Heliconius in Nature

Heliconius numata features on the front page of the Nature web site today. We have published a paper, led by Mathieu Joron, showing how chromosomal rearrangements are associated with a wing patterning supergene. These genomic inversions reduce recombination and therefore maintains a ‘coadapted gene complex’ that allows multiple morphs of the butterfly to mimic different model species. The paper received quite a bit of press coverage.