This shift caused substantial disruption to the vegetation throughout the region and resulted in the establishment of the arid deserts of the American Southwest ( Van Devender 1977 Van Devender and Spaulding 1979 Wells and Woodcock 1985). Around 17,000 years ago, the southwestern United States, which is home to several Neotoma species, experienced a temperature increase as the Late Glacial Cold Stage came to an end.
Though most woodrat species have fairly distinct ranges across the continent, there are a number of known areas where two closely related species come into contact, and reproductively viable individuals can arise when interbreeding occurs in these hybrid zones ( Patton 2007 Shurtliff et al. Woodrats ( Neotoma spp.) comprise the sister genus to Peromyscus deer mice ( Figure 1A), and are endemic to North and Central America ( Hall 1982). By studying woodrats of the genus Neotoma, which have survived just such an event by adapting to a novel and toxic food resource, we can gain insight into the physiological and genetic factors involved in response to climatic changes and overcoming substantial dietary shifts. The effects this will have on the animals that rely on these plants for sustenance – and vertebrate herbivores in particular – are not entirely known, but significant changes in the nutritional profile of available plants are virtually assured. One result that does seem likely, based on analyses of small climate change events over the past few centuries, are vast alterations to vegetation ( Rosenzweig et al. Though these changes will affect virtually every biome in substantial ways over the course of just a few decades, the potential consequences this will have on ecosystems are just beginning to be understood. 2017), and land areas are projected to experience even more severe increases ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2018).
Under optimistic projections, a mean rise of 2☌ over pre-industrial temperatures is expected by the end of the 21 st century ( Raftery et al. Turnover and novelty in detoxification gene islands in herbivores is widespread within distinct p450 subfamilies, and may have provided the crucial substrate for dietary adaptation during environmental change.Ĭlimate change is one of the largest threats currently facing life on Earth. Our assemblies demonstrate that trio binning from an F 1 hybrid rodent effectively recovers parental genomes from species that diverged more than a million years ago. We found that woodrats show expansions of all three p450 gene families, including the evolution of multiple novel gene islands within the 2B and 3A subfamilies. Using these new assemblies, we explored the genomic architecture of three cytochrome p450 subfamilies (2A, 2B, and 3A) that play key roles in the metabolism of naturally occurring toxic dietary compounds. lepida F 1 hybrid, resulting in phased, chromosome-level, highly complete, haploid genome assemblies for each species from one individual. To better understand the genetic mechanisms underlying this ability, we employed a trio binning sequencing approach with a N. lepida) independently achieved a major dietary feat – switching to the novel and toxic food source creosote bush ( Larrea tridentata) – in the aftermath of a natural warming event. Woodrats of the genus Neotoma provide a unique opportunity to study how vertebrate herbivores respond to climate change, as two sister species ( N. The genomic architecture underlying the origins and maintenance of biodiversity is an increasingly accessible feature of species, due in large part to third-generation sequencing and novel analytical toolsets.
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