes. One of the novel findings was that they can remember the shapes of evasive models. Additionally, all observed patterns also point toward blue tits being able to generalise the learnt phenotype (i.e., blue tits also avoided imperfect mimics after the learning phase; by imperfect we mean that a model having only one of the two evasive cues had lower attack proportions). Furthermore, we uncovered evidence that wild blue tits actually showed some preferences towards one of our models, the tailed and banded phenotype). Perhaps, wild blue tits may prefer prey with these specifics.

Figure 3: Visualisation of the three main experimental phases, Initiation (top), Learning (centre) and Generalisation (bottom). During the Initiation phase, four phenotypes were offered and any preference of the birds was recorded. In the Learning phase, the evasive phenotype was taught and, during the Generalisation phase, the same phenotypes were offered again to see whether the attack behaviour shifted.

While our experiments have hinted at a lot of different mechanisms possibly shaping the evolution of butterfly phenotypes, more research into this field is needed. Pinheiro and Freitas (2014) already proposed possible cases of evasive mimicry in mainly neotropical Nymphalids. Similar efforts are needed for Hesperiidae and these should to be underlined by morphometric and genetic analysis. Similarly it is not only necessary to know whether birds are able to learn and generalise these cues (creamy bands on the forewings and “tails” on the hindwings), but it is also cardinal to test whether they actually avoid pursuing evasive prey in their natural habitats.

To sum up, our study provides supporting evidence that it is possible for evasive mimicry to actually shape the evolution of phenotypes in nature in skippers.

References

[1] Holling, C. S. (1965): The Functional Response of Predators to Prey Density and its Role in Mimicry and Population Regulation. In Memoirs of the Entomological Society of Canada 97 (S45), pp. 5–60. DOI: 10.4039/entm9745fv.

[2] Linke D, Elias M, Klečková I, Mappes J and Matos-Maraví P (2022) Shape of Evasive Prey Can Be an Important Cue That Triggers Learning in Avian Predators. Front. Ecol. Evol. 10:910695. DIO: 10.3389/fevo.2022.910695.

[3] Páez, E.; Valkonen, J. K.; Willmott, K. R.; Matos-Maraví, P.; Elias, M.; Mappes, J. (2021): Hard to catch: experimental evidence supports evasive mimicry. In Proceedings. Biological sciences 288 (1946), p. 20203052. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.3052.

[4] van Someren, V. G. L.; Jackson, T. H. E. (1959): Some comments on protective resemblance amongst African Lepidoptera (Rhopalocera). In The Lepidopterist Society 13 (3), pp. 121–150.

Nuestro viaje al Perú

Story by Pavel Matos & Daniel Linke

Versión en Español
Jump to the English version

Con un pequeño retraso de casi 2 años (¡Gracias, COVID-19! :-/), logramos realizar nuestro primer trabajo de campo en Tarapoto, Perú. Tarapoto es una bella y mística localidad en la región norteña de San Martín, en la vertiente oriental de los Andes a ~350 msnm. El viaje lo hicimos entre octubre 2021 y enero 2022, y representando a nuestro equipo en la República Checa, fuimos Pável y Daniel. A continuación, les presentamos un pequeño resumen de nuestras aventuras en el bosque lluvioso tropical peruano:

El trabajo de campo se realizó en Tarapoto y cerca a Wayra Sacha. De arriba a la izquierda hacia abajo a la derecha, unos riquísimos hongos del bosque para el almuerzo, la cabaña en Wayra Sacha, nuestro hogar temporal, un almuerzo lujoso en medio de la naturaleza, nuestro amigo el oso perezoso muy curioso por nuestro trabajo.

¿Para qué fuimos?

¡Fuimos a hacer ciencia! Nuestro proyecto, financiado por la Fundación Checa de Ciencias (GAČR, proyecto GJ20-18566Y), tiene como finalidad entender las tácticas que usan los predadores (aves) y sus presas (mariposas) para sobrevivir en la naturaleza. En particular, pensamos que algunas mariposas que son muy rápidas y difíciles de capturar (¡incluso para un entomólogo bien entrenado!), comunican su habilidad a sus predadores mediante señales que van desde colores hasta formas de las alas. Esta estrategia es beneficiosa tanto para el predador como para la presa [1]: 1) el predador, luego de aprender las señales de la presa, invertirá más tiempo y energía en capturar otras presas más fáciles de capturar y que suplirán su requerimiento nutricional; 2) la presa, que comunica sus habilidades de escape, sufrirá menor tasa de depredación e incluso requerirá menos energía de escape porque sus predadores evitarán cazarlas antes de iniciar el ataque [2].

Estas interacciones entre animales que ocurren en selvas lluviosas remotas nos permiten iluminar otros ángulos de la evolución como motor originador de biodiversidad. De pensar que la frustración (en este caso, del predador incapaz de rápidamente cazar a su presa) pueda tener consecuencias evolutivas, es conmovedor. La hipótesis de mimetismo de escape [3] sugiere que algunas mariposas mimetizan unas a otras las señales de escape, a pesar de que varias de estas especies han evolucionado de forma separada durante millones de años [4].

Las mariposas clasificadas en la familia Hesperiidae presentan muchos ejemplos de convergencia fenotípica, tanto en coloración como en forma de las alas. Por ejemplo, una especie clasificada dentro de un género puede ser muy parecida a otra especie clasificada en otro género. En el panel, se muestran cuatro fenotipos convergentes en los géneros Telegonus, Cecropterus y otros clasificados en la tribu Eudamina (subfamilia Eudaminae).

El equipo

Las expediciones en Perú son fruto de una estrecha colaboración con el Departamento de Ornitología del Museo de Historia Natural en Lima, a cargo de Letty Salinas. En el trabajo de campo nos acompañaron Jacqueline Hernández y Valery Eche, dos ornitólogas con experiencia en colecta y captura temporal de aves en Perú, ¡y con mucho entusiasmo por el trabajo de campo! La localidad principal de trabajo fue cerca al fundo Wayra Sacha, de la familia César Ramírez y Stephanie Gallusser. Ambos con mucha pasión por la naturaleza y con un gran conocimiento de la fauna y flora del lugar.

Nuestra filosofía en el trabajo de campo es que todos nos beneficiemos y reconozcamos, de forma justa, los aportes y conocimientos de los investigadores locales y personas de la comunidad. Estamos conscientes de que la investigación helicóptero [5] retrasa y vulnera el desarrollo de la ciencia, donde investigadores que visitan países en vía de desarrollo aportan muy poco a la ciencia local y casi un nulo beneficio a las comunidades locales. Antes de nuestro viaje, nuestros protocolos de trabajo fueron diseñados y discutidos de forma conjunta para maximizar la eficiencia y eficacia, tomando en cuenta las experiencias en el campo de cada miembro del equipo. Durante el trabajo de campo, pequeños ajustes a nuestros protocolos fueron necesarios, pero todo fue muy fluido gracias a los consejos de Jacqueline, Valery, Letty, César y Stephanie. ¡Este ha sido un verdadero trabajo en equipo!

El equipo de trabajo en Tarapoto. De izquierda a derecha: Valery, Daniel, Jacqueline, Pavel, Stephanie, César.

¿Qué encontramos?

Gracias a esta primera expedición, logramos hacer un censo de las aves y mariposas locales. A pesar de que Perú es un gran destino para el avistamiento de aves y mariposas a nivel mundial, es increíble la poca información sobre las abundancias de aves en diferentes épocas del año y sobre las identidades de las especies de mariposas, sobre todo en grupos poco estudiados como la familia Hesperiidae. Hemos recabado una información valiosa sobre 31 familias de aves con dieta insectívora, que incluye sonidos, abundancias, comportamiento alimentador, y registros fotográficos. Esta información será muy útil también para las actividades de ecoturismo que se realizan en la zona, y complementan el conocimiento de César y Stephanie. Las identidades de las mariposas también fueron ya corroboradas usando la técnica de DNA barcoding, y estamos en el proceso de registro fotográfico de patrones alares de ejemplares montados.

Una pequeña selección de la diversidad de aves y mariposas en la localidad de estudio. De arriba a la izquierda hacia abajo a la derecha: Pteroglossus castanotis, Cacicus cela, Galbula cyanescens, Papilio thoas, Danaus plexippus, Anartia amathea, a mating pair of Spicauda teleus, Chioides catillus, Cecropterus dorantes, Telegonus fulgerator, Urbanus esmeraldus, Morpho helenor.

Nuestra siguiente expedición

Gracias a nuestras evaluaciones piloto en el área de estudio, las pruebas de palatabilidad de mariposas y de observación de interacciones presa-predador en aviarios son llevadas a cabo tomando en cuenta las abundancias por especie de ave insectívora en la zona. Nuestro protocolo consiste en evaluar las respuestas de comportamiento de aves frente a mariposas con distintas estrategias defensivas: alta capacidad de escape, desagradables de sabor/tóxicas, y controles agradables de sabor. Estos experimentos nos están dando una visión más detallada de las interacciones aves-mariposas en distintos microhábitats (ciudad vs bosque secundario) y experiencia de predadores con presas (aves juveniles vs adultos).

¡Muy pronto publicaremos un pequeño resumen en este blog de estos experimentos!

English version

We’ve finally done our first fieldwork in Tarapoto, Peru, after a delay of almost 2 years (thanks, COVID-19 :-/) Tarapoto is an incredibly beautiful and welcoming place located in the northern region of San Martín. The city is on the eastern side of the Andes, facing Amazonia, at about 350 masl. Our trip was between October 2021 and January 2022, and Pável and Daniel represented our team based in Czechia. Here, we just wanted to share our experiences in a pre-montane rainforest in Peru:

View from “El mirador” towards the Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul in the San Martin region, Peru.

Why did we travel to Peru?

Our research project, funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR, project GJ20-18566Y), aims to better understand the strategies used by predators (insectivorous birds) and prey (butterflies) to survive in nature. In particular, we think that some butterflies are incredibly fast and hard to catch (even for a trained entomologist!) and that they can communicate their escaping ability to predators by wing colourations and/or shapes. This strategy is twofold beneficial [1]: 1) the predator, once it learned these evasive prey signals, would allocate less energy in pursuing the hard-to-catch butterflies; 2) the prey, which signals its escape abilities, would have lower predation as cognitive predators might avoid attacking them [2].

Such animal interactions happening in remote rainforests illuminate different angles of evolution and give insights into how biodiversity originates. It’s also interesting that frustration-based learning (in this case, a predator being unable to catch an evasive prey) might have far-reaching evolutionary consequences. The hypothesis of “evasive mimicry” [3] suggests that some butterflies mimic aposematic signals that advertise elusiveness, even among species that diverged millions of years ago [4].

Skippers (family Hesperiidae) present many examples of convergent signals (both in colouration and shape). For example, members of one genus might look more similar to members of other genera than to sister species (i.e., species nested within the same genus). Here, four similar phenotypes are found both in the genera Telegonus, Cecropterus and other genera in the tribe Eudamina (subfamily Eudaminae).

The team

Our expeditions in Peru are possible thanks to a tight collaboration with the Department of Ornithology, Natural History Museum in Lima, and its head Letty Salinas. During the fieldwork, we were working with Jacqueline Hernández and Valery Eche, two ornithologists with great experience in collecting and taking care of birds, and with a lot of enthusiasm for the fieldwork! The main working locality has been nearby Wayra Sacha, owned by the family of César Ramírez and Stephanie Gallusser. Both are passionate about nature and incredibly knowledgeable about the local fauna and flora.

Our working philosophy is that everyone benefits from the work and that we recognize the input and knowledge of local researchers and local people. We are aware that helicopter research [5] hinders the development of global science, as many times researchers travel to work in developing countries but provide little to no benefit to local communities and scientists. Before our trip, our working protocols were designed and discussed in an open and meaningful way with everyone, taking the experiences and knowledge of everyone in the team. During the fieldwork, some adjustments to the protocol were necessary but those were rather smooth thanks to the advice of Jacqueline, Valery, Letty, César, Stephanie, Daniel and Pável. This has been real teamwork!

The team during the fieldwork in 2021/22. From left to right: Valery, Daniel, Jacqueline, Pavel, Stephanie, César.

What did we find?

We comprehensively inventoried local insectivorous birds and butterflies. Despite Peru being one of the top global destinations for butterflies and bird watching, the knowledge of local species abundances and communities across seasons is still scarce, especially in little-studied groups such as skipper butterflies (Family: Hesperiidae). We collected important data for 31 bird families, including sounds, abundances, feeding behaviour, and photographic records. This information will also be useful in local activities such as ecotourism, with scientific data that complements knowledge in the local community. The species identities of butterflies have also been corroborated with the technique DNA barcoding, and we’re currently in the process of photographing mounted specimens.

A small selection of bird and butterfly diversity in the working locality. From top left to bottom right: Pteroglossus castanotis, Cacicus cela, Galbula cyanescens, Papilio thoas, Danaus plexippus, Anartia amathea, a mating pair of Spicauda teleus, Chioides catillus, Cecropterus dorantes, Telegonus fulgerator, Urbanus esmeraldus, Morpho helenor.

Our next expedition

Thanks to our first fieldwork, the planned palatability tests and the evaluation of prey-predator interactions in aviaries are taking into account the abundances and species identities of local insectivorous birds and butterflies. Our plan is to record the behavioural responses of birds when deciding which prey to pursue. Our standardized protocol includes the evaluation of butterflies with different defensive strategies: highly evasive, unpalatable/toxic, and, as control, palatable and slow-flying butterflies. Altogether, coupled with our ongoing projects to understand the evolution of species and traits along the butterfly tree of life, this fieldwork will give us a comprehensive look into how predator-prey interactions shape evolution and how it is driven by different microhabitats (city vs secondary forest).

Coming soon, we will write another blog entry with our findings from the palatability tests and experiments in aviaries with birds and butterflies from the rainforest!

Are cryptic species real?

Story by Pedro Ribeiro, with input from journal club participants*

A cryptic paradox

We resumed our online journal club in 2021, a space dedicated to brainstorming key ideas in evolutionary biology while updating our literature references. ☕

The year started with an interesting opinion article by Struck and colleagues (2018) [1], which argued about the evolutionary relevance of ‘cryptic species’; cryptic here does not refer to the ecological phenomenon of crypsis or camouflage, but to unnoticed species diversity. The authors did a great job putting forward four evolutionary explanations that lead to cryptic species: 1) recent speciation with little time for sister species to diverge morphologically, 2) ‘morphological stasis’ driven by low rates of morphological change across multiple species, 3) convergence and 4) parallelism, the latter two basically describing morphological resemblance among species arising independently from distinct ancestors.

A mimicry ring of blue-white-black Neotropical butterflies comprising several morphologically-similar sister species that were recently considered as one species, and large-scale convergences among unrelated butterflies. From top-down and left-right, caterpillars and adults of Perichares deceptus, Neoxeniades luda, Thracides nanea, Ectomis pervivax, Telegonus obstupefactus, Narcosius colossus, Telegonus viracocha, Telegonus audax. Photos by Daniel H. Janzen (Área de Conservación Guanacaste) under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

Of more interest to a broader audience, the authors also aimed to provide an evolutionary definition of what really cryptic species are. This attempt resonated the most during our journal club, mostly because of the framework built with requirements that are many times violated in the nature. For example, that cryptic species should be ‘separable and diverged genotypic clusters of individuals (reflecting reproductive isolation)’ (page 157), preferably quantified with genome-wide sequence data (page 158), and that ‘rates of morphological evolution for cryptic ingroup taxa should be substantially (statistically) reduced compared with non-cryptic taxa’ (page 155).

Is it beneficial to fulfill such requirements to simply call a species cryptic? What would happen when two clear species do not fully follow the concept of reproductive isolation? Do rates of morphological evolution should necessarily be reduced in cryptic taxa, thus, neglecting the discovery of cryptic species in fast evolving (or even adaptive) phenotypic radiations, such as cichlids in the African Great Lakes?

‘Cryptic species’ is not the opposite of adaptive radiation. For example, within the adaptive radiation of warning coloration in Heliconius butterflies, H. eratosignis has been recently raised as a separate species from the morphologically similar H. demeter. Photo by Eratosignis under CC BY-SA 4.0.

There have been simpler definitions of cryptic species, for example, the one provided by Bickford et al. (2007) [2] where ‘cryptic taxa are two or more distinct species that are erroneously classified (and hidden) under one species name’. But certainly the attempt of Struck and colleagues to provide an evolutionary definition sparked more questions about the nature of cryptic species. Are cryptic species real or do they just reflect the inability of biologists to discriminate between two or more species at a certain time?

During our discussion, we came to the idea that cryptic species are a paradox, thus, they are not biologically real. First, researchers are not looking around deliberately for cryptic species. After all, how could we know that a species is hidden within another one before having observations and data? Second, at the very act of recognizing and describing a cryptic species, this new taxon is not any more ‘cryptic’ because it becomes a fully described one with diagnosable characters (morphological, molecular, or other phenotypic traits) that should clearly tell apart one from another species. Therefore, a taxon is not yet ‘cryptic’ before its discovery nor it becomes ‘cryptic’ after its description; it simply is a species.

Although ours is (still) a non-alcoholic journal club, it made sense to us that a cryptic species is only an adjective (human construction) describing that, for a while, taxonomists were not able to detect a morphologically hidden species within another species [3].

Do not misinterpret us. We fully agree that unnoticed species diversity is a major impediment to studying and understanding biodiversity in the XXI century. The evolutionary processes that lead to multiple species resembling each other morphologically must also be investigated before it is too late (remember, we’re in the middle of a mass extinction). But attempting to provide an evolutionary definition of cryptic species, following strict rules that are often violated in the nature, might be an overburden [4].

A version of the Schrödinger’s Cryptic Species Box. Illustration by Viki Bartoňová.

Far more interesting would be the connection this concept brings between biology and physics, something we call The Schrödinger’s Cryptic Species Box. We do not know whether there are two (or more) cryptic species or only one species until we open the box. To complicate things further, this is a very subjective box because an expert taxonomist might readily recognize the cryptic species while a rookie one might not.

Cryptic species can be cryptic and non-cryptic until the box is opened – or until species are diagnosed by a taxonomist – when it can only be one or more recognizable species. Illustration by Viki Bartoňová.

As Alena said during the journal club: nature does not care. It will drift alleles apart or select some of them, but it is us that are trying to figure it out (and to name it) for our future reference. After all, don’t even get us started with the species concept…

*Regular participants in our journal club: Alena Sucháčková, Benita Laird-Hopkins, Daniel Linke, Ernesto Bonadies, Irena Klečková, Pável Matos, Pedro Ribeiro, Shuang Xing

References

[1] Struck et al. 2018. Finding evolutionary processes hidden in cryptic species. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 33: 153-163. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2017.11.007.

[2] Bickford et al. 2007. Cryptic species as a window on diversity and conservation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 22: 148-155. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2006.11.004.

[3] Korshunova et al. 2017. External diversity is restrained by internal conservatism: New nudibranch mollusc contributes to the cryptic species problem. Zoologica Scripta, 46: 683-692. DOI: 10.1111/zsc.12253.

[4] Heethoff 2018. Cryptic species – Conceptual or terminological chaos? A response to Struck et al. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 33: 310. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2018.02.006.

Butterflies were doing just fine in the harsh climate of the cold ice age stages

Story by Alena Sucháčková

A new study on the evolutionary history of widely distributed butterflies published in the Journal of Biogeography.

Big congrats to our team member Alena and colleagues for the new paper 🎉.

Cranberry blue – Agriades optilete (the butterfly). Photo by Jana Marešová.

Some species inhabit very limited areas. On the other hand, the areas of some others are huge – for example, we can name the peregrine falcon, the wolf, or us, humans. Many of such widespread species are common biotic components in the Holarctic realm: Europe, temperate Asia and North America. Nevertheless, such regions and their biota experienced different environments during the Pleistocene climate fluctuations: in Europe and North America, huge continental and mountain glaciers covered a significant part of the landscape, whereas in Eastern Europe, central Asia and Siberia together with the Beringian land bridge, the mammoths and their fellows lived in and created a flowery, rich mosaic of various types of grasslands, shrublands and open forests.

Alena Sucháčková from our lab participated in a study focusing on four Holarctic butterflies with different habitat preferences: Boloria chariclea inhabits tundra, Agriades optilete prefers bogs and humid meadows, Carterocephalus palaemon lives in variable temperate grassland species, and Oeneis jutta is a taiga specialist. The study combines genetic data and species distribution modelling to understand the evolutionary history of the butterflies.

The current landscape of Alaska, the American part of Beringia which has been an important refugium for North American fauna during cold ice age stages. Photo by Jana Marešová.

The biogeographic histories of the studied butterflies differ among subregions and between species occurring in open habitat and forests. In the mostly flat northern and central Asia, butterflies of various types of open habitats lived through the ice ages in widely distributed east-west belts, in contrast to the taiga species, whose populations were fragmented during the Pleistocene, and recently connected again. In the mountainous and oceanic regions of Europe and North America, the ranges of all four species retreated because of the huge glaciation events. After the glaciers melted, butterflies (re)colonized such regions and formed contact zones among populations.

During the ice age stages, some small organisms known from the fossil record, such as open habitat rodents or beetles, dwelled the vast areas of the famous mammoth steppe. Holarctic open habitat butterflies could represent another component of such lost biome.

Reference

Marešová J., Sucháčková Bartoňová A., Konvička M., Hoye T.T., Gilg O., Kresse J.-C., Shapoval N.A., Yakovlev R.V., Faltýnek Fric Z. (2020) The story of endurance: Biogeography and the evolutionary history of four Holarctic butterflies with different habitat requirements. Journal of Biogeography in press: DOI: 10.1111/jbi.14022

The craft of writing: our experience reading a book together

Writing is a skill that every scientist must cultivate: we need to communicate our research findings in an effective way. For 2 months and a half, we read the 28 chapters (306 pages) of the book The Scientist’s Guide to Writing: How to write more easily and effectively throughout your scientific career (Stephen B. Heard, Princeton University Press, 2016). We’ve had a lot of fun discussing the book and sharing positive and negative experiences when writing, reading and reviewing other people’s texts.

We agree that the main message of the book is that, as crafters of articles, we should pay attention to the needs of users (how and why readers will use our product) to achieve crystal-clear communication, while taking deliberate attention to what and how we write.

You can find several reviews of the book elsewhere. Here, we write the most relevant advice and take-home messages for each of us, providing perspectives from starting PhD students and post-docs.

The Book 📖. By reading it together we not only got some suggestions on how to improve our writing but we also shared nice moments during the difficult COVID-19 quarantine.

Čiko

The three main points I got from the book are that clarity is king, writing is a craft, and that storming the beach (i.e., getting a first draft ready early) is a great strategy. Our goal when writing is to be understood so we should strive to be as clear as possible; other worries such as style should take a backseat when we write.

Writing is a lot like a craft as opposed to something that requires a specific mood or creativity sparkle (even though these totally help!). Then, with purposeful practice, we can get better at it. Storming the beach has invaluable perks such as getting early feedback. So, instead of worrying about having a perfect draft try getting a draft out soon.

Alča

Be crystal clear. Always try to think like your reader (try to achieve “telepathic writing”). You may ask a friend (a scientist who is not familiar with the exact topic) for a friendly review. He/she would indicate what is still unclear in your text.

Before starting to write the entire manuscript, outline the main story in 2-3 sentences to include the primary question and the take-home message. And think of them during the whole writing – e.g., if you are in doubt to include a table, sentence, etc., always ask yourself: Does it help to develop the main story or would that distract from it? If it distracts, simply take it away.

The paragraphs need to be compact and develop one idea at a time. There is a topic sentence – the first one – indicating what the paragraph is about. Then build the story and finish with a concluding sentence. Each sentence should fit into the paragraph’s main topic.

Irča

Reading together provided me with the motivation to read the WHOLE book 😉. For me, the main takeaways of the book were the description of a writer behaviour and the tips for efficient management of writing sessions. I liked that the author respects the writer’s individuality and provides recommendations to improve writing efficiency rather than defining strict rules in academic writing.

I also got simple tips on how to improve the self-evaluation of our texts (e.g. change fonts, transfer the text into another format to see it with “different eyes”) and how to ask for friendly reviews (define clearly the focus and deadlines). In the past, I had a course on academic writing which dealt with the structure of scientific texts and clarity. But I still enjoy reading about best-practices in writing, such as keeping one single main idea and constructing texts and paragraphs.

Once more, Zoom (and Google Docs, and Slack) were our best allies to improve our reading experience and discussions.

Pedro

One idea that resonates along the book is that we should always try to think about the needs of our readers, and how our writing can achieve clarity for them. After all, every scientific-writing product is meant to be understood by a certain reader.

Most likely, a friend will revise your work and give suggestions, but it is mandatory that you revise your own draft before someone else does. The idea is that a well self-revised draft will be easier for someone else to revise and achieve good quality, with clarity.

As writers, we have specific writing behaviours (such as using too many fancy words, or vague connectors, etc) that can sometimes muddle our work. Acknowledging such behaviours is key to improving our writing and we should always think about them.

Pável

Pay attention to how, when, and what we write. This is something not obvious to realize. Managing our own writing behaviour is important to become effective and to speed up our writing process. For example, writing logs might help us realize what things around us are more likely to distract our attention, thus, would be best to avoid.

Each of us has a particular style of writing, but there are some common composition techniques that help improve clarity. For example, brevity. Keeping our texts concise is actually challenging, but there are several opportunities to improve brevity, such as sticking to our main story, don’t drift away from an outline, and think of brevity before, during and after writing (i.e., always!).

Finally, there are different ways of composing a text, and each of them is more effective in a particular situation, such as articles for scientific journals, newspapers, or even blogs like this one. Perhaps one of the most valuable tips of the book is to always think as a reader and have an honest discussion (sometimes confrontation) with yourself about the clarity of your text. The idea is that our texts offer an effortless understanding for readers.

Life and work in the time of a pandemic

Working from home during the past month and a half has been a whole new radical experience. The impact was different on each of us and we handled this new situation differently given our backgrounds, personalities and home environments (kids, partners, or living alone). Here, we just wanted to share how we are coping with this new working and living environment. In our stories below, each of us highlight and finally get a consensus on five key elements for a healthy life-work balance in the time of COVID-19:

• Use digital tools to communicate, meet and share plans and progress achieved.

• Find and keep a routine.

• Maintain a daily schedule (including one for kids!).

• Free (be kind to) yourself from unnecessary guilt for non-accomplished goals; move forward with new smaller subgoals.

• Keep yourself physically active every day.

Pável

For almost 5 weeks, I’ve kept a habit of biking or running every 1-2 days. Apart of the physical and mental health benefits, this new habit gives me amazing moments with my daughter when we bike along tracks in the forest near our home. The transition from winter to spring was excellent not only for observing life blooming around us but also for talking about nature with her.

While running, I also try to take photos of the emerging butterflies (and occasionally some other animals). I upload those photos to iNaturalist hoping to contribute a little bit to recording biodiversity around my home.

With one kid at home 24/7, I’m managing my work thanks to the support of my partner and her family. We both have crazy loads of work now but we found ways to schedule it while the other takes care of our daughter. During the times with her, for example, we love to do lots of paintings (she’s also learning writing) or gardening (we got some herbs for cooking).

When I’m at work, it’s very important to have regular communication with the team and to increase our working efficiency by using digital tools such as Slack, Zoom and Google Docs.

We meet twice per week. On Monday afternoons, we have informal chats on how we’re doing during the quarantine and we also share among us our plans for the week. On Wednesdays, our meeting is dedicated to sharing tips and experiences when it comes to academic writing, while we discuss 2-3 chapters of the book The Scientist’s Guide to Writing (Stephen B. Heard).

During the quarantine, we are all working on existing data (analyzing and writing) and on submitting grant proposals (yes, it’s the time of the year). We mainly use Slack and Google Docs to get and provide feedback on our texts, including this blog post!

Video meetings have been fun (despite technical problems with cameras sometimes 😄). Pedro is still in Brazil, but we all have got times together for catching up and for improving “soft skills” on written communication.

Alena

Scientists are, by definition, a little bit autistic. They like to be alone and avoid crowds. Let us say that we hate people. My first realization during the quarantine times was that as much as we hate crowds, we actually love our friends, family and colleagues who we are used to meet daily. Social media and communication tools are great but cooperation on a grant proposal, when you were used to discuss the topic several hours face-to-face, is a real struggle. Or a weekend hanging out with your friends differs from chatting on WhatsApp.

I think that people living in the countryside are lucky now. After 12 years in the town centre, me and my husband moved to a village, just on time, only about two weeks before the “lockdowns”. Also the possibility of getting infected is low here as you meet very few people on the streets regardless of weather. The whole world is “forced” to enjoy small rewards, such as time spent with children, walks with dogs, radish finally growing, blooming trees and (of course!) first butterflies taking flight.

At the beginning, it was hard for me to focus on work. There are so many distractions! But after some weeks, I have found my routine. I work on the computer in the morning (about 9:30 till 13:00 – sorry, I sleep longer now), then have a pause for lunch and coffee and a little bit of listening to an audio book, and continue working, until 16:00-18:00, depending on the weather and mood. I have to admit that I am less effective than at my office so far, but it seems we will have a lot more time to practice our home-offices, am I right?

In the first weeks of the national quarantine, one of the first things that ran out of markets was baker’s yeast (yes, Czechs have a crazy love for baking). Fortunately, we somehow managed to get enough “droždí” for all the baking during Easter. Portraying, a typical Czech lamb bread (half of it).

Irena

I am distinguishing two phases of our quarantine. During the first phase, I was very stressed by the coronavirus spreading in Europe and by expectations of a future development in our country. I was checking internet news and the worldometers very frequently. There was a lot of bad news, but I was also impressed by the public solidarity. My husband returned from Spain with a cough, thus we have started the quarantine a bit sooner than the rest of the nation. We are parents of three small boys and the care for them would be difficult, if we both would have been infected and would have had the “bad flu” symptoms. Moreover, based on the available statistics, our parents are in the risky group with high probability of complications. I think that we were “lucky” not to be the first country with Coronavirus infection outside of China and that our government took this advantage and managed the situation pretty well. The infection is not spreading exponentially across our country and the health services are able to deal with the number of infected people. Overall, our system is working (we have enough food, health care is available etc.). Still, I have concerns about spreading of the virus in the rest of the world and about indirect consequences in economy, culture, a lot of people around already lost (or worry about) their work…

During the “second phase”, we have adapted to the novel situation. We are checking the news only once a day, which helps a lot to keep our mental balance. We are also able to focus on work. The arrangement of our working time is challenging (my husband is a group leader and I am a “mixed” technician/researcher). We alternate in the care for our boys. Boys are also trying to provide us working time by playing together (they understand that we have to work), but they still need a lot of assistance during their small conflicts and they have various requirements. My working time decreased in comparison to my regular working week but when I get on the computer, I do not procrastinate. I am currently focusing on writing a manuscript and I am happy about every progress.

On a personal level, we are enjoying time with family. We live in a house in a small village, which, in combination with the ongoing spring period, makes quarantine some type of vacation (with three kids, the winter quarantine would have been much mooooore difficult). We have a regular day time schedule for them: teaching our oldest son (8-10h), cooking (10-11h) (daily cooking necessary, 3 boys;). After lunch (13-18h) we are going out to have some fun (biking, fishing, walking and observing changes in nature, monitoring butterflies, learning of bird voices) + gardening. We are reading with the oldest son (around 19h) after dinner. I am also trying to focus on our younger sons (4 years old twins). Now, I have enough time to talk with both of them (it was a little bit difficult in the “normal” mode and one of the twins was rather submissive, which was obvious on his language skills). Thus, I am talking with him a lot and we are practicing logopedics exercises. Next, I have enough time to be consistent in general education. Our twins get very relaxed and they are flourishing. The oldest son is missing his friends and he is sometimes losing motivation for school stuff. Still, he has a lot of fun with his two brothers and we keep him motivated in collaboration with his teacher by using our didactic abilities (basically, we are developing materials with fish-theme for our little “fisherman”). It is not surprising that we are missing social activities after 6 weeks of isolation. But, thanks to modern technologies, we are having chats with family, good friends, colleagues and the teacher. One day in a week we make an all-day trip to our wonderful surroundings to escape from our daily routine.

Gardening has been one of our favorite things during the quarantine. In the photo, seedlings of coriander, basil and sunflower.

Francisko

Dealing with this pandemic has been challenging in unique ways, which now that I come to think of it makes a lot of sense since these are unique times. My initial thoughts about self-isolating were that I would do ALL the things that wanted to do with more time. After all, I don’t have to look after anyone but myself and so nothing would stay between me and this idealized, super productive version of myself. As you might have guessed from my initial statement, this was not the case. It turns out that this pandemic took its toll on my mental health and, consequently, in my productivity as well. Fortunately, I learned a few strategies to cope with the current situation that really helped me. I hope they are somewhat helpful to you too. So, without further ado, here they are:

1. Try to follow a routine. Since I started self-isolating I noticed it was really easy to let my schedule run wild. This was a significant source of stress to me and the simplest way to address it was to come up with a simple routine. It made it easier to figure out how to spend my time and it reduced the amount of decisions I have to make. I noticed that this approach reduced the attrition throughout my day: I don’t have to think about what to do, I just have to follow my plan. Finding out a routine that works well might take time though (I’m still working on mine), but I think it’s worth planning it.

2. Focus on what you can control. There are tons of things that can overwhelm you during this pandemic such as having friends who are in areas that have many cases of coronavirus disease or family that’s in the risk group. I noticed these things were building up and making me feel anxious. Unfortunately, a lot of the time there’s not much I could do about them. Focusing on what I can control (however simple it might be) helped me deal with these feelings. For instance, calling my parents more often and making sure I’m available to them has really helped me state of mind.

3. Be kind to yourself. Maybe you’re dealing with this whole situation really well but maybe you’re not. I’m most likely in the second group. Feeling bad about it hasn’t helped me deal with it though. What has helped is acknowledging that I’d like to act differently, trying to identify the possible reasons behind my behavior, and tackling these reasons. I found this process to be more complicated than I anticipated though. I tried different things and a lot of them didn’t quite work. I found it extremely important to take a kinder approach to how I deal with these unsuccessful attempts. I try to learn what I can from them and move on to the next attempt.

These are the things I wanted to share with you. I understand my situation is quite particular and I’m extremely privileged as well, so maybe they won’t be applicable to a large number of people. Still, I hope they do help out at least a few people 🙂

Some of us found rewarding to walk/run/bike in parks, meadows and forests around Č. Budějovice. In the photo, a comma, Polygonia c-album .

Pedro

Hey, all! Quarantine has taught me a very unsettling matter: too much time does not mean a lot of productivity. Perhaps, nor should it. But breaking this chain of productivity to which we are used to during “regular” times is what is hitting me at present. For me, personally, this has been even harder since I have finished my master’s but haven’t already started my PhD, so every task seems a bit out of context!

So, ok, how am I actually dealing with this? Overall, acknowledging that we are going through unique (and hard) times and that we should focus not only on productivity itself, but on how we can put our minds at ease to accomplish at least something every day, regardless of big or small. Therefore, I will focus on this activities that have been helping me to accomplish at least something everyday.

I think that for me, as for most people I know, exercises are the first step towards putting our minds at ease. For example, I have found that even 20 minutes of stretching (yoga-like) exercises a day helps me a lot to sit down and write a paragraph about a specific subject. Going for a walk is also very helpful.

I have also started to read more, not papers, but books I have on a forgotten shelf. This, particularly, has been great for me, since reading fiction does not occur on a daily basis for me. Being in contact with this type of literature is great!

One very interesting thing about my quarantine is something we came up with a group of friends. We decided to do a battle of our favourite music albums. The idea is that everyone (we are 11) chose three albums to compete, and a bracket (like a world cup bracket) was assembled. Each day, two albums compete. We have to listen to them, and then vote the one we liked the most. It is very interesting to see that the albums we chose are not always the ones we vote for! This may not be in books about being productive, but has helped a lot “psychologically”.

Well, I guess this is a little bit of how I have been dealing with this times. Do not know if it is of any use, but hope someone can find it at least amusing to read! Cheers!