12.10.2023

Preprint alert! you can find it here. Absolutely crazy inversion landscape in spruce bark beetle. The first preprint from our team. Special congratulations to Anastasiia and Piotr and many thanks to all the people who contributed!

We examine genome-wide variation in the spruce bark beetle Ips typographus, scan for polymorphic inversions, and test whether inversions are involved in key adaptations in this species. We identified 27 polymorphic inversions covering at least 28% of the genome. The inversions vary in size and in levels of intra-inversion recombination, are highly polymorphic across the species range, and often overlap, forming an extremely complex genomic architecture. We show that the heterogeneous inversion landscape is likely maintained by the combined action of several evolutionary forces and that inversions are enriched in odorant receptor genes encoding key elements of recognition pathways for host plants, mates, and symbiotic fungi.  Read to find out more!