Ketchum Remi N, Smith Edward G, Toledo Leandra M, Leach Whitney B, Padillo-Anthemides Natalia, Baxevanis Andreas D, Reitzel Adam M, Ryan Joseph F
Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida, St. Augustine, Florida, USA.
Department of Genetics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
bioRxiv. 2024 Nov 9:2024.10.10.617593. doi: 10.1101/2024.10.10.617593.
Understanding how populations diverge is one of the oldest and most compelling questions in evolutionary biology. An in depth understanding of how this process operates in planktonic marine animals, where barriers for gene flow are seemingly absent, is critical to understanding the past, present, and future of ocean life. plays an important ecological role in its native habitat along the Atlantic coast of the Americas and is highly destructive in its non-native habitats in European waters. Although historical literature described three species of , the lack of stable morphological characters has led to the collapse of this group into a single species, . We generate high-quality reference genomes and use a whole-genome sequencing approach to reveal that there are two species of along its native range and show that historical divergence between the two species coincides with historical glacial melting. We define a hybridization zone between species and highlight that environmental sensing genes likely contribute to the invasive success of . Overall, this study provides insights into the fundamental question of how holopelagic species arise without clear barriers to gene flow and sheds light on the genomic mechanisms important for invasion success in a highly invasive species.
理解种群如何分化是进化生物学中最古老且最具吸引力的问题之一。深入了解这一过程在浮游海洋动物中是如何运作的至关重要，因为在这类动物中似乎不存在基因流动的障碍，这对于理解海洋生物的过去、现在和未来都非常关键。[该物种]在其美洲大西洋沿岸的原生栖息地中发挥着重要的生态作用，而在欧洲水域的非原生栖息地中则具有高度的破坏性。尽管历史文献描述了[该物种]的三个物种，但由于缺乏稳定的形态特征，这个类群已合并为一个单一物种，即[现物种名称]。我们生成了高质量的参考基因组，并采用全基因组测序方法来揭示在其原生范围内存在两种[该物种]，并表明这两个物种之间的历史分化与历史上的冰川融化相吻合。我们定义了物种之间的杂交区域，并强调环境感知基因可能促成了[该物种]的入侵成功。总体而言，这项研究为全浮游物种在没有明显基因流动障碍的情况下如何产生这一基本问题提供了见解，并揭示了对于一个高度入侵性物种入侵成功至关重要的基因组机制。
