Transgenic Plodia larvae expressing the very bright mBaoJin (mStayGold variant) in its silk glands.

Also some gorgeous 3xP3:mCherry staining of larval ocelli and glia.

(see revised preprint) by pantry moth wizards
@donyaniyaz.bsky.social & @lucalivraghi.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Very cool work by @jasminealqassar.bsky.social, @evolvwing.bsky.social, and co. And some stunning pictures as an extra treat!

Preprint alert from the lab
@jasminealqassar.bsky.social led this elegant study of gene expression in the silk glands of our favorite alternative "silk worm", the pantry moth.

Mega-polyploid cells with thousands of genome copies just to express a handful of proteins

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Check out our deep dive into the molecular genetics of male-specific cell type : the gorgeous UV-iridescent scales of Sulphur Butterflies

by lab wizards 🦋🔬 🖥️ 🧬
Ling Sheng Loh
@hanliconius.bsky.social
and a big team

1/n

I am really thrilled to share that our paper, led by Izzy Novick, resolving the Tineidae phylogeny using UCEs and exploring the origins of keratinophagy and synanthropy in the family is now published in Molecular Ecology. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Awesome new paper by @lucalivraghi.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
in @currentbiology.bsky.social
on the evo-devo of a butterfly color variation

enjoy the show!

Preprint! Minos-mediated transgenesis in the pantry moth
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

By @donyaniyaz.bsky.social

The Lepidoptera Genomics meeting July6-12 in Crete is going to be amazing and they extended the abstract deadline.
I wish I could go (most of the team is going)
events.gwdg.de/event/880/

Thrilled to share that this paper is out now in Development! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Thanks to my wonderful collaborators, mentors, and colleagues who supported me during this process! My Master's thesis advisor Dr. Sean Mullen (bsky-less), co-authors Dr. Hannah Aichelman and Isabel Novick (both bsky-less), my current PhD advisor @evolvwing.bsky.social, as well as many others.

In addition to our genome assembly and annotation, we preformed synteny analyses to investigate chromosome evolution. Notably, the synteny alignment with M. cinxia suggested the reduction in karyotype size in T. bisselliella is due to a whole chromosomal fusion of the ancestral 30 and Z chromosomes.

Here we present the first reference quality, pseudochromosome-level genome for the species and a genome annotation. The lack of quality genomic resources has severely limited investigations to identify the mechanism of keratin digestion and chromosome evolution of this Ditrysian moth.

Tineola bisselliella, the webbing clothes moth, is a prolific pest species that is globally-distributed and has the ability to digest keratin. As larvae they leave their signature holes in clothes, rugs, and taxidermy.

My first paper is out today in GBE! A genome assembly and annotation for the webbing clothes moth. academic.oup.com/gbe/article/... A short 🧵

New preprint by butterfly wizard
@lucalivraghi.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We mapped optix (again?!) as the switch gene of a natural polymorphism, this time controlling silver patches of a mountain butterfly. Gorgeous RNAi validation, evidence of selective sweeps, introgression

A lovely commentary on @lucalivraghi.bsky.social and @hwkmthcrspr.bsky.social's recent papers, by VanKuren and Kronforst (bsky-less?). "“Being wrong” has never been a bad thing in science because good scientists cannot let go of those little things that just do not line up" - 🔥🔥🔥

There’s loads of invertebrate macrophotographers on Bsky now, so I’ve whipped up a starter pack to make it easy to fill your feed with excellent bug photos!

#Invertebrate #Macrophotography 🧪

go.bsky.app/5CHHo2r

So true, it definitely is hard to find larger sets. Set2 is pretty good (at least I can distinguish all the colors with Protanopia). You can actually specify RColorBrewer to only display colorblind friendly palettes which is super helpful: display.brewer.all(colorblindFriendly = TRUE)

@science.org
Sorry to be trolling already (this one is from 10.1126/sciadv.ado4167) but a lot of your papers are hard to read for 4% of scientists. Other journals like the New Phytologist issue guidance about figure color accessibility. You could also ask your editors to do better
💜thank you💚
Chloe

(please amplify) 4% of scientists face an important barrier to an the ENTIRE FIELD of single-cell genomics and here is why

Hey Lepidoptera folks, here’s a Starter Pack of Lepidopterologists! If you want to be added (or removed), just @ me with your favourite: #buttetflies? #moths? go.bsky.app/U3HPgpW