Previous studies have reported that chromosome synteny in Lepidoptera has been well conserved, yet the number of haploid chromosomes varies widely from 5 to 223. Here we report the genome (393 Mb) of the Glanville fritillary butterfly (Melitaea cinxia; Nymphalidae), a widely recognized model species in metapopulation biology and eco-evolutionary research, which has the putative ancestral karyotype of n ¼ 31. Using a phylogenetic analyses of Nymphalidae and of other Lepidoptera, combined with orthologue-level comparisons of chromosomes, we conclude that the ancestral lepidopteran karyotype has been n ¼ 31 for at least 140 My. We show that fusion chromosomes have retained the ancestral chromosome segments and very few rearrangements have occurred across the fusion sites. The same, shortest ancestral chromosomes have independently participated in fusion events in species with smaller karyotypes. The short chromosomes have higher rearrangement rate than long ones. These characteristics highlight distinctive features of the evolutionary dynamics of butterflies and moths.

Photoassimilates such as sugars are transported through phloem sieve element cells in plants. Adapted for effective transport, sieve elements develop as enucleated living cells. We used electron microscope imaging and three-dimensional reconstruction to follow sieve element morphogenesis in Arabidopsis. We show that sieve element differentiation involves enucleation, in which the nuclear contents are released and degraded in the cytoplasm at the same time as other organelles are rearranged and the cytosol is degraded. These cellular reorganizations are orchestrated by the genetically redundant NAC domain-containing transcription factors, NAC45 and NAC86 (NAC45/86). Among the NAC45/86 targets, we identified a family of genes required for enucleation that encode proteins with nuclease domains. Thus, sieve elements differentiate through a specialized autolysis mechanism.

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Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

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Metabarcoding of vertebrate DNA derived from carrion flies has been proposed as a promising tool for biodiversity monitoring. To evaluate its efficacy, we conducted metabarcoding surveys of carrion flies on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, which has a well-known mammal community, and compared our results against diurnal transect counts and camera trapping. We collected 1,084 flies in 29 sampling days, conducted metabarcoding with mammal-specific (16S) and vertebrate-specific (12S) primers, and sequenced amplicons on Illumina MiSeq. For taxonomic assignment, we compared blast with the new program protax, and we found that protax improved species identifications. We detected 20 mammal, four bird, and one lizard species from carrion fly metabarcoding, all but one of which are known from BCI. Fly metabarcoding detected more mammal species than concurrent transect counts (29 sampling days, 13 species) and concurrent camera trapping (84 sampling days, 17 species), and detected 67% of the number of mammal species documented by 8 years of transect counts and camera trapping combined, although fly metabarcoding missed several abundant species. This study demonstrates that carrion fly metabarcoding is a powerful tool for mammal biodiversity surveys and has the potential to detect a broader range of species than more commonly used methods.

Summary• Mosses (Bryophyta) are nonvascular plants that constitute a large part of the photosynthesizing biomass and carbon storage on Earth. Little is known about how this important portion of flora maintains its health status. This study assessed whether the moss, Physcomitrella patens, responds to treatment with chitosan, a fungal cell wall-derived compound inducing defense against fungal pathogens in vascular plants.• Application of chitosan to liquid culture of P. patens caused a rapid increase in peroxidase activity in the medium. For identification of the peroxidase(s), matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF)/MS, other methods and the whole-genome sequence of P. patens were utilized. Peroxidase gene knock-out mutants were made and inoculated with fungi.• The peroxidase activity resulted from a single secreted class III peroxidase (Prx34) which belonged to a P. patens specific phylogenetic cluster in analysis of the 45 putative class III peroxidases of P. patens and those of Arabidopsis and rice. Saprophytic and pathogenic fungi isolated from another moss killed the Prx34 knockout mutants but did not damage wild-type P. patens.• The data point out the first specific host factor that is pivotal for pathogen defense in a nonvascular plant. Furthermore, results provide conclusive evidence that class III peroxidases in plants are needed in defense against hostile invasion by fungi.