Fig. 1: Analysis of visual genes shows high conservation within day and night flying Lepidoptera with a DAGL gene duplication in Macrosoma leucophasiata.

Maximum likelihood tree of 20 selected lepidopteran species with high quality genomes, representing seven butterfly and eight moth families (left). The tree was built from 3376 BUSCO single-copy orthologs, and results show 100% support with SH-aLRT and ultrafast bootstrap (black dot at nodes). The diel niche of each species is indicated by orange suns (diurnal) and purple moons (nocturnal). A gene count matrix of phototransduction-related gene families, showing mean gene copy number (right).