On Japan's Ogasawara Islands, lace bugs wrote their family tree in DNA

Japan's remote Ogasawara Islands are oceanic islands whose insects evolved in isolation, and their lace bugs have now yielded new species, identified through genome-wide DNA comparisons. The ZooKeys study untangles how these tiny plant-feeding insects split into new species as they shifted between host plants — a living illustration of evolution branching on islands. Each newly named species sharpens the map of what these protected islands hold.

SDG 15 · Life on land