Infection with a male-killing Spiroplasma bacterium might drive morphological changes in female reproductive organs in a butterfly

Sexual selection, and conflicts between sex or within sex, can induce morphological variations within species. This may challenge the identification and characterization of diagnostic morphological characters from reproductive organs that are of utmost importance for the morphology-based classification of faunal diversity, particularly on species level. In Lepidoptera, and in some other insects, females have evolved reproductive organs that can accommodate and/or digest nuptial gifts, or so called spermatophores, transferred from the males during copulation.

We dissected and compared the female reproductive organs of the widespread African monarch, Danaus chrysippus, which can host an endosymbiont, Spriorplasma that induces sex-ratio distortions in the populations.

The documents included contain pictures of the female organs and spermatophores, as well as all ecological data collected for the study samples.