This project is based on the paper Genomic evidence for panmixia of eastern and western North American migratory monarch butterflies.
Monarch butterflies are known for their spectacular annual migration in eastern North America, with millions of monarchs flying up to 4,500 kilometers to overwintering sites in central Mexico. Monarchs also live west of the Rocky Mountains, where they travel shorter distances to overwinter along the Pacific Coast. It is often assumed that eastern and western monarchs form distinct evolutionary units that require specific protection, but genomic studies to support this notion are lacking. This paper focuses on evaluation of flight performance of these butterflies and also a genetic analysis of the difference between the two species Eastern Monarchs and Western Monarchs.
Talla, Venkat, et al. “Genomic Evidence for Gene Flow between Monarchs with Divergent Migratory Phenotypes and Flight Performance.” Molecular Ecology, vol. 29, no. 14, 2020, pp. 2567–2582
This project is end to end executable, which can be executed by running the R/00_doit.R file via the command line or in RStudio. It produces several plots which are available in results/plots/ and also an ioslides presentation doc/Group_7.Rmd