Abstract
Body segmentation is an essential process in development that occurs simultaneously in some insect species but sequentially in others. Whether these two modes of body segmentation are controlled by the same molecular mechanisms, however, is unclear. In a new study, Leslie Pick and colleagues establish the painted butterfly Vanessa cardui as an emerging model of sequential body segmentation and evaluate the level of evolutionary conservation of body segmentation genes from simultaneously segmenting Drosophila fruit flies, as well as other species. To learn more about this research paper and the people behind it, we talked to first author Ximena Gutiérrez Ramos and corresponding author Leslie Pick, Professor and Chair in the Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, USA.