Phylogenomics resolves major relationships and reveals significant diversification rate shifts in the evolution of silk moths and relatives.
Chris A HamiltonRyan A St LaurentK DexterIan J KitchingJesse W BreinholtAndreas ZwickM J T N TimmermansJesse R BarberAkito Y KawaharaPublished in: BMC evolutionary biology (2019)
Our study establishes a backbone for future evolutionary, comparative, and taxonomic studies of Bombycoidea. We postulate that the rate shifts identified are due to the well-documented bat-moth "arms race". Our research highlights the flexibility of AHE to generate genomic data from a wide range of museum specimens, both age and preservation method, and will allow researchers to tap into the wealth of biological data residing in natural history collections around the globe.