Dataset Information

Museum genomics reveals the Xerces blue butterfly (Glaucopsyche xerces) was a distinct species driven to extinction.

ABSTRACT: The last Xerces blue butterfly was seen in the early 1940s, and its extinction is credited to human urban development. This butterfly has become a North American icon for insect conservation, but some have questioned whether it was truly a distinct species, or simply an isolated population of another living species. To address this question, we leveraged next-generation sequencing using a 93-year-old museum specimen. We applied a genome skimming strategy that aimed for the organellar genome and high-copy fractions of the nuclear genome by a shallow sequencing approach. From these data, we were able to recover over 200 million nucleotides, which assembled into several phylogenetically informative markers and the near-complete mitochondrial genome. From our phylogenetic analyses and haplotype network analysis we conclude that the Xerces blue butterfly was a distinct species driven to extinction.

SUBMITTER: Grewe F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8292013 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Museum genomics reveals the Xerces blue butterfly (<i>Glaucopsyche xerces</i>) was a distinct species driven to extinction.

Grewe Felix F Kronforst Marcus R MR Pierce Naomi E NE Moreau Corrie S CS

Biology letters 20210721 7

The last Xerces blue butterfly was seen in the early 1940s, and its extinction is credited to human urban development. This butterfly has become a North American icon for insect conservation, but some have questioned whether it was truly a distinct species, or simply an isolated population of another living species. To address this question, we leveraged next-generation sequencing using a 93-year-old museum specimen. We applied a genome skimming strategy that aimed for the organellar genome and ...[more]

PMID: 34283930

Similar Datasets

Project description:Resistance genes play an important role in the defense of plants against the invasion of pathogens. In Setaria italica and closely related grass species, R genes have been identified through genetic mapping and genome-wide homologous/domain searching. However, there has been to date no systematic analysis of the evolutionary features of R genes across all sequenced grass genomes. Here, we determined and comprehensively compared R genes in all 12 assembled grass genomes and an outgroup species (Arabidopsis thaliana) through synteny and selection analyses of multiple genomes. We found that the two groups of nucleotide binding site (NBS) domains containing R genes-R tandem duplications (TD) and R singletons-adopted different strategies and showed different features in their evolution. Based on Ka/Ks analysis between syntenic R loci pairs of TDs or singletons, we conclude that R singletons are under stronger purifying selection to be conserved among different grass species than R TDs, while R genes located at TD arrays have evolved much faster through diversifying selection. Furthermore, using the variome datasets of S. italica populations, we scanned for selection signals on genes and observed that a part of R singleton genes have been under purifying selection in populations of S. italica, which is consistent with the pattern observed in syntenic R singletons among different grass species. Additionally, we checked the synteny relationships of reported R genes in grass species and found that the functionally mapped R genes for novel resistance traits are prone to appear in TDs and are heavily divergent from their syntenic orthologs in other grass species, such the black streak R gene Rxo1 in Z. mays and the blast R gene Pi37 in O. sativa. These findings indicate that the R genes from TDs adopted tandem duplications to evolve faster and accumulate more mutations to facilitate functional innovation to cope with variable threats from a fluctuating environment, while R singletons provide a way for R genes to maintain sequence stability and retain conservation of function.

Dataset Information

Museum genomics reveals the Xerces blue butterfly (Glaucopsyche xerces) was a distinct species driven to extinction.

Publications

Museum genomics reveals the Xerces blue butterfly (<i>Glaucopsyche xerces</i>) was a distinct species driven to extinction.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets