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. 2021 Dec 8;12(2):jkab414. doi: 10.1093/g3journal/jkab414

The genome sequence of the avian vampire fly (Philornis downsi), an invasive nest parasite of Darwin’s finches in Galápagos

Melia G Romine 1, Sarah A Knutie 2,3, Carly M Crow 4, Grace J Vaziri 2, Jaime A Chaves 5,6, Jennifer A H Koop 4,2, Sangeet Lamichhaney 1,7,✉,2
Editor: M Scott
PMCID: PMC9210292  PMID: 34878103

Abstract

The invasive avian vampire fly (Philornis downsi, Diptera: Muscidae) is considered one of the greatest threats to the endemic avifauna of the Galápagos Islands. The fly larvae parasitize nearly every passerine species, including Darwin’s finches. Most P. downsi research to date has focused on the effects of the fly on avian host fitness and mitigation methods. A lag in research related to the genetics of this invasion demonstrates, in part, the need to develop full-scale genomic resources with which to address further questions within this system. In this study, an adult female P. downsi was sequenced to generate a high-quality genome assembly. We examined various features of the genome (e.g., coding regions and noncoding transposable elements) and carried out comparative genomics analysis against other dipteran genomes. We identified lists of gene families that are significantly expanding or contracting in P. downsi that are related to insecticide resistance, detoxification, and counter defense against host immune responses. The P. downsi genome assembly provides an important resource for studying the molecular basis of successful invasion in the Galápagos and the dynamics of its population across multiple islands. The findings of significantly changing gene families associated with insecticide resistance and immune responses highlight the need for further investigations into the role of different gene families in aiding the fly’s successful invasion. Furthermore, this genomic resource provides a necessary tool to better inform future research studies and mitigation strategies aimed at minimizing the fly’s impact on Galápagos birds.

Keywords: avian vampire fly genome, parasitic invasion, Galápagos, insecticide resistance, Darwin’s finches

Introduction

The invasive avian vampire fly (Philornis downsi, Diptera: Muscidae) (Figure  1A) is considered among the greatest threats to the unique and endemic avifauna of the Galápagos Islands (Causton et al. 2013). In its larval form, the fly parasitizes eleven species of Darwin’s finches as well as nearly every other Galápagos passerine species (Causton et al. 2013; Fessl et al. 2018; Figure  1). The larvae are obligate nest ectoparasites that feed on the blood and other fluids of nestling and brooding adult birds (Fessl and Tebbich 2002). The impact of parasitism by the fly has been severe in some populations of birds in Galápagos and while the effects are variable, some studies have reported near-total nest failure rates due to parasitism (Dudaniec et al. 2007; Koop et al. 2011, 2013; O’Connor et al. 2014; Knutie et al. 2016; Heimpel et al. 2017; Addesso et al. 2020). The fly has also been implicated in the decline of the medium tree finch (Camarhyncus pauper), the warbler finch (Certhidia olivacea), and the mangrove finch (Camarhyncus heliobates) (Dvorak et al. 2004; Grant et al. 2005; Cunninghame et al. 2017; Peters and Kleindorfer 2018; Bulgarella et al. 2019). Furthermore, the potential for population-level declines of even relatively prominent bird species, e.g., the medium ground finch, have also been demonstrated using predictive models (Koop et al. 2016).

Figure 1.

Figure 1

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The avian vampire fly, P. downsi (A), parasitizes many endemic bird species of the Galápagos Islands, including the medium ground finch, Geospiza fortis (B). The fly is parasitic in its larval forms (C, bottom three) residing primarily in the nesting material. The larvae feed by chewing through the skin and feeding on the secreted blood and other fluids of avian hosts. Larvae then pupate (C, second from top) in the nest material and enclose (C, top) as adult flies. Photos courtesy of Sam Rowley (A), Kelly Ballantyne (B), and Sabrina McNew (C).

The genus Philornis includes approximately 50 species found primarily in the Neotropics and North America (Dodge 1955, 1963; Spalding et al. 2002; Dudaniec and Kleindorfer 2006; Couri et al. 2007). Several Philornis species are found in mainland Ecuador (Bulgarella et al. 2015, 2017), but P. downsi remains the only recorded species of the genus present, to date, in the Galápagos. Philornis downsi is thought to have been introduced from mainland Ecuador, though the full pathway of invasion is not yet known (Fessl et al. 2018). Preliminary population genetics studies show that P. downsi in the archipelago have a high degree of relatedness relative to those on the mainland, which supports the hypothesis of a relatively recent invasion, and also the possibility of continued gene flow between populations in the Galápagos (Dudaniec et al. 2008; Koop et al. 2021).

Despite the robust number of studies that explored the effects of these flies on hosts in the Galápagos (Causton et al. 2013, 2019), questions remain about the underlying ecological and evolutionary mechanisms of their successful invasion in the Galápagos. This knowledge gap demonstrates the need to develop a full-scale genomic resource of P. downsi as it provides a critical knowledge base from which to explore these questions, similar to other parasites of concern (e.g., Scott et al. 2020). In this study, we first generated a high-quality draft genome of P. downsi. Furthermore, we carried out comparative genomic analyses with other published dipteran genomes that identified evidence of significantly expanded or contracted gene families associated with insecticide resistance, detoxification, and possible counter defense against host immune responses. The identification of these gene families serves as the first step toward investigations of the fly’s ability to rapidly evolve traits associated with its successful invasion in the Galápagos. This genomic resource provides a necessary tool to better inform future research studies and mitigation strategies aimed at minimizing the fly’s impact on the birds of the Galápagos.

Materials and methods

Sampling and DNA extraction for genome sequencing

Philornis downsi were collected in Jardín de las Opuntias on San Cristobal Island, Galápagos, Ecuador (−0.9491651°, −89.5528454°) in March-April of 2019. Adult flies were reared from pupae collected from the nests of small ground finches (Geospiza fuliginosa). When nests were empty, either because nestlings died or fledged, all larvae and pupae were extracted from the nest and placed in a falcon tube with a modified lid that allowed airflow. After flies eclosed from their pupal case, they were placed in a freezer (−20°C) to immobilize them, then preserved in 95% ethanol. Preserved flies were transported to the University of Connecticut, then shipped to Northern Illinois University for further processing. DNA was extracted using DNeasy Blood and Tissue Kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA, USA) on whole fly samples after wings and legs were removed using forceps. All samples were treated with Monarch® RNase A (New England Biolabs) to remove RNA from genomic DNA samples. Multiple samples were extracted and those with low yields of DNA (<1 µg of total yield) or fragmentation (samples that showed multiple bands on agarose gel) were discarded from further processing. Quantification of double-stranded DNA was done using QuBit® and samples were run on an agarose gel to assess fragmentation. Finally, the sample from a single female individual with the highest DNA yield of molecular weight (>100 kb) was chosen for library preparation and genome sequencing.

Estimate of genome size and ploidy

We prepared a 10X Chromium GEM sequencing library using the extracted DNA from a single female individual according to the manufacturer’s recommended genome assay linked-read workflow. The library was sequenced on the Illumina Novaseq platform using NovaSeq 6000 Reagent Kit to generate paired-end 150 bp reads from ∼350 bp average insert size fragments. We used a k-mer based approach to estimate genome size, heterozygosity, and repeat content from unprocessed short-sequencing reads (Vurture et al. 2017). We also used the k-mer distribution to extract heterozygous k-mer pairs to assess the ploidy level in P. downsi (Ranallo-Benavidez et al. 2020). These estimates of genome size and ploidy were then used to choose parameters for the downstream genome assembly pipeline.

Genome assembly and annotation

The 10X Chromium linked reads were used to generate a reference genome using Supernova.v.2.1.1 (Weisenfeld et al. 2017) with default parameters. The genome contiguity statistics such as scaffold N50 and the total number of scaffolds were calculated using custom scripts. We further compared the draft genome assembly against a set of conserved genes in Diptera using BUSCO version 4.0.6 (Waterhouse et al. 2017) to assess gene-space completeness. The annotation of the P. downsi genome was done using the Maker (version 3.01.03) annotation pipeline (Cantarel et al. 2008). The parameters and configuration files used to run Maker are provided on our lab GitHub page (see “Data availability”). We generated protein homology evidence using publicly available proteome datasets from two highly curated dipteran genomes, Musca domestica (Scott et al. 2014) and Drosophila melanogaster (Adams et al. 2000), downloaded from the Ensembl metazoa database (Cunningham et al. 2019). We used D. melanogaster, version BDGP6.32, and M. domestica version MdomA1 from the Ensembl metazoa database for these annotations. In addition, we used a built-in pipeline in MAKER (Augustus) to generate ab initio gene prediction models to annotate the P. downsi genome.

Transposable elements in Philornis downsi

We combined homology-based and de novo approaches using Repeatmasker version 4.1.0 (Hubley and Green 2013; Flynn et al. 2019) to characterize transposable elements (TEs) in P. downsi. We used two different sets of repeat libraries, (1) a reference repeat library downloaded from the Repbase database (release 20190301) (Bao et al. 2015) and (2) a de novo custom-built species-specific repeat library generated for P. downsi using RepeatModeler version 2.0.1 (Flynn et al. 2019). The usage of the de novo species-specific repeat library increased the accuracy of detection and annotation of TEs. For an unbiased comparison of repeat landscapes among all species, we used similar approaches to detect TEs in the genomes of house fly (M. domestica, NCBI accession no. GCA_002191195.1), stable fly (Stomoxys calcitrans, NCBI accession no. GCA_001015335.1), tsetse fly (Glossina morsitans, NCBI accession no. GCA_001077435.1), Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata, NCBI accession no. GCA_000347755.4), fruit fly (D. melanogaster, NCBI accession no. GCA_000001215.4), and yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti, NCBI accession no. GCA_002204515.1), together with an outgroup, postman butterfly (Heliconius melpomene, NCBI accession no. GCA_000313835.2).

Orthologs to other dipteran genomes

We inferred orthogroups and orthologs by comparative analysis of genomes from P. downsi and six additional dipteran species (M. domestica, S. calcitrans, G. morsitans, C. capitata, D. melanogaster, and A. aegypti), together with an outgroup, H. melpomene. This analysis used the draft proteome of P. downsi generated from our genome annotation pipeline described above. Complete proteomes of each of the remaining seven species were downloaded from the Ensembl database (Cunningham et al. 2019). The orthologs inference was carried out using OrthoFinder version 2.5.2 with default parameters (Emms and Kelly 2015). Only the longest isoform of each gene was used as an inference for orthologs.

Gene family evolution

To explore the evolution of gene families in P. downsi relative to other Dipterans, we examined the rooted species tree generated by Orthofinder. Orthofinder first infers a gene tree for each orthogroup using DendroBLAST (Kelly and Maini 2013) and then infer a species tree from the set of gene trees using STAG (Emms and Kelly 2018) and finally roots the species tree using STRIDE (Emms and Kelly 2017). STAG and STRIDE can leverage information from multigene families to build a robust species tree rather than relying only on sets of single-copy orthologs (Emms and Kelly 2015).

We used this phylogeny to analyze the significant changes in gene family size across lineages using a maximum likelihood approach CAFÉ, version 4.2.1 with default parameters (De Bie et al. 2006). CAFÉ uses a birth and death process to model gene gain and loss across a phylogenetic tree and assesses the distribution of family size under this model to estimate the significance of differences in gene family size across taxa (P < 0.01). The separate birth (λ) and death (μ) rates were estimated for this dataset using the lambda (mu) command.

Results and discussion

Genome sequencing and assembly

A DNA library was prepared from a single adult female P. downsi fly using the 10× Chromium linked-read approach and sequenced on the Illumina platform to generate paired-end 150-bp reads, resulting in ∼479 million read pairs (∼72 Gb of raw sequence data). We first generated a k-mer distribution based on these short-sequencing reads for preliminary characterization of genome structure in P. downsi (Supplementary Table S1 and Supplementary Figure S1) that further allowed us to make informed decisions on parameters needed for building a reference genome. We also utilized the k-mer distribution to estimate the ploidy level in P. downsi, which indicated it to be a diploid species (Supplementary Figure S2).

Based on k-mer based genome size estimate (782.6 Mb) we had ∼91× sequence coverage for generating the draft de novo genome assembly. The total estimated length of the draft genome assembly was 971.6 Mb. The assembly contained 41,176 total scaffolds (minimum 1000 bp to maximum 8.6 Mb) with scaffold N50 of 1.3 Mb. We used blastn (BLAST version 2.9.0+) with the draft genome both as “database” and “query” to assess sequence similarity among different scaffolds. All 100% identical scaffolds were flagged as “duplicated,” and these 3954 scaffolds (total 19 Mb) were removed from downstream analysis. These scaffolds were all short in length (<5 kb) and possibly the result of misassembly.

Gene-space completeness was assessed using BUSCO version 4.0.6. Among 3258 genes highly conserved across Diptera, 3147 (95.8%) complete BUSCO genes were identified (3059 single copies and 88 duplicated) in the P. downsi draft genome assembly. Partial sequences of 71 genes were identified (2.2%) and only 67 (2.0%) were missing, which indicated a high degree of gene-space completeness in the P. downsi genome.

Genome annotation

We combined protein homology-based evidence and ab initio gene prediction models using the MAKER genome annotation pipeline (Cantarel et al. 2008) which identified 15,774 protein-coding genes in the P. downsi genome. The genome annotation of P. downsi was compared against two closely related Muscidae species (1) M. domestica, annotation version MdomA1 and (2) S. calcitrans, annotation version ScalU1 from Ensembl metazoa database. The number of genes annotated in P. downsi (15,774) was slightly higher compared to M. domestica (14,402) and S. calcitrans (14,078) (Table  1). The average length of genes in P. downsi was significantly smaller than two other Muscidae species, while the average length of exons was similar. These results indicate that the introns in P. downsi are relatively compact compared to other Muscidae species. However, this could also be an indication that there are missing sequences in the assembled genome of P. downsi causing these differences in comparison with other Muscidae genomes.

Table 1.

Statistics of genomic features among three fly genomes

Genome statistics P. downsi M. domestica (v. MdomA1) S. calcitrans (v. ScalU1)
Genome size (Gb) 0.97 0.76 0.97
Total genes 15,774 14,402 14,078
Avg. gene length (bp) 4,789 15,078 25,802
Total exons 56,595 109,373 145,506
Avg. exon length (bp) 367 441 452
Number of exons per gene 3.59 7.59 10.34
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Total exons and the average number of exons per gene were also lower in P. downsi. However, the number of exons in P. downsi may have been underestimated because we do not currently have information on alternative splicing and the number of isoforms for each gene in P. downsi due to lack of tissue-specific transcriptome data in this study. We aimed to carry out RNA sequencing of P. downsi tissues to build transcriptomes that would generate better experimental evidence of annotated gene models. Travel restrictions to our field sites in Galápagos during the COVID-19 pandemic hindered our ability to obtain these “RNA-quality” tissues. We acknowledge this limitation in the current study and aim to revise genome annotations in a future version of the P. downsi genome using this approach. Shorter average gene length may also reflect higher genome fragmentation in P. downsi compared to the other two species that have relatively contiguous genomes.

Transposable elements in Philornis downsi

Mobile TEs are key features of eukaryotic genomes, being major determinants of genome size variation (Kapusta et al. 2017; Lamichhaney et al. 2021), and important contributors to the evolution of an organism (Pourrajab and Hekmatimoghaddam 2021). We characterized the TEs in the P. downsi genome using homology-based (Hubley and Green 2013) and de-novo approaches (Flynn et al. 2019). More than half of the genome (51.7%) of P. downsi consists of TEs (Supplementary Table S2). Among these sequences, 9.3% of the genome are retroelements (7.7% LINEs and 1.6% LTRs) and 23.4% are DNA transposons. Short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs), a major category of retroelements, were not detected in the P. downsi genome.

Transposable elements are known to be highly correlated with genome size across the tree of life (Kidwell 2002; Lynch 2007), and our results across various dipteran genomes are consistent with this pattern (Figure  2A). Philornis downsi had the highest proportion of DNA transposons (23.4%) among all taxa analyzed. In comparison, only 6.36% of the S. calcitrans genome and 15.96% of the M. domestica genome consisted of DNA transposons. Although P. downsi and S. calcitrans have similar genome sizes, S. calcitrans had slightly higher amounts of repeat content (58.3%), compared to P. downsi (51.7%) (Figure  2B). Stomoxys calcitrans had higher amounts of long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) (23.8%), compared to P. downsi (7.7%).

Figure 2.

Figure 2

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Landscape of transposable elements in P. downsi. (A) Comparison of repeat content and genome size across Diptera and its outgroup. (B) Repeat statistics on various classes of transposable elements across dipteran genomes.

Transposable elements are typically noncoding sequences that can insert themselves in various places of the genome, often with neutral or deleterious phenotypic consequences (Bourque et al. 2018). The role of TEs, as well as their evolution across insect genomes, is still an area of major research, but they are thought to be important drivers of genomic architecture depending on the location of the genome to which they insert themselves (i.e., coding vs noncoding regions). Furthermore, TEs may also be a critical mechanism of adaptive evolution, as has been shown in an invasive ant species (Schrader et al. 2014). Analysis of TEs in P. downsi and across other dipteran genomes showed a strong positive correlation between genome size and repeat content (Figure  2A), consistent with similar findings across other taxa (Lynch 2007; Lamichhaney et al. 2021). Interestingly, P. downsi had a higher number of DNA transposons (Class II TEs) than any other compared genome, including M. domestica, S. calcitrans, and G. morsitans. While long terminal repeat (LTR) transposons, LINEs, and SINEs were present in the species studied, P. downsi had no SINEs, a finding consistent with a study by Petersen and colleagues (Petersen et al. 2019) showing that SINEs contribute less than 1% to the TE content of dipterans. However, it is important to note that some SINEs may be present in P. downsi but are currently masked as unclassified. Future research should explore the role of TEs, especially DNA transposons, in aiding the invasion of P. downsi to the Galápagos.

Orthologs to other dipteran genomes and outgroup Heliconius

Comparative genomics analysis of 113,047 protein sequences from P. downsi and seven other species (listed above) identified 11,112 orthogroups. A total of 95,567 proteins (out of 113,047, 84.5%) were assigned to these orthogroups. The mean size of an orthogroup was 8.8 genes/species, and 3069 orthogroups had single-copy genes in each species. A total of 5754 orthogroups were shared among all eight species. Orthogroups present in fewer than four species ranged from 496 in A. aegypti to 1445 in M. domestica (Figure  3A). The number of unique orthologs in each species was mostly consistent with their phylogenetic relationships (e.g., A. aegypti and the outgroup H. melpomene had the highest number of unique orthogroups). However, G. morsitans had the highest number of unique orthologs among the rest of the species compared. The number of shared orthologs among each pair of species is presented in Supplementary Table S3. The number of orthologs identified in P. downsi is consistent with other published dipteran genomes (Figure  3A and Supplementary Table S3), indicating no major bias in the genome assembly and annotation pipeline used in this study.

Figure 3.

Figure 3

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Orthogroups in P. downsi. (A) Phylogenetic relationship between P. downsi and other seven dipteran species, estimated using alignments from 3069 orthogroups had singly copy orthogroups in each species. Horizontal bars for each species show number of orthogroups that are single-copy orthologs in all species, present in all species, present in most species, present in few species, and unique to the species. (B) Number of shared orthologs among all species. Each vertical line connecting dots indicates the number of gene families (in the y-axis) that are shared among species analyzed. Certain shared gene families among species or unique gene families within a species had low count (<19), hence not included in the figure.

Within P. downsi, 13,706 out of 15,774 (86.9%) annotated genes were assigned to orthogroups. We expect the remaining missing genes to either be the most recently evolved orphan genes in the branch leading to the P. downsi lineage or the consequence of a lack of inclusion of enough closely related species of P. downsi in the analysis. The distribution of these unique genes in the P. downsi genome is random and does not show specific clustering patterns across various locations of the genome.

We also compared the number of pairwise orthogroups that are uniquely shared among all eight species (Figure  3B). A total of 993 orthogroups were unique to Diptera (after excluding the outgroup H. melpomene), 79 orthogroups were shared only between M. domestica and P. downsi and 12 putative gene families were unique to only P. downsi. These 12 gene families consisted of 27 genes and the great majority had the best BLAST hits against “uncharacterized” or “hypothetical” proteins in other related species (Supplementary Table S4). This result indicates that these gene families that appeared “unique” in P. downsi are likely false predictions as we do not have experimental evidence (e.g., transcriptome data) for the gene models in P. downsi for accurate identification of its orthologs in other species compared.

Gene family evolution

Across 11,112 orthogroups identified, 101 gene families showed evidence of significant expansion or contraction (P < 0.01) across the phylogenetic tree. Twenty-five of these 101 gene families were identified in the branch leading to P. downsi. We filtered these 25 putative gene families by excluding: (1) families where all genes were annotated as “uncharacterized” or “hypothetical” protein in all species, and (2) genes that were annotated from genome scaffolds in P. downsi that had high sequence similarity (>95%, putative duplicated scaffolds). Following filtration, 13 gene families showed evidence of significant expansion or contraction (P < 0.01) in P. downsi (Table  2).

Table 2.

List of significantly expanding/contracting (P < 0.01) gene families in P. downsi

S.No Ortholog ID Gene family name P-value
1 OG0000008 Fibrinogen C-terminal domain-containing proteina <0.0001
2 OG0000009 Histone 2Bb <0.0001
3 OG0000014 Histone H1b <0.0001
4 OG0000015 Cuticular proteinb <0.0001
5 OG0000017 Scp domain-containing proteina <0.0001
6 OG0000040 Cytochrome P450b <0.0001
7 OG0000044 Sant-like DNA-binding domainb <0.0001
8 OG0000055 Protein takeoutb <0.0001
9 OG0000057 Nuclease HARBI1a <0.0001
10 OG0000107 Gag-pol polyprotein precursora <0.0001
11 OG0000120 Larval serum proteinb <0.0001
12 OG0000134 Glutathione S Transferaseb <0.0001
13 OG0000312 Seminal fluid proteina <0.0001
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a

Gene family expanded in P. downsi.

b

Gene family contracted in P. downsi.

One of the gene families identified as significantly expanding or contracting relative to its closest phylogenetic neighbors was cytochrome P450 (CYP450). CYP450 is a diverse superfamily of proteins associated with catabolism and anabolism of xenobiotics and endogenous compounds, that also play a role in insect hormone metabolism (Iga and Kataoka 2012). Overproduction of these detoxification enzymes has possibly allowed numerous insect species to develop insecticide resistance (Scott 1999; Wen et al. 2011). Philornis downsi and M. domestica have an expanded CYP450 gene family in comparison to their most recent common ancestor with G. morsitans (family Glossinidae) (Figure  4A). The P. downsi CYP450 family is composed of 102 genes in comparison to 66 in G. morsitans. An even greater level of expansion was observed in two other members of Muscidae (M. domestica: 143 genes and S. calcitrans: 193 genes). Compared to G. morsitans, the expansion of CYP450 genes is mainly found in CYP4, CYP6, and CYP28 genes (Figure  4B). The CYP6 subfamily in P. downsi is composed of 25 genes, almost doubling the number from the 14 genes present in G. morsitans. Within M. domestica and S. calcitrans, some expanded CYP6 and CYP9 genes are clustered along the scaffold (Dermauw et al. 2020). We found a similar case in P. downsi. For example, there were eight CYP6 genes clustered within the 195-kb region in scaffold 39. We also found an expansion in the CYP4 subfamily from 15 genes in G. morsitans to 31 genes in P. downsi. A similar expansion was seen in the CYP28 subfamily (four genes in G. morsitans to eight genes in P. downsi).

Figure 4.

Figure 4

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Gene family evolution. (A) Number of genes in Cytochrome P450 gene family across Diptera. (B) Number of genes in various subfamilies of Cytochromes P450 gene family in G. morsitans, P. downsi, M. domestica, and D. melanogaster. (C) Number of genes in glutathione S-transferase gene family across Diptera. (D) Number of genes in various subfamilies of glutathione S-transferase gene family in G. morsitans, P. downsi, M. domestica, and D. melanogaster.

Glutathione S-transferase (GST) also showed evidence of expansion in P. downsi. GSTs are a highly conserved, large family of dimeric enzymes associated with detoxification of endogenous and/or xenobiotic compounds, such as insecticides (Ketterman et al. 2011). The P. downsi GST family consists of 25 genes and the pattern across the dipterans is similar to that observed within the Cytochrome P450 gene family described above (Figure  4C). For example, in comparison to G. morsitans (15 genes), P. downsi and M. domestica have an expanded number of genes (25 genes in P. downsi, 31 genes in M. domestica). The GST family is further grouped into six subclasses (Delta, Epsilon, Omega, Sigma, Theta, and Zeta), with Delta and Epsilon being specific subclasses found in the class Insecta. The major expansions of the GST family in P. downsi were observed in Delta and Epsilon subclasses (Figure  4D).

We also identified a reduction in size of the Fibrinogen C-terminal Domain-Containing and SCP domain-containing gene families, both known to have immune function properties (Table  1 and Supplementary Table S5). Fibrinogen plays a key role in blood clot formation through the conversion of fibrinogen to insoluble fibrin (Weisel and Litvinov 2017) and the C-terminal domain of fibrinogen is the primary binding site of platelets (Hanington and Zhang 2011). The Sperm-coating glycoprotein (Scp) family contains, among other proteins, antigen 5 (Ag5), which is associated with the venom secretory ducts of stinging insects (Gibbs et al. 2008).

The invasion of P. downsi has had dramatic negative effects on the endemic avifauna of the Galápagos, including Darwin’s finches. As researchers work to better understand the pathway of invasion and the ecological and evolutionary processes that may have facilitated its invasion to the Galápagos, the need for a high-quality whole genome sequence has grown. The addition of this resource is therefore meant to provide the foundation for further investigations using genomics tools in this system. Gene expression studies could shed light on the observed gene family expansions and contractions noted in our study and present a promising avenue for future research. Further population-scale resequencing of various populations of P. downsi will also allow us to explore mechanisms of local adaptation of the parasite to the environment across islands.

Data availability

The genome assembly has been deposited at DDBJ/ENA/GenBank under the accession JAHXMU000000000. The version described in this paper is version JAHXMU010000000. Short-sequencing reads used for generating this genome have been deposited to NCBI, under bioproject accession number PRJNA747990. Custom scripts and codes used for running all analyses reported in this paper can be found on our lab GitHub page (https://github.com/sangeet2019/Philornis). Supplemental Material available at figshare: https://doi.org/10.25387/g3.14700222.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Lauren Albert, Taylor Verrett, and Corrine Arthur for field assistance and the Galápagos Science Center and the Galápagos National Park for logistical support. They also thank Noah K. Whiteman for his helpful comments on the manuscript and Bethia King for her entomological expertise. The sampling was done under Galápagos National Parks permits PC 28-19 and Genetic Access permit MAE-DNB-CM-2016-0041.

S.L. and J.A.H.K. conceived the idea. S.A.K., G.J.V., and J.C. collected the specimens. C.M.C. and J.A.H.K. carried out the laboratory work. M.R. and S.L. designed and performed the bioinformatic analyses with the support of C.M.C. and J.A.H.K. S.L. and J.A.H.K. prepared the manuscript, and all authors edited and approved the final version.

Funding

This project was supported by the Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University to S.L., Northern Illinois University Division of Research and Innovation Partnerships and the University Library to J.A.H.K., and the University of Connecticut to S.A.K.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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Associated Data

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

Data Availability Statement

The genome assembly has been deposited at DDBJ/ENA/GenBank under the accession JAHXMU000000000. The version described in this paper is version JAHXMU010000000. Short-sequencing reads used for generating this genome have been deposited to NCBI, under bioproject accession number PRJNA747990. Custom scripts and codes used for running all analyses reported in this paper can be found on our lab GitHub page (https://github.com/sangeet2019/Philornis). Supplemental Material available at figshare: https://doi.org/10.25387/g3.14700222.

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