Abstract
The vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster is a pivotal model for invertebrate development, genetics, physiology, neuroscience, and disease. The whole family Drosophilidae, which contains over 4,400 species, offers a plethora of cases for comparative and evolutionary studies. Despite a long history of phylogenetic inference, many relationships remain unresolved among the genera, subgenera, and species groups in the Drosophilidae. To clarify these relationships, we first developed a set of new genomic markers and assembled a multilocus data set of 17 genes from 704 species of Drosophilidae. We then inferred a species tree with highly supported groups for this family. Additionally, we were able to determine the phylogenetic position of some previously unplaced species. These results establish a new framework for investigating the evolution of traits in fruit flies, as well as valuable resources for systematics.
Highlights
The vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster is a well-established and versatile model system in biology (Hales et al 2015)
The story began at the start of the 20th century when the entomologist Charles Woodworth bred D. melanogaster in captivity, paving the way to William Castle’s seminal work at Harvard in 1901 (Sturtevant 1959)
We assembled a multilocus data set of 17 genes (14,961 unambiguously aligned nucleotide positions) from 704 species of Drosophilidae
Summary
The vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster is a well-established and versatile model system in biology (Hales et al 2015). More than 150 genomes of Drosophila species are sequenced (Adams et al 2000; Clark et al 2007; Wiegmann and Richards 2018; Kim et al 2021), allowing the comparative investigation of gene families (Sackton et al 2007; Almeida et al 2014; Finet et al 2019) as well as global comparison of genome organization (Bosco et al 2007; Bhutkar et al 2008) For all these studies, a clear understanding of the historical relationships between species is necessary to interpret the results in an evolutionary context. Our results establish a new framework for investigating the systematics and diversification of fruit flies and provide a valuable genomic resource for the Drosophila community
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