Diversity in olfactory receptor repertoires is associated with dietary specialization in a genus of frugivorous bat.

ABSTRACT: Mammalian olfactory receptor genes (ORs) are a diverse family of genes encoding proteins that directly interact with environmental chemical cues. ORs evolve via gene duplication in a birth-death fashion, neofunctionalizing and pseudogenizing over time. Olfaction is a primary sense used for food detection in plant-visiting bats, but the relationship between dietary specialization and OR repertoire diversity is unclear. Within neotropical Leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomidae), many lineages are plant specialists, and some have a distinct OR repertoire compared to insectivorous species. Yet, whether specialization on particular plant genera is associated with the evolution of specialized, less diverse OR repertoires has never been tested. Using targeted sequence capture, we sequenced the OR repert

SUBMITTER: Yohe LR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8473985 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature