Andrea Renata da Silva Romero

Parasitoid wasps play a fundamental role in the biological control of pests. However, their morphological identification may be limited due to their small size and the high morphological similarity between species. Our objective was to identify specific genomic variants of the target species Palmistichus elaeisis Delvare & LaSalle, 1993, Tetrastichus howardi (Olliff, 1893), Trichospilus diatraeae Cherian & Margabandhu, 1942, and Trichogramma pretiosum Riley, 1879, (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) by whole-genomic sequencing. Parasitoids were collected from their hosts and established in the laboratory after adult emergence. A sample of each parasitoid was sent to the Departamento de Ciências Biológicas at Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (UFES) and “Oscar Monte” Entomophagous Insect Collection for morphological identification. Subsequently, samples composed of 20 individuals were preserved in absolute ethanol for DNA extraction. The DNA was extracted, quantified and sequenced on the Illumina Novaseq 6000 platform. Bioinformatic tools were used for quality control, detection of specific genomic variants, principal component analysis (PCA), and support vector machine (SVM). Genomic sequencing generated high-quality data for the analyzed parasitoids, allowing the identification of four specific variants for P. elaeisis, two for Te. howardi, four for Ts. diatraeae and five for Tg. pretiosum. These results provide a precise molecular tool for distinguishing parasitoids used in biological control programs.

The objectives of this study were to provide the buffalo research community with an updated SNP map for the Axiom Buffalo Genotyping (ABG) array with genomic positions for SNP currently unmapped and to map all cattle QTL from the CattleQTLdb onto the buffalo reference assembly. To update the ABG array map, all SNP probe sequences from the ABG array were re-aligned against the UOA_WB_1 assembly. With the new map, the number of mapped markers increased by approximately 10% and went from 106 778 to 116 708, which reduced the average marker spacing by approximately 2 kb. A comparison of results between signatures of autozygosity study using the ABG and the new map showed that, when the additional markers were used there was an increase in the autozygosity peaks and additional peaks in BBU5 and BBU11 could be identified. After sequence alignment and quality control, 64 650 (UMD3.1) and 76 530 (ARS_UCD1.2) cattle QTL were mapped onto the buffalo genome. The mapping of the bovine QTL database onto the buffalo genome should be useful for genome-wide association studies in buffalo and, given the high homology between the two species, the positions of cattle QTL on the buffalo genome can serve as a stepping stone towards a water buffalo QTL database.