Abstract
BackgroundThe blood-feeding behavior evolved multiple times in Insecta lineages and it represents an excellent opportunity to study patterns of convergent molecular evolution regarding this habit. In insects the expansion of some gene families is linked with blood-feeding behavior, but a wide study comparing the evolution of these gene families among different lineages is still missing. Here we gathered genomic data from six independently-evolved hematophagous lineages, aiming to identify convergent expansions and/or contractions of gene families in hematophagous lineages of insects.ResultsWe found four rapidly evolving gene families shared by at least two hematophagous independently-evolved lineages, including a heat-shock and a chemosensory protein. On the expression of these four rapidly evolving gene families we found more genes expressed in mated individuals compared with virgin individuals in rapidly-expanded families and more genes expressed in non-blood-feeding individuals compared with blood-feeding individuals in rapidly-contracted families.ConclusionOur results reveal a new set of candidate genes to be explored in further analysis to help the development of new strategies to deal with blood-feeding vectors and also presents a new perspective to study the evolution of hematophagy identifying convergent molecular patterns.
Highlights
The blood-feeding behavior evolved multiple times in Insecta lineages and it represents an excellent opportunity to study patterns of convergent molecular evolution regarding this habit
We found four of such gene families: rapid expansions in a small heat shock protein Small heat shock protein HSP20 (HSP20) (EOG090W0E1I) and in a carboxylesterase (EOG090W022L), and rapid contractions in a transmembrane protein (EOG090W0LR7) and in an odorant-binding protein (EOG090W0JL7) (Table 1), but only the HSP20 showed a convergent pattern of expansion considering a non-hematophagous ancestor
In this work, we investigated the evolution of gene families as a first approach to identify convergent evolution in blood-feeding insects
Summary
The blood-feeding behavior evolved multiple times in Insecta lineages and it represents an excellent opportunity to study patterns of convergent molecular evolution regarding this habit. Hematophagy, or the habit of blood-feeding, is a widespread feeding behavior, being found in several groups like insects, fishes, mammals, and birds [1]. Several of these hematophagous species are able to transmit viruses, bacteria, and parasites during the blood-feeding behavior, which are harmful to the host, causing huge economic loss and health impacts on humans and animals. The main group responsible for vector-borne diseases is the class Insecta, where hematophagy independently evolved multiple times [4, 5]. To better understand the basis of insects’ hematophagy, different approaches have been employed in many fields of science, e.g. animal behavior [6], ecology [7], biochemistry [8] and genomics [9, 10]
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