Color polymorphism offers rich opportunities for studying the eco-evolutionary mechanisms that drive the adaptations of local populations to heterogeneous and changing environments. We explored the color morph diversity and composition in a Chrysomela lapponica leaf beetle across its entire distribution range to test the hypothesis that environmental and climatic variables shape spatiotemporal variation in the phenotypic structure of a polymorphic species. We obtained information on 13 617 specimens of this beetle from museums, private collections, and websites. These specimens (collected from 1830-2020) originated from 959 localities spanning 33° latitude, 178° longitude, and 4200 m altitude. We classified the beetles into five color morphs and searched for environmental factors that could explain the variation in the level of polymorphism (quantified by the Shannon diversity index) and in the relative frequencies of individual color morphs. The highest level of polymorphism was found at high latitudes and altitudes. The color morphs differed in their climatic requirements; composition of colour morphs was independent of the geographic distance that separated populations but changed with collection year, longitude, mean July temperature and between-year temperature fluctuations. The proportion of melanic beetles, in line with the thermal melanism hypothesis, increased with increasing latitude and altitude and decreased with increasing climate seasonality. Melanic morph frequencies also declined during the past century, but only at high latitudes and altitudes where recent climate warming was especially strong. The observed patterns suggest that color polymorphism is especially advantageous for populations inhabiting unpredictable environments, presumably due to the different climatic requirements of coexisting color morphs.

Departmant of Zoology Swedish Museum of Natural History Stockholm Sweden

Department of Animal Ecology and Physiology Radboud University Nijmegen The Netherlands

Department of Biocenology Institute for Biological Problems of the North Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Magadan Russia

Department of Biology and Environmental Science Linnaeus University Kalmar Sweden

Department of Biology University of Turku Turku Finland

Department of Ecology and Nature Management Ural State Forest Engineering University Yekaterinburg Russia

Department of Entomology National Museum Prague 9 Cirkusová Czech Republic

Department of Life Sciences Natural History Museum London United Kingdom

Department of Terrestrial Zoology Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt am Main Germany

Department of Zoology and Entomology University of the Free State Bloemfontein South Africa

Ecology and Genetics Research Unit University of Oulu Oulu Finland

Faculty of Biology Belarusian State University Minsk Belarus

Federal Scientific Center of the East Asia Terrestrial Biodiversity Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladivostok Russia

Insititute of Zoology Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing China

Institute of Botany The Czech Academy of Sciences Dukelská Třeboň Czech Republic

Natural History Museum University of Oslo Oslo Norway

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