Irena Kleckova

• PhD
• Czech Academy of Sciences, Biology Centre

The evolution of wasp mimicry and biogeography in the genus Temnostoma (Diptera: Syrphidae)

In flying animals, wing morphology is typically assumed to influence flight behaviours. Whether seasonal polymorphism in butterfly morphology is linked to adaptive flight behaviour remains unresolved. Here, we compare the flight behaviours and wing morphologies of the spring and summer forms of two closely related butterfly species, Pieris napi and...

In flying animals, wing morphology is typically assumed to influence flight behaviours. Whether seasonal polymorphism behaviour might be associated with divergent fore wing shapes. Pieris individuals in the spring are small and have elongated fore wings, traits correlate with low fly speed and acceleration, and in butterfly morphology is linked to...

Climate change poses a severe threat to many taxa, with increased mean temperatures and frequency of extreme weather events predicted. Insects can respond to high temperatures using behaviour, such as angling their wings away from the sun or seeking cool local microclimates to thermoregulate or through physiological tolerance. In a butterfly commun...

Climate change is a major threat to species worldwide, yet it remains uncertain whether tropical or temperate species are more vulnerable to changing temperatures. To further our understanding of this, we used a standardised field protocol to (1) study the buffering ability (ability to regulate body temperature relative to surrounding air temperatu...

Gut microbial communities are complex and heterogeneous and play critical roles for animal hosts. Early-life disruptions to microbiome establishment can negatively impact host fitness and development. However, the consequences of such early-life disruptions remain unknown in wild birds. To help fill this gap, we investigated the effect of continuou...

1. Genomic data are not yet widely used in insect conservation practice. Here, with a focus on butterflies, we aim to identify the strengths, limitations and remaining gaps between the fields of population genomics and insect conservation management. Based on a literature search complemented with expert opinion, we discuss avenues for translating r...

Insect exposure to their predators can affect individuals and community processes, through direct consumption or nonlethal effects. However, the links between behavioral and physiological responses and stimuli needed for the development of predator avoidance are not clear. We subjected desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) to three nonlethal treat...

The diversification of alpine species has been modulated by their climatic niches interacting with changing climatic conditions. The relative roles of climatic niche conservatism promoting geographical speciation and of climatic niche diversification are poorly understood in diverse temperate groups. Here, we investigate the climatic niche evolutio...

Efficient thermoregulation is crucial for animals living under fluctuating climatic and weather conditions. We studied the body heating of six butterfly species of the genus Erebia (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) that co-occur in the European Alps. We tested whether butterfly physical characteristics (body size, wing loading) are responsible for the int...

Climate change poses a severe threat to many taxa, with increased mean temperatures and frequency of extreme weather events predicted. Insects respond to non-optimal temperatures using behaviours or local microclimates to thermoregulate (thermal buffering ability), or through physiological tolerance. We studied the thermal buffering ability and the...

Efficient thermoregulation is crucial for animals living under changing climatic and weather conditions. We used a thermal camera to measure thermoregulation of six co-occurring species of Erebia (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) mountain butterflies in a laboratory experiment with artificial light and heating source. We studied wild individuals to test w...

Insect exposure to their predators can affect individuals and community processes, through direct consumption or nonlethal effects. However, the links between behavioural and physiological responses and stimuli needed for the development of fear are not clear. We subjected the desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) to three nonlethal treatments, us...

Advertising escape ability could reduce predatory attacks. However, the effectiveness of certain phenotypic cues (e.g., color, shape, and size) in signaling evasiveness is still unknown. Understanding the role of such signals in driving predator learning is important to infer the evolutionary mechanisms leading to convergent evasiveness signals amo...

The evolution and distribution of alpine species have been modulated by their climatic niches. However, the relative roles of climatic niche conservatism promoting geographical speciation and of climatic niche diversification are poorly understood in diverse temperate groups. Here, we describe the evolution of climatic niche in a species rich butte...

Insect exposure to their predators can affect individuals and community processes, through direct consumption or nonlethal (i.e., nonconsumptive) effects. However, the links between behavioural and physiological responses and stimuli needed for development of the fear are not clear. We therefore subjected the desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria)...

Gut microbial communities are complex and heterogeneous and play critical roles for animal hosts. Early-life disruptions to microbiome establishment can negatively impact host fitness and development. However, the consequences of such early-life disruptions are unknown in wild birds. To help fill this gap, after validating the disruptive influence...

The composition of gut bacterial communities is strongly influenced by the host diet in many animal taxa. For birds, the effect of diet on the microbiomes has been documented through diet manipulation studies. However, for wild birds, most studies have drawn on literature-based information to decipher the dietary effects, thereby, overlooking indiv...

The global increase in species richness toward the tropics across continents and taxonomic groups, referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient, stimulated the formulation of many hypotheses to explain the underlying mechanisms of this pattern. We evaluate several of these hypotheses to explain spatial diversity patterns in a butterfly family,...

Low-elevation mountains represent unique model systems to study species endangered by climate warming, such as subalpine and alpine species of butterflies. We aimed to test the effect of climate variables experienced by Erebia butterflies during their development on adult abundances and phenology, targeting the key climate factors determining the p...

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is arguably one of the most striking patterns in nature. The global increase in species richness toward the tropics across continents and taxonomic groups stimulated the formulation of many hypotheses to explain the underlying mechanisms of this pattern. We evaluated several of these hypotheses to explain sp...

Temporal patterns in butterfly behavior should reflect diurnal, seasonal and population-level changes in mate availability. Investment into mating should peak at times when potential mates are at a maximum; at other times, individuals should save energy and focus on maintenance activities. To explore these assumptions, we re-analyzed mark-recapture...

Understanding how speciation relates to ecological divergence has long fascinated biologists. It is assumed that ecological divergence is essential to sympatric speciation, as a mechanism to avoid competition and eventually lead to reproductive isolation, while divergence in allopatry is not necessarily associated with niche differentiation. The im...

Climate change scenarios predict losses of cold-adapted species from insular locations, such as middle high mountains at temperate latitudes, where alpine habitats extend for a few hundred meters above the timberline. However, there are very few studies following the fates of such species in the currently warming climate. We compared transect monit...

Understanding the potential of animals to quickly respond to changing temperatures is imperative for predicting the effects of climate change on biodiversity. Ectotherms, such as insects, use behavioural thermoregulation to keep their body temperature within suitable limits. Behavioural thermoregulation may be particularly important at warm margins...

Understanding the potential of animals to immediately respond to changing temperatures is imperative for predicting the effects of climate change on biodiversity. Ectothermic animals, such as insects, use behavioural thermoregulation to keep their body temperature within suitable limits. It may be particularly important at warm margins of species o...

We studied the speciose butterfly genus Erebia by reconstructing its phylogenetic relationships using parsimony and Bayesian approaches. We estimated times and rates of diversification for its lineages and employed a biogeographical analysis in order to reconstruct its evolutionary history. DNA sequence data from one mitochondrial gene and three nu...

Erebia euryale (Esper, 1805) is a montane-zone representative of a Holarctic butterfly genus the species of which occur mainly in alpine areas. As in many mountain insects, E. euryale frequently undergoes a prolonged biennial larval development, which can be synchronised across mountains, resulting in prominent biennial peaks in adult emergence. Ho...

We studied the habitat requirements of a vulnerable butterfly, E rebia aethiops, in a grassland‐forest mosaic within a nature reserve. This species inhabits seemingly abundant habitats such as forest edges, but it is declining in many parts of E urope. We analysed mark‐recapture data, focusing on the effects of distinct vegetation structures, necta...

Erebia aethiops is an aberrant lowland representative of a predominately arctic and alpine butterfly genus. We used behavioral records obtained during a mark-recapture study (MR) to extract information about its adult diurnal and within-season activity, and to compare its activity with previously studied mountain Erebia species. Similarly to them,...

The Marsh fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) has declined across Europe, including the Czech Republic. Current conservation strategies rely on prevention of habitat loss and degradation, and increase in habitat quality and connectivity via promoting traditional grassland management. The population structure and adult demogra...