It's out, Minos transgenesis in the pantry moth by @donyaniyaz.bsky.social @lucalivraghi.bsky.social High efficient, glowing eye and silk gland markers peerj.com/articles/202... @peerj.bsky.social

What a remarkable discovery! In SW Turkey a new species of Lycaenid was discovered, Rapala suleymani sp.n., of a genus that was only known from the eastern palearctic & indomalayan realms, it's closest relative flies 7000km away! doi.org/10.31184/M00...

A fantastic writeup by Glenn Zorpette from @spectrum.ieee.org. Glenn joined us in Italy where we collectively sampled hundreds of new species for @projectpsyche.bsky.social. Shoutout to Luigi Avantaggiato for the spectacular photos and @costprogramme.bsky.social funding for bringing groups together.

It is so nice to finally see the first paper of my PhD published! It was possible thanks to invaluable contributions of Andrea Chiocchio, @mariaheikkila.bsky.social, @jadrankarota.bsky.social, Lauri Kaila, and @lepphylo.bsky.social.

Claire Merot opens the afternoon session at the #biodiversity25 with a presentation about the structural genetic diversity across the tree of life. Structural variants (SVs) are in order de magnitude higher than SNPs. TEs accounts for many SVs. SVs are different across different lineages.

New preprint! We unexpectedly discovered that some Caenorhabditis species delete parts of their somatic genome early in development, which fragments their chromosomes and eliminates key germline genes. Multiple lines of evidence suggest this bizarre process was present in the ancestors of C. elegans

Programmed DNA elimination was present in the last common ancestor of Caenorhabditis nematodes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.23.681605v1

Really nice paper from @tiff-ki.bsky.social & co. shows no overall decline in butterfly species richness in Sulawesi over 166 yrs, but changing communities with endemics & forest specialists declining. Short-term trends unreliable measures of long term. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 🌏

The new European Butterfly Red List is published today, with worrying findings. Over 1/4 (28%) of Europe’s 442 species are threatened with extinction or are close to being so. The situation is far worse for our 148 endemic species, 40% are now threatened or nearly so www.bc-europe.eu/webpage.php?...

🚀 Second STSM of 10kLepGenomes! Jakub Tetla (Jagiellonian Univ., Poland) visited @jadrankarota.bsky.social (Lund, Sweden) from 24–26 Sept 2025. The goal was to integrate museum collections with phylogenomics to study West Palearctic tiger moths. #10kLepGenomes #Lepidoptera #Museomics

This week we celebrated reaching 1000 lepidopteran genomes in the Tree of Life (ToL) programme @ the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social with butterfly crafts and cake! Many of these genomes were sequenced by the wonderful ToL teams as part of @projectpsyche.bsky.social & the Darwin Tree of Life project 🦋🧬

Now published! Our paper on: (1) Accurate sequencing of sperm at scale (2) Positive selection of spermatogenesis driver mutations across the exome (3) Offspring disease risks from male reproductive aging [1/n] www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today´s Guardian has an article about our study on butterfly colors, where we compare butterfly colors in native forest to those in eucalyptus plantations. This is study is a partnership between labs from Denmark, Spain, and Brazil. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Preprint Alert! 🦥 We produced complete genomes for 2 Xenarthra and placed them in a mammalian comparative framework. We found that Xenarthra harbour the largest number of retrocopies in mammals! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Project Psyche is featured in a new article out now on @spectrum.ieee.org! Check it out to get an insight into the efforts of @ebpgenome.bsky.social and the milestones achieved during the fieldtrip of #ProjectPsyche and @10klepgenomes.bsky.social to the Italian Alps 🦋

If you're interested in understanding discordance in phylogenomic analyses, the @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social's special issue 'Phylogenomic Discordance: Patterns, Processes, and Solutions' is for you! tinyurl.com/v2eces3s I'll be sharing a few articles a week until we're through the issue! (1/n)🧪

Exciting news! The next #PopGroup meeting will take place in Lille 🍟, France, 7–9 January 2026 – just 1 hour by train from London, Brussels, and Paris. This year, PopGroup will also host ALPHY, the annual meeting of Evolutionary Genomics. More info: populationgeneticsgroup.org.uk See you there !

k-mer-based diversity scales with population size proxies more than nucleotide diversity in a meta-analysis of 98 plant species. academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

Funded PhD position available 🎉 Come and work with me in Helsinki to uncover the pathways producing colourful tiger moth wings. Lots of options for genomics, CRISPR, fieldwork, behaviour experiments… Email with questions! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

Hospodářská, @petrnguyen.bsky.social et al. investigated genome size and karyotype in Polyommatus and Lysandra butterflies, rejecting polyploidy to confirm karyotypic diversification via chromosome fragmentation in Polyommatinae butterflies. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf157 #genome #evolution

Join us at #Biodiversity25 ! Interested in Lepidoptera? There will be the session on @projectpsyche.bsky.social with project updates, the highly anticipated re-launch of Lepbase and discussions on the analysis of the first 1,000 lep genomes. Plus there's a keynote by @lepphylo.bsky.social!🦋

Celebrating the first 1,000 sequenced genomes on @projectpsyche.bsky.social 😎🧬🦋 #ProjectPsyche #MothStitching

Hybridogenesis as an intermediate step between sexual reproduction and parthenogenesis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.19.677091v1

Our paper Genomic diversity of the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus was published in Science today! It features inversions, selection in action, museum specimens and putative new ecotypes. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

To celebrate the genomes for 1,000 (!) species of Lepidoptera in Europe, Project Psyche has released a preprint outlining our ambitions to jointly sequence & leverage genomes of all 11,000 species in Europe to propel science, conservation & society. This was a joy to write together as a community!

How many chromosomes can an animal have? In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Looking for a PhD? I am advertising two industry sponsored PhD projects. One on black soldier fly genetics with #betabugs and another on searching insect biodiversity for novel enzymes #Syngenta. Get in touch if you are interested!! bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/available-ic...

🚀🧬🔥 Hot off the press — 2025! Don’t miss this must-read publication: bit.ly/4mJwFb7 This groundbreaking paper sets the stage for Earth BioGenome Project Phase II — where EBP is gearing up to scale genome sequencing 10× faster than ever before! 🌍✨

An amazing PhD opportunity with strong links to @projectpsyche.bsky.social, LepEU & @10klepgenomes.bsky.social!

Mediterranean butterfly spotted in the UK for the first time - twice! Two sightings of the Southern Small White (Pieris mannii) have now been verified - one in Suffolk and one in County Durham. 📍 Read the full story 👉 buff.ly/q7svIE5 📷: Adam Gor

So excited to share this preprint from the Rosin lab in collaboration with the Hawley lab and @eelcotromer.bsky.social on moth spermatogenesis! We investigate the meiotic errors that occur during the formation of apyrene sperm (that have no DNA) in silkworms! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

First field trip of the #WG2 has come to an end! We will share some of the most relevant moments of this fantastic week! Stay tuned 🦋🧬

@10klepgenomes.bsky.social First WG2 meeting is over. It was an intense week full of light trapping and sample preparations for @projectpsyche.bsky.social, lectures and meeting wonderful people 🤩🦋💡🔬

Smattered with smashing photos and a moth-trapping timelapse, I sure hope you enjoy the visual spectacle that is this blog as much as I enjoyed writing it! Will you be thinking about hydrogen cyanide synthesis pathways the next time you see a Six-spot Burnet? 📹 @charlottewright.bsky.social

Our paper on myxozoan genomes is out now in G3! See thread below for a brief recap (slight change of title from the preprint, same content). Thank you also to @arunsethuraman.bsky.social for handling the manuscript and @joannamasel.bsky.social for helpful comments. academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

Midweek at #lepgencrete conference we take a half-day excursion. This time we went to the beach, and had dinner at a hillside taverna.

*Rapid chromosome evolution in butterflies and the potential of Project Psyche for lepidopteran genomics* Charlotte Wright, Wellcome Sanger Institute #lepgencrete Holocentric chroms thought to facilitate rapid karyotype rearrangement. But analysis of >100 genomes shows primarily conservation.

We are just starting sessions at the 2025 Workshop on Lepidopteran genetics in Kolymbari, Crete, Greece. During the week, researchers from around the world (Europe, Americas, China & Japan, etc) present research on moths and butterflies. events.gwdg.de/event/880/ #lepgencrete

This course with @marcelauliano.bsky.social and @ferreiranunesjoao.bsky.social ‬will introduce the audience to a spectrum of methods which are present in a usual assembly workflow, starting from raw data and finishing with a fully assembled genome @pacbio.bsky.social Check it out shorturl.at/UEmOH

📢 The #BiodiversityHeritageLibrary is entering a bold new chapter – and we need your help! Today we release our official Call for Support. We’re seeking new hosts for BHL’s staff, infrastructure, and services. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL

50% decline in the European Grassland Butterfly Indicator since 1991 www.naturetoday.com/intl/en/natu... @savebutterflies.bsky.social

Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is outrageously cool The authors managed to nullify the geomagnetic field around bogong moths but allowed them to see a typical starry night sky and the moths could *still* navigate the correct direction of migration 🤯 🧪🌏

How did evolution drive massive genome contraction during oceanic island colonization? A new paper from our lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Proud to have authored this review with brilliant people. Hope we inspire more attempts to sequence the #protist genomes that are within reach! Huge thanks to Alexandra Schoenle for leading. #ProtistsOnSky authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

It's finally out! This paper took quite a while but I'm so excited to share now! For anyone who studies sex chromosomes, take note: we found a rare "slower X"! (dN/dS_X < dN/dS_Autos) 👀

Congratulations to the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Dr. Naomi Pierce! www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display...

It was a joy to be a teaching assistant on the EMBO Computational Molecular Evolution course and I'm very glad to have been able to also join the EMBO satellite workshop on Biodiversity Genomics in beautiful Crete!

Struggling to find the tiny microchromosomes in draft bird genome assemblies? Our new #preprint introducing MicroFinder can help: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 below (1/n) @sangerinstitute.bsky.social

(1/3) During the #PopulationGenomics Workshop in Montpellier, participants took part in hands-on lab sessions to extract DNA from butterfly samples they had collected themselves 🧪🦋 Here’s what they accomplished! 👇