Back

Multiple evolutionary events in host plant adaptation in Lepidoptera

Luo, M.; Li, B.; Ma, L.; Jia, Z.; Shi, Z.; Liu, H.; Wang, Z.; Zhang, B.; Yu, S.; Qi, J.; Xiao, Y.; Zhou, S.; Chung, H.; Wang, G.

2025-04-09 evolutionary biology
10.1101/2025.04.05.647383 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The evolution of insect host adaptation is a key component of insect-plant coevolution, a complex process often shaped by multiple evolutionary events. In this study, we identified two UDP-glycosyltransferase (UGT) genes, SfruUGT33T10 and SfruUGT33F32, in the fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda, which play critical roles in the tolerance of benzoxazinoids (BXs), secondary metabolites in maize. These two detoxification enzymes exhibited distinct glycosylation patterns for BXs and varying detoxification efficiencies, reflecting independent evolutionary trajectories. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that SfruUGT33T10 originated independently within Noctuidae, while SfruUGT33F32 resulted from tandem duplication within the UGT33F gene family and may have undergone neofunctionalization within the Spodoptera genus. Our findings provide evidence that the evolution of these two UGT paralogs contributed to the variation in the tolerance to maize BXs among different Lepidopteran species. This research underscores the significance of multiple independent evolutionary routes in host plant adaptation and offer new insights into the complex evolutionary processes underlying insect-plant interactions.

Published in Plant, Cell & Environment · training set

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.