Nature Communications (Sep 2018)

Repeated inversions within a pannier intron drive diversification of intraspecific colour patterns of ladybird beetles

  • Toshiya Ando,
  • Takeshi Matsuda,
  • Kumiko Goto,
  • Kimiko Hara,
  • Akinori Ito,
  • Junya Hirata,
  • Joichiro Yatomi,
  • Rei Kajitani,
  • Miki Okuno,
  • Katsushi Yamaguchi,
  • Masaaki Kobayashi,
  • Tomoyuki Takano,
  • Yohei Minakuchi,
  • Masahide Seki,
  • Yutaka Suzuki,
  • Kentaro Yano,
  • Takehiko Itoh,
  • Shuji Shigenobu,
  • Atsushi Toyoda,
  • Teruyuki Niimi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06116-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

Read online

The harlequin ladybird beetle, Harmonia axyridis, has remarkable phenotypic diversity, with over 200 colour patterns. Here, Ando et al. show that this patterning is regulated by the transcription factor gene pannier and has diversified by repeated inversions and cis-regulatory modifications of pannier.