Sensory receptor expansion and neural accommodation in butterfly color vision

Overview

1. Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
2. Halicioğlu Data Science Institute, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
3. Department of Biology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA
4. Department of Genetics and Development, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
5. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA

Abstract

The evolution of complex brains required the incorporation of newly evolved neurons into existing circuits, yet the genetic and developmental mechanisms enabling their integration remain poorly understood. Butterflies expanded their color vision by adding a second R7 photoreceptor per ommatidium, a rare departure from the conserved insect eye ground plan. Because each R7 makes an independent stochastic fate choice, this duplication increased the number of ommatidial types from two to three. We identified the genetic basis of this expansion and demonstrated how the brain accommodates the new input. R7 duplication was achieved by converting R3/4 cells to an R1/6 fate, triggering the R7 recruitment program on both sides of the ommatidium. By manipulating transcription factor expression in Drosophila, we engineered a “butterfly-fly” that recapitulates this ancient R7 duplication and three-type stochastic mosaic. In the fly brain, two R7 subtypes connect to specific types of Dm8 neurons, which are born in excess and undergo apoptosis if they fail to find synaptic partners. In our butterfly-fly model, these surplus Dm8s are immediately rescued and form subtype-appropriate connections. These findings suggest that population-level variation maintains a reservoir of potentially interacting neurons, providing a developmental substrate that allows the brain to immediately accommodate newly evolved neurons.

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Data

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• geo:GSE338277, at NCBI GEO; found in “Data, code, and materials availability:”

Data, code, and materials availability

All data and code needed to evaluate and reproduce the results in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Raw and processed snRNAseq data generated in this study have been deposited in the NCBI GEO under accession no. GSE338277 (https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE338277). Reads were aligned to the V. cardui genome assembly ilVanCard2.1 (NCBI accession no. GCF_905220365.1; https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/genome/GCF_905220365.1/). R scripts used to process, analyze, and visualize the snRNAseq data have been archived on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21811741 and are also available on GitHub (https://github.com/kekebird888/scrnaseq-butterfly). This study generated new antibodies (VcBar, VcRo, VcLz, VcChaoptin, and VcDIP-γ); the sequence information required to produce these antibodies is provided in the Supplementary Materials (table S3). To obtain the antibodies, please contact M.W.P. at , while supplies last.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 1, 9 October 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 9 authors, 4 funders, 53 references.

Cite

This paper

Gao, K., Ainsworth, J., Donati, A., Zhao, Y., Ragsac, M. F., Genduso, C., Andre, Z., Tomlinson, A., & Perry, M. W. (2026). Sensory receptor expansion and neural accommodation in butterfly color vision. Science advances, 12(41), eaei7570.

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