From whole bodies to single cells: A guide to transcriptomic approaches for ecology and evolutionary biology.

RNA sequencing (RNAseq) methodology has experienced a burst of technological developments in the last decade, which has opened up opportunities for studying the mechanisms of adaptation to environmental factors at both the organismal and cellular level. Selecting the most suitable experimental approach for specific research questions and model systems can, however, be a challenge and researchers in ecology and evolution are commonly faced with the choice of whether to study gene expression variation in whole bodies, specific tissues, and/or single cells. A wide range of sometimes polarised opinions exists over which approach is best.

Germline proliferation trades off with lipid metabolism in .

Little is known about the metabolic basis of life-history trade-offs but lipid stores seem to play a pivotal role. During reproduction, an energetically highly costly process, animals mobilize fat reserves. Conversely, reduced or curtailed reproduction promotes lipid storage in many animals.

An Ancestral Balanced Inversion Polymorphism Confers Global Adaptation.

Since the pioneering work of Dobzhansky in the 1930s and 1940s, many chromosomal inversions have been identified, but how they contribute to adaptation remains poorly understood. In Drosophila melanogaster, the widespread inversion polymorphism In(3R)Payne underpins latitudinal clines in fitness traits on multiple continents. Here, we use single-individual whole-genome sequencing, transcriptomics, and published sequencing data to study the population genomics of this inversion on four continents: in its ancestral African range and in derived populations in Europe, North America, and Australia.