Sami M. Kivelä, Kyung Min Lee, George C. Adamidis, Simona Bonelli, Frederik Hendrickx, Peter Huemer, Tomas Kadlec, Tuomas Kankaanpää, Guillaume Minard, Matthew E. Nielsen, Elena Piano, Toomas Tammaru, Konstantina Zografou and Thomas Merckx
Cities create novel conditions that differ from natural or rural environments, so that special adaptations may be required from individuals that live there. A key question is whether such urban adaptations arise once, and then spread to other cities, or arise repeatedly in different cities. Thomas Merckx, together with a team of international colleagues, studied this in two common European insects: the small heath butterfly and the latticed heath moth. Our analyses suggest that urban adaptations have multiple origins in both species. Yet, the two species’ population histories differ: small heath populations show clear genetic differences, while latticed heath populations are genetically much more similar across Europe.