Poster Presentation Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution Conference 2016

Hologenomic adaptations underlying the evolution of sanguivory in the vampire bat (#438)

Marie Lisandra Zepeda Mendoza 1 , Zijun Xiong 2 , Anne Kathrine Runge 1 , Marina Escalera-Zamudio 3 , Julien Thézé 4 , Jose Alfredo Samaniego Castruita 1 , Daniel Streicker 5 , Hannah K Frank 6 , Elizabeth Loza-Rubio 7 , Shengmao Liu 2 , Kristine Bohman 1 , Nicole White 8 , Oliver A Ryder 9 , Aris Katzourakis 4 , Oliver G Pybus 4 , Yang Li 2 , Maria L Méndez-Ojeda 10 , Aldo Carmona Baez 1 , Shiping Liu 2 , Gareth Jones 11 , Alex D Greenwood 3 , Mads Frost Bertelsen 12 , Mike Bunce 13 , Guojie Zhang 2 , Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén 14 , M Thomas P Gilbert 1
  1. Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Denmark, Copenhagen
  2. BGI–Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China
  3. Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), Berlin, Germany
  4. Dept of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford
  5. Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, University of Glasgow, Scotland
  6. Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, California, USA
  7. Centro Nacional de Investigación Disciplinaria en Microbiología Animal, INIFAP, Mexico
  8. Australian Wildlife Forensic Services, Department of Environment and Agriculture, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
  9. San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, California, USA
  10. Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia, Universidad Veracruzana, Veracruz, Mexico
  11. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, England
  12. Center for Zoo and Wild Animal Health, Copenhagen Zoo, Copenhagen, Denmark
  13. Trace and Environmental DNA laboratory, Department of Environment and Agriculture, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
  14. Center for Biological Sequence Analysis, Department of Systems Biology, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

The order Chiroptera, bats, exhibits extremely high genetic and dietary diversity, and includes the only three obligate sanguivorous mammals, the vampire bats. Relying on blood as the sole dietary source poses significant challenges, ranging from morphological to nutritional. To study the evolution of sanguivory we used a hologenomic approach, in which we identified adaptive changes in the vampire genome as well as in its gut microbiome. To this end, we generated a high-quality reference genome (N50=26.9 Mb) for the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, using a combination of de novo assembly and a Hi-C-based contiguity refinement technology. We then performed comparative genomic analyses against bats with other diets (frugivorous, insectivorous, and carnivorous), including gene selection, gene loss, and gene family expansion-contraction. We also generated metagenomics datasets by shotgun sequencing faecal samples of D. rotundus and bats with other diets. We identified taxa and functions that were differentially abundant or present only in the vampire bat. Our combined genomics and metagenomics results highlight how both genome and gut microbiome played key roles in the evolution of sanguivory, through affecting traits such as energy metabolism, immunity, digestive system morphogenesis, and osmotic homeostasis. The common vampire bat represents a perfect example of the study of the evolution of complex phenotypes in non-model organisms by analysing its genome and gut microbiome in a complementary fashion. Overall, our results highlight that studies not accounting for the action of both the genome and the microbiome provide incomplete insights into the evolution of complex adaptations.