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Simple Summary: The Andean Altiplano, known for its extreme weather and high biodiversity, is an ideal place to study how insects adapt to their environment. This research focuses on the butterfly species Phulia nymphula, which is common in the high-altitudinal Andes Mountains, to identify how their wing shapes vary across six locations in the Northern Chilean Altiplano. By analyzing the wings of 77 butterflies, the study found significant differences in wing shape, likely due to local environmental conditions. These differences suggest that the butterflies have adapted to their specific habitats. The findings showed how the wing shape differentiate between localities across the Northern Altiplano and provide insights into how high-altitude species evolve and adapt through changes in their morphology, highlighting the role of ecological and evolutionary processes in shaping biodiversity in extreme environments. The Andean Altiplano, characterized by its extreme climatic conditions and high levels of biodiversity, provides a unique environment for studying ecological and evolutionary adaptations in insect morphology. Butterflies, due their large wing surface compared to body surface, and wide distribution among a geographical area given the flight capabilities provided by their wings, constitute a good biological model to study morphological adaptations following extreme weathers. This study focuses on Phulia nymphula, a butterfly species widely distributed in the Andes, to evaluate wing shape variation across six localities in the Northern Chilean Altiplano. The geometric morphometrics analysis of 77 specimens from six locations from the Chilean Altiplano (Caquena, Sorapata Lake, Chungará, Casiri Macho Lake, Surire Salt Flat, and Visviri) revealed significant differences in wing shape among populations. According to the presented results, variations are likely influenced by local environmental conditions and selective pressures, suggesting specific adaptations to the microhabitats of the Altiplano. The first three principal components represented 60.92% of the total wing shape variation. The detected morphological differences indicate adaptive divergence among populations, reflecting evolutionary responses to the extreme and fragmented conditions of the Altiplano. This study gives insights into the understanding of how high-altitude species can diversify and adapt through morphological variation, providing evidence of ecological and evolutionary processes shaping biodiversity in extreme environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The following article studied the environment influence between island and mainland in an endemic marsupial from Chile the mouse-opossum Thylamys elegans (Waterhouse, 1839). Its important to understand that the isolated habitat could affect the pattern of morphological evolution in organism due to millions of years of being separated from the mainland. In this re-search we used two methodologies to study those effects in the mandible of this marsupial, first a biomechanical methodology which was used to correlate it with the diet, and a second called ge-ometric morphometrics which combine the geometry and biology to identify the principal changes in the morphology. Our results showed that Island populations have more disparity in the mor-phology in comparison to the mailand differences that could be related to the arid environment and other characteristic of the island. Concluding that one of the possible reason of the evolutionary history of this Chilean mouse-opossum was processes of natural selection by a process of coloniza-tion of island after vicariance denominated founder effect. Island ecosystems differ in several elements from mainland ecosystems and may induce variations related to natural selection and patterns of adaptation in most aspects of the biology of an organism. Thylamys elegans (Waterhouse, 1839) is a marsupial endemic to Chile, distributed from Loa River to Concepción. Historically, three subspecies have been described: Thylamys elegans elegans, Thylamys elegans coquimbensis and Thylamys elegans soricinus. For this research, two morphometric approaches and a biomechanical model were used to compare the mandible shapes and biomechanics between two Chilean mouse opossum populations belonging to different subspecies: one from the coastal desert of Chile (T. e. coquimbensis) and the other from the central inland region (T. e. elegans). Additionally, mandibles of insular populations found in the Reserva Nacional Pinguino de Humboldt (RNPH)), from which the subspecies association is unknown, were also included. The results showed that insular populations have differences in mandibular shapes, sizes and biomechanical characteristics compared to continental populations, which may be related to environmental variables like aridity and vegetation cover, prey type, insularity effects and/or the founder effect on micromammals, apart from vicariance hypotheses and other selective pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]