Project description:How widespread ecological communities assemble remains a key question in ecology. Trophic interactions between widespread species may reflect a shared population history or ecological fitting of local pools of species with very different population histories. Which scenario applies is central to the stability of trophic associations and the potential for coevolution between species. Here we show how alternative community assembly hypotheses can be discriminated using whole-genome data for component species and provide a likelihood framework that overcomes current limitations in formal comparison of multispecies histories. We illustrate our approach by inferring the assembly history of a Western Palearctic community of insect herbivores and parasitoid natural enemies, trophic groups that together comprise 50% of terrestrial species. We reject models of codispersal from a shared origin and of delayed enemy pursuit of their herbivore hosts, arguing against herbivore attainment of "enemy-free space." The community-wide distribution of species expansion times is also incompatible with a random, neutral model of assembly. Instead, we reveal a complex assembly history of single- and multispecies range expansions through the Pleistocene from different directions and over a range of timescales. Our results suggest substantial turnover in species associations and argue against tight coevolution in this system. The approach we illustrate is widely applicable to natural communities of nonmodel species and makes it possible to reveal the historical backdrop against which natural selection acts.
Project description:We used an approach combining PacBio data and published Illumina reads to de novo assemble D. busckii contigs. We generated Hi-C data from D. busckii embryos to order these contigs into chromosome-length scaffolds. For D. virilis we generated Hi-C data to order and orient the published Dvir_caf1 scaffolds into chromosome-length assemblies. Furthermore, we compared Hi-C matrices from these two new assemblies with D. melanogaster with respect to synteny blocks and dosage compensation as a chromosome-wide gene-regulatory mechanism.
Project description:We used an approach combining PacBio data and published Illumina reads to de novo assemble D. busckii contigs. We generated Hi-C data from D. busckii embryos to order these contigs into chromosome-length scaffolds. For D. virilis we generated Hi-C data to order and orient the published Dvir_caf1 scaffolds into chromosome-length assemblies. Furthermore, we compared Hi-C matrices from these two new assemblies with D. melanogaster with respect to synteny blocks and dosage compensation as a chromosome-wide gene-regulatory mechanism.
Project description:The human reference genome is used extensively in modern biological research. However, a single consensus representation is inadequate to provide a universal reference structure because it is a haplotype among many in the human population. Using 10× Genomics (10×G) "Linked-Read" technology, we perform whole genome sequencing (WGS) and de novo assembly on 17 individuals across five populations. We identify 1842 breakpoint-resolved non-reference unique insertions (NUIs) that, in aggregate, add up to 2.1?Mb of so far undescribed genomic content. Among these, 64% are considered ancestral to humans since they are found in non-human primate genomes. Furthermore, 37% of the NUIs can be found in the human transcriptome and 14% likely arose from Alu-recombination-mediated deletion. Our results underline the need of a set of human reference genomes that includes a comprehensive list of alternative haplotypes to depict the complete spectrum of genetic diversity across populations.