Scientists from 17 countries study butterflies in the Pirin Mountains

An international entomological expedition near the village of Vlahi in the Kresna Gorgearea has already collected around 300 butterfly species. Their genomes will be sequenced for the first time, said the National Museum of Natural History at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The participants, aged between 12 and 72, include scientists, genomics specialists, conservationists, volunteers and amateur entomologists from 17 European countries. They include representatives from Bulgaria, Sweden, Czechia, Slovakia, Belgium, France, Austria, Poland, Romania, Italy, Germany, Türkiye, Estonia, Serbia, Finland, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The Balkans and Bulgaria are among the regions with high species diversity and endemism, but they remain underrepresented in international DNA and genomic databases. The goal of the large-scale project is to sequence the genomes of all 11,000 butterfly species found in Europe.

The expedition brings together the work of the European scientific network 10kLepGenomes, the pan-European project Psyche and the LepEU consortium. It involves researchers from leading scientific institutions, including Lund University, Stockholm University and the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Edited by Ivo Ivanov

Translated by Kostadin Atanasov