2. Behavioral Biology TALKS - Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft

from neighbouring South Atlantic deep-sea basins. IceAGE aims to combine classical
taxonomic methods with modern aspects of biodiversity research, in particular
phylogeography (population genetics and DNA barcoding) and ecological modelling in
the climatic sensitive region around Iceland. The sampling area is characterised by
several local pecularities like submarine ridges (geographical barriers) and influence
of different water masses of different origin. This allows the analysis of factors
influencing the distribution and migration of species as well as investigation of the
background of biogeographic zonation. The first IceAGE expedition with RV Meteor
(M85/3) took place August/September 2011.
To highlight the promising approaches of the IceAGE-project, examples from isopods
can demonstrate the complexity of the sampling area and show the first steps in
modelling species distribution in Icelandic waters.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Invited speaker 2: Chair – Christoph Bleidorn A 704 / 11:00
Oliver Niehuis (Bonn)
Insect phylogenetics in the era of genomics
Author: Oliver Niehuis 1
Affiliation: 1 Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig Bonn
The evolutionary history of the extant insect orders has received considerable
attention, yet our knowledge of their phylogenetic relationships is far from complete.
Next generation sequencing technology provides new opportunities to study the
phylogeny of insects by analyzing an unparalleled amount of nucleotide characters as
well as new genomic meta-characters. We used whole genome sequencing to infer
the evolutionary origin of twisted-wing parasites (order Strepsiptera) whose
phylogenetic relationship to other endopterygote insects has proven notoriously
difficult to resolve. Using this approach, we were able to study more than 1.7 million
codon sites from approximately 4,500 orthologous and inparalogous genes ? the
largest dataset ever analyzed to resolve the phylogenetic position of Strepsiptera or
any other insect order. We additionally studied near intron pairs and gene order for
phylogenetic reconstruction. In second project (1KITE), we are currently applying
transcriptome sequencing to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of all
remaining insect orders by studying transcriptome nucleotide sequence data from
about 1,000 insect species. I will discuss the challenges that are associated with
studying such a large amount of nucleotide data, with assessing orthology among
transcript sequences (and the role of accurately annotated genomes for doing so),
and I will provide first glimpses on the obtained results. Finally, I will show how
genome and transcriptome nucleotide sequence data can be exploited to aid
targeted amplification of genes of interest in research projects with a more narrow
phylogenetic scope and/or with a limited budget.
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