What makes a beetle red? Or metallic? Or striped? And why display such a diversity of colour patterns within one species? These are the questions being asked by Lynette Strickland, a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Pre-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Join us as we discuss her recent research on the genetic and ecological basis of colour polymorphisms in the tortoise beetle, Chelymorpha alternans.

Related article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-018-0149-z