News

We have just published a paper with collaborators in Shanghai demonstrating that the black soldier fly has 5 ILPs (Insulin like proteins). Over expression of ILP2 produced faster growing maggots with higher lipid content - potentially important for the industry. Free link to the paper here.

Tom Generalovic has just published his thesis chapter in GBE describing genetic diversity in the black soldier fly. Divergence between lineages is similar to that between different butterfly species - lots of genetic diversity useful for the insect bioconversion industry. Link to the paper here.

This new paper with a team in York and the Sanger shows use of the same genes in amazonian mimetic butterflies: "Investigating seven butterfly lineages and a day-flying moth, we show that evolution can be surprisingly predictable, with butterflies and moths using the exact same genetic tricks”

We recently posted a preprint on our work in Helicoverpa - demonstrating bidirectional introgression between an invasive and a native pest species in Brazil.

Welcome to our new website!

Well done to Eva on publishing her thesis chapter work in PNAS on Mechanitis and Melinaea genomics - these rapidly radiating and diverse genera are a complex of genome rearrangements and introgression, offering insights into the genomic basis for tropical diversityRead the paper: E.S.M. van der Heijden, K. Näsvall, F.A. Seixas, C.E. Beserra Nobre, …

Congratulations to Henry North on winning the best talk prize at the Department Seminar day this year. Henry presented his work on Helicoverpa both genomics and introgression

Congratulations to Conall Stanforth for winning the Janet Moore prize for supervision teaching in Zoology - which is voted for by the final year students. Well done!!!

The lab will be heavily involved in organising the Black Soldier Fly conference in September 2025 in Cambridge. More details can be found here: https://www.bsfcon.com/

Eva Van Der Heijden successfully defended her this today. Congratulations Eva!