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Dryad

Data for: Mobilomes of four flower-breeding Drosophila species

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Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms that shape the architecture, diversity and adaptations of genomes and their ecological and genetic interfaces is of utmost importance to understand biological evolution. Transposable elements (TEs) play an important role in genome evolution, due to their ability to transpose within and between genomes, providing sites of non-allelic recombination. Here we investigate patterns and processes of TE driven genome evolution associated with niche diversification. Specifically, we compared TE content, TE landscapes, and frequency of horizontal transposon transfers (HTTs) across genomes of five flower-breeding Drosophila (FBD) with different levels of specialization on flowers. Further, we investigated whether niche breadth, and ecological and geographical overlaps are associated with potential for HTT rates. Mobilome landscapes recovered for all species presented a bell-shaped curve, revealing an equilibrium between transposition and excision over evolutionary history. This pattern agrees with results previously recovered for other Drosophilidae species of the same subgenera studied here, suggesting that lineage-specific factors shape the mobilome of this lineage. Nevertheless, the abundance and richness of TE superfamilies was associated with niche breadth. Furthermore, the two more widespread species, the specialist D. incompta and the generalist D. lutzii, presented the highest frequency of HTT events. Our analyses also revealed that HTT opportunities are positively influenced by abiotic niche overlap but are not associated with phylogenetic relationships, niche breadth and biotic niche overlap. This suggests the existence of intermediate vectors promoting HTTs between species presenting non-overlapping biotic niches.