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1. Dichotomy of Dosage Compensation along the Neo Z Chromosome of the Monarch Butterfly

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.09.056  

   Gu, Liuqi ; Reilly, Patrick F. ; Lewis, James J. ; Reed, Robert D. ; Andolfatto, Peter ; Walters, James R. ( December 2019 , Current Biology)
2. A butterfly pan-genome reveals that a large amount of structural variation underlies the evolution of chromatin accessibility

   https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.276839.122  

   Ruggieri, Angelo A. ; Livraghi, Luca ; Lewis, James J. ; Evans, Elizabeth ; Cicconardi, Francesco ; Hebberecht, Laura ; Ortiz-Ruiz, Yadira ; Montgomery, Stephen H. ; Ghezzi, Alfredo ; Rodriguez-Martinez, José Arcadio ; et al ( October 2022 , Genome Research)

   Despite insertions and deletions being the most common structural variants (SVs) found across genomes, not much is known about how much these SVs vary within populations and between closely related species, nor their significance in evolution. To address these questions, we characterized the evolution of indel SVs using genome assemblies of three closely related Heliconius butterfly species. Over the relatively short evolutionary timescales investigated, up to 18.0% of the genome was composed of indels between two haplotypes of an individual Heliconius charithonia butterfly and up to 62.7% included lineage-specific SVs between the genomes of the most distant species (11 Mya). Lineage-specific sequences were mostly characterized as transposable elements (TEs) inserted at random throughout the genome and their overall distribution was similarly affected by linked selection as single nucleotide substitutions. Using chromatin accessibility profiles (i.e., ATAC-seq) of head tissue in caterpillars to identify sequences with potential cis -regulatory function, we found that out of the 31,066 identified differences in chromatin accessibility between species, 30.4% were within lineage-specific SVs and 9.4% were characterized as TE insertions. These TE insertions were localized closer to gene transcription start sites than expected at random and were enriched for sites with significant resemblance to several transcription factor binding sites with known function in neuron development in Drosophila . We also identified 24 TE insertions with head-specific chromatin accessibility. Our results show high rates of structural genome evolution that were previously overlooked in comparative genomic studies and suggest a high potential for structural variation to serve as raw material for adaptive evolution. 

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3. Multiple transmission routes sustain high prevalence of a virulent parasite in a butterfly host

   https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.1630  

   Majewska, Ania A. ; Sims, Stuart ; Schneider, Anna ; Altizer, Sonia ; Hall, Richard J. ( September 2019 , Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)

   Understanding factors that allow highly virulent parasites to reach high infection prevalence in host populations is important for managing infection risks to human and wildlife health. Multiple transmission routes have been proposed as one mechanism by which virulent pathogens can achieve high prevalence, underscoring the need to investigate this hypothesis through an integrated modelling-empirical framework. Here, we examine a harmful specialist protozoan infecting monarch butterflies that commonly reaches high prevalence (50–100%) in resident populations. We integrate field and modelling work to show that a combination of three empirically-supported transmission routes (vertical, adult transfer and environmental transmission) can produce and sustain high infection prevalence in this system. Although horizontal transmission is necessary for parasite invasion, most new infections post-establishment arise from vertical transmission. Our study predicts that multiple transmission routes, coupled with high parasite virulence, can reduce resident host abundance by up to 50%, suggesting that the protozoan could contribute to declines of North American monarchs. 

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4. Dynamics and Control of a Flapping Wing UAV with Abdomen Undulation Inspired by Monarch Butterfly

   https://doi.org/10.23919/ACC50511.2021.9483293  

   Tejaswi, K. C. ; Kang, Chang-Kwon ; Lee, Taeyoung ( January 2021 , 2021 American Control Conference (ACC))
5. Siamese Learning-Based Monarch Butterfly Localization

   https://doi.org/10.1109/DSLW53931.2022.9820497  

   Shoouri, Sara ; Yang, Mingyu ; Carichner, Gordy ; Li, Yuyang ; Hamed, Ehab A. ; Deng, Angela ; Green, Delbert A. ; Lee, Inhee ; Blaaw, David ; Kim, Hun-Seok ( May 2022 , 2022 IEEE Data Science and Learning Workshop (DSLW))