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METAMORPHOSIS of the Monarch butterfly described. "The caterpillar enters the chrysalis stage without vision, because the head capsule was discarded with its six simple eyes, so it can now only distinguish light from darkness. The inside portion of the chrysalis, below the gold crown, turns to a jade green liquid within the first 16 hours, as the caterpillar's stomach, intestines, and most all of the other internal parts disintegrate." https://lnkd.in/eXsDT2s View in LinkedIn

RETENTION OF CONNECTIONS. "More recent models of duplicate gene evolution suggest that rates of duplicate gene retention vary among protein functional groups. Observations of high retention rates among more connected proteins are consistent with the gene balance hypothesis, which predicts that the fate of duplicate genes largely depends on maintaining a stoichiometric balance among members of macromolecular complexes." https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

BUTTERFLY PUPAE WING SCALES (1896), histological examination. "It appeared that during early pupal life the wings are as transparent as glass, but that from five to ten days before emergence, they become opaque, and pure white. After this, a dull ochre-yellow or drab color suffuses the wings, tinging all parts except those that are destined to become the white spots of the mature wing, these always remains pure white." Brilliant Victoriana! https://lnkd.in/eRTtjTc View in LinkedIn

Fireworks of the future? Japan to create fake shooting stars View in LinkedIn

FEMALE LOSS OF LIFE STYLE. "Yet despite the apparent virtues of holometaboly, some insects have minimised or even lost the holometabolous lifestyle, at least from some part of the life cycle. With respect to holometabolous insects that have entirely lost complete metamorphosis, this has only occurred in females, where it has been achieved via the deletion of the pupal and post-metamorphic stage (i.e. the ancestral ‘adult’), via a developmental process known as paedomorphosis." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12313/full View in LinkedIn

NEW THINKING. "This hypothesis, known as the duplication-degeneration-complementation (DDC) process, posits that degenerative mutations may knock out independent subfunctions encoded by discrete regulatory elements in duplicate genes, thus requiring preservation of both copies in order to maintain the full complement of ancestral gene functions." https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

NEW TWIST. "Duplicate genes show evidence of purifying selection more consistent with buffering of the ancestral gene function than neofunctionalization reconciled Ohno's original theory with more recent observations by proposing subfunctionalization as a means of preserving duplicate genes in the presence of degenerative mutations targeting both members of a duplicate pair." https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

POOR THEORETICAL FIT. "The preservation of large numbers of duplicate genes derived from ancient polyploidy events is difficult to reconcile with a model in which null alleles at duplicate loci are easily fixed by genetic drift." https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

POLLEN DIETS IN INSECTS. "Female honey bees (Apis mellifera) and hoverflies, for example, require pollen for successful reproduction. Among butterflies, Heliconius are the only species known to supplement their adult diet by feeding on pollen." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn

"POLLEN FEEDING is one such dietary specialization that occurs at different developmental stages across herbivorous insect species. Some pollen feeding species feed only as larvae, laying down fat reserves later used for adult nutrition. Others feed as adults, and some as both larvae and adults, to provide a source of nutrition for sexual maturation and body maintenance." https://lnkd.in/essFGXS View in LinkedIn