Rewilded horses in European nature conservation - a genetics, ethics, and welfare perspective.

In recent decades, the integration of horses (Equus ferus) in European rewilding initiatives has gained widespread popularity due to their potential for regulating vegetation and restoring natural ecosystems. However, employing horses in conservation efforts presents important challenges, which we here explore and discuss. These challenges encompass the lack of consensus on key terms inherent to conservation and rewilding, the entrenched culture and strong emotions associated with horses, low genetic diversity and high susceptibility to hereditary diseases in animals under human selection, as well as insufficient consideration for the social behaviour of horses in wild-living populations.

Why Do Some Lineages Radiate While Others Do Not? Perspectives for Future Research on Adaptive Radiations.

Understanding the processes that drive phenotypic diversification and underpin speciation is key to elucidating how biodiversity has evolved. Although these processes have been studied across a wide array of clades, adaptive radiations (ARs), which are systems with multiple closely related species and broad phenotypic diversity, have been particularly fruitful for teasing apart the factors that drive and constrain diversification. As such, ARs have become popular candidate study systems for determining the extent to which ecological features, including aspects of organisms and the environment, and inter- and intraspecific interactions, led to evolutionary diversification.

The history and organization of the Workshop on Population and Speciation Genomics.

With the advent of high-throughput genome sequencing, bioinformatics training has become essential for research in evolutionary biology and related fields. However, individual research groups are often not in the position to teach students about the most up-to-date methodology in the field. To fill this gap, extended bioinformatics courses have been developed by various institutions and provide intense training over the course of two or more weeks.

Supergene origin and maintenance in Atlantic cod.

Supergenes are sets of genes that are inherited as a single marker and encode complex phenotypes through their joint action. They are identified in an increasing number of organisms, yet their origins and evolution remain enigmatic. In Atlantic cod, four megabase-scale supergenes have been identified and linked to migratory lifestyle and environmental adaptations.

Stable species boundaries despite ten million years of hybridization in tropical eels.

Genomic evidence is increasingly underpinning that hybridization between taxa is commonplace, challenging our views on the mechanisms that maintain their boundaries. Here, we focus on seven catadromous eel species (genus Anguilla) and use genome-wide sequence data from more than 450 individuals sampled across the tropical Indo-Pacific, morphological information, and three newly assembled draft genomes to compare contemporary patterns of hybridization with signatures of past introgression across a time-calibrated phylogeny. We show that the seven species have remained distinct for up to 10 million years and find that the current frequencies of hybridization across species pairs contrast with genomic signatures of past introgression.

Assessing SNP-markers to study population mixing and ecological adaptation in Baltic cod.

Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is a species of great ecological and economical importance in the Baltic Sea. Here, two genetically differentiated stocks, the western and the eastern Baltic cod, display substantial mechanical mixing, hampering our understanding of cod ecology and impeding stock assessments and management. Based on whole-genome re-sequencing data from reference samples obtained from the study area, we designed two different panels of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms markers (SNPs), which take into account the exceptional genome architecture of cod.

Disentangling structural genomic and behavioural barriers in a sea of connectivity.

Genetic divergence among populations arises through natural selection or drift and is counteracted by connectivity and gene flow. In sympatric populations, isolating mechanisms are thus needed to limit the homogenizing effects of gene flow to allow for adaptation and speciation. Chromosomal inversions act as an important mechanism maintaining isolating barriers, yet their role in sympatric populations and divergence with gene flow is not entirely understood.

Ticket to spawn: Combining economic and genetic data to evaluate the effect of climate and demographic structure on spawning distribution in Atlantic cod.

Climate warming and harvesting affect the dynamics of species across the globe through a multitude of mechanisms, including distribution changes. In fish, migrations to and distribution on spawning grounds are likely influenced by both climate warming and harvesting. The Northeast Arctic (NEA) cod (Gadus morhua) performs seasonal migrations from its feeding grounds in the Barents Sea to spawning grounds along the Norwegian coast.

Harnessing the Power of Genomics to Secure the Future of Seafood.

Best use of scientific knowledge is required to maintain the fundamental role of seafood in human nutrition. While it is acknowledged that genomic-based methods allow the collection of powerful data, their value to inform fisheries management, aquaculture, and biosecurity applications remains underestimated. We review genomic applications of relevance to the sustainable management of seafood resources, illustrate the benefits of, and identify barriers to their integration.

Genome architecture enables local adaptation of Atlantic cod despite high connectivity.

Adaptation to local conditions is a fundamental process in evolution; however, mechanisms maintaining local adaptation despite high gene flow are still poorly understood. Marine ecosystems provide a wide array of diverse habitats that frequently promote ecological adaptation even in species characterized by strong levels of gene flow. As one example, populations of the marine fish Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) are highly connected due to immense dispersal capabilities but nevertheless show local adaptation in several key traits.

Genomic Differentiation and Demographic Histories of Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Yellowfin Tuna (Thunnus albacares) Populations.

Recent developments in the field of genomics have provided new and powerful insights into population structure and dynamics that are essential for the conservation of biological diversity. As a commercially highly valuable species, the yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) is intensely exploited throughout its distribution in tropical oceans around the world, and is currently classified as near threatened. However, conservation efforts for this species have so far been hampered by limited knowledge of its population structure, due to incongruent results of previous investigations.

Bayesian Phylogenetic Estimation of Clade Ages Supports Trans-Atlantic Dispersal of Cichlid Fishes.

Divergence-time estimation based on molecular phylogenies and the fossil record has provided insights into fundamental questions of evolutionary biology. In Bayesian node dating, phylogenies are commonly time calibrated through the specification of calibration densities on nodes representing clades with known fossil occurrences. Unfortunately, the optimal shape of these calibration densities is usually unknown and they are therefore often chosen arbitrarily, which directly impacts the reliability of the resulting age estimates.

Three chromosomal rearrangements promote genomic divergence between migratory and stationary ecotypes of Atlantic cod.

Identification of genome-wide patterns of divergence provides insight on how genomes are influenced by selection and can reveal the potential for local adaptation in spatially structured populations. In Atlantic cod - historically a major marine resource - Northeast-Arctic- and Norwegian coastal cod are recognized by fundamental differences in migratory and non-migratory behavior, respectively. However, the genomic architecture underlying such behavioral ecotypes is unclear.

How to take autophagy and endocytosis up a notch.

The interconnection of the endocytic and autophagosomal trafficking routes has been recognized more than two decades ago with both pathways using a set of identical effector proteins and sharing the same ultimate lysosomal destination. More recent data sheds light onto how other pathways are intertwined into this network, and how degradation via the endosomal/autophagosomal system may affect signaling pathways in multicellular organisms. Here, we briefly review the common features of autophagy and endocytosis and discuss how other players enter this mix with particular respect to the Notch signaling pathway.

Phylogenetic position and subspecies divergence of the endangered New Zealand Dotterel (Charadrius obscurus).

The New Zealand Dotterel (Charadrius obscurus), an endangered shorebird of the family Charadriidae, is endemic to New Zealand where two subspecies are recognized. These subspecies are not only separated geographically, with C. o.

The lack of autophagy triggers precocious activation of Notch signaling during Drosophila oogenesis.

Background: The proper balance of autophagy, a lysosome-mediated degradation process, is indispensable for oogenesis in Drosophila. We recently demonstrated that egg development depends on autophagy in the somatic follicle cells (FC), but not in the germline cells (GCs). However, the lack of autophagy only affects oogenesis when FCs are autophagy-deficient but GCs are wild type, indicating that a dysfunctional signaling between soma and germline may be responsible for the oogenesis defects.

A combined proteomic and genetic analysis identifies a role for the lipid desaturase Desat1 in starvation-induced autophagy in Drosophila.

Autophagy is a lysosomal-mediated degradation process that promotes cell survival during nutrient-limiting conditions. However, excessive autophagy results in cell death. In Drosophila, autophagy is regulated nutritionally, hormonally and developmentally in several tissues, including the fat body, a nutrient-storage organ.