Poster Details
EVOLUTION OF SILK BIOSYNTHESIS AND ASSOCIATED BEHAVIOUR IN CADDISFLIES
Trichoptera exhibit high ecological and species diversity and serve as models for evolution of species and functional diversity. Caddisfly larvae are referred to as underwater architects. Silk secretion and diverse case-making behaviour allows them to exploit a wide variety of ecological niches. We present the draft genome sequence of Plectrocnemia conspersa. This species is of particular ecological interest because of its net-spinning behaviour, aggregation behaviour and its ability to persist in intermittent streams. We compare different de novo hybrid-assembly approaches using both Illumina and Oxford Nanopore reads. The wtdbg2 pipeline performed best concerning genome quality and computing time. The draft assembly comprises 1614 contigs with a cumulative length of 396 Mbp. It exhibits a contig N50 of 868980 and a GC content of 30.1%. The genome contains 94.2% of an Endopterygota core gene collection, indicating an almost complete coverage of the coding fraction. This draft genome will serve as starting point for deep and shallow phylogenomic studies to infer the evolution of silk usage, as well as for comparative genomics of the silk genes and gene expression at deep phylogenetic levels but also among sister taxa with differing silk use.
Jacqueline Heckenhauer (Primary Presenter/Author), LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics; Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, jacqueline.heckenhauer@senckenberg.de;
Deepak Kumar Gupta (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE-TBG); Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany, deepak.gupta@senckenberg.de;
Paul Frandsen (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA, paulbfrandsen@gmail.com;
Stefan Prost (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE-TBG), Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre,Frankfurt, Germany, stefan.prost@senckenberg.de;
Tilman Schell (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE-TBG); Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany, tilman.schell@senckenberg.de;
Julio Schneider (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, julio.schneider@senckenberg.de;
Steffen Pauls (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, steffen.pauls@senckenberg.de;