For hundreds of years, butterfly collecting has often inspired a special kind of fanaticism, spurring lengthy expeditions, sparking rivalries and prompting some collectors to risk their fortunes and ...

Martha Jones: It’s like in those films: if you step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race. The Doctor: Then don’t step on any butterflies. What have butterflies ever done to you?

A unique butterfly breeding experiment gave researchers an opportunity to study the physical and genetic changes underlying the evolution of structural color, responsible for butterflies' iridescent ...

Unravelling the secrets hidden in the DNA of butterflies and moths could help aid nature conservation, transform our understanding of evolution, and uncover new ways of tackling agricultural pests. A ...

Butterflies that independently evolved the same wing patterns have also evolved similar eyes and brains which are fine-tuned for vision in the shifting light of tropical rainforests, according to new ...

Delias sambawana, a butterfly that hails from Indonesia, at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace and phylogeny by Hillis, Zwickl, and Gutell When Akito Kawahara ...

Now scientists have turned the idea on its head, unleashing a riot of changes to butterflies’ wings with a tiny tweak of their DNA. Geneticists have found that a single gene governs surprisingly ...

This process, called "reinforcement", prevents closely related species from interbreeding thus driving them further apart genetically and promoting speciation. Although scientists have speculated ...

Scientists say they have seen one of the fastest evolutionary changes ever observed in a species of butterfly. The tropical blue moon butterfly has developed a way of fighting back against parasitic ...