RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Evolutionary dynamics of genome size and content during the adaptive radiation of Heliconiini butterflies
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.08.12.503723
DO 10.1101/2022.08.12.503723
A1 Francesco Cicconardi
A1 Edoardo Milanetti
A1 Erika C. Pinheiro de Castro
A1 Anyi Mazo-Vargas
A1 Steven M. Van Belleghem
A1 Angelo Alberto Ruggieri
A1 Pasi Rastas
A1 Joseph Hanly
A1 Elizabeth Evans
A1 Chris D Jiggins
A1 W Owen McMillan
A1 Riccardo Papa
A1 Daniele Di Marino
A1 Arnaud Martin
A1 Stephen H Montgomery
YR 2023
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/05/23/2022.08.12.503723.1.abstract
AB Heliconius butterflies, a speciose genus of Müllerian mimics, represent a classic example of an adaptive radiation that includes a range of derived dietary, life history, physiological and neural traits. However, key lineages within the genus, and across the broader Heliconiini tribe, lack genomic resources, limiting our understanding of how adaptive and neutral processes shaped genome evolution during their radiation. We have generated highly contiguous genome assemblies for nine new Heliconiini, 29 additional reference-assembled genomes, and improve 10 existing assemblies. Altogether, we provide a major new dataset of annotated genomes for a total of 63 species, including 58 species within the Heliconiini tribe. We use this extensive dataset to generate a robust and dated heliconiine phylogeny, describe major patterns of introgression, explore the evolution of genome architecture, and the genomic basis of key innovations in this enigmatic group, including an assessment of the evolution of putative regulatory regions at the Heliconius stem. Our work illustrates how the increased resolution provided by such dense genomic sampling improves our power to generate and test gene-phenotype hypotheses, and precisely characterize how genomes evolve.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.