Ancient Wings: animating the evolution of butterfly wing patterns.

Character optimization methods can be used to reconstruct ancestral states at the internal nodes of phylogenetic trees. However, seldom are these ancestral states visualized collectively. Ancient Wings is a computer program that provides a novel method of visualizing the evolution of several morphological traits simultaneously. It allows users to visualize how the ventral hindwing pattern of 54 butterflies in the genus Bicyclus may have changed over time. By clicking on each of the nodes within the evolutionary tree, the user can see an animation of how wing size, eyespot size, and eyespot position relative the wing margin, have putatively evolved as a collective whole. Ancient Wings may be used as a pedagogical device as well as a research tool for hypothesis-generation in the fields of evolutionary, ecological, and developmental biology.