Concerns about the potential toxicity of pollen from genetically modified maize on neighbouring butterflies prompted urgent studies, reports Nigel Williams.

In this paper we provide low-congested Interval Routing Schemes (IRS) for some common interconnection networks such as butterflies, wrapped butterflies and cube connected cycles. In particular, by exploiting their hypercube-like structure, we show that 1-IRS and 2-IRS are already sufficient to get schemes with a congestion which is at most c times the optimal one, for low constant values of c. ...

The rich diversity of wing color patterns within and between butterfly species makes butterflies an attractive system for studying the development and evolution of pattern formation. Study of the molecular and genetic basis of pattern formation in butterflies has revealed that a number of developmentally important genes possess expression patterns in the developing wing that correlate with the ...

During a brief visit of Alonnisos Island in 2022 some insect species (mainly butterflies) were observed and photographed. Three them are new for the island’s fauna - giant Asian mantis Hierodula tenuidentata Saussure, 1869, western conifer seed bug Leptoglossus occidentalis Heidemann, 1910, millet skipper Pelopidas thrax (Hübner, [1821]). Their establishment on island is not surprise, but it we...

One hundred and thirty-five years ago, Henry Walter Bates noticed striking similarities between unrelated pierid, ithomiine and heliconiine butterflies collected from the same area [1]. Bates termed this phenomenon ‘mimicry’, and showed that rare or unprotected butterflies would gain by imitating the warning patterns of commoner, unpalatable forms. Later, Müller [2] showed that unpalatable spec...

Butterflies are concerned with scrupulous ecosystem’s productivity. Their diversity and richness indicate affluence in natural variety resource cock-and-bull story. The present study reports 40 butterfly species of 5 families, which were obtained from an investigation conducted over a period six months, June 2020 to November 2020, five different areas Dinhata subdivision, West Bengal, India, vi...

Fall migratory monarch butterflies, tested for their directional responses to magnetic cues under three conditions, amagnetic, normal, and reversed magnetic fields, showed three distinct patterns. In the absence of a magnetic field, monarchs lacked directionality as a group. In the normal magnetic field, monarchs oriented to the southwest with a group pattern typical for migrants. When the hori...

Many of the stories that have appeared in this column recount the way in which the timely appearance of a paper catalyzed the pursuit of a new line of research. The experience is, happily, not limited to new papers. One of the greatest pleasures in research is to discover (or more accurately, to rediscover) a gem of a paper that has been in the literature for some time but whose findings or pro...

Do genetic correlations among phenotypic characters reflect developmental organization or functional coadaptation of the characters? We test these hypotheses for the wing melanin pattern of Pieris occidentalis butterflies, by comparing estimated genetic correlations among wing melanin characters with a priori predictions of the developmental organization and the functional (thermoregulatory) or...