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. 2023 Oct 6;8:430. [Version 1] doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.20109.1

The genome sequence of a druid fly, Clusia tigrina (Fallén, 1820)

Liam M Crowley 1, Ruth Y Akinmusola 2; University of Oxford and Wytham Woods Genome Acquisition Lab; Darwin Tree of Life Barcoding collective; Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life programme; Wellcome Sanger Institute Scientific Operations: DNA Pipelines collective; Tree of Life Core Informatics collective; Darwin Tree of Life Consortiuma
PMCID: PMC10915360  PMID: 38449716

Abstract

We present a genome assembly from an individual male Clusia tigrina (a druid fly; Arthropoda; Insecta; Diptera; Clusiidae). The genome sequence is 1,216.4 megabases in span. Most of the assembly is scaffolded into 5 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the X and Y sex chromosomes. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled and is 17.68 kilobases in length.

Keywords: Clusia tigrina, a druid fly, genome sequence, chromosomal, Diptera

Species taxonomy

Eukaryota; Metazoa; Eumetazoa; Bilateria; Protostomia; Ecdysozoa; Panarthropoda; Arthropoda; Mandibulata; Pancrustacea; Hexapoda; Insecta; Dicondylia; Pterygota; Neoptera; Endopterygota; Diptera; Brachycera; Muscomorpha; Eremoneura; Cyclorrhapha; Schizophora; Acalyptratae; Opomyzoidea; Clusiidae; Clusia; Clusia tigrina (Fallén, 1820) (NCBI:txid576317).

Background

Clusia tigrina is a member of the Clusiidae family, subfamily Clusiinae (Halliday, 1838), commonly known as druid flies ( Lonsdale, 2017). Druid flies have characteristic antennae, in which the second segment has a triangular projection over the third segment when viewed laterally. Flies of this family have dark brown to pale yellow narrow bodies (2.5–6.0 mm long) and variable anterodistal wing infuscations ( Fu et al., 2010; Kazerani et al., 2020). Their species-specific morphologies include different patterns of spots and brown stripes ( Lonsdale, 2017). C. tigrina can be distinguished from other closely related druid flies, such as C. flava, by the three prominent dark brown marks on their wings ( Kazerani et al., 2020).

Clusiidae are distributed worldwide, but most occur in tropical regions and only 15 species have been identified from Europe ( Hellqvist, 2018). They are more abundant in tropical regions, but it remains likely that more species await discovery in temperate biomes ( Lonsdale, 2017). Clusia tigrina has been recorded mainly in western Europe and Scandinavia, with sparse records from Serbia and Russia ( GBIF Secretariat, 2022). It is associated with forested habitats, with plenty of large, mature trees, since their saproxylic larvae develop in deadwood ( Roháček et al., 2017). C. tigrina is a rare fly in Britain and Ireland ( Falk, 1991), although recently there has been an increase in records.

Male C. tigrina (and other Clusiidae) have been observed in competitive courtship displays called ‘lekking’, in which they gather in one place for the purpose of attracting females to the area ( Rathore et al., 2023).

Studies on the phylogeny and evolution of druid flies tend to rely on morphological data ( Lonsdale, 2017), which may be limited, therefore, integrating molecular data may provide a more comprehensive understanding. The availability of high-quality genome data could help reconstruct the phylogeny and evolutionary history of C. tigrina. Here, we present a chromosomally complete genome sequence for C. tigrina based on one male specimen from Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire. This is the first whole genome sequence for a member of Clusiidae, and it is anticipated that it will provide a foundation for understanding biodiversity, evolutionary history and the genetic variation underlying the different morphological traits of this group.

Genome sequence report

The genome was sequenced from one male Clusia tigrina ( Figure 1) collected from Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire, UK (latitude 51.76, longitude –1.32). A total of 31-fold coverage in Pacific Biosciences single-molecule HiFi long reads and 30-fold coverage in 10X Genomics read clouds was generated. Primary assembly contigs were scaffolded with chromosome conformation Hi-C data. Manual assembly curation corrected 271 missing joins or mis-joins and removed 5 haplotypic duplications, reducing the assembly length by 0.17% and the scaffold number by 24.06%, and increasing the scaffold N50 by 464.14%.

Figure 1. Photograph of the Clusia tigrina (idCluTigr1) specimen used for genome sequencing.

Figure 1.

The final assembly has a total length of 1,216.4 Mb in 665 sequence scaffolds with a scaffold N50 of 230.2 Mb ( Table 1). A summary of the assembly statistics is shown in Figure 2, while the distribution of assembly scaffolds on GC proportion and coverage is shown in Figure 3. The cumulative assembly plot in Figure 4 shows curves for subsets of scaffolds assigned to different phyla. Most (92.58%) of the assembly sequence was assigned to 5 chromosomal-level scaffolds, representing 3 autosomes and the X and Y sex chromosomes. Chromosome-scale scaffolds confirmed by the Hi-C data are named in order of size ( Figure 5; Table 2). Chromosome X contains a large region of low confidence from approximately 58.61–118.49 Mb. This block consists of numerous scaffolds with relatively high repeat content where the Hi-C signal is ambiguous in terms of being able to provide a clear order and orientation for the affected scaffolds. In addition, there is a repetitive region of low confidence on Chromosome 2 from approximately 60.32–92.32 Mb, and it was not possible to achieve an accurate order and orientation for the scaffolds in this location. While not fully phased, the assembly deposited is of one haplotype. Contigs corresponding to the second haplotype have also been deposited. The mitochondrial genome was also assembled and can be found as a contig within the multifasta file of the genome submission.

Figure 2. Genome assembly of Clusia tigrina, idCluTigr1.2: metrics.

Figure 2.

The BlobToolKit Snailplot shows N50 metrics and BUSCO gene completeness. The main plot is divided into 1,000 size-ordered bins around the circumference with each bin representing 0.1% of the 1,216,395,172 bp assembly. The distribution of scaffold lengths is shown in dark grey with the plot radius scaled to the longest scaffold present in the assembly (429,819,325 bp, shown in red). Orange and pale-orange arcs show the N50 and N90 scaffold lengths (230,177,572 and 1,864,154 bp), respectively. The pale grey spiral shows the cumulative scaffold count on a log scale with white scale lines showing successive orders of magnitude. The blue and pale-blue area around the outside of the plot shows the distribution of GC, AT and N percentages in the same bins as the inner plot. A summary of complete, fragmented, duplicated and missing BUSCO genes in the diptera_odb10 set is shown in the top right. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/idCluTigr1.1/dataset/CAKKTE01/snail.

Figure 3. Genome assembly of Clusia tigrina, idCluTigr1.2: BlobToolKit GC-coverage plot.

Figure 3.

Scaffolds are coloured by phylum. Circles are sized in proportion to scaffold length. Histograms show the distribution of scaffold length sum along each axis. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/idCluTigr1.1/dataset/CAKKTE01/blob.

Figure 4. Genome assembly of Clusia tigrina, idCluTigr1.2: BlobToolKit cumulative sequence plot.

Figure 4.

The grey line shows cumulative length for all scaffolds. Coloured lines show cumulative lengths of scaffolds assigned to each phylum using the buscogenes taxrule. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/idCluTigr1.1/dataset/CAKKTE01/cumulative.

Figure 5. Genome assembly of Clusia tigrina, idCluTigr1.2: Hi-C contact map of the idCluTigr1.2 assembly, visualised using HiGlass.

Figure 5.

Chromosomes are shown in order of size from left to right and top to bottom. An interactive version of this figure may be viewed at https://genome-note-higlass.tol.sanger.ac.uk/l/?d=NWiOFk6uQqSFmLU8Voirqw.

Table 1. Genome data for Clusia tigrina, idCluTigr1.2.

Project accession data
Assembly identifier idCluTigr1.2
Species Clusia tigrina
Specimen idCluTigr1
NCBI taxonomy ID 576317
BioProject PRJEB46850
BioSample ID SAMEA7701567
Isolate information idCluTigr1, male: whole organism (DNA sequencing)
idCluTigr2, female: whole organism (Hi-C scaffolding)
Assembly metrics * Benchmark
Consensus quality (QV) 51.4 ≥ 50
k-mer completeness 99.96% ≥ 95%
BUSCO ** C:97.3%[S:96.0%,D:1.3%],
F:0.7%,M:2.0%,n:3,285
C ≥ 95%
Percentage of assembly mapped to chromosomes 92.58% ≥ 95%
Sex chromosomes X and Y localised homologous pairs
Organelles Mitochondrial genome assembled complete single alleles
Raw data accessions
PacificBiosciences SEQUEL II ERR6907893, ERR6939254
10X Genomics Illumina ERR6688630–ERR6688633
Hi-C Illumina ERR6688634
Genome assembly
Assembly accession GCA_920105625.2
Accession of alternate haplotype GCA_920105815.1
Span (Mb) 1,216.4
Number of contigs 1,127
Contig N50 length (Mb) 5.7
Number of scaffolds 666
Scaffold N50 length (Mb) 230.2
Longest scaffold (Mb) 429.8

* Assembly metric benchmarks are adapted from column VGP-2020 of “Table 1: Proposed standards and metrics for defining genome assembly quality” from ( Rhie et al., 2021).

** BUSCO scores based on the diptera_odb10 BUSCO set using v5.3.2. C = complete [S = single copy, D = duplicated], F = fragmented, M = missing, n = number of orthologues in comparison. A full set of BUSCO scores is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/idCluTigr1.1/dataset/CAKKTE01/busco.

Table 2. Chromosomal pseudomolecules in the genome assembly of Clusia tigrina, idCluTigr1.

INSDC accession Chromosome Length (Mb) GC%
OV050030.1 1 429.82 38.0
OV050031.1 2 230.18 40.0
OV050033.1 3 187.99 38.0
OV050032.1 X 206.07 38.5
OV050034.1 Y 6.71 37.0
OV050035.2 MT 0.02 21.0

The estimated Quality Value (QV) of the final assembly is 51.4 with k-mer completeness of 99.96%, and the assembly has a BUSCO v5.3.2 completeness of 97.3% (single = 96.0%, duplicated = 1.3%), using the diptera_odb10 reference set ( n = 3,285).

Metadata for specimens, spectral estimates, sequencing runs, contaminants and pre-curation assembly statistics can be found at https://links.tol.sanger.ac.uk/species/576317.

Methods

Sample acquisition and nucleic acid extraction

One male (specimen ID Ox000706, idCluTigr1) and one female (specimen ID Ox000707, idCluTigr2) of Clusia tigrina were collected from Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire (biological vice-county Berkshire), UK (latitude 51.76, longitude –1.32) on 2020-07-24. Liam Crowley (University of Oxford) collected and identified the specimens, which were then preserved on dry ice. The male specimen (idCluTigr1) was used for genome sequencing, while the female (idCluTigr2) was used for Hi-C scaffolding.

DNA was extracted at the Tree of Life Laboratory, Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI). The idCluTigr1 sample was weighed and dissected on dry ice. Tissue from the whole organism was disrupted using a Nippi Powermasher fitted with a BioMasher pestle. High molecular weight (HMW) DNA was extracted using the Qiagen MagAttract HMW DNA extraction kit. Low molecular weight DNA was removed from a 20 ng aliquot of extracted DNA using the 0.8X AMpure XP purification kit prior to 10X Chromium sequencing; a minimum of 50 ng DNA was submitted for 10X sequencing. HMW DNA was sheared into an average fragment size of 12–20 kb in a Megaruptor 3 system with speed setting 30. Sheared DNA was purified by solid-phase reversible immobilisation using AMPure PB beads with a 1.8X ratio of beads to sample to remove the shorter fragments and concentrate the DNA sample. The concentration of the sheared and purified DNA was assessed using a Nanodrop spectrophotometer and Qubit Fluorometer and Qubit dsDNA High Sensitivity Assay kit. Fragment size distribution was evaluated by running the sample on the FemtoPulse system.

Sequencing

Pacific Biosciences HiFi circular consensus and 10X Genomics read cloud DNA sequencing libraries were constructed according to the manufacturers’ instructions. DNA sequencing was performed by the Scientific Operations core at the WSI on Pacific Biosciences SEQUEL II (HiFi) and Illumina NovaSeq 6000 (10X) instruments. Hi-C data were also generated from whole organism tissue of idCluTigr2 using the Arima2 kit and sequenced on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 instrument.

Genome assembly, curation and evaluation

Assembly was carried out with Hifiasm ( Cheng et al., 2021), and haplotypic duplication was identified and removed with purge_dups ( Guan et al., 2020). One round of polishing was performed by aligning 10X Genomics read data to the assembly with Long Ranger ALIGN, calling variants with FreeBayes ( Garrison & Marth, 2012). The assembly was then scaffolded with Hi-C data (Rao et al., 2014) using SALSA2 ( Ghurye et al., 2019). The assembly was checked for contamination and corrected as described previously ( Howe et al., 2021). Manual curation was performed using HiGlass ( Kerpedjiev et al., 2018) and Pretext ( Harry, 2022). The mitochondrial genome was assembled using MitoHiFi ( Uliano-Silva et al., 2023), which runs MitoFinder ( Allio et al., 2020) or MITOS ( Bernt et al., 2013) and uses these annotations to select the final mitochondrial contig and to ensure the general quality of the sequence.

A Hi-C map for the final assembly was produced using bwa-mem2 ( Vasimuddin et al., 2019) in the Cooler file format ( Abdennur & Mirny, 2020). To assess the assembly metrics, the k-mer completeness and QV consensus quality values were calculated in Merqury ( Rhie et al., 2020). This work was done using Nextflow ( Di Tommaso et al., 2017) DSL2 pipelines “sanger-tol/readmapping” ( Surana et al., 2023a) and “sanger-tol/genomenote” ( Surana et al., 2023b). The genome was analysed within the BlobToolKit environment ( Challis et al., 2020) and BUSCO scores ( Manni et al., 2021; Simão et al., 2015) were calculated.

Table 3 contains a list of relevant software tool versions and sources.

Table 3. Software tools: versions and sources.

Wellcome Sanger Institute – Legal and Governance

The materials that have contributed to this genome note have been supplied by a Darwin Tree of Life Partner. The submission of materials by a Darwin Tree of Life Partner is subject to the ‘Darwin Tree of Life Project Sampling Code of Practice’, which can be found in full on the Darwin Tree of Life website here. By agreeing with and signing up to the Sampling Code of Practice, the Darwin Tree of Life Partner agrees they will meet the legal and ethical requirements and standards set out within this document in respect of all samples acquired for, and supplied to, the Darwin Tree of Life Project.

Further, the Wellcome Sanger Institute employs a process whereby due diligence is carried out proportionate to the nature of the materials themselves, and the circumstances under which they have been/are to be collected and provided for use. The purpose of this is to address and mitigate any potential legal and/or ethical implications of receipt and use of the materials as part of the research project, and to ensure that in doing so we align with best practice wherever possible. The overarching areas of consideration are:

• Ethical review of provenance and sourcing of the material

• Legality of collection, transfer and use (national and international)

Each transfer of samples is further undertaken according to a Research Collaboration Agreement or Material Transfer Agreement entered into by the Darwin Tree of Life Partner, Genome Research Limited (operating as the Wellcome Sanger Institute), and in some circumstances other Darwin Tree of Life collaborators.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by Wellcome through core funding to the Wellcome Sanger Institute (206194) and the Darwin Tree of Life Discretionary Award (218328).

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

[version 1; peer review: 4 approved]

Data availability

European Nucleotide Archive: Clusia tigrina. Accession number PRJEB46850; https://identifiers.org/ena.embl/PRJEB46850. ( Wellcome Sanger Institute, 2021) The genome sequence is released openly for reuse. The Clusia tigrina genome sequencing initiative is part of the Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project. All raw sequence data and the assembly have been deposited in INSDC databases. The genome will be annotated using available RNA-Seq data and presented through the Ensembl pipeline at the European Bioinformatics Institute. Raw data and assembly accession identifiers are reported in Table 1.

Author information

Members of the University of Oxford and Wytham Woods Genome Acquisition Lab are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4789928.

Members of the Darwin Tree of Life Barcoding collective are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4893703.

Members of the Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life programme are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4783585.

Members of Wellcome Sanger Institute Scientific Operations: DNA Pipelines collective are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4790455.

Members of the Tree of Life Core Informatics collective are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5013541.

Members of the Darwin Tree of Life Consortium are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4783558.

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Wellcome Open Res. 2024 Mar 14. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.22268.r74654

Reviewer response for version 1

Zheng Li 1

This paper provides a chromosome-level genome assembly of a druid fly, Clusia tigrina. This genome will be a wonderful resource for researchers interested in fly or insect genomics in general. The quality of the genome assembly meets the standard of other insect genomes from the Darwin tree of life project. This manuscript also did a great job as a data note. 

One thing that can be improved is to provide a citation for karyotyping information. The current inference of chromosome number is based on the Hi-C analysis. Given that the blocks of the chromosome seem ambiguous, it will be stronger to provide additional evidence of the chromosome number.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

insect genomics

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Wellcome Open Res. 2024 Mar 14. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.22268.r74650

Reviewer response for version 1

Daniel Bruzzese 1

Crowley and Akinmusola have assembled a high quality near-chromosomal 1.2 Gb genome for the druid fly ( Clusia tigrina) using PacBio, 10X, and Hi-C They then manually curated the assembly and provided thorough quality control to verify the accuracy of their assembly. 

This is an excellent paper that utilizes the current gold-standard in assembly tools and analysis. and presents a valuable genomic resource.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

Evolutionary biology, symbiosis, and arthropod genomics.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Wellcome Open Res. 2024 Mar 5. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.22268.r74651

Reviewer response for version 1

Jan Veenstra 1

This is yet another high-quality genome assembly from the Welcome Sanger Institute. It is a very nice illustration of how good today’s technology has gotten with respect to both the physical and digital machinery. This is perhaps best illustrated by having only two authors manuscript describing this genome assembly, as compared to the very long author lists of earlier publications.

In order to review a genome assembly paper, there are two things to look at, the actual genome assembly, and the manuscript describing it. I spent some time looking for genes I am interested in in this assembly. It is really a good and nice assembly. As to the manuscript itself, I don’t see any missing details.

The Rao et al., 2014 reference in the text misses the hyperlink.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

Arthropod neuropeptides. Biochemsitry, physiology, molecular biology, evolution.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Wellcome Open Res. 2024 Mar 4. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.22268.r74653

Reviewer response for version 1

Tomas N Generalovic 1

This article presents a genome assembly for the species Clusia tigrine, a species of which appears to be of primary interest in biodiversity monitoring and morphological analysis. This genome assembly is of high-quality and adds a significant and relatively complete resource to the public domain. Whilst reports on mitochondrial and nuclear markers have been reported for Clusiidae species [1], this appears to be the first whole genome resource available for the Clusiidae. The 1.2 Gb genome of the druid fly is assembled into three autosomes and two sex chromosomes. A typical XY sex determination system is identified. This reference is generated from a male individual and an array of sequencing technology allowing (pseudo-)chromosomal scaffolds to be assembled. This resource will likely be of benefit for studying the evolutionary trajectory of the species and wider genera and appears of particular interest in behavioural investigations but seemingly the most beneficial insights will be to monitor biodiversity. This fly was sampled in the UK (Wytham Woods, Oxford) where it appears to be a rare observation.

The genome appears to have several scaffolds orientated with low confidence, however, overall, the assembly appears to exceed several of the general benchmarks suggested by [2], with the exception of “Percentage of assembly mapped to chromosomes”. The second (incomplete) haplotype was also only assembled to contig-level with only 540.9 Mb sequence assembled.

The rationale for this work is clear and the methodological approach is using up-to-date technology. All interactive links appear in working order and the data is available in the public domain as stated.

Overall, this article is scientifically sound as a data note with only minor comments related to grammar etc. which are provided below:

Several incidents of values less than 10 being referred to in the numerical form, values <10 e.g. “5” instead of “five”. Advice changes throughout.

Under the Data availability statement the Wellcome Sanger Institute, 2021 reference is incorrectly placed after the full top.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

Evolutionary Biology

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

References

  • 1. : Phylogenetic analysis of the druid flies (Diptera: Schizophora: Clusiidae) based on morphological and molecular data. Insect Systematics & Evolution .2010;41(3) : 10.1163/187631210X500628 231-274 10.1163/187631210X500628 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  • 2. : Towards complete and error-free genome assemblies of all vertebrate species. Nature .2021;592(7856) : 10.1038/s41586-021-03451-0 737-746 10.1038/s41586-021-03451-0 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Associated Data

    This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

    Data Citations

    1. Wellcome Sanger Institute: The genome sequence of a druid fly, Clusia tigrina (Fallén, 1820). European Nucleotide Archive.[dataset], accession number PRJEB46850,2021.

    Data Availability Statement

    European Nucleotide Archive: Clusia tigrina. Accession number PRJEB46850; https://identifiers.org/ena.embl/PRJEB46850. ( Wellcome Sanger Institute, 2021) The genome sequence is released openly for reuse. The Clusia tigrina genome sequencing initiative is part of the Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project. All raw sequence data and the assembly have been deposited in INSDC databases. The genome will be annotated using available RNA-Seq data and presented through the Ensembl pipeline at the European Bioinformatics Institute. Raw data and assembly accession identifiers are reported in Table 1.


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