Genomic resources forGoniozus legneri,Aleochara bilineataandPaykullia maculata, representing three independent origins of the parasitoid lifestyle in insects

Abstract

Parasitoid insects are important model systems for a multitude of biological research topics and widely used as biological control agents against insect pests. While the parasitoid lifestyle has evolved numerous times in different insect groups, research has focused almost exclusively on Hymenoptera from the parasitica clade. The genomes of several members of this group have been sequenced, but no genomic resources are available from any of the other, independent evolutionary origins of the parasitoid lifestyle. Our aim here was to develop genomic resources for three parasitoid insects outside the parasitica. We present draft genome assemblies for Goniozus legneri, a parasitoid Hymenopteran more closely related to the non-parasitoid wasps and bees than to the parasitica wasps, the Coleopteran parasitoid Aleochara bilineata and the Dipteran parasitoid Paykullia maculata. The genome assemblies are fragmented, but complete in terms of gene content. We also provide preliminary structural annotations. We anticipate that these genomic resources will be valuable for testing the generality of findings obtained from parasitica wasps in future comparative studies.Data availabilityThe Whole Genome Shotgun projects have been deposited at DDBJ/ENA/GenBank under the accessions NCVS00000000 (G. legneri), NBZA00000000 (A. bilineata) and NDXZ00000000 (P. maculata). The versions described in this paper are versions NCVS01000000, NBZA01000000 and NDXZ01000000, respectively. Mapped reads and genome annotations are available through http://parasitoids.labs.vu.nl/parasitoids/. This website also includes genome browsers and viroblast instances for each genome.

Coleoptera genome and transcriptome sequences reveal numerous differences in neuropeptide signaling between species

“…The public genome sequences for sixteen Coleoptera species (Richards et al, 2008; Keeling et al, 2013; Cunningham et al, 2015; Vega et al, 2015; McKenna et al, 2016; Meyer et al, 2016; Tarver et al, 2016; Ando et al, 2018; Fallon et al, 2018; Gautier et al, 2018; Kraaijeveld et al, 2018; Schoville et al, 2018; Van Belleghem et al, 2018a, 2018b; Wu, Li & Chen, 2018) should make it possible to identify their complete neuropeptidomes and answer this question. Given that Tenebrio molitor once was the most studied beetle, as still evidenced by the number of publications that can be retrieved for this species on PubMed, I have added it to the list, even though only transcriptome data are available for this species.…”

The draft genome of the specialist flea beetle Altica viridicyanea (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) provides insight into host plant specialization

“…Consequently, the genome for A. viridicyanea will add to our genomic resources for a monophagous member of the Chrysomelidae. Furthermore, this assembly will also expand our knowledge of beetles in general as we currently have only 21 published beetle genome assemblies [22,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] (Table S1) which is a comparably small number for a diverse insect group with nearly 400,000 described species [34][35][36]. Finally, the high-quality genome assembled here will provide an important resource for further studies on host plant adaptation and functionally a liated genes.…”

Next Generation Biological Control: The Need for Integrating Genetics and Evolution

“…presents a key for deciding which sequencing strategy to use for various cases in biological control, accounting for the current state of technologies and the biology of the species (with examples(Ferguson et al,in preparation b, in preparation c;Kraaijeveld et al, 2019;Paspati et al, 2019).…”