Marius F. Maurstad

Genome of the green-head ant, Rhytidoponera metallica, reveals mechanisms of toxin evolution in a genetically hyper-diverse eusocial species - Genome Biology Background While ants are textbook examples of eusocial animals in which altruistic behavior is maintained through kin selection, several ants form genetically diverse colonies that challenge this concept. One example is the Australian green-head ant (Rhytidoponera metallica) whose colonies harbor such extreme genetic variation that they have been speculated to represent an unstable form of eusociality. Yet, R. metallica is among the most successful ants on the Australian subcontinent. This success has been hypothesized to be partly due to the diverse venoms harbored within each colony. However, the genomic basis and evolutionary scenarios that maintain this toxin diversity remain unknown. Results To examine toxin genomic architecture, quantify individual-level genetic variation, and identify both proximate and ultimate mechanisms that have facilitated the toxin diversity in R. metallica, we generate a high-quality draft genome from a single worker. Most ectatotoxin genes are in clusters that contain evidence of multiple, complex gene-family expansions, some of which are likely explained by the presence of transposable elements. We also show that toxin regions of the genome exhibit elevated genetic variation despite being under strong selection and that this variation can translate to phenotypic diversity through toxin alleles with different functional properties. Conclusions Taken together, our results point to classical gene duplication and diversification as the main evolutionary mechanism by which the main toxin family in ant venoms evolves, suggest toxin-gene functional diversification under frequency-dependent selection maintains colony-level venom hypervariability in R. metallica, and provide new insight into the role of multi-level selection in eusocial animals.

New publication: "Genome of the green-head ant, #Rhytidoponera metallica, reveals mechanisms of toxin evolution in a genetically hyper-diverse eusocial species" with Isaksen, Nachtigall, Araya, Hansen & Undheim from @biovitenskap.bsky.social
Published in Genome Biology by @springernature.com

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

Crazy discovery in ants 🤯🐜

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants | Nature
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago."

Regjeringen med storsatsing i Arktis: Vil bruke en milliard på polarforskning Norge skal fortsatt være en av verdens fremste polarforskningsnasjoner. Det er viktig for å ivareta Norges sikkerhet og geopolitiske interesser, og for å håndtere og forstå raske klimaendringer. Derfo...

Regjeringen gir 1 milliard kroner til polarforskning og forskningsprosjektet #Polarhavet2050, hvor Universitetet i Oslo er én av fjorten partnere. Dette blir spennende!
@jentoft.bsky.social

Chromosomal Inversions Mediated by Tandem Insertions of Transposable Elements Abstract. Chromosomal inversions play a crucial role in evolution by influencing phenotypes through the linkage of coadapted alleles. While inversions have

Our paper is now published in GBE!

We find that transposable elements (likely) facilitated several large chromosomal inversions in Atlantic cod.

So proud of the work by our team!

doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

Chromosomal Inversions Mediated by Tandem Insertions of Transposable Elements Abstract. Chromosomal inversions play a crucial role in evolution by influencing phenotypes through the linkage of coadapted alleles. While inversions have

@robinaraya.bsky.social @naturalselection.bsky.social @kjetillsj.bsky.social et al. investigate TEs in four large inversions in Atlantic cod - TEs accumulate in breakpoints, suggesting they drive inversions through ectopic recombination.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf131

#genome #evolution #TEsky

Chromosomal Inversions Mediated by Tandem Insertions of Transposable Elements Abstract. Chromosomal inversions play a crucial role in evolution by influencing phenotypes through the linkage of coadapted alleles. While inversions have

🆕 ✨ New publication out:

Chromosomal Inversions Mediated by Tandem Insertions of Transposable Elements

We find that transposable elements are the likely mechanism of (some) inversions in cod fishes!

academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

Chromosomal Inversions Mediated by Tandem Insertions of Transposable Elements Abstract. Chromosomal inversions play a crucial role in evolution by influencing phenotypes through the linkage of coadapted alleles. While inversions have

Presence of DNA transposons in the breakpoints of the inverted genotype in Atlantic cod - perhaps also the case for many other species? Great to see this finally out academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

A century of anthropogenic perturbations impact genomic signatures of the iconic migratory Atlantic cod Retrospective assessment of the iconic migratory Atlantic cod uncovers human-induced genome-wide changes during the last century.

Finally is this story out public!! With an amazing historical dataset from IMR (@havforskningsinstituttet) we demonstrate how human perturbations impact the genomic signal in one of the largest cod stocks in the world: the northeast arctic cod | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Phosphaenus hemipterus - one of only 3 firefly species in Czech Republic with both sexes flightless! Was lucky enough to find pupae a while back and now they're already mating in my setup. Fingers crossed for eggs!

PhD Research Fellow in functional genomics (274518) | University of Oslo Job title: PhD Research Fellow in functional genomics (274518), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Friday, February 28, 2025

We have a PhD position available at the Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo to work on peptide signaling in plants and insects. Please share.

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

New paper out 📝✨

"k-mer approaches for biodiversity genomics"

We discuss k-mer spectra, sex determination, allopolyploid subgenome separation, among other topics - and offer a large tutorial list

Link to paper:
genome.cshlp.org/content/earl...

Link to all tutorials:
github.com/KamilSJaron/...

WASTER: Practical de novo phylogenomics from low-coverage short reads The advent of affordable whole-genome sequencing has spurred numerous large-scale projects aimed at inferring the tree of life, yet achieving a complete species-level phylogeny remains a distant goal ...

WASTER’s ability to accurately estimate trees from low-coverage sequencing data without relying on assembly and alignment will lead to substantially reduced sequencing and computational costs in phylogenomic projects. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #genomics #evolution #phylogeny

Short tandem repeats delineate gene bodies across eukaryotes Nature Communications - Despite the abundance of simple repeats in eukaryote genomes, their spatial distribution is largely unknown across taxa. Here, the authors show that repeats accumulate...

New publication: "Short tandem repeats delineate gene bodies across #eukaryotes" with William Reinar, Anders Krabberød, Vilde Lalun @vildeol.bsky.social, Melinka Butenko @melinkab.bsky.social, Kjetill Jakobsen.
Published in Nature Communications @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PhD student in Evolution of Indo-Pacific birds The Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics is offering a four-year PhD position focused on analyzing population-level genomic data from museum bird samples. The project will employ cutting-edge gen...

[please share widely!]

We have two PhD positions available at the Swedish Museum of Natural History:

[Position 1] Birds, hybridization, genomes, island biology, biogeography, sexual selection 🦚, w/ me, Knud Jønsson, Martin Iredstedt and @stelkens.bsky.social et al
recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a...

🚨 Revolutionising Snakebite Treatments with AI-Designed Proteins 🐍

I'm proud to share our latest study published in hashtag#Nature, driven by Susana Vazquez Torres, and co-led by David Baker (Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington) and myself.

Chromosomal inversions mediated by tandem insertions of transposable elements Chromosomal inversions play a crucial role in evolution by influencing phenotypes through the linkage of co-adapted alleles. While inversions have been found across a large number of taxa, mapping and...

Very happy to share our new paper that just came out: “Chromosomal inversions mediated by tandem insertions of transposable elements”
#TEsky #Transposons

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ops - forgot the key words: #TEsky #Transposable #TEs #repeats #genome #genomics

Chromosomal inversions mediated by tandem insertions of transposable elements Chromosomal inversions play a crucial role in evolution by influencing phenotypes through the linkage of co-adapted alleles. While inversions have been found across a large number of taxa, mapping and...

We have a new paper out!

"Chromosomal inversions mediated by tandem insertions of transposable elements." 📝 🧬

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Chromosomal inversions mediated by tandem insertions of transposable elements https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.09.631634v1

Comparison of whole-genome assemblies of European river lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis) and brook lamprey (Lampetra planeri) We present haplotype-resolved whole-genome assemblies from two individuals of the sister species the European river lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis) and the brook lamprey (Lampetra planeri). The genome ...

Chromosome level reference genomes of river and brook lamprey (Lampreta fluvatilis and L. planeri) indicating a species complex: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

‘A place of joy’: why scientists are joining the rush to Bluesky Researchers say the social-media platform — an alternative to X — offers more control over the content they see and the people they engage with.: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03784-6

There are already many articles for which there is more attention on Bluesky than on other comparable micro-blogging sites, meaning the academic community and the general public have clearly adopted Bluesky as one of its core places to disseminate and discuss new research.

A Place of Joy.

Dry shipper! I've flown with one within Europe. I recommend getting a backpack for it, as the larger ones can be quite difficult to carry.

📝 Consistent accumulation of transposable elements in species of the Hawaiian Tetragnatha spiny-leg adaptive radiation across the archipelago chronosequence

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thread!