Lepidoptera suffer critical lack of genetic tools and heritable genome edition has been achieved only in a few model species. Here we demonstrate that the CRISPR/Cas9 system is highly efficient for genome editing in a non-model crop pest Lepidoptera, the noctuid moth Spodoptera littoralis. We knocked-out the olfactory receptor co-receptor Orco gene to investigate its function in Lepidoptera olf...

The loss of species from an ecological community can have cascading effects leading to the extinction of other species. Specialist herbivores are highly diverse and may be particularly susceptible to extinction due to host plant loss. We used a bipartite food web of 900 Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) herbivores and 2403 plant species from Central Europe to simulate the cascading effect of pla...

The external and internal genitalia of Lepidoptera have long provided a wealth of taxonomic and phylogenetic characters. However, traditional genitalia preparation techniques destroy both DNA, which is increasingly being used in Lepidoptera phylogenetics and species discrimination, and the scale pattern of the abdomen. In this paper, we describe a procedure for extracting both DNA for sequence ...

Lepidoptera (moths, butterflies, and caterpillars) are an uncommon cause of adverse reactions in humans. Most reactions to Lepidoptera are mild and self-limited; however, reactions in sensitive individuals and reactions to particular species can be severe and life threatening. Specific syndromes caused by Lepidoptera include erucism (cutaneous reactions from contact with caterpillars, moths, or...

The applicability of mitochondrial nad6 sequences to studies of DNA and population variability in Lepidoptera was tested in four species of economically important moths and one of wild butterflies. The genetic information so obtained was compared to that of cox1 sequences for two species of Lepidoptera. nad6 primers appropriately amplified all the tested DNA targets, the generated data proving ...

Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are becoming model organisms for genetics and evolutionary biology. Decoding the Lepidoptera genomes, both nuclear and mitochondrial, is an essential step in these studies. Here we describe a protocol to assemble mitogenomes from Next Generation Sequencing reads obtained through whole-genome sequencing and report the 15,338 bp mitogenome of Lerema accius. The...

Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) comprise significant portions of the world's natural history collections, but a standardized tissue preservation protocol for molecular research is largely lacking. Lepidoptera have traditionally been spread on mounting boards to display wing patterns and colors, which are often important for species identification. Many molecular phylogenetic studies have us...

A quick guide to the Australian Bogong moth, the nocturnal counterpart of the migratory Monarch butterfly.

Butterflies and moths constitute some of the most popular and charismatic insects. Lepidoptera include approximately 160 000 described species, many of which are important model organisms. Previous studies on the evolution of Lepidoptera did not confidently place butterflies, and many relationships among superfamilies in the megadiverse clade Ditrysia remain largely uncertain. We generated a mo...

We studied a community of frugivorous Lepidoptera in the lowland rainforest of Papua New Guinea. Rearing revealed 122 species represented by 1,720 individuals from 326 woody plant species. Only fruits from 52% (171) of the plant species sampled were attacked. On average, Lepidoptera were reared from 1 in 89 fruits and a kilogram of fruit was attacked by 1.01 individuals. Host specificity of Lep...