Minghui Jin, Henry L North, Yan Peng, Hangwei Liu, Bo Liu, Ruiqing Pan, Yan Zhou, Weigang Zheng, Kaiyu Liu, Bo Yang, Lei Zhang, Qi Xu, Samia Elfekih, Wendy A Valencia-Montoya, Tom Walsh, Peng Cui, Yongfeng Zhou, Kenneth Wilson, Chris Jiggins, Kongming Wu, Yutao Xiao
The cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera , is set to become the most economically devastating crop pest in the world, threatening food security and biosafety as its range expands across the globe. Key to understanding the eco-evolutionary dynamics of H. armigera , and thus its management, is an understanding of population connectivity and the adaptations that allow the pest to establish in unique environments. We assembled a chromosome-scale reference genome and re-sequenced 503 individuals spanning the species range to delineate global patterns of connectivity, uncovering a previously cryptic population structure...
July 10, 2023: The innovation