Spodoptera litura is an important polyphagous pest that causes great damage to agriculture. We performed RNA-seq from 15 individuals of S. litura, including different larval (fifth and sixth instar larvae), chrysalis, and adult developmental stages. We also sequenced the Spodoptera frugiperda to compared with the S. litura. A total of 101,885 differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) were identified in the S. litura. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses indicated that the S. litura may undergo active development and basic metabolism, such as xenobiotic and detoxifying metabolism, during its larvae and adult stages, which explains the difficulty to control it. We also found that DETs of single-copy orthologous genes between S. litura and S. frugiperda were involved in basic metabolism and developmental, but S. litura were highly enriched in energy and metabolic processes, whereas S. frugiperda had stronger nervous and olfactory functions. Metagenomics analysis in larval S. litura and S. frugiperda revealed that microbiota can both participate in the detoxification and metabolism processes in them, but the relative abundance of detoxification-related microbiota was more abundant in S. frugiperda. Transcriptome results also confirmed the detoxification-related pathway of S. frugiperda was more abundant than that of S. litura. Therefore, we can conclude that the detoxification ability of S. frugiperda is stronger than that of in S. litura, which is related to the wide adaptation and strong resistance of S. frugiperda. Our study might provide clues to the development of novel pest control strategies.

The Tibetan macaque (Macaca thibetana) is an endemic macaque species in China belonging to the sinica group in genus Macaca. Here, we report the first chromosome-level genome assembly for the Tibetan macaque using PacBio long-read sequencing and Hi-C technology. The assembled Tibetan macaque genome was 2.82 Gbp in size with contig N50 of 48.75 Mbp and scaffold N50 of 150.62 Mbp, which was anchored to 22 chromosomes. Compared to the chromosome-level genome of rhesus macaque and cynomolgus macaque, the genome size of the Tibetan macaque is the smallest and the assembly quality is the best. A total of 22,485 protein-coding genes and 1.33 Gbp repeat sequences were annotated in the Tibetan macaque genome. Phylogenetic analysis indicated the Tibetan macaque was closely related to the stump-tailed macaque and diverged from a common ancestor 5.06 million years ago. A total of 977 positively selected genes were identified, which were enriched in pathways related to the thyroid, diabetes mellitus, fatty acid biosynthesis and metabolism. Among them, 11 genes associated with tail development and 9 genes associated with body size were found to be under positive selection, which might contribute to short tail and large body size of the Tibetan macaque. The structural variation (SV) analysis between the Tibetan macaque and other macaques identified 6,778 Tibetan macaque-specific SVs. Among them, three deletions and four insertions in six genes might be associated with tail development and body size. The high-quality genome of the Tibetan macaque will benefit further biological and evolutionary studies on primates.