Many animals undergo complete metamorphosis, where larval forms change abruptly in adulthood. Color change during ontogeny is common, but there is little understanding of evolutionary patterns in these changes. Here, we use data on larval and adult color for 246 butterfly species (61% of all species in Australia) to test whether the evolution of color is coupled between life stages. We show that adults are more variable in color across species than caterpillars and that male adult color has lower phylogenetic signal. These results suggest that sexual selection is driving color diversity in male adult butterflies at a broad scale. Moreover, color similarities between species at the larval stage do not predict color similarities at the adult stage, indicating that color evolution is decoupled between young and adult forms. Most species transition from cryptic coloration as caterpillars to conspicuous coloration as adults, but even species with conspicuous caterpillars change to different conspicuous colors as adults. The use of high‐contrast coloration is correlated with body size in caterpillars but not adults. Taken together, our results suggest a change in the relative importance of different selective pressures at different life stages, resulting in the evolutionary decoupling of coloration through ontogeny.

中文翻译：

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从隐秘到多彩：蝴蝶幼虫和成年颜色的进化解耦

许多动物经历了完全的变态，其中成虫的幼体在成年后突然发生变化。个体发育过程中颜色变化很普遍，但是对这些变化中的进化模式知之甚少。在这里，我们使用246种蝴蝶物种（澳大利亚总物种的61％）的幼虫和成年颜色数据来检验颜色的演变是否在生命阶段之间耦合。我们表明，成年动物的颜色比毛毛虫更易变，并且成年男性的系统发生信号较低。这些结果表明，性选择广泛地驱动了成年雄性蝴蝶的颜色多样性。此外，幼虫阶段物种之间的颜色相似度不能预测成年阶段的颜色相似度，这表明颜色演化在年轻和成年形式之间是不相关的。大多数物种从成虫的隐性着色过渡到成年时的明显着色，但即使有显着的毛虫的物种也成年后变为不同的显色。高对比度着色的使用与毛毛虫的体型相关，而与成虫无关。两者合计，我们的结果表明在不同的生命阶段，不同选择压力的相对重要性发生了变化，从而导致通过个体发育对色素的进化解耦。