Age-based demography is fundamental to management of wild fish populations. Age estimates for individuals can determine rates of change in key life-history parameters such as length, maturity, mortality and fecundity. These age-based characteristics are critical for population viability analysis in endangered species and for developing sustainable harvest strategies. For teleost fish, age has traditionally

Teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis), the wild progenitor of maize (Zea mays L.), is an important germplasm resource for improvement of modern maize lines. However, we have limited genetic and genomic information about teosinte and lack state-of-the-art tools to annotate transcriptomes assembled by single-molecule long-read sequencing without a reference genome. Here, we employed single-molecule long-read

The contemporary effective population size is important in many disciplines including population genetics, conservation science and pest management. One of the most popular methods of estimating this quantity uses temporal changes in allele frequency due to genetic drift. A significant assumption of the existing methods is the independence among loci while constructing confidence intervals (CI), which

Current knowledge on environmental distribution and taxon richness of free-living bacteria is mainly based on cultivation-independent investigations employing 16S rRNA gene sequencing methods. Yet, 16S rRNA genes are evolutionarily rather conserved, resulting in limited taxonomic and ecological resolutions provided by this marker. The faster evolving protein-encoding gene priB was used to reveal ecological

Previous studies of butterfly diversification in the Neotropics have focused on Amazonia and the tropical Andes, while southern regions of the continent have received little attention. To address the gap in knowledge about the Lepidoptera of temperate South America, we analysed over 3000 specimens representing nearly 500 species from Argentina for a segment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase

Polymorphism for immune functions can explain significant variation in health and reproductive success within species. Drastic loss in genetic diversity at such loci constitutes an extinction risk and should be monitored in species of conservation concern. However, effective implementations of genome-wide immune polymorphism sets into high-throughput genotyping assays are scarce. Here, we report the

Accurate species identification often relies on public repositories to compare the barcode sequences of the investigated individual(s) with taxonomically assigned sequences. However, the accuracy of identifications in public repositories is often questionable, and the names originally given are rarely updated. For instance, species of the Sea Lettuce (Ulva spp.; Ulvophyceae, Ulvales, Ulvaceae) are

Population genetic data can provide valuable information on the demography of a species. For rare and elusive marine megafauna, samples for generating the data are traditionally obtained from tissue biopsies, which can be logistically difficult and expensive to collect and require invasive sampling techniques. Analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) offers an alternative, minimally invasive approach to

Software tools for linkage disequilibrium (LD) analyses are designed to calculate LD among all genetic variants in a single region. Since compute and memory requirements grow quadratically with the distance between variants, using these tools for long-range LD calculations leads to long execution times and increased allocation of memory resources. Furthermore, widely used tools do not fully utilize

We used long read sequencing data generated from Knightia excelsa, a nectar-producing Proteaceae tree endemic to Aotearoa (New Zealand), to explore how sequencing data type, volume and workflows can impact final assembly accuracy and chromosome reconstruction. Establishing a high-quality genome for this species has specific cultural importance to Māori and commercial importance to honey producers in

Anopheles is a diverse genus of mosquitoes comprising over 500 described species, including all known human malaria vectors. While a limited number of key vector species have been studied in detail, the goal of malaria elimination calls for surveillance of all potential vector species. Here, we develop a multilocus amplicon sequencing approach that targets 62 highly variable loci in the Anopheles genome

Sichuan pepper is a commonly used spice in Asian cuisine. Sanshools and wgx-50/gx-50 isolated from it have been shown to possess a wide spectrum of medicinal properties. Here we generated a chromosome-level genome assembly of one Sichuan pepper species Zanthoxylum armatum characterized by drought tolerance and apomixis. Analyses of functionally related genes suggested that increased gene copy number

Molecular methods, including environmental DNA (eDNA) methods, provide essential information for biological and conservation sciences. Molecular measurements are often performed in the laboratory, which limits their scope, especially for rapid on-site analysis. eDNA methods for species detection provide essential information for the management and conservation of species and communities in various

The bean bug (Riptortus pedestris) causes great economic losses of soybeans by piercing and sucking pods and seeds. Although R. pedestris has become the focus of numerous studies associated with insect–microbe interactions, plant–insect interactions, and pesticide resistance, a lack of genomic resources has limited deeper insights. Here, we report the first R. pedestris genome at the chromosomal level

Age is a fundamental parameter in wildlife management as it is used to determine the risk of extinction, manage invasive species, and regulate sustainable harvest. In a broad variety of vertebrates species, age can be determined by measuring DNA methylation. Animals with known ages are initially required during development, calibration, and validation of these epigenetic clocks. However, wild animals

The White Sands pupfish (Cyprinodon tularosa), endemic to New Mexico in Southwestern North America, is of conservation concern due in part to invasive species, chemical pollution, and groundwater withdrawal. Herein, we developed a draft reference genome and use it to provide biological insights into the evolution and conservation of C. tularosa. We used our assembly to localize microsatellite markers

Millions of scientific specimens are housed in museum collections, a large part of which are fluid preserved. The use of formaldehyde as fixative and subsequent storage in ethanol is especially common in ichthyology and herpetology. This type of preservation damages DNA and reduces the chance of successful retrieval of genetic data. We applied ancient DNA extraction and single stranded library construction

Areca palm (Areca catechu L.; family Arecaceae) is an important tropical medicinal crop and is also used for masticatory and religious purposes in Asia. Improvements to areca properties made by traditional breeding tools have been very slow, and further advances in its cultivation and practical use require genomic information, which is still unavailable. Here, we present a chromosome-scale reference

Bioinformatic analysis of eDNA metabarcoding data is a crucial step toward rigorously assessing biodiversity. Many programs are now available for each step of the required analyses, but their relative abilities at providing fast and accurate species lists have seldom been evaluated. We used simulated mock communities and real fish eDNA metabarcoding data to evaluate the performance of 13 bioinformatic

The soybean cyst nematode (Heterodera glycines) is a sedentary plant parasite that exceeds billion USD annually in yield losses. This problem is exacerbated by H. glycines populations overcoming the limited sources of natural resistance in soybean and by the lack of effective and safe alternative treatments. Although there are genetic determinants that render soybeans resistant to nematode genotypes

Molecular identification is increasingly used to speed up biodiversity surveys and laboratory experiments. However, many groups of organisms cannot be reliably identified using standard databases such as GenBank or BOLD due to lack of sequenced voucher specimens identified by experts. Sometimes a large number of sequences are available, but with too many errors to allow identification. Here, we address

Interactions of organisms with their environment are complex and environmental regulation at different levels of biological organization is often non-linear. Therefore, the genotype to phenotype continuum requires study at multiple levels of organization. While studies of transcriptome regulation are now common for many species, quantitative studies of environmental effects on proteomes are needed

Identifying local adaptation in bottlenecked species is essential for conservation management. Selection detection methods have an important role in species management plans, assessments of adaptive capacity, and looking for responses to climate change. Yet, the allele frequency changes exploited in selection detection methods are similar to those caused by the strong neutral genetic drift expected

With the advent of chromatin-interaction maps, chromosome-level genome assemblies have become a reality for a wide range of organisms. Scaffolding quality is, however, difficult to judge. To explore this gap, we generated multiple chromosome-scale genome assemblies of an emerging wild animal model for carcinogenesis, the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus). Short-read assemblies were scaffolded

Whole genome duplication is hypothesized to have played a critical role in the evolution of several major taxa, including vertebrates, and while many lineages have rediploidized, some retain polyploid genomes. Additionally, variation in ploidy can occur naturally or be artificially induced within select plant and animal species. Modern genetic techniques have not been widely applied to polyploid or

The nautilus, commonly known as a “living fossil,” is endangered and may be at risk of extinction. The lack of genomic information hinders a thorough understanding of the biology and evolution of nautilus, which can shed light on the conservation of this endangered species. Here, we report the first high-quality chromosome-level genome assembly of Nautilus pompilius. The assembled genome size comprised

Adaptive genetic variation is a function of both selective and neutral forces. To accurately identify adaptive loci, it is thus critical to account for demographic history. Theory suggests that signatures of selection can be inferred using the coalescent, following the premise that genealogies of selected loci deviate from neutral expectations. Here, we build on this theory to develop an analytical

The discipline of phylogeography has evolved rapidly in terms of the analytical toolkit used to analyse large genomic data sets. Despite substantial advances, analytical tools that could potentially address the challenges posed by increased model complexity have not been fully explored. For example, deep learning techniques are underutilized for phylogeographic model selection. In non-model organisms

The use of genomic and phenotypic data to scan for outliers is a mainstay for studies of hybridization and speciation. Geographic cline analysis of natural hybrid zones is widely used to identify putative signatures of selection by detecting deviations from baseline patterns of introgression. As with other outlier-based approaches, demographic histories can make neutral regions appear to be under selection

Several methods based on the sequentially Markovian coalescent (SMC) make use of full genome sequence data from samples to infer population demographic history including past changes in population size, admixture, migration events and population structure. More recently, the original theoretical framework has been extended to allow the simultaneous estimation of population size changes along with other

Characterization of microbial assemblages via environmental DNA metabarcoding is increasingly being used in routine monitoring programs due to its sensitivity and cost-effectiveness. Several programs have recently been developed which infer functional profiles from 16S rRNA gene data using hidden-state prediction (HSP) algorithms. These might offer an economic and scalable alternative to shotgun metagenomics

Metagenomics can generate data on the diet of herbivores, without the need for primer selection and PCR enrichment steps as is necessary in metabarcoding. Metagenomic approaches to diet analysis have remained relatively unexplored, requiring validation of bioinformatic steps. Currently, no metagenomic herbivore diet studies have utilized both chloroplast and nuclear markers as reference sequences for

Plastid genomes play an important role in genomics and evolutionary biology. Next-generation sequencing has revolutionized plastid genomic data acquisition to the point that genome assembly has become a bottleneck for widespread utilization of plastid genome data. To solve this problem, we developed an open-source, cross-platform tool known as, NOVOWrap, which includes both command-line and graphical

The effective use of metabarcoding in biodiversity science has brought important analytical challenges due to the need to generate accurate taxonomic assignments. The assignment of sequences to genus or species level is critical for biodiversity surveys and biomonitoring, but it is particularly challenging as researchers must select the approach that best recovers information on species composition

Biodiversity knowledge is widely heterogeneous across the Earth's biomes. Some areas, due to their remoteness and difficult access, present large taxonomic knowledge gaps. Mostly located in the tropics, these areas have frequently experienced a fast development of anthropogenic activities during the last decades and are therefore of high conservation concerns. The biodiversity hotspots of Southeast

The hyperdiverse order Coleoptera comprises a staggering ~25% of known species on Earth. Despite recent breakthroughs in next generation sequencing, there remains a limited representation of beetle diversity in assembled genomes. Most notably, the ground beetle family Carabidae, comprising more than 40,000 described species, has not been studied in a comparative genomics framework using whole genome

Simulation-based methods such as approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) are well-adapted to the analysis of complex scenarios of populations and species genetic history. In this context, supervised machine learning (SML) methods provide attractive statistical solutions to conduct efficient inferences about scenario choice and parameter estimation. The Random Forest methodology (RF) is a powerful ensemble

Profiling diverse microbiomes is revolutionizing our understanding of biological mechanisms and ecologically relevant problems, including metaorganism (host + microbiome) assembly, functions and adaptation. Amplicon sequencing of multiple conserved, phylogenetically informative loci has therefore become an instrumental tool for many researchers. Investigations in many systems are hindered, however

Wrasses represent dominant component of major coral reef systems. Among wrasses, Cheilinus undulatus is an endangered species with high economic and ecological value that exhibits sex reversal of female into male, while sexual selection occurs in breeding aggregations. However, the molecular-associated mechanism remains unclear. Opsin gene diversification is regarded as a potent force in sexual selection

Accurate and reliable biodiversity estimates of marine zooplankton are a prerequisite to understand how changes in diversity can affect whole ecosystems. Species identification in the deep sea is significantly impeded by high numbers of new species and decreasing numbers of taxonomic experts, hampering any assessment of biodiversity. We used in parallel morphological, genetic, and proteomic characteristics

Butterfly hillstream loach (Beaufortia kweichowensis), a benthic fish in the torrential mountain streams, possesses a totally flat ventrum, flattened craniofacial and body skeletons, and enlarged paired fins covered by substantially small keratinous structures. However, little is known about the genetic basis of these specialized morphological adaptations. Here we present a 448.52‐Mb genome assembly

We describe an integrative approach to improve contiguity and haploidy of a reference genome assembly and demonstrate its impact with practical examples. With two novel features of Lep‐Anchor software and a combination of dense linkage maps, overlap detection and bridging long reads, we generated an improved assembly of the nine‐spined stickleback (Pungitius pungitius) reference genome. We were able

The Maroni is one of the most speciose basins of the Guianas and hosts a megadiverse freshwater fish community. Although taxonomic references based on morphological identification exist for both the Surinamese and Guianese parts of the basin, there are still taxonomic uncertainties concerning the status of several species. We used COI sequences of 1284 fish in conjunction with morphological and biogeographical

DNA metabarcoding is a popular methodology for biodiversity assessment and increasingly used for community level analysis of intraspecific genetic diversity. The evolutionary history of hundreds of specimens can be captured in a single collection vial. However, the method is not without pitfalls, which may inflate or misrepresent recovered diversity metrics. Numts, nuclear pseudogene copies of mitochondrial

The soil environment contains a large, but historically underexplored, reservoir of biodiversity. Sequencing prokaryotic marker genes has become commonplace for the discovery and characterization of soil bacteria and archaea. Increasingly, this approach is also applied to eukaryotic marker genes to characterize the diversity and distribution of soil eukaryotes. However, understanding the properties

Fungi form diverse communities and play essential roles in many terrestrial ecosystems, yet there are methodological challenges in taxonomic and phylogenetic placement of fungi from environmental sequences. To address such challenges, we investigated spatiotemporal structure of a fungal community using soil metabarcoding with four different sequencing strategies: short‐amplicon sequencing of the ITS2

Microbiome composition data collected through amplicon sequencing are count data on taxa in which the total count per sample (the library size) is an artefact of the sequencing platform, and as a result, such data are compositional. To avoid library size dependency, one common way of analysing multivariate compositional data is to perform a principal component analysis (PCA) on data transformed with

Population genetics relies heavily on simulated data for validation, inference and intuition. In particular, since the evolutionary ‘ground truth’ for real data is always limited, simulated data are crucial for training supervised machine learning methods. Simulation software can accurately model evolutionary processes but requires many hand‐selected input parameters. As a result, simulated data often

Environmental genomics is a promising field for monitoring biodiversity in a timely fashion. Efforts have increasingly been dedicated to the use of bacteria DNA derived data to develop biotic indices for benthic monitoring. However, a substantial debate exists about whether bacteria‐derived data using DNA metabarcoding should follow, for example, a taxonomy‐based or a taxonomy‐free approach to marine

Environmental DNA metabarcoding is a powerful tool for studying biodiversity. However, bioinformatic approaches need to adjust to the diversity of taxonomic compartments targeted as well as to each barcode gene specificities. We built and tested a pipeline based on read correction with DADA2 allowing analysing metabarcoding data from prokaryotic (16S) and eukaryotic (18S, COI) life compartments. We

There are wide genomic and phenotypic differences between Asian and European pig breeds, yet the current reference genome is the European Duroc pig genome. A high‐quality pig genome is lacking for genetic analysis of agricultural traits in Asian pigs. Here, using a hybrid approach, a high‐quality reference genome (MSCAAS v1) for the Asian Meishan breed is assembled with a contig N50 size of 48.05 Mb

Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus, also known as ciwujia) belongs to the Araliaceae family, which contains more than 1,500 species in 41 genera with diverse chromosome numbers and genome sizes. General consensus posits that ancient whole‐genome duplication events and rapid evolutionary radiation are the driving forces for this variation in genome properties. In an attempt to generate more

The Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) is the only fox species occurring in the Arctic and has adapted to its extreme climatic conditions. Currently, the molecular basis of its adaptation to the extreme climate has not been characterized. Here, we applied PacBio sequencing and chromosome structure capture technique to assemble the first V. lagopus genome assembly, which is assembled into chromosome fragments

Manchurian walnut (Juglans mandshurica Maxim.) is a synonym of J. cathayensis, a diploid, vulnerable, temperate deciduous tree valued for its wood and nut. It is also valued as a rootstock for Juglans regia because of its reported tolerance of lesion nematode. Reference genomes are available for several Juglans species, our goal was to produce a de novo, chromosome‐level assembly of the J. mandshurica

DNA barcoding and metabarcoding are now widely used to advance species discovery and biodiversity assessments. High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) has expanded the volume and scope of these analyses, but elevated error rates introduce noise into sequence records that can inflate estimates of biodiversity. Denoising —the separation of biological signal from instrument (technical) noise—of barcode and metabarcode

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has emerged as one of the most efficient methods to assess aquatic species presence. While the method can in theory be used to investigate nonaquatic fauna, its development for inventorying semi‐aquatic and terrestrial fauna is still at an early stage. Here we investigated the potential of aquatic eDNA metabarcoding for inventorying mammals in Neotropical environments

Whilst the global threat to biodiversity is accelerating, recent advances in sequencing and assembly technologies, along with decreasing costs, are ushering in a golden age for biodiversity genomics. In a From the Cover article in this issue of Molecular Ecology Resources, Morin et al. report an exceptionally high‐quality draft genome assembly of the vaquita (Phocoena sinus), a porpoise first described

Animal dietary information provides the foundation for understanding trophic relationships, which is essential for ecosystem management. Yet, in marine systems, high‐resolution diet reconstruction tools are currently under‐developed. This is particularly pertinent for large marine vertebrates, for which direct foraging behaviour is difficult or impossible to observe and, due to their conservation status