{"id":572629,"date":"2026-01-21T15:02:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T18:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=572629"},"modified":"2026-01-21T15:02:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T18:02:24","slug":"meeting-and-separation-among-butterflies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/meeting-and-separation-among-butterflies\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting and separation among butterflies"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_572634\" style=\"max-width: 1150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright vertical\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-572634 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/RPF-notas-borboleta-melinaea-ludovica-2025-09-1140.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1140\" height=\"715\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/RPF-notas-borboleta-melinaea-ludovica-2025-09-1140.jpg 1140w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/RPF-notas-borboleta-melinaea-ludovica-2025-09-1140-250x157.jpg 250w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/RPF-notas-borboleta-melinaea-ludovica-2025-09-1140-700x439.jpg 700w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/RPF-notas-borboleta-melinaea-ludovica-2025-09-1140-120x75.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1140px) 100vw, 1140px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">Andr\u00e9 Freitas \/ UNICAMP <\/span><em>Melinaea ludovica<\/em>, a species found in the forests of Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru<span class=\"media-credits\">Andr\u00e9 Freitas \/ UNICAMP <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Genome sequencing of butterflies from the <em>Melinaea<\/em> and <em>Mechanitis<\/em> genera is revealing the factors behind species diversification. An international group of researchers found that some species arose through hybridization\u2014a process that increased genetic variation\u2014and later became reproductively isolated from their ancestors. Part of this process is identified by differences between species in mitochondrial DNA, of maternal origin, and the nuclear genome. The divergence of species occurred rapidly over less than 2 million years, through chromosomal fusions and fissions. \u201cWe still don\u2019t know why this rearrangement occurs more frequently in this group of butterflies, but we observed a significant variation in the number of chromosomes,\u201d says biologist Andr\u00e9 Freitas of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), coauthor of the study. Even if they are genetically close, two species with different sets of chromosomes cannot produce offspring when they interbreed (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2410939122\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>PNAS<\/em><\/a>, July 28).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Genome sequencing of butterflies reveals factors behind species diversification","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1651],"tags":[206,231,237],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-572629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","tag-biodiversity","tag-evolution","tag-genetics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":572638,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572629\/revisions\/572638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572629"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=572629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}