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EVOLUTIONARY GENETICS

Metamorphosis of a butterfly inversion

Chromosomal inversions frequently underlie distinct phenotypic variation. A new study shows that in butterflies, inversion haplotypes accumulate deleterious mutations that prevent fixation in natural populations.

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Fig. 1: The evolution of inversion variants in Heliconius numata.

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Correspondence to Clemens Küpper.

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Küpper, C. Metamorphosis of a butterfly inversion. Nat Genet 53, 264–266 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-021-00809-y

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